[ECOLOG-L] Changing Climate Change Grant Competition
Dear Ecolleagues: A proposal from American Bird Conservancy has become a finalist for a major $200,000 grant from the Green Mountain Coffee Company in their Changing Climate Change grant competition. ABC is one of five finalists in the Threats to Coffee Growing Communities category, and part of the selection process includes public input. Approval of this grant would be a major step forward for the American Birds Campaign but we need your vote to help us win the grant! www.justmeans.com/showideadetails Shade coffee plantations in the Andes Mountains are valuable habitat for wintering migratory birds such as the Cerulean Warbler, the fastest declining songbird in North America. The mature trees that grow alongside the coffee crop also act as a valuable carbon store. Unfortunately, shade coffee plants produce a lower bean yield than plants bred to grow in sun coffee farms that are devoid of trees, and thus they provide a lower income for farmers. As a result, shade farms are being converted to sun farms, and birds and the environment are paying the price. ABC's proposed project, developed in partnership with the Colombian coffee federation (CENICAFÉ), will calculate the amount of carbon stored in shade coffee plantations versus the much lower carbon value of sun coffee plantations. It will then test a system to provide financial incentives to farmers to keep their coffee in shade using funding for carbon offsets paid for by corporations. If successful, this project stands to benefit farmers across millions of acres of the Andes, and could be a major advance in the battle to save the Cerulean Warbler. The project will have multiple additional benefits for local communities in terms of the protection of watersheds and traditional farming techniques. Please support ABC's proposal today (or please, no later than April 6). It will only take a moment of your time, so vote now! Just follow the link http://www.justmeans.com/showideadetails?ideaid=9985isread=y then click the Support it button on the right-hand side of the web page it takes you to. And don't forget to forward this email to a friend, too! Thank You, Arturo Restrepo A. | Carbon Finance Coordinator American Bird Conservancy 1731 Connecticut Avenue, N.W. 3rd Floor | Washington, D.C. 20009 USA T: 1 202 234 7181 ext. 210 | F: 1 202 234 7182
[ECOLOG-L] Hilton Pond 03/01/09
We're trying to get caught up on our This Week at Hilton Pond postings after putting together four lengthy Costa Rica hummingbird banding summaries, so we've combined the first two weeks of March to make the next installment. This one's about our early March snow, a Rufous Hummingbird we banded in Rock Hill SC, and some ducks that came to visit. To view our photo essay smorgasbord for 1-14 March 2009, please visit http://www.hiltonpond.org/ThisWeek090301.html We also banded a lot of birds at Hilton Pond Center during that fortnight; they're listed along with significant recaptures--some of which were rather old. Happy Spring Nature Watching! BILL -- RESEARCH PROGRAM c/o BILL HILTON JR. Executive Director Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History 1432 DeVinney Road, York, South Carolina 29745 USA resea...@hiltonpond.org, (803) 684-5852, eFax: (503) 218-0845 Please visit our web sites (courtesy of Comporium.net): Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History at http://www.hiltonpond.org Operation RubyThroat: The Hummingbird Project at http://www.rubythroat.org **
[ECOLOG-L] News: Report Calls for Prosperity without Growth
[The report itself, Prosperity without Growth? - The transition to a sustainable economy, can be accessed from: http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications.php?id=914 ] * * * http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/30/g20-sustainable-development-commission Ahead of G20 summit, report says: promote sustainability over growth * Nick Fletcher * The Guardian, Monday 30 March 2009 The pursuit of economic growth was one of the root causes of the financial crisis, and governments should respond to the recession by abandoning growth at all costs in favour of a more sustainable, greener system, says a report out today. Before this week's G20 summit, the Sustainable Development Commission, an independent adviser to the government, says the developed world's reliance on debt to fuel its relentless growth has created an unstable system that has made individuals, families and communities vulnerable to cycles of boom and bust. The benefits of growth have also been delivered unequally, with a fifth of the world's population earning only 2% of global income. Increased consumption also has disastrous environmental consequences, including the degradation of some 60% of the world's ecosystems. According to the SDC, the global economy is almost five times larger than it was 50 years ago, and if it continues to grow at the same rate it would be 80 times larger by the end of the century. Faced with the current recession, it is understandable that many leaders at the G20 summit will be anxious to restore business as usual, said Professor Tim Jackson, economics commissioner at the SDC. But governments really need to take a long, hard look at the effects of our single-minded devotion to growth - effects which include the recession itself. It may seem inopportune to be questioning growth while we are faced with daily news of the effects of recession, but allegiance to growth is the most dominant feature of an economic and political system that has led us to the brink of disaster. Not to stand back now and question what has happened would be to compound failure with failure: failure of vision with failure of responsibility. Figuring out how to deliver prosperity without growth is more essential now than ever. The report - called Prosperity without growth? - calls on governments to develop a sustainable economic system that does not rely on ever-increasing consumption. The SDC's proposals to achieve this include: improving financial and fiscal prudence, as well as giving priority to investment in public assets and infrastructure over private affluence; allowing individuals to flourish by tackling inequality, sharing available work, improving work-life balance and reversing the culture of consumerism; and establishing ecological limits on economic activity. The report concludes: The clearest message from the financial crisis is that our current model of economic success is fundamentally flawed. For the advanced economies of the western world, prosperity without growth is no longer a utopian dream. It is a financial and ecological necessity. * * * http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/pages/redefining-prosperity.html Redefining Prosperity Road scene with sign, Please find alternative routeThe economy is geared, above all, to economic growth. Economic policy in the current recession is all about returning to growth - but an economic crisis can be an opportunity for some basic rethinking and restructuring. Two objectives other than growth - sustainability and wellbeing - have moved up the political and policy-making agenda in recent years, challenging the overriding priority traditionally given to economic growth. SDC's Redefining Prosperity project has looked into the connections and conflicts between sustainability, growth, and wellbeing. As part of a two year programme of work, we commissioned thinkpieces, organised seminars, and invited feedback. This project has now resulted in a major SDC report: 'Prosperity without growth?: the transition to a sustainable economy' by Professor Tim Jackson, SDC's Economics Commissioner. Prosperity without growth? analyses the relationship between growth and the growing environmental crisis and 'social recession'. In the last quarter of a century, while the global economy has doubled, the increased in resource consumption has degraded an estimated 60% of the world's ecosystems. The benefits of growth have been distributed very unequally, with a fifth of the world's population sharing just 2% of global income. Even in developed countries, huge gaps remain in wealth and well-being between rich and poor. While modernising production and reducing the impact of certain goods and services have led to greater resource efficiency in recent decades, our report finds that current aspirations for 'decoupling' environmental impacts from economic growth are unrealistic. The report finds no evidence as yet of
Re: [ECOLOG-L] analyzing ordinal phenology data
John, Basically you are doing a ranked regression analysis. I believe you can find a paper on that from several years ago. It works, but you just cannot make inferences based on the regression line. That is, you can't find a phenology rate due to the regression, but you can still talk about direction and effect. One goal of regression is to decide cause and effect of some predicted trend. You may do that with rank regression - that is, reject the null hypothesis of independence between your independent and dependent variables. Cheers, Jim John Skillman wrote: Ecologgers... We have regularly censused populations of several different plant species throughout the growing season and categorized the observed individuals into one of 7 different phenological stages (e.g., stage 1 = initial greening, stage 4 = peak flowering, stage 6 = seed drop, etc.). These numeral IDs for the different stages are ordinal data that, by coincidence, tend to scale linearly with day of the growing season. Although using ordinal data is not permitted (and makes no sense) in regression analyses, we've done it anyway! By running regressions we are able to get slopes (change in phenological stage vs. day of year) which, in essence, quantifies the seasonal rates of development for the different species. Taking it one step further, Analyses of Covariance confirm that some species progress through these phenological stages at rates that are significantly different from that of other species. So if this tells me what I want to know, what is the problem? The problem, of course, is that this approach treats these phenological stage IDs (1-7) as quantitative values when, in fact, they are nothing more than category labels. Can anyone suggest an alternative way to use these data to quantify seasonal development rates and test for differences among species? BTW, we censused different individuals within each population haphazardly (~10 individuals per population per census date) and did NOT follow the same individuals over the season. John Skillman -- James J. Roper Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute Bocas del Toro Marine Research Station MRC 0580-03 Unit 9100, Box 0948 DPO AA 34002-9998 Skype-in (USA):+1 706 5501064 Skype-in (Brazil): 41 39415715 E-mail - personal: jjro...@gmail.com E-mail - consulting: arsart...@gmail.com STRI Bocas del Toro http://www.stri.org/english/research/facilities/marine/bocas_del_toro/index.php Programa de Pós-graduação em Ecologia e Conservação http://www.bio.ufpr.br/ecologia/ Educational Pages http://jjroper.googlepages.com/ Ars Artium Consulting http://arsartium.googlepages.com/ 9^o 21.122' N, and 82^o 15.390' W In Google Earth, copy and paste - 9 21.122' N, 82 15.390' W
[ECOLOG-L] clarification/ parthenogenesis sex
Just to clarify, since a couple asked offlist, what I meant when I said sex does not have adaptive advantage to the individual, that comes from this in my basic Biology textbook: Sex is of great evolutionary advantage for populations or species...However evolution occurs because of changes at the level of individual survival and reprono obvious advantage accrues to the progeny of an individual that engages in sexual repro. In fact recombination is a destructive as well as a constructive process in evolutionThe segregation of chromosomes during meiosis tends to disrupt adv combos of genes more often than it creates new, better adapted combinations... In fact the more complex the adaptation of an indiv organism, the less likely that recombination will improve it and the more likely that recomb will disrupt it. It is therefore a puzzle to know what a well-adapted individual gains from participating in sexual repro since all of its progeny could maintain its successful gene combinations reproduced asexually I understand that there are 2 reigning theories at present on the evolution of sex. One is the deleterious mutation hypothesis (Kondrashav) that sex purges a species of genetic mutations (for this to be an evolutionary stable strategy, according to his calculations anyway, the rate of deleterious mutations must be less than 1 individual per generation, which is right about the rate that deleterious mutations occur in most species). The other is Van Valen's Red Queen hypothesis, which says sexual repro helps individuals fight disease and parasites. The organism is in an ever present red-queen-syndrome battle (running fast to stay in the same place) with disease and parasites, and sex helps mix up the gene combos. What I'm TRYING To understand is where/how does selfish gene theory fit in with all this. Sometimes selfish gene theory seems at odds with Darwinian selection on individuals, but sometimes it doesn't. OK does that help clarify? Any insight??? :-) Wendee ~~ Wendee Holtcamp, M.S. Wildlife Ecology Freelance Writer * Photographer * Bohemian http://www.wendeeholtcamp.com http://bohemianadventures.blogspot.com ~~6-wk Online Writing Course Start Apr 11 Jun 6, 2009~~ ~~~ 'Better to light a candle than curse the darkness'
