• Energy Research

William J. McConnell, James D. A. Millington, Nicholas J. Reo, Marina Alberti, Heidi Asbjornsen, Lawrence A. Baker, Nicholas Brozov, Laurie E. Drinkwater, Scott A. Drzyzga, Jose, Fragoso, Daniel S. Holland, Claire A. Jantz, Timothy Kohler, Herbert D. G. Maschner, Michael Monticino, Guillermo Podesta, Robert Gilmore Pontius, Jr., Charles L. Redman, David Sailor, Gerald Urquhart, and Jianguo Liu. (2011). Research on Coupled Human and Natural Systems (CHANS): Approach, Challenges, and Strategies. Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America April: 218-228.

Human beings have used fire as an ecosystem management tool for thousands of years. In the context of the scientific and policy debate surrounding potential climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies, the importance of the impact of relatively recent state fire-exclusion policies on fire regimes has been debated. To provide empirical evidence to this ongoing debate we examine the impacts of state fire-exclusion policies in the chestnut forest ecosystems of two geographically neighbouring municipalities in central Spain, Casillas and Rozas de Puerto Real. Extending the concept of 'Traditional Ecological Knowledge' to include the use of fire as a management tool as 'Traditional Fire Knowledge' (TFK), we take a mixed-methods and interdisciplinary approach to argue that currently observed differences between the municipalities are useful for considering the characteristics of >pre-industrial anthropogenic fire regimes> and their impact on chestnut forest ecosystems. We do this by examining how responses from interviews and questionnaire surveys of local inhabitants about TFK in the past and present correspond to the current biophysical landscape state and recent fire activity (based on data from dendrochronological analysis, aerial photography and official fire statistics). We then discuss the broader implications of TFK decline for future fire management policies across Europe particularly in light of the published results of the EU sponsored Fire Paradox research project. In locations where TFK-based >pre-industrial anthropogenic fire regimes> still exist, ecosystem management strategies for adaptation and mitigation to climate change could be conceivably implemented at a minimal economic and political cost to the state by local communities that have both the TFK and the adequate social, economic and cultural incentives to use it. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. This research was made possible by an Academic Outreach Engagement Grant from Middlebury College. The following Middlebury College and New York University students volunteered as interviewers during the Fall of 2012 and Spring of 2013 semesters: Kimberly Sable, Kaelin Stone, Charlotte O’Herron, Forrest Carroll, Zuzana Vuova, Peter Elbaum, Jillian Mock, Jessica Davis, Cody Beaudreau, Aidan McGrath, Gabrielle Fromer, Fran Bullard, William Marrs, Rosie Mazzarella, Emily Duh, Shaun Devlin, Martin Kim, Samuel Schwartzbad, Priyanka Jhaveri, Renee Antoine, Phillip Origlio, Michael Cutrone, Louis Bedford, Lindsey Skolnik, Nino Kakauridze, Giovanni Barcenes, Ann Yang and Rachel Rinehart. Francisco Seijo would like to thank the Fundación “Equo” for its help in finding local volunteers for the project and the municipal governments of Rozas de Puerto Real and Casillas – and particularly David Saugar and Daniel Moreno – for their kind and disinterested collaboration in the deployment of the survey questionnaire. FS would also like to express his gratitude to Beatriz Pérez Ramos from the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha and Peter Fule of Northern Arizona University for their helpful comments and contributions to this paper and to Captain Jorge Garcia Rodriguez of the Spanish army for allowing us access to military aerial photographs. Jorge Lozano is being supported by a Prometeo Fellowship from the SENESCYT, a national agency for Education and Science of the Government of Ecuador. James Millington would like to acknowledge the Leverhulme Trust for his Early Career Fellowship (ECF/2010/0378) which funded his fieldwork in the study area. G. Sangüesa-Barreda and J.J. Camarero contributions to this study were supported by projects CGL2011-26654 (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness) and 1032S/2013 (OAPN, Spanish Ministry of Agriculture and Environment). All authors would also like to express their gratitude to the people of Rozas and Casillas for their hospitality and, especially, patience in responding to our questions. Peer Reviewed

a b s t r a c t In many managed forests, tree regeneration density and composition following timber harvest are highly variable. This variability is due to multiple environmental drivers - including browsing by herbivores such as deer, seed availability and physical characteristics of forest gaps and stands - many of which can be influenced by forest management. Identifying management actions that produce regeneration abundance and composition appropriate for the long-term sustainability of multiple forest values (e.g., timber, wildlife) is a difficult task. However, this task can be aided by simulation tools that improve under- standing and enable evaluation of synergies and trade-offs between management actions for different resources. We present a forest tree regeneration, growth, and harvest simulation model developed with the express purpose of assisting managers to evaluate the impacts of timber and deer management on tree regeneration and forest dynamics in northern hardwood forests over long time periods under different scenarios. The model couples regeneration and deer density sub-models developed from empirical data with the Ontario variant of the US Forest Service individual-based forest growth model, Forest Vegeta- tion Simulator. Our error analyses show that model output is robust given uncertainty in the sub-models. We investigate scenarios for timber and deer management actions in northern hardwood stands for 200 years. Results indicate that higher levels of mature ironwood (Ostrya virginiana) removal and lower deer densities significantly increase sugar maple (Acer saccharum) regeneration success rates. Furthermore, our results show that although deer densities have an immediate and consistent negative impact on for- est regeneration and timber through time, the non-removal of mature ironwood trees has cumulative negative impacts due to feedbacks on competition between ironwood and sugar maple. These results demonstrate the utility of the simulation model to managers for examining long-term impacts, synergies and trade-offs of multiple forest management actions. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation are two major environmental actions that need to be effectively performed this century, alongside ensuring food supply for a growing global human population. These three issues are highly interlinked through land management systems. Thus, major global food production regions located in biodiversity hotpots and with potential for carbon sequestration face trade-offs between these valuable land-based ecosystem services. The state of Mato Grosso in Brazil is one such region, where private lands that have been illegally used for agriculture could be restored to natural vegetation - with potential benefits for climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation, although with potentially negative effects on food production. To address this challenge, in this study we used a multicriteria nexus modeling approach that considers carbon stocks, priority areas for biodiversity conservation, and the opportunity for food production, to develop scenarios of land allocation that aim to balance the benefits and drawbacks of ecosystem restoration. Results show that forcing landowners to restore their individual lands compromises the potential for a "green land market" throughout the Amazon biome in which private landowners with lower food production capacities (e.g., less connected to markets and infrastructure) would benefit from restoration programs that compensate them for the inclusion of environmental restoration among their economic activities, instead of taking large economic risks to produce more food. We additionally highlight that strategic ecosystem restoration can achieve higher gains in biodiversity and carbon with lower costs of restoration actions and with minimal impacts on agriculture. Analyses like ours demonstrate how scenarios of land allocation that simultaneously address climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation through ecosystem restoration, while also minimizing possible impacts on food production, can be sought to move the world towards a sustainable future.

Achieving food and nutrition security for all in a changing and globalized world remains a critical challenge of utmost importance. The development of solutions benefits from insights derived from modelling and simulating the complex interactions of the agri-food system, which range from global to household scales and transcend disciplinary boundaries. A wide range of models based on various methodologies (from food trade equilibrium to agent-based) seek to integrate direct and indirect drivers of change in land use, environment and socio-economic conditions at different scales. However, modelling such interaction poses fundamental challenges, especially for representing non-linear dynamics and adaptive behaviours. We identify key pieces of the fragmented landscape of food security modelling, and organize achievements and gaps into different contextual domains of food security (production, trade, and consumption) at different spatial scales. Building on in-depth reflection on three core issues of food security – volatility, technology, and transformation – we identify methodological challenges and promising strategies for advancement. We emphasize particular requirements related to the multifaceted and multiscale nature of food security. They include the explicit representation of transient dynamics to allow for path dependency and irreversible consequences, and of household heterogeneity to incorporate inequality issues. To illustrate ways forward we provide good practice examples using meta-modelling techniques, non-equilibrium approaches and behavioural-based modelling endeavours. We argue that further integration of different model types is required to better account for both multi-level agency and cross-scale feedbacks within the food system.