Musings, Explorations, and Announcements

Over at Yale Environment 360, Richard Stone has an interesting article about ongoing work examining recent blooms of jellyfish populations.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that jellyfish populations have been on the rise, and it is possible that some marine systems are entering alternate stable states that are jellyfish- rather than fish-dominated: By removing a curb on jellyfish population growth, overfishing “opens up ecological space for jellyfish,” says Anthony Richardson, an ecologist at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research in Cleveland, Australia.

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This month's Conservation Letters has a Policy Perspective on the risks of relying REDD+ funding for conservation projects.  REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, with the "+" standing for biodiversity and social benefits), is a mechanism for transferring funds to developing countries for forest preservation and restoration.  REDD+ financing is eventually supposed to flow primarily from the private sector, and it is one of the few parts of an international climate agreement that has been uncontentious in negotiations.

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Conservation Letters has an article about a situation in Borneo that illustrates how sudden, unpredictable events in ecology are not always bad.  In the past year, the island's forests have undergone an ecosystem-wide event known as "general flowering," where trees of many species produce seeds and fruit in massive amounts.  These events occur rarely (the last was 12 years ago), and in the years in between few seeds are produced and few new trees take root.

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Ecosystem Marketplace posted an interesting document today on Global Forest Carbon Financial Risk Management Best Practices.  Produced as part of a workshop of forest investors and lawyers, it outlines the risks in the forest carbon offset market and practices to manage these risks.  Given the growth potential of forest carbon offset markets (not to mention other ecosystem service markets), the risk management tools for offset transactions are underdeveloped.   The authors document 25 different categories of risk that need to be addressed in order to develop the market.

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The search for new biofuels has effectively created an entire new category of agriculture, along with which comes a host of new management risks.  The cycles of crop growth and failure may be less well known than those of more familiar food crops, and they may be affected by new pests and disease. A particularly worrisome area of risk associated with biofuel crops is the possibility that the crops themselves may become noxious pests in countries to which they are imported.

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