Diverse values of nature for sustainability.

Twenty-five years since foundational publications on valuing ecosystem services for human well-being, addressing the global biodiversity crisis still implies confronting barriers to incorporating nature's diverse values into decision-making. These barriers include powerful interests supported by current norms and legal rules such as property rights, which determine whose values and which values of nature are acted on. A better understanding of how and why nature is (under)valued is more urgent than ever.

Flooding tolerance of four tropical peatland tree species in a nursery trial.

In order to facilitate hydrological restoration, initiatives have been conducted to promote tree growth in degraded and rewetted peatlands in Indonesia. For these initiatives to be successful, tree seedlings need to be able to survive flooding episodes, with or without shade. We investigated the survival rates and the formation of adventitious roots in the case of four tree species exposed to combinations of different shading and water levels under controlled conditions in a nursery, with artificial rainwater and with peat soil as the medium.

Assessment of browsed plants in a sub-tropical forest frontier by means of fuzzy inference.

Browsing of forest frontiers by cattle in sub-tropical landscapes is detrimental to ecosystem health, but essential to smallholder livelihoods. We described a silvopastoral landscape, searching for browsed plants to assess how much of the forest is actually used for this end, and also searching for potential new useful species for silvopastoral purposes. The first objective was accomplished through a floristic description, making observations of individuals with browsing marks.

Discourses mapped by Q-method show governance constraints motivate landscape approaches in Indonesia.

Interpreting discourses among implementers of what is termed a "landscape approach" enables us to learn from their experience to improve conservation and development outcomes. We use Q-methodology to explore the perspectives of a group of experts in the landscape approach, both from academic and implementation fields, on what hinderances are in place to the realisation of achieving sustainable landscape management in Indonesia. The results show that, at a generic level, "corruption" and "lack of transparency and accountability" rank as the greatest constraints on landscape functionality.

Subsidence and carbon dioxide emissions in a smallholder peatland mosaic in Sumatra, Indonesia.

Most attention in quantifying carbon dioxide (CO) emissions from tropical peatlands has been on large-scale plantations (industrial timber, oil palm ()), differing in drainage and land-use practices from those of smallholder farms. We measured subsidence and changes in bulk density and carbon organic content to calculate CO emissions over 2.5 years in a remnant logged-over forest and four dominant smallholder land-use types in Tanjung Jabung Barat District, Jambi Province, Sumatra, Indonesia: (1) simple rubber () agroforest (> 30 years), (2) mixed coconut () and coffee gardens () (> 40 years), (3) mixed betel nut () and coffee gardens (> 20 years), and (4) oil palm plantation (1 year).

Indonesia's forest conversion moratorium assessed with an agent-based model of Land-Use Change and Ecosystem Services (LUCES).

The Indonesian government recently confirmed its Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) to mitigate global climate change. A forest moratorium policy that protects forest and peatland is a significant part of the INDCs; however, its effectiveness is unclear in the face of complex land-use and land-cover change. This study aims to assess the dynamics of land-use change and ecosystem service supply as a function of local decision-making.

Multi-century tree-ring precipitation record reveals increasing frequency of extreme dry events in the upper Blue Nile River catchment.

Climate-related environmental and humanitarian crisis are important challenges in the Great Horn of Africa (GHA). In the absence of long-term past climate records in the region, tree-rings are valuable climate proxies, reflecting past climate variations and complementing climate records prior to the instrumental era. We established annually resolved multi-century tree-ring chronology from Juniperus procera trees in northern Ethiopia, the longest series yet for the GHA.

Global Tree Cover and Biomass Carbon on Agricultural Land: The contribution of agroforestry to global and national carbon budgets.

Agroforestry systems and tree cover on agricultural land make an important contribution to climate change mitigation, but are not systematically accounted for in either global carbon budgets or national carbon accounting. This paper assesses the role of trees on agricultural land and their significance for carbon sequestration at a global level, along with recent change trends. Remote sensing data show that in 2010, 43% of all agricultural land globally had at least 10% tree cover and that this has increased by 2% over the previous ten years.

Climate change mitigation and adaptation in the land use sector: from complementarity to synergy.

Currently, mitigation and adaptation measures are handled separately, due to differences in priorities for the measures and segregated planning and implementation policies at international and national levels. There is a growing argument that synergistic approaches to adaptation and mitigation could bring substantial benefits at multiple scales in the land use sector. Nonetheless, efforts to implement synergies between adaptation and mitigation measures are rare due to the weak conceptual framing of the approach and constraining policy issues.

Influence of coastal vegetation on the 2004 tsunami wave impact in west Aceh.

In a tsunami event human casualties and infrastructure damage are determined predominantly by seaquake intensity and offshore properties. On land, wave energy is attenuated by gravitation (elevation) and friction (land cover). Tree belts have been promoted as "bioshields" against wave impact.

Boundary work for sustainable development: Natural resource management at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

Previous research on the determinants of effectiveness in knowledge systems seeking to support sustainable development has highlighted the importance of "boundary work" through which research communities organize their relations with new science, other sources of knowledge, and the worlds of action and policymaking. A growing body of scholarship postulates specific attributes of boundary work that promote used and useful research. These propositions, however, are largely based on the experience of a few industrialized countries.

Variable responses of the depth of tree nitrogen uptake to pruning and competition.

Trees in cropped fields may improve nitrogen (N) use efficiency by intercepting leached N, but crop yield will be reduced if the trees compete strongly with crops for N. Ideal trees for intercropping will take up N from deeper soil layers not accessed by the crop species. Spatiotemporal aspects of tree nitrogen capture niches were investigated within a hedgerow intercropping system by placing 15N at three depths and monitoring 15N uptake by trees pruned either 25 or 4 days before application of 15N.