Researchers propose paradigm shift with "planetary commons" to safeguard earth's critical systems

A groundbreaking research paper challenges conventional notions of global commons and advocates for a more expansive framework called the "Planetary Commons".

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF LINCOLN

 

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"PLANETARY COMMONS" NEEDED TO SAFEGUARD EARTH'S CRITICAL SYSTEMS

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CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF LINCOLN

A groundbreaking research paper, published this week in the renowned journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), challenges conventional notions of global commons and advocates for a more expansive framework called the "Planetary Commons."

The study, conducted by a collaborative team of 22 leading international researchers - including Professor Louis Kotzé, Senior Professorial Fellow in Lincoln Law School and Professor Duncan French, Head of College of Health & Science and Professor of International Law - over nearly two years, calls for a paradigm shift in global governance to effectively safeguard the Earth's critical systems.

The traditional concept of global commons, encompassing shared resources beyond national borders such as the deep oceans, high seas, the atmosphere, and Antarctica, is expanded upon by the researchers. They argue that these global commons must not only include geographic regions but also critical biophysical systems that regulate the resilience and state of the entire planet—what they term the Planetary Commons.

According to Professor Louis Kotzé, co-lead author and a legal expert affiliated with the University of Lincoln, UK, and North-West University in South Africa: "Our existing global environmental law and governance framework is unable to address the planetary crisis and keep us from crossing planetary boundaries. This is why we urgently need Planetary Commons as a new law and governance approach that can safeguard critical Earth system regulating functions more effectively."

The researchers stress that the Planetary Commons go beyond jurisdictional boundaries and sovereign entitlements. They argue that all states and people share a collective interest in protecting and effectively governing these critical Earth system functions for the collective good.

The researchers’ proposed framework, built on the idea of global commons but significantly expanded, addresses the unprecedented pressure that human activities place on Earth's critical regulatory systems.

Fellow co-lead author, Johan Rockström, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and Professor of Earth System Science at the University of Potsdam, emphasises the need for transnational cooperation, stating: "To limit risks for human societies and secure critical Earth system functions, the researchers propose a new framework of planetary commons to guide governance of the planet. This planetary commons framework has the potential to initiate the long overdue paradigm shift that we urgently need to safeguard the Earth system."

The publication marks a milestone in the intersection of law, politics, and Earth system science. The researchers hope that their work will contribute to the development of a new global governance approach to address the planetary crisis and secure the stability and resilience of Earth's critical systems.

ENDS

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2301531121 

ARTICLE TITLE

The planetary commons: A new paradigm for safeguarding Earth-regulating systems in the Anthropocene

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

22-Jan-2024

 

Delhi smog: India's cities must look beyond their limits to clean up air pollution 

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF SURREY

Delhi smog: India's cities must look beyond their limits to clean up air pollution 

Delhi needs the help of its rural neighbours to finally beat its killer smog problem, concludes a review carried out by the University of Surrey and regional government officials in Delhi, India.  

Professor Prashant Kumar, founding director of Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE) at the University of Surrey, said:  

“Air pollution doesn’t respect city boundaries – and so it must be tackled at regional level. If cities like Delhi want to avoid the lethal smog seen in recent years, they’ll need neighbouring rural areas to help them. We know this approach works – we've seen success in places like Mexico City and Los Angeles. By working together, we can tackle air pollution.” 

In most Indian cities (60%), the air is over seven times more polluted than it should be. This has huge health implications.  

Some of this pollution comes from neighbouring rural areas – from crop burning, wood stoves, or power plants.  

Yet measures to tackle urban smog usually ignore rural sources. Instead, they focus only on measures within the city limits – like boosting public transport or controlling pollution from industry and building sites. 

The GCARE review recommends tackling air pollution at a regional level instead. This means identifying the wider area where a city’s pollution is produced – its so-called “airshed”.  

GCARE makes several recommendations:  

• Regional air quality plans should be drawn up – which has worked well in places like Mexico City and Los Angeles. 

• "Smog forecasts” could be produced with better monitoring. Satellites could spot bonfires and other sources of pollution. Scientists could then predict how it would interact with weather conditions.  

•  “Airshed Councils” could help local, regional and federal agencies co-ordinate their efforts.  

Dr Anwar Ali Khan, Senior Environmental Engineer on the Delhi Pollution Control Committee, said: 

“Delhi’s neighbouring States have an important role to play in helping save lives in our city – and in their areas too. We need an action plan with a sound scientific basis, and we need better monitoring. This requires cities, governments and others to work together. A joined-up approach is the only way to defeat this deadly health hazard.” 

Dr Mukesh Khare, Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, said:  

"A significant portion of air pollution stems from sources outside city limits, which requires a shift from city-specific to region-specific emission reduction targets. The establishment of an airshed will be a critical tool for effective air quality management and planning." 

The research project demonstrates the University of Surrey’s contributions to a number of UN Sustainability Goals (SDG), including: No Poverty (SDG 1), No Hunger (SDG 2), Affordable and Clean Energy (SDG 7) and Climate Action (SDG 13). 

The full paper is published in the journal Sustainable Horizons. 

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JOURNAL

Sustainable Horizons

DOI

10.1016/j.horiz.2024.100090 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Systematic review

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

A critical review of managing air pollution through airshed approach

 

Detention fails to help young lawbreakers avoid further offenses, report shows

Peer-Reviewed Publication

ASSOCIATION FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE

Youth who are caught stealing, using illegal drugs, or committing other moderate crimes are far less likely to reoffend when they receive therapy, life-skills training, and other rehabilitative help rather than legal punishment, a growing body of research shows.

These findings underscore efforts in many states to implement programs that protect young people who engage in crime from reoffending and spiraling into a life of hardship, according to a new report published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Increasingly, policymakers are recognizing that processing youth through the courts may cause long-lasting psychological harm at a critical time in their development.

“If policymakers could take away one finding from the research summarized in this article, it would be that formal sanctioning, (e.g., court appearance) was never related to better life outcomes … for youths charged with moderately serious offenses,” the report states.

The authors of the report include APS Fellow Elizabeth Cauffman, developmental psychologist Jordan Beardslee, and clinical psychologist Marie Gillespie, all of University of California, Irvine;  Frank Davis of the Alternative Public Defender’s Office in Orange County, California; Judge Maria Hernandez of the Superior Court of Orange County; and Tamika Williams, Orange County deputy district attorney.

The report outlines 20 years’ worth of developmental science, including two large, long-term studies, both co-led by Cauffman, involving adolescent boys and men in early adulthood who become entangled in the justice system. 

Criminal behavior tends to peak in late adolescence and decline in early adulthood. And most youth, even those charged with serious felonies, become law-abiding adults, Cauffman and her co-authors emphasize. But several factors heighten individuals’ risk for ongoing offending, including:

• antisocial traits,
• substance use,
• poor impulse control,
• low expectations for the future,
• perceptions of the justice system as unfair,
• parental neglect,
• school suspension or expulsion, and
• community poverty and violence.

The authors also point to racial inequities in judicial sanctions on youth. Research shows that adolescents of color are arrested, referred to juvenile court, subject to harsher sentences, and tried as adults more than White youths. One study indicated that Black boys and young men were rearrested more often than their White peers despite equal or even lower rates of offending.

The authors suggest that juvenile justice policymakers not only minimize formal processing and detention for youths who commit lower-level offenses but expand diversion programs and other alternatives to jail time. 

“Adolescents are continuing to change and the response to their behavior should be developmentally appropriate,” Cauffman said. “How we respond to young people in the justice system matters. And if we want to improve community safety, we should use the science to guide both policy and practice.” 

These reforms should apply not only to adolescents but to individuals transitioning into adulthood, as research has shown that the human brain continues maturing into a person’s mid and late 20s. A promising concept is the young adult court (YAC), a specialized program for individuals ages 18-25, the authors noted. They are conducting a randomized control trial in Orange County to examine differences between young adults who are processed through a YAC versus traditional means. Young men in the YAC are supervised for at least 18 months by the court and specially trained probation officers. The youth receive help with life skills, employment, health, housing, and education. A judge can dismiss or reduce charges against those who complete the program. 

“We hope to understand the extent to which involvement with the YAC is related to short- and long-term positive outcomes in behavior, mental and physical health, school and work, and other domains,” the authors wrote.

In a commentary accompanying the report, Felice Upton, Assistant Secretary of Juvenile Rehabilitation for Washington State, argued that strengthening educational and vocational training programs with juvenile detention facilities also stands to help lift young offenders’ life trajectory. She also emphasized the importance of addressing detained youths’ psychological problems, noting that a high number of individuals entering the juvenile justice system in her state meet a diagnosis for complex post-traumatic stress disorder. Prior research has linked mental health disorders with delinquency. 

“Bringing systems and science together to find solutions is essential to help young people desist from criminal justice system involvement,” Upton wrote.

The report, “Adolescent Contact, Lasting Impact? Lessons Learned From Two Longitudinal Studies Spanning 20 Years of Developmental Science Research With Justice-system-involved Youth,” is available at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15291006231205173. Upton’s commentary is available at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15291006231218669.

 

The Association for Psychological Science is the scientific home of thousands of leading psychological science researchers, practitioners, teachers, and students from around the world. APS is dedicated to advancing scientific psychology across disciplinary and geographic borders and committed to disseminating psychological science to the public, incentivizing global collaboration among researchers, catalyzing the further development of psychological science, and promoting the application of psychological science to public policy.

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JOURNAL

Psychological Science in the Public Interest

DOI

10.1177/15291006231205173 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Literature review

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Adolescent Contact, Lasting Impact? Lessons Learned From Two Longitudinal Studies Spanning 20 Years of Developmental Science Research With Justice-System-Involved Youths

 

Centralized social networks potentially hinder innovation by making decision-making too similar

Study examines how communities adopt innovative and sustainable farming practices

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

Social systems where influence is focused around one or a few individuals may create environments where new ideas are ignored, and innovation is hindered.

This is according to a study published today in People and Nature by researchers at the University of Sydney and Stockholm University. It looked at the social networks and fertiliser use of 30 rural, cocoa-producing villages in Sulawesi, to examine how innovative and sustainable farming practices are adopted among communities.

It found that when one or two farmers hold a disproportionate level of influence (often due to their roles as "model farmers" in official sustainability programs) most other farmers tend to adopt similar practices, in this case decisions around how to fertilise their crops.

This type of social hierarchy – referred to by the researchers as “hub and spoke” networks – risks hindering innovation and could be detrimental to the adoption of practices which promote sustainability and food security, said Associate Professor Matous from the University of Sydney’s School of Project Management.

“If you’ve ever watched a group of kindergarteners play soccer, you’ll know that they run after the one kid who has the ball all at the same time. It’s a bit like that – to foster innovation what you really need is people playing a range of roles and exploring a problem from different angles,” said Associate Professor Matous.

“Centralising influence risks locking in the wrong approach as the status quo – from there it can create a culture of homogeneity, reinforcing pack mentality and group think. When combined with power hierarchies in which those who are less central are not listened to, it can crowd out innovative voices, sometimes swaying entire communities one way or another. In the case of fertilisers, this is a problem because too much can threaten the environment and too little can impact food security,” he said.

According to a UN study, smallholder farms support the livelihoods of 2.5 billion people worldwide, with farmers’ decisions on how to manage their land having profound consequences for the environment and global food security. The research was published in collaboration with Swisscontact, an NGO that works to promote sustainable agricultural practices.

“As we advocate for a nuanced approach to sustainable farming initiatives, we caution against programs that elevate a select group of farmers based merely on the fact that these farmers have been the conduit for outside interventions in the past. This can simply reinforce traditionalists and therefore, the status quo,” says Ross Jaax, Swisscontact’s Senior Technical Advisor for Sustainable Agriculture.

The study’s co-author from the University of Stockholm, Professor Örjan Bodin said: “While these individuals may hold sway in the short term, our findings suggest that top-down interventions risk undermining the social fabric of communities, potentially hindering adaptive capacities in the face of evolving agricultural and environmental challenges.

Associate Professor Matous said the results extend beyond the agricultural context and may also hold some truth in corporate and other leadership settings, areas which the School of Project Management explores.

“In contrast to the popular idea of a strong leader, we are interested in understanding socialised forms of leadership where decisions and influence are broadly shared, so we can find more effective ways of engaging communities in projects and programs".

DISCLOSURE:

The researchers have no conflicts of interest to declare. The research was financially supported by Swisscontact.

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JOURNAL

People and Nature

DOI

10.1002/pan3.10578 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Hub-and-spoke social networks among Indonesian cocoa farmers homogenize farming practices

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-Jan-2024

COI STATEMENT

The researchers have no conflicts of interest to declare. The research was financially supported by Swisscontact.

 

AA attendance lower among African American, Hispanic and young populations

Peer-Reviewed Publication

JOURNAL OF STUDIES ON ALCOHOL AND DRUGS

 

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"NO ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES" SIGN

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CREDIT: JOURNAL OF STUDIES ON ALCOHOL AND DRUGS

By Amy Norton

Alcoholics Anonymous has long been a cornerstone of treating alcohol use disorders in the United States. But even today, Americans are not accessing it equally, according to a new study in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

Alcoholics Anonymous, or AA, got its start nearly 90 years ago and is famous for spurring the "12-step" approach to recovery -- which includes acknowledging powerlessness over alcohol and giving your life over to a "higher power."

Over the years, AA and similar "mutual-help groups" have become a staple of treatment for alcohol and other drug use disorders, and research has proven they can help people achieve lasting recovery.

Yet few studies have looked at whether Americans are actually using such support groups equally. The new findings, published in the January issue of JSAD, show they are not -- and those disparities are just as clear today as 20 years ago.

After adjusting for other factors, the researchers found that between 2000 and 2020, Black and Hispanic/Latinx Americans with an alcohol use disorder were about 40% less likely to have ever attended AA meetings versus their White counterparts.

An even greater divide was seen between people younger than 30 and relatively older adults: Among adults younger than 30, less than 5% had ever attended AA -- versus about 12% of adults age 30 and up. After adjusting for other factors, the younger group attended AA at about a third of the rate of their older counterparts.

"This is concerning, because the disparities suggest that these groups -- Black, Latinx and emerging adults -- are not receiving optimal care," said lead researcher Sarah Zemore, Ph.D., a senior scientist with the Alcohol Research Group, in Emeryville, Calif.

"It's known that mutual-help groups can be quite effective in initiating and sustaining recovery," Zemore said.

And in the United States, she noted, they've become a cornerstone of addressing substance use disorders. In fact, more Americans turn to the free and widely available support groups than to specialty substance use treatment (meaning inpatient or outpatient programs for alcohol and drug problems).

Why then do disparities in AA participation exist?

This study cannot answer that question, Zemore said. But she and her colleagues did find that the explanation does not appear to rest in disparities in use of specialty substance use treatment: When they looked only at study participants who had received specialty treatment for substance use, they saw the same disparities in AA attendance.

According to Zemore, that suggests there may be something about AA that is "not attractive" to young adults and people of color.

Some past studies have suggested as much, the researchers point out: People of color attending 12-step meetings have, for instance, reported conflicts with the program's general philosophy, as well as feelings of being scrutinized or discriminated against. Young adults, meanwhile, may often be turned off by the meetings' religious nature.

The current findings are based on data from the National Alcohol Survey, which collects information on Americans' drinking habits at roughly five-year intervals. The researchers focused on nearly 8,900 Americans who were surveyed between 2000 and 2020 and who reported ever having at least 2 of 11 symptoms used to diagnose an alcohol use disorder.

Gaps in AA attendance among people of color and young people were not explained by factors such as the severity of people's alcohol-related problems or whether they had received specialty treatment. When the researchers accounted for those factors, Black adults, Hispanic/Latinx adults and young adults were still less likely to have attended AA.

Over the years, AA has evolved, now offering meetings in different languages and specifically for people of color and women, for instance. Based on the new findings, though, disparities in attendance have not narrowed since 2000.

"This problem probably isn't going to be solved by AA alone," Zemore said.

The key ingredient in AA and similar programs, she noted, seems to be the change in people's "social networks." That is, they offer a ready-made way to be around others who are working toward recovery.

AA is not the only option for people looking for peer support: Nationally, there are several mutual-help alternatives to 12-step programs, such as SMART Recovery and LifeRing.

It's not clear from this study, Zemore said, whether similar disparities exist in Americans' use of those alternative mutual-help groups.

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Zemore, S. E., Mericle, A. A., Martinez, P., Bergman, B. G., Karriker-Jaffe, K. J., Patterson, D., & Timko, C. (2024). Disparities in Alcoholics Anonymous participation from 2000 to 2020 among U.S. residents with an alcohol use disorder in the National Alcohol Survey. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 85(1), 32-40. https://doi.org/10.15288/jsad.23-00086
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To arrange an interview with Dr. Sarah Zemore, please contact her at szemore@arg.org.
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The Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs considers this press release to be in the public domain. Editors may publish this press release in print or electronic form without legal restriction. Please include a byline and citation.
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The Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs is published by the Center of Alcohol & Substance Use Studies at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. It is the oldest substance-related journal published in the United States.
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To view the public domain, stock-photo database of alcohol, tobacco and other drug-related images compiled by the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, please visit www.jsad.com/photos.

 

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JOURNAL

Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Disparities in Alcoholics Anonymous participation from 2000 to 2020 among U.S. residents with an alcohol use disorder in the National Alcohol Survey

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-Jan-2024

COI STATEMENT

The authors declare no conflicts of interest

 

What experience do newcomers have with the welfare state?

A wide-ranging study on the experiences of immigrants and bureaucrats with the Belgian welfare system.

Book Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF LIÈGE

 

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COVER

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CREDIT: @KULEUVEN PRESS

What are the expectations and needs of new arrivals/migrants in our country, and what social assistance can Belgium provide? This is the central question of a wide-ranging study conducted by researchers from the University of Liège, the KULeuven and Saint Louis University. The results of this study have just been published in a book, available in free access, which provides a unique understanding of the interactions between migrants, the welfare state and the administrations in our country.

The question of the social assistance that countries can provide to newcomers often gives rise to lively public debate and remains a major concern at a political level. This reality gives rise to new demands and changes in the profiles of people who benefit from social services. Social institutions - such as the PCSWs (public centres for social welfare) in Belgium - responsible for providing assistance play a crucial role in newcomers' access to social benefits. “Access to social assistance that meets the needs of migrants can significantly influence their incorporation into the new living environment, explains Elsa Mescoli, an anthropologist at the ULiège CEDEM (Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Migration) and co-author of the book. For example, how social institutions deal with language barriers, and the strategies developed by social workers to try and overcome certain obstacles, can make it easier for migrants to participate in the social, cultural, economic and political dynamics of their new environment”.

This book sheds empirical light on the match between the needs of newcomers and the services provided for them. Peter De Cuyper, sociologist at the KULeuven’s Institute for Research on Work and Society (HIVA), continues: “It examines the accessibility of social assistance for new arrivals from a global perspective, encompassing aspects such as access (and the equality of this access for everyone) and the availability of services. One of the main conclusions is that accessibility (or service provision) differs (widely) not only between PCSWs, but also between social workers. Factors influencing this are, for example, the organisation of services (general or specialised services), language policies, but also the personal attitudes of social workers. As a result, new arrivals feel that they are treated unequally and, according to them, getting help depends on the presence of a more or less “nice” social worker”. Focusing on Belgian public social welfare centres (CPAS/OCMW) as a case study in Wallonia, Flanders and Brussels, the authors explore the policies and practices related to social assistance and labour market activation for newcomers and the factors influencing people's access to their rights. By integrating the perspectives of all stakeholders and drawing on the views of social workers and managers as well as the experiences of migrants themselves, this book offers a unique understanding of the interactions between immigrants, the welfare state, and bureaucrats on the ground. It provides valuable pointers for improving service delivery by striving to adopt a more inclusive approach.

This book was produced as part of the BBOX project, funded by Belspo, a cooperation between the University of Liège (CEDEM), the KULeuven and the UCLouvain Saint Louis-Bruxelles (FUSL). The book 'Newcomers Navigating the Welfare State. Experiences of Immigrants and Street-Level Bureaucrats with Belgium's Social Assistance System" is an open-access book with the GPRC (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content) label. 

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DOI

10.11116/9789461665249 

 

UBC researchers advocate for sustainable logging to safeguard against global flood risks

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

 

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FLOODING IN BRITISH COLUMBIA'S FRASER VALLEY IN NOVEMBER 2021. CREDIT: UBC APPLIED SCIENCE

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CREDIT: UBC APPLIED SCIENCE

It’s time to recognize the power of healthy forests in managing global growing flood risk, and to shift towards more sustainable forestry practices and policy.

This call is emphasized by UBC researchers in a peer-reviewed article published recently in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

Dr. Younes Alila, a hydrologist and professor in the faculty of forestry, and his graduate student Henry Pham synthesized decades of hydrology studies and found that many “severely and consistently underestimated” the impact of forest cover on flood risk.

As a consequence, it led to forest management policies and practices that were either unsound or poorly informed.

Cause and effect

For more than a century, Dr. Alila explained, scientists have clung to a “deterministic” analysis. To use a strategic board game analogy, this is like looking at each move in isolation and thinking, “If I move here, then I should win.” It fails to account for the roll of the dice, the cards you draw, and what your opponents might do—all of which can change the game.

When it comes to understanding how logging might increase flood risk, a deterministic approach would look at the logging alone and try to figure out its direct effect. But the risk of flooding is influenced by many things, such as how much snow is on the ground, whether it’s melting or not, how much rain is falling, and the characteristics of the landscape itself. These factors interact over time in complex ways.

Taking them all into account is called a “probabilistic” approach and provides a better overall picture of flood risk. It’s like a savvy board game player considering all the game’s variables instead of just one.

“The probabilistic approach is already well established in other disciplines such as climate change science. It is the most accurate method for evaluating the effects of deforestation on floods,” said Henry Pham, a student in UBC’s master of science in forestry program.

Forests can lower flood risk

Dr. Alila says the probabilistic framework is designed to understand and predict, for instance, how much of the 2021 Fraser Valley floods could be attributed to climate change, land use change or logging. The approach also can be extended to investigate the causes of flood risk in other cities and regions.

He added: “In B.C. alone, the flood risk is escalating as we continue to lose forest cover due to ongoing large-scale logging and wildfires. If we want to mitigate the costs of disasters like the 2021 flooding in the Fraser Valley or the 2018 flooding in Grand Forks, we need to change the way we manage our forest cover. Regenerative practices such as selective logging, small patch cutting, and other alternatives to clear-cutting are an important way forward.”

Pham noted that clear-cut logging causes more severe and much more frequent floods, and such floods can have harsh consequences. “They can negatively impact river ecosystems, degrade water quality in community watersheds, and cause sedimentation issues downstream. Thousands of lives and many ecosystems further downstream of clear-cut logging stand to be affected.”

Dr. Alila concludes, “Forests serve as the most effective natural defense against a global escalating flood risk attributed to factors such as climate change. Now is the time for water and forest management policies to start being guided by the most up-to-date and defensible science.”

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JOURNAL

Science of The Total Environment

DOI

10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.169646 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Science of forests and floods: The quantum leap forward needed, literally and metaphorically

The complexity of forests cannot be explained by simple mathematical rules, study finds

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL

The way trees grow together do not resemble how branches grow on a single tree, scientists have discovered.

Nature is full of surprising repetitions. In trees, the large branches often look like entire trees, while smaller branches and twigs look like the larger branches they grow from. If seen in isolation, each part of the tree could be mistaken for a miniature version of itself.

It has long been assumed that this property, called fractality, also applies to entire forests but researchers from the University of Bristol have found that this is not the case.

The study, published in December in Journal of Ecology, refutes claims that the self-similarity which is observed within individual trees can be extended to whole forest canopies and landscapes.

Lead author Dr Fabian Fischer explained: “Fractality can be found in many natural systems. Transport networks such as arteries or rivers often show self-similarity in the way they branch, and many organic structures, such as trees, ferns or broccoli, are composed of parts that look like the whole.

“Fractality provides a way of categorising and quantifying these self-similar patterns we so often observe in nature, and has been hypothesized to be an emergent property that is shared by many natural systems.

“Intuitively, if you look at a picture of something and you can’t quite determine how big it is, then this is good indicator of fractality. For instance, is this a large mountain in front of me or just a small rock looking like a mountain? Is it a branch or whole a tree?

“Scientifically, this self-similarity has the attractive property that it allows you to describe an apparently complex object using some very simple rules and numbers.”

If self-similarity extended from the small twigs of a single tree to entire forest ecosystems, it would help ecologists describe complex landscapes in much simpler ways, and potentially directly compare the complexity of very different ecosystems, such as coral reefs and forest canopies.

To test this idea that forest canopies behave like fractals, the team used airborne laser scanning data from nine sites spread across Australia’s Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN). These sites span a large rainfall gradient and vary enormously in their structure: from sparse and short arid woodlands in Western Australia to towering, 90-m tall mountain ash forests in Tasmania. From each laser scan, they derived high-resolution forest height maps and compared these to what forest heights would look like if the forests were fractal in nature.

Dr Fischer said: “We found that forest canopies are not fractal, but they are very similar in how they deviate from fractality, irrespective of what ecosystem they are in.

“That they are not fractal makes a lot of sense and was our hypothesis from the start. While it might be possible to confuse a branch for an entire tree, it’s usually easy to differentiate trees from a grove of trees or from an entire forest.

“But it was surprising how similar all forest canopies were in the way they deviated from true fractals, and how deviations were linked to the size of the trees and how dry their environment was.

“The consistency of deviations also gave us an idea of how we could compare complexity across ecosystems. Most ecosystems, like forests, will hit an upper limit – most likely determined by the maximum size of its organisms – beyond which their structure cannot vary freely anymore.

“If we could determine these upper limits, this could open up routes to understanding how very different organisms and systems (coral reefs, forests, etc.) work and to test whether they might share the same basic organising principles.”

Now the team plan to compare an even wider range of forest ecosystems across the globe, find out whether there are similar organizing principles in forests and beyond, and discover what drives these patterns by looking at multiple scans in time.

Dr Fischer concluded: “A key question in science is whether there are generalizable patterns in nature, and an excellent candidate for this is fractality.

“The forests we studied were not fractal, but there were clear similarities across all sites in how they deviated from fractality. From a theoretical point of view, this points the way to a framework for finding general organizing principles in biology.

“But this also has practical implications: if we cannot understand the forest from its trees, and vice versa, then we must monitor forests both at small and large scales to understand how they respond to climatic changes and growing human pressure.”

 

Paper:

‘No evidence for fractal scaling in canopy surfaces across a diverse range of forest types’ by Fabian Fischer and Tommaso Jucker in Journal of Ecology.

 

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JOURNAL

Journal of Ecology

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

No evidence for fractal scaling in canopy surfaces across a diverse range of forest types