26 June 2014, Thursday, Day 4
The morning session continued with
Alessandro (Chiaurcci)’s talk about biodiversity partitioning. By lunchtime,
the teams were formed and their project titles established, and they started to
develop experimental protocols. Two groups will be analysing bird data, one
will work on butterflies, and one on plant communities. Although only small
datasets can be collected in such a short time, this is still a useful
opportunity to hone skills in experimental design, and start practicing in this
difficult ”art of compromise”. The afternoon was spent in the field; the
weather continues to be warm and sunny. After dinner, I gave a talk on
ecosystem services, including the recent update on the global valuation,
published ca. two weeks ago, that upped the global value of ecosystem services to
about 200 trillion US$/year.This is much higher than the 1997 estimate, and a
multiple of the global GDP calculated in the usual way. There followed a lively
debate about the usefulness and acceptability of economic valuation of ESs that
flowed onto a discussion about monetising various human activities and values,
and our attitude towards nature. Apparently, field work did not tire out the
participants’ thirst for discussions. We have also learned that the University
of Ioannina will formally take over the school as their field station, and the
handover will be signed next Tuesday. As there are not many field stations in
the Mediterranean, this site could be an attractive location for field-based
courses for European universities.
Gabor Lovei
No comments:
Post a Comment