The bii4africa dataset of faunal and floral population intactness estimates across Africa's major land uses

Sub-Saharan Africa is under-represented in global biodiversity datasets, particularly regarding the impact of land use on species' population abundances. Drawing on recent advances in expert elicitation to ensure data consistency, 200 experts were convened using a modified-Delphi process to estimate 'intactness scores': the remaining proportion of an 'intact' reference population of a species group in a particular land use, on a scale from 0 (no remaining individuals) to 1 (same abundance as the reference) and, in rare cases, to 2 (populations that thrive in human-modified landscapes). The resulting bii4africa dataset contains intactness scores representing terrestrial vertebrates (tetrapods: ±5,400 amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals) and vascular plants (±45,000 forbs, graminoids, trees, shrubs) in sub-Saharan Africa across the region's major land uses (urban, cropland, rangeland, plantation, protected, etc.) and intensities (e.g., large-scale vs smallholder cropland). This dataset was co-produced as part of the Biodiversity Intactness Index for Africa Project. Additional uses include assessing ecosystem condition; rectifying geographic/taxonomic biases in global biodiversity indicators and maps; and informing the Red List of Ecosystems.

Earth stewardship: Shaping a sustainable future through interacting policy and norm shifts

Transformation toward a sustainable future requires an earth stewardship approach to shift society from its current goal of increasing material wealth to a vision of sustaining built, natural, human, and social capital-equitably distributed across society, within and among nations. Widespread concern about earth's current trajectory and support for actions that would foster more sustainable pathways suggests potential social tipping points in public demand for an earth stewardship vision. Here, we draw on empirical studies and theory to show that movement toward a stewardship vision can be facilitated by changes in either policy incentives or social norms. Our novel contribution is to point out that both norms and incentives must change and can do so interactively. This can be facilitated through leverage points and complementarities across policy areas, based on values, system design, and agency. Potential catalysts include novel democratic institutions and engagement of non-governmental actors, such as businesses, civic leaders, and social movements as agents for redistribution of power. Because no single intervention will transform the world, a key challenge is to align actions to be synergistic, persistent, and scalable.

Planning for change: Transformation labs for an alternative food system in Cape Town, South Africa

There has been a call for more participatory processes to feed into urban planning for more resilient food systems. This paper describes a process of knowledge co-production for transforming towards an alternative food system in Cape Town, South Africa. A 'transformative space' was created though a T-Lab process involving change-agents advocating for an alternative food system, and was designed to discuss challenges in the local food system from a range of perspectives, in order to co-develop potentially transformative innovations that could feed into government planning. In this paper, we describe and reflect on the T-lab in order to consider whether its design was able to meet its objective: to initiate an experimental phase of coalition-building by diverse actors that could feed into the provincial government's strategic focus on food and nutrition security. Our findings indicate that T-labs have the potential to be important mechanisms for initiating and sustaining transformative change. They can be complementary to urban planning processes seeking to transform complex social-ecological systems onto more sustainable development pathways. However, as with all experimental co-production processes, there is significant learning and refinement that is necessary to ensure the process can reach its full potential. A key challenge we encountered was how to foster diversity and difference in opinions in the context of significant historical legacies of inequality, whilst simultaneously acting for 'the common good' and seeking ways to scale impact across different contexts. The paper concludes with deliberations on the nature of planning and navigating towards systemic transformative change.

Cross-scale and social-ecological changes constitute main threats to private land conservation in South Africa

Conserving biodiversity in the long term will depend in part on the capacity of Protected Areas (PAs) to cope with cross-scale, social-ecological disturbances and changes, which are becoming more frequent in a highly connected world. Direct threats to biodiversity within PAs and their interactions with broader-scale threats are both likely to vary with PA spatial and management characteristics (e.g., location, dependence on ecotourism revenues, governmental support). Private Land Conservation Areas (PLCAs) are interesting case study systems for assessing cross-scale threats to PAs and their determinants. Despite the growing number of PLCAs around the world, there is considerable uncertainty regarding the long-term capacity of these privately owned areas to conserve biodiversity. Their potential impermanence is commonly raised as a key concern. To better understand the threats to which different types of PLCAs are likely to be vulnerable, we asked 112 PLCA landholders in South Africa what they perceived as the top threats to their PLCAs. Landowners identified direct threats to the biodiversity within their PLCAs (e.g., poaching, extreme weather, inappropriate fire regimes, alien species) as well as describing broader socio-economic threats (e.g., regional crime, national legislation and politics, global economic recessions), which were noted to interact across scales. We found support for the hypothesis that patterns in the perceived multi-scale threats to a PLCA correspond with its management and spatial characteristics, including its remoteness, dependence on ecotourism or hunting revenues, and richness of megafaunal species. Understanding the threats to which different PLCAs may be vulnerable is useful for developing more nuanced, targeted strategies to build PLCA resilience to these threats (for example, by strengthening the capacity of self-funded PLCAs to cope with the threat of economic downturns through more innovative financial instruments or diversified revenue streams). Our findings highlight the importance of considering interactions between broad-scale socio-economic changes and direct threats to biodiversity, which can influence the resilience of PAs in ways that are not anticipated by more traditional, discipline-specific consideration of direct threats to the biodiversity within their boundaries.

Calibration of Five Different Thromboplastins, Using Fresh and Freeze-dried Plasma

The results of this trial confirmed that the five different thromboplastin preparations could be calibrated in terms of thromboplastin 67/40 (2) in respect to their sensitivity to coumarin induced defect.

Using thromboplastin 2 (67/40) as reference and assigning to it, by definition, a TSR of 2.0, the other four thromboplastins can be assigned the following TSRs: thromboplastin 1 (69/223) 1.9: thromboplastin 3 (68/434) 2.0; thromboplastin 4 (70/115)2.0; and thromboplastin 5 (70/178) 1.5.

In view of the great amount of collaborative work which has been invested in the study of these preparations, they should be kept primarily for the purposes of calibrating other reference preparations rather than be consumed as working standards. Thromboplastin 67/40 should be preserved for calibrating future batches of an international reference material or of national reference preparations of a similar type. The other four preparations could be used to calibrate similar types of thromboplastin: human brain without added bovine factors (69/223) for calibration of similar human thromboplastins; the bovine thromboplastin (68/434) for bovine preparations, and the two different rabbit brain preparations (70/115) and (70/178) for calibration of the rabbit brain reagents. In this manner each of the preparations would be compared to a material of the same species and similar type, and the stocks of these materials conserved to last over a longer period of time.

Carefully prepared freeze-dried pooled plasma from patients on oral anticoagulants can be used instead of a large number of individual fresh plasmas to simplify the calibration procedure of selected thromboplastins.

In the present state of knowledge about the coumarin induced coagulation defect, artificially prepared abnormal plasmas appear to have little use in the calibration of thromboplastin preparations for control of anticoagulant therapy.

An Exploration of Human Well-Being Bundles as Identifiers of Ecosystem Service Use Patterns

We take a social-ecological systems perspective to investigate the linkages between ecosystem services and human well-being in South Africa. A recent paper identified different types of social-ecological systems in the country, based on distinct bundles of ecosystem service use. These system types were found to represent increasingly weak direct feedbacks between nature and people, from rural "green-loop" communities to urban "red-loop" societies. Here we construct human well-being bundles and explore whether the well-being bundles can be used to identify the same social-ecological system types that were identified using bundles of ecosystem service use. Based on national census data, we found three distinct well-being bundle types that are mainly characterized by differences in income, unemployment and property ownership. The distribution of these well-being bundles approximates the distribution of ecosystem service use bundles to a substantial degree: High levels of income and education generally coincided with areas characterised by low levels of direct ecosystem service use (or red-loop systems), while the majority of low well-being areas coincided with medium and high levels of direct ecosystem service use (or transition and green-loop systems). However, our results indicate that transformations from green-loop to red-loop systems do not always entail an immediate improvement in well-being, which we suggest may be due to a time lag between changes in the different system components. Using human well-being bundles as an indicator of social-ecological dynamics may be useful in other contexts since it is based on socio-economic data commonly collected by governments, and provides important insights into the connections between ecosystem services and human well-being at policy-relevant sub-national scales.

Regime shifts in the anthropocene: drivers, risks, and resilience

Many ecosystems can experience regime shifts: surprising, large and persistent changes in the function and structure of ecosystems. Assessing whether continued global change will lead to further regime shifts, or has the potential to trigger cascading regime shifts has been a central question in global change policy. Addressing this issue has, however, been hampered by the focus of regime shift research on specific cases and types of regime shifts. To systematically assess the global risk of regime shifts we conducted a comparative analysis of 25 generic types of regime shifts across marine, terrestrial and polar systems; identifying their drivers, and impacts on ecosystem services. Our results show that the drivers of regime shifts are diverse and co-occur strongly, which suggests that continued global change can be expected to synchronously increase the risk of multiple regime shifts. Furthermore, many regime shift drivers are related to climate change and food production, whose links to the continued expansion of human activities makes them difficult to limit. Because many regime shifts can amplify the drivers of other regime shifts, continued global change can also be expected to increase the risk of cascading regime shifts. Nevertheless, the variety of scales at which regime shift drivers operate provides opportunities for reducing the risk of many types of regime shifts by addressing local or regional drivers, even in the absence of rapid reduction of global drivers.

Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet

The planetary boundary (PB) concept, introduced in 2009, aimed to define the environmental limits within which humanity can safely operate. This approach has proved influential in global sustainability policy development. Steffen et al. provide an updated and extended analysis of the PB framework. Of the original nine proposed boundaries, they identify three (including climate change) that might push the Earth system into a new state if crossed and that also have a pervasive influence on the remaining boundaries. They also develop the PB framework so that it can be applied usefully in a regional context.

Science , this issue 10.1126/science.1259855

Marine regime shifts: drivers and impacts on ecosystems services

Marine ecosystems can experience regime shifts, in which they shift from being organized around one set of mutually reinforcing structures and processes to another. Anthropogenic global change has broadly increased a wide variety of processes that can drive regime shifts. To assess the vulnerability of marine ecosystems to such shifts and their potential consequences, we reviewed the scientific literature for 13 types of marine regime shifts and used networks to conduct an analysis of co-occurrence of drivers and ecosystem service impacts. We found that regime shifts are caused by multiple drivers and have multiple consequences that co-occur in a non-random pattern. Drivers related to food production, climate change and coastal development are the most common co-occurring causes of regime shifts, while cultural services, biodiversity and primary production are the most common cluster of ecosystem services affected. These clusters prioritize sets of drivers for management and highlight the need for coordinated actions across multiple drivers and scales to reduce the risk of marine regime shifts. Managerial strategies are likely to fail if they only address well-understood or data-rich variables, and international cooperation and polycentric institutions will be critical to implement and coordinate action across the scales at which different drivers operate. By better understanding these underlying patterns, we hope to inform the development of managerial strategies to reduce the risk of high-impact marine regime shifts, especially for areas of the world where data are not available or monitoring programmes are not in place.

Scenarios for Global Biodiversity in the 21st Century

Quantitative scenarios are coming of age as a tool for evaluating the impact of future socioeconomic development pathways on biodiversity and ecosystem services. We analyze global terrestrial, freshwater, and marine biodiversity scenarios using a range of measures including extinctions, changes in species abundance, habitat loss, and distribution shifts, as well as comparing model projections to observations. Scenarios consistently indicate that biodiversity will continue to decline over the 21st century. However, the range of projected changes is much broader than most studies suggest, partly because there are major opportunities to intervene through better policies, but also because of large uncertainties in projections.

Home treatment in haemophilia: clinical, social and economic advantages

Twenty-eight severely affected haemophiliacs were observed for 3 months under treatment as hospital out-patients and for the subsequent 9 months while treating themselves at home. Delay in receiving treatment and financial costs were both clearly reduced by home treatment, the patients recovered from individual bleeds more quickly and reported a greater sense of personal freedom and independence. The amount of treatment required did not materially change and no untoward effects were noted; the use of analgesics tended to be less.

Measuring conditions and trends in ecosystem services at multiple scales: the Southern African Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (SAfMA) experience

The Southern African Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (SAfMA) evaluated the relationships between ecosystem services and human well-being at multiple scales, ranging from local through to sub-continental. Trends in ecosystem services (fresh water, food, fuel-wood, cultural and biodiversity) over the period 1990-2000 were mixed across scales. Freshwater resources appear strained across the continent with large numbers of people not securing adequate supplies, especially of good quality water. This translates to high infant mortality patterns across the region. In some areas, the use of water resources for irrigated agriculture and urban-industrial expansion is taking place at considerable cost to the quality and quantity of freshwater available to ecosystems and for domestic use. Staple cereal production across the region has increased but was outstripped by population growth while protein malnutrition is on the rise. The much-anticipated wood-fuel crisis on the subcontinent has not materialized but some areas are experiencing shortages while numerous others remain vulnerable. Cultural benefits of biodiversity are considerable, though hard to quantify or track over time. Biodiversity resources remain at reasonable levels, but are declining faster than reflected in species extinction rates and appear highly sensitive to land-use decisions. The SAfMA sub-global assessment provided an opportunity to experiment with innovative ways to assess ecosystem services including the use of supply-demand surfaces, service sources and sink areas, priority areas for service provision, service 'hotspots' and trade-off assessments.

A biodiversity intactness index

The nations of the world have set themselves a target of reducing the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. Here, we propose a biodiversity intactness index (BII) for assessing progress towards this target that is simple and practical--but sensitive to important factors that influence biodiversity status--and which satisfies the criteria for policy relevance set by the Convention on Biological Diversity. Application of the BII is demonstrated on a large region (4 x 10(6) km2) of southern Africa. The BII score in the year 2000 is about 84%: in other words, averaged across all plant and vertebrate species in the region, populations have declined to 84% of their presumed pre-modern levels. The taxonomic group with the greatest loss is mammals, at 71% of pre-modern levels, and the ecosystem type with the greatest loss is grassland, with 74% of its former populations remaining. During the 1990s, a population decline of 0.8% is estimated to have occurred.

Experimental burn plot trial in the Kruger National Park: history, experimental design and suggestions for data analysis

The experimental burn plot (EBP) trial initiated in 1954 is one of few ongoing long-termfire ecology research projects in Africa. The trial aims to assess the impacts of differentfire regimes in the Kruger National Park. Recent studies on the EBPs have raised questions as to the experimental design of the trial, and the appropriate model specificationwhen analysing data. Archival documentation reveals that the original design was modified on several occasions, related to changes in the park's fire policy. These modifications include the addition of extra plots, subdivision of plots and changes in treatmentsover time, and have resulted in a design which is only partially randomised. The representativity of the trial plots has been questioned on account of their relatively small size,the concentration of herbivores on especially the frequently burnt plots, and soil variation between plots. It is suggested that these factors be included as covariates inexplanatory models or that certain plots be excluded from data analysis based on resultsof independent studies of these factors. Suggestions are provided for the specificationof the experimental design when analysing data using Analysis of Variance. It is concluded that there is no practical alternative to treating the trial as a fully randomisedcomplete block design.

Long term effects of fire frequency and season on the woody vegetation dynamics of the Sclerocarya birrea/Acacia nigrescens savanna of the Kruger National Park

A lack of knowledge together with vacillating fire management approaches in the Kruger National Park until the mid 1950s, gave rise to a long term fire research experiment aimed at shedding light on savanna responses to various combinations of fire fre- quencies and seasons. This trial was laid out in 1954 in four of the six major vegetation zones of the park. With the future of the experiment now being reconsidered, full scale vegetation surveys have been conducted on all the plots and compared to the surveys done in 1954. This paper examines the woody vegetation responses to fourteen fire treatments in the Knobthorn/Marula savanna. Parameters of interest were woody species composition responses, together with tree & shrub density and structural changes. The results indicate that no significant changes in woody species had occurred for the peri- od 1954 vs 1998, while density decreased on biennial and increased on triennial treatments. The proportion of single stemmed plants increased over the period. Season of burn has a marked effect on structure, with April and August burns giving rise to the largest basal areas but the lowest heights. Environmental parameters such as climate, varying herbivory and differing soils, and their respective interactions on vegetation morphology, together with fire behaviour, further influenced results.

Haemophilia treatment in the United Kingdom from 1969 to 1974

A study has been made by the Haemophilia Centre Directors of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. From 1969 to 1974 2600 patients with haemophilia A and 388 with haemophilia B attended Haemophilia Centres for treatment. Of these patients, 71 are known to have died in the survey period. A record is presented of the amounts and types of therapeutic materials used each year during this time. The incidenceof jaundice and anti-factor VIII and anti-factor IX antibodies was recorded.

The sporadic case of haemophilia A

Plasma samples from 41 mothers of haemophilic sons in "simplex families" (families with only one affected member) have been tested for factor VIII and factor-VIII-related antigen. The results suggest that 39 of these women are likely to be carriers of haemophilia.

The estimation of the number of binding sites for antibody on antigen molecules with reference to factor VIII and its antibody

The theoretical basis for determining the number of antibody sites on antigen molecules is examined. The theoretical considerations are applied to factor VIII molecules. Examples based on data available at the Oxford Haemophilia Centre are calculated to illustrate the approach. It is concluded that there are few sites on each factor VIII molecule for human antibody. The three antibodies for which reasonable data were available suggest 1-3 sites for human antibody. The data for rabbit antibody suggest 5-6 sites per factor VIII molecule.

Post-Infectional Compounds From the French Bean Phaseolus vulgaris; Isolation and Identification of Genistein and 2',4',5,7-Tetrahydroxyisoflavone

The isolation and identification of two isoflavones from fungal- infected pods of Phaseolus vulgaris L. is described. One, genistein, is known to occur in other legumes. On the basis of ultraviolet and p.m.r. spectroscopy and of mass spectra, the second compound was tentatively identified as 2?,4?,5,7-tetrahydroxyisoflavone.