THE SCIENCE CHRONICLES January 20101

WHINING, PLANNING, SOCKS W/SANDALS: 42 RESOLUTIONS FOR CONSERVATION SCIENCE

Also Daniel Pauly Responds to Ray Hilborn on the State of the World’s Fisheries

Is There Something Wrong With the Scientific Method? Why Sophie Parker Likes Getting Dirty Professionalized Conservation: The Downsides The Curiously Persistent and Wildly Divergent Football-Field Metaphor

a Nature Conservancy Science pub : all opinions are those of the authors and not necessarily of the Conservancy the science CHRONICLES January 2011

Table of Contents

Editor’s Note and Letters 3

The Lead 4 Daniel Pauly: Focusing One’s Microscope

42 New Year’s Resolutions for Conservation Science 8

Drinking from the Firehose: Is Something Wrong with the Scientific Method? 14

Jonathan Hoekstra, Jensen Montambault, Doria Gordon, Rob McDonald and Joe Fargione

Peer Review: Sophie Parker 20

New Conservancy Research 26

Paul West: Trading Carbon for Crops

Viewpoints 28

Jonathan Adams: Professionalization and its Discontents Erik Meijaard: Chinese Whispers in Indonesian Conservation (Or, The Curiously Persistent and Wildly Divergent Football-Field Metaphor)

Reviews 31 Jonathan Higgins on Patti Smith’s Just Kids Bob Lalasz on Fried and Hansson’s Rework

Science Shorts 33

Peter Kareiva: Compact Urban Development for the Sake of Our Watersheds Peter Karevia: Being Analytical & Smart Priority Setting Could Save Conservation a Lot of Money Peter Kareiva: No Evidence That Clouds Will Help Cool Off Global Warming Peter Kareiva: The Difference Between Two and Three Degrees Warming to Polar Bears Peter Kareiva: Improving Yields: A Way Out of Agricultural Pressure for Land Conversion

News, Announcements and Orgspeak 36

Conservancy Publications 40

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Editor’s Note

Adam Phillips, who’s a child psychoanalyst and a very good writer, once said: “In sci- ence, the relationship to truth becomes a sadomasochistic one, truth being that which it is better for us to submit to.” I’ve always known there’s something wrong about that quote, and I’ve never felt it more than after finishing this issue of Chronicles. Each of the features — Daniel Pauly’s response to Ray Hilborn on the state of global fisheries, the 42 New Year’s resolutions for conservation science, our responses to Jonah Lehrer’s piece on the decline of the scientific method, my interview with Sophie Parker, the two viewpoints and even Peter’s science shorts — are celebrations in a way of the process of science, the arguments, the yearning, the lovely pursuit. It’s not submission to anything except...better science. You can set your compass by far worse things, or be happy just buying a ticket to watch. Speaking of which: Happy New Year.

—Bob Lalasz [email protected]

Cover photo: Socks with sandals. Cover photo credit: shaymus22/Flickr. Used through a Creative Commons license.

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Letters

To the Editor:

Regarding "Land's End" (Science Chronicles, November 2010), like others in conservation, the Conservancy has pulled back on its international terrestrial protected areas work, but I fully support this change. A key reason for this is that the enthusiasm of many governments for es- tablishing new terrestrial protected areas has waned. The World Database on Protected Areas shows that the rate of new protected area establishment peaked in 2000 and is now largely flat. In a world headed to 9 billion people, it will get ever harder to protect more land. If you look at the 38 countries where the Conservancy works, 27 of them have more than the global average of 12% already within terrestrial protected areas. The scope for increases in terrestrial protected areas within TNC countries is limited. I just want to say three words to you. Just three words. Are you listening? Marine protected areas.

—Craig Leisher, Central Science lead diver

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The Lead Focusing One’s Microscope

By Daniel Pauly Sea Around Us Project, Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia d.pauly@fisheries.ubc.ca

Editor’s note: This essay is a response to Ray Hilborn’s piece in the November 2010 issue of Chronicles on the state of the world’s fisheries. We continue to solicit other responses for publication; please send yours to [email protected].

Scientific discoveries are often a matter of focusing one’s microscope — actual or virtual — and so rules have emerged on how to focus. For instance, plant and animal cells were discov- ered in the second half of the 17th century by Robert Hook and Anton van Leeuwenhoek, but it took over 150 years of arduous work to fully establish their role as building blocks of all living things. Kaspar Friedrich Wolff, who established that all plants were composed of cells, could be mentioned here, or Theodor Schwann, who demonstrated the same for animals.

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Establishing this fundamental role of cells was complicated by the wide difference of cell sizes and other properties in various organs, and by the existence of acellular tissues in both plants and animals. But throughout these 150 or so years of sometimes bitter debate about the roles of cells, one thing was clear all along: Those who didn’t believe in cells had to adjust their microscope in the manner of those who saw them, and not the other way around. Why? Because if the “cell denialists” (for want of a better term) adjusted their microscopes such that they showed only objects larger or smaller than cells, then obviously cells were not detected, as also was the case if the dye they used to highlight their tissue samples did not generate sufficient contrast, or if they were clumsy and their samples were too thin or too thick for cells to be visi- ble.

In other words: It was easy not to see cells, and this is why we celebrate those who did, along with those scientists who discovered things that others couldn’t see, be those things natu- ral selection, plate tectonics or the structure of DNA.

In 1998, my co-authors and I first described the phenomenon now known as ”fishing down marine food webs” mainly because we were lucky both with the data available at the time and with the setting of our conceptual “microscopes.” The global catch data then at our disposal pertained to FAO’s 18 large “statistical areas,” and we could detect a strong fishing- down signal in about half of them. We suggested that the fishing-down process might be wide- spread, but we didn’t have a solid explanation at that time for why it did not seem to be occur- ing in all areas.

“Fishing down” is essentially what happens when the fishes (and invertebrates) of a given ecosystem become vulnerable to fishing, e.g., to newly introduced trawlers. In such cases, the larger, longer-lived fishes of the top of the food web (which have high trophic levels) are de- pleted faster than the smaller, shorter-lived fish and invertebrates (which tend to have lower trophic levels). Thus, time series of multispecies catches from the ecosystem and assemblage in ques- tion will exhibit declining mean trophic levels.

Subsequent research by myself and my associates and by a number of independent authors throughout the world has helped to address the arguments of early critics of the fishing-down concept and to establish its general occurrence (see Figure 1 on the next page for an example) and intensity (about 0.05 - 0.10 TL per decade). Also, we were able to identify many of the factors that can cause the effect to be masked, thus knocking our microscope out of focus.

I have recently reviewed this work — in Chapter 3 of a book called 5 Easy Pieces: The Im- pact of Fisheries on Marine Ecosystems — with reference to so-called “judo arguments,” Isaac Asi- mov’s name for points that your opponent makes that can be turned around and actually strengthen your case. For example, one judo argument against the fishing-down concept was that it originally considered shifts in between-species composition, but not within-species changes in size and hence trophic level. This particular point turns into a judo argument once

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Figure 1. Fishing down in the eastern Mediterranean, as established using Greek fisheries catch statistics by K. Stergiou (In State of the Hellenic Marine Environment 2005). Critics of fishing down cannot explain why such patterns repeatedly emerge, so they ignore the papers that present them. This specific graph, documenting fishing down by trophic level “slices,” also refutes the notion of “fishing through,” which asserts that fishing down is an artifact caused by the inclu- sion when computing mean trophic levels of increasing catches of low-trophic-level organisms.

you consider that, when fishing intensifies, large fish (e.g., cod, grouper or tuna) become smaller and hence tend to have lower trophic levels, trends that intensify the fishing-down effect. The other judo arguments were similar, with the fishing-down denialists repeatedly ending on the mat.

Recently, Nature published a paper on trends in fisheries that also had its microscope out of focus, and which consequently presented a confused picture, with fishing down sometimes visible, sometimes not. It will be shown elsewhere that its authors’ equally confused prose leads to many several judo arguments. Notably, they did not consider the spatial expansion of fisher- ies, which is one of the strongest masking effects for fishing down. Indeed, fisheries expansion, proceeding at rates ranging between 1 million and 4 million square kilometers per year from 1950 to the near present, is a masking factor that we had already identified and warned col- leagues against. Thus, if you exploit a shelf ecosystem with a trawl fishery that reduces the abundance and size of the big fish and, indeed, the biomass of the entire exploited species as-

6 the science CHRONICLES January 2011 semblage, there is a point at which you will want to expand in deeper, offshore waters to access previously unexploited, large, high-trophic level fishes, and so on….

Consequently, if you compute time series of mean trophic levels in catches from an ex- panding area, chances are that you will fail to detect any fishing-down effect. This masking ef- fect is the reason why, in science, we standardize key variables. For example, agronomists working on rice production use standardized paddies for their different treatments, and do not allow for expansion of the area planted.

Similarly, when making statements about the health of the global ocean, or the status of the world’s marine fisheries, researchers must use studies that do not represent a grossly biased sample, drawn from the well-managed fisheries of a few countries or regions at the world’s end, like Alaska or New Zealand, lest one’s microscope be, again, out of focus. SC

Image credit: doug.deep/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.

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New Year’s Resolutions for Conservation Science

Question #1: What one thing do you wish conservation scientists would

stop doing in 2011?

Topic: Communication

Stop talking to ourselves. Each one of us should make an appointment to stand up and talk about the things that mean the most to us in front of an audience we really don’t know — a lo- cal political meeting, a hunting association, local fishing club, a church. Even if you get a roast- ing, they will appreciate your bravery! Remember to listen as well as preach; you’ll learn more than you think. —Mark Spalding, senior marine scientist

Stop whining! I tire of hearing conservation scientists whine about not being heard by state di- rectors, stakeholders, other scientists, the public, etc. Figure out how to be heard! —Randy L. Swaty, fire ecologist, North America region

Stop calling nature “fragile” without clear evidence to support this metaphor. —Peter Kareiva, chief scientist

Stop using Powerpoint as a teleprompter. Understand that the design of your presentations, reports, tools, interfaces and websites is as important to your influence and success as the sci- ence they contain. —Dan Majka, conservation science spatial analyst

Stop using circles to describe conservation. Conservation should have a point, metaphorically and literally. I am avoiding cyclical language or representations when engaging people in con- servation because to the average person it looks like we are spinning helplessly in circles. —John T. Heaston, director, Platte River Program

Stop spouting facts and figures as if this will motivate change. Speak from the heart, tell sto- ries and inspire. My resolution is to learn how to share my conservation work in a way that is compelling. —Martha Schumann, Southwest New Mexico field representative

Stop saying “biodiverse” when you mean “species rich.” It’s impossible to know if one place is more biodiverse than another. Have you counted the genes? Read Noss 1990 again if you need to. Or go back to college. —Brian Richter, co-director, Global Freshwater Team

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Stop saying you hate marketing. Even if you do. It’s 2011 — we’re all in communications now, ladies and gentlemen, every time we send an email or flail about trying to explain to a stranger what the Conservancy is. Marketing isn’t a department. It’s everyone. Commit to improving your end. —Bob Lalasz, director of science communications

Topic: Practices

Stop planning so much and start doing more work on the ground. —Steve Young, chief botanist, New York Natural Heritage Program

Stop thinking that “conservation design” equals “conservation.” We have been patting our- selves on the back for great conservation designs before we have completed the critical step of implementation. —Joanne Wilson, deputy director of science, Coral Triangle Center

Stop weeding invasives. Weeding is demoralizing and a drain on resources because the efforts are perpetual, as invasives continually re-sprout or re-colonize. Weeding is only justifiable as a temporary measure to help planted natives establish. —Christian O. Marks, floodplain forest ecolo- gist, Connecticut

Stop wasting time discussing foolish issues like “what`s the best name: ecosystem services, nature benefits or natural infrastructure?” As Mick Jagger said once, let`s work!! —João Guimarães, GIS specialist, Atlantic Forest & Central Savannas

Stop thinking that science is THE answer. Most people view the world through a different lens … and no amount of data that we pile upon them will change that. Since that won’t change, we must. —Liz Rank, US Fire Learning Network conservation coordinator

Stop choosing cool locations for meetings and start choosing cheap and convenient ones. Meeting in less appealing venues would be one way to encourage people to use alternatives to meeting in person as often as we do. —Jon Fisher, data analyst

Stop spending so much time in meetings and on email and more time in the field doing con- servation! —Alison Green, marine strategies/science coordinator, Asia-Pacific

Designers everywhere concur: STOP using the font Comic Sans. (And socks with sandals, while you’re at it.) —Jen Newlin, creative manager, Oregon

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2) Which question, problem or analysis should conservation scientists finally focus on in 2011?

The Impacts of Climate Change

Reckoning with the potential climate-change effects on hydrologic systems. The Big Dry is coming. —Brian Richter, co-director, Global Freshwater Team

Defining the terms of a sustainable future. In a climate-changed world in which 9 billion peo- ple will need food, water and energy, protecting nature will require us to anticipate future trends and not be so retrospective. —Jonathan Hoekstra, director of conservation science, Washington

Clearly articulating how more unfragmented large blocks of older forested landscapes would be more resilient to climate change impacts than would more fragmented and largely younger forested landscapes. I have a gut feeling condition is vitally important; some others think the impacts from timber management are so benign and reversible that it's hardly worth spending the much-larger costs of mature forest systems. —Joshua Royte, conservation planner, Maine

Figuring out how to live with climate change (as opposed to stopping it) and focus on geo- engineering, including some solar-radiation management solutions that seem relatively cost ef- fective and achievable. —Sanjayan, lead scientist

Degraded Lands and Habitat Fragmentation

Conservation of pristine areas is cost-efficient, but will never protect most of the world’s biodi- versity. Restoring degraded lands appears expensive, but it reaches much more widely and also directly improves human welfare. How do we create a methodology for picking the degraded landscapes where we should work? —Bill Millan, senior policy advisor, international government relations

Defining the thresholds of habitat fragmentation that affect the viability of various taxa and natural process. We keep guessing about the necessary size of habitat patches — but not work- ing to collect data to support our guesses. —Chris Helzer, program director, Eastern Nebraska Pro- ject

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Poverty Alleviation

Learning how to assess the extent to which our conservation work contributes towards or supports poverty alleviation. —Sangeeta Mangubhai, portfolio manager, Papua Bird’s Head, Indone- sia

Creating credible evidence that doing strategies that combine conservation and poverty alle- viation are better than doing each separately. —Sanjayan, lead scientist

Ecosystem Services

Ecosystem services. —Mark Dumesnil, associate director of coastal restoration, Texas

Making the evident link between environmental protection & social/economic resiliency MORE evident — translating it in plain English for those most vulnerable & politicians/ decision-makers. The Caribbean has neglected this extremely important lesson, recently illus- trated graphically with Haiti, and appears to continue with business as usual. —Nathalie Zenny, marine specialist, Jamaica

Effectively measuring and evaluating ecosystem services and its changes due to positive or negative anthropic impact in a simple and replicable way. —João Guimarães, GIS Specialist, Atlan- tic Forest & Central Savannas

Putting an actual price tag on nature’s services: clean air, fresh water, protected land. —Blythe Thomas, director of media relations, WO

Creating the most efficient messages and examples to show people how dependent their own well-being is on a healthy and resilient natural environment. —Jorge Brenner, Gulf of Mexico pro- ject director, Texas

Marine

Assessing the impact of plastics on the high seas — there’s lots of anecdotal evidence, but no scientific consensus if this is a small, medium or huge problem. —Sanjayan, lead scientist

How to scale up from small community-based marine protected areas to design large-scale, effective and well-designed resilient networks of MPAs. —Alison Green, marine strategies/science coordinator, Asia-Pacific

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Assorted

Achieving a better balance of native plant botanists per engineer $$ to be included in riparian restoration. Also, big perennial creeks and rivers consist of thousands of upland intermittent, ephemeral, seep, spring, swale etc. components that don’t get restoration big bucks. And I think we spread weeds faster than we control them and just give lip service to this divide. —Margaret Carey, steward, Middle Fork John Day River, Oregon

Develop data, methods and models for calibrating degrees of human use on landscapes against impacts on ecosystems and the species we care about. —Peter Kareiva, chief scientist

Getting GIS-based early warning decision support systems to the public and the regulatory/ licensing agencies the countries where we work. —Randy Curtis, director of multilateral and bilat- eral affairs, international government relations

Recognizing that the social and financial sustainability of our work matters as much as the ecological sustainability. —Craig Leisher, senior advisor on poverty and conservation

The fact that the world economy has reached unsustainability. Alternative energy sources need to be developed to power the economy. Where will sufficient energy come from to replace oil and what will be its impact on conservation? —Jan Slatts, GIS manager, North America region

How to integrate their work with other scientists and practitioners early in the game. If, for example, marine biophysical scientists started talking with a variety of social scientists, as a team they may find balanced and practical solutions to some key marine conservation issues. —Alan White, lead, MPA strategy, Asia-Pacific

How to reduce food waste. Irrigated agriculture is the world’s biggest water consumer. Yet 25 percent to 50 percent of the food produced with this water in both developing and developed countries is wasted. Returning that water to nature wouldn’t even diminish food for people! —Eloise Kendy, director, environmental flows program, Global Freshwater Team

Getting button-down shirts. I’ve also got no problem with the robust diversity of T- shirts….that come in something other than plaids. —Joshua Royte, conservation planner, Maine

Personal Ones (They Didn’t Read My Instructions, But So What?)

To be more of what I am, a geographer. I hope to advance data management standards and workflows for planning methods, something conservation scientists are negligent with. My goal is to contextualize the great work they do across conservation landscapes. —Dave Smetana, conservation data node manager

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As an field science junkie, I find that swimming through emails and conservation by computer is detrimental to the constitution and distances one from the realities of applying science to con- servation. So my resolution is to spend about 4 hours on personal emails only from mid- January to mid-June, maximize my time underwater swimming through a medium that was designed for the purpose, and dedicate myself to personal and coral reef resilience. To realize this resolution, I will be disappearing from the office to Australia, various parts of Indonesia, Palau, and an undisclosed location for the period and offline during that time. —Rod Salm, direc- tor, marine science and strategies, Asia Pacific

My resolutions are simple: Cut out red meats. Write 2 pages per day. Create 2 NO Travel months per year. —Sanjayan, lead scientist SC

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Drinking from the Fire Hose: Is There Something Wrong with the Scientific Method?

Jonah Lehrer had a piece in The New Yorker in December (“The Truth Wears Off: Is There Something Wrong with the Scientific Method?”) on a seemingly dramatic recent decline in rep- licability of many scientific studies, particularly in ecology and psychology.

He explores a few explanations — selective reporting, journal bias toward “pathbreak- ing” studies and positive data, regression to the mean — and finds them all wanting. The con- sequences of his reportage seem to throw the scientific project into doubt: What do we do when rigorously validated findings can no longer be proved?

I urge you to read the piece — a lot of people, including scientists, are talking about it, and The New York Times columnist David Brooks put it on his best magazine pieces of 2010 list. So I put the study to five Conservancy scientists and asked them: Have you seen this trend in your own fields? What’s your explanation for what Lehrer is reporting -- do you even buy that it’s happening? If you buy it, what are the consequences (if any) for conservation science and conservation practice?

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See below for their responses. If you have reactions to the piece or their responses, send them to me at [email protected]. —Bob Lalasz

Jonathan Hoekstra: “It’s a reminder to remain skeptical”

I have not measured — or seen measurements of — the decline effect in conservation, but I have certainly seen ideas rise and fall.

I think conservation is particularly susceptible to two effects, one that Lehrer touched on and one that he did not. The first (which Lehrer discusses) would fall under the bias for positive results. Conservation science has a purpose, and so it may be susceptible to people wanting to solve a problem and then seeking the most obvious evidence — evidence that will probably ex- hibit a large effect (I agree with Lehrer that this is not the same as scientific fraud).

The other explanation I find compelling is the popularity effect. This was not discussed by Lehrer but is featured here: http://is.gd/jIqK9. In my experience, it goes something like this — someone observes something interesting and writes it up as a possibly meaningful new in- sight (even though it might just be an idiosyncratic phenomenon). Others are intrigued and search for the same in their work. The idea becomes popular in the literature and at scientific meetings. Anecdotal evidence accumulates (conservation too rarely involves real experimental or even structured observational studies). The real importance of this idea is less than the hoopla might suggest and people either get bored of it, or they are drawn away by the next shiny idea.

That gets me to your last question. What Lehrer did not discuss (but what really matters) is: “Does the decline effect matter?” Lehrer insinuates that it does — that’s what makes his story sufficiently provocative to win the attention of The New Yorker audience. But I’m not entirely convinced. For example, Lehrer describes an 80 percent decline in the effect size of fluctuating asymmetry on male reproductive success. Well, it turns out that those effect sizes went from small to smaller. Even on the high side, fluctuating asymmetry only explained about 10 percent of the variation in reproductive success. That’s actually pretty good for an evolution study (hence publication and lots of academic attention), but it doesn’t say anything about the factors that explain the other 90+ percent of variation in reproductive success. Lehrer also referenced a meta-analysis by Jennions showing significant declines in measured effects over time. Jennions’ findings, while highly significant statistically, were similarly small in terms of effect size.

To me, the decline effect only matters if it would steer conservation action in a different direction. If the size of an effect declines over time (or if our statistical confidence that it is some-

15 the science CHRONICLES January 2011 thing greater than zero falls below 95 percent), but would still motivate the same conservation action, then it only matters in an academic sense. I didn’t see evidence in Lehrer’s story that effects reversed sign from positive to negative; that would be troubling because it would sug- gest that the science could be wrong and subsequent action misguided. Fortunately, science tends to self-correct over time. That is probably the most important take-away for me of Le- hrer’s piece — it is a reminder to remain skeptical, and to continually investigate what we think we know, so that science can self-correct and so that conservation does not get lured astray.

—Jonathan Hoekstra, director of conservation science, The Nature Conservancy in Washington

Jensen Montambault: ”If you can't question science, you can't do it.”

I was so excited this was in The New Yorker. I think that the piece reflects a pendulum shift that's happened in science. In the 1980s, in ecology and other disciplines, we got very into reductionism — if we have a precise hypothesis, we can figure out how the world works. In part, that was a reaction to natural history. Now we're saying: Wait a minute, insisting P<0.05=significant is arbitrary. Most good ecological statisticians will tell you that — if you really want to know what's going on with your system, you have to look at more than just “What's a statistically significant result?”

From a personal standpoint, I'm thinking about when I worked on birds on the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean. There are these endemic birds, Bahama Mockingbird, Cu- ban Crow, the islands’ own sub-species of Thick-billed Vireo. They're cute but not “charis- matic,” so no one's really studied them that well. And they are a little on the rare side, so when you're in the field, you don't have most ideal data set to work with. When I went out and did the survey the way you're supposed to, I got interesting significant results, but not as interesting as combining those results with casual observations of the species and how the villagers and tourists were interacting with them. There's a whole lot more in helping to decide where or whether to put a protected area than just identifying if there's a habitat in crisis. Critical think- ing and reevaluating your question is to me what science is, more than just the numbers.

That’s why I think this piece is fantastic, even if some people worry about making the public doubt science. We may not want to make people feel insecure about science — but if you can't question science, you can't do it.

—Jensen Montambault, conservation measures specialist, The Nature Conservancy

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Doria Gordon: “I see it as an additional argument that measures are critical to our work.”

I haven’t noticed this trend, but it’s likely because there’s so little replication of ecological/conservation experiments. I certainly agree that one can inadvertently bias experi- mental design and analysis, and that it probably happens more frequently than we’d all like to believe. It’s also clear that hypotheses are often refined as results come in, but still presented as if they were developed a priori without modification. But bias is more likely to explain incorrect conclusions than diminishing ones, so I don’t know if that’s the explanation for this phenome- non.

The consequences of this pattern are likely to be more immediately important for fields like medicine, environmental toxicology, etc. than for the majority of conservation science. If the relationship holds, but the results diminish over time, many of the conclusions are still valid, but the effect is less strong than originally understood. That might still be fine unless there are significant trade-offs of concern (in undesirable side effects, for example). I’ll be interested to hear if others suggest that we should alter our approach, which is already so fraught with sub- jectivity, context and assumption (because of timing, data availability, dependence on human interactions, etc.) that it’s hard to imagine that this finding of diminishing effect size would have a really significant impact. But I think the degree to which we should incorporate this additional uncertainty into our thinking again would depend on how much a given strategy is based on a specific scientific relationship, the risk, investment, etc.

The article certainly supports that we evaluate the effects of our strategies in place, rather than assuming that effects documented elsewhere will hold in a new location, under dif- ferent conditions — much less the same location and conditions! So I see it as an additional ar- gument that measures are critical to our work. I am choosing not to accept the alternative con- clusion — that science is inconsistent and irrelevant and therefore not worth pursuing — I just can’t believe that.

—Doria Gordon, director of conservation science, The Nature Conservancy in Florida

Rob McDonald: “I want to thank Lehrer for writing it.”

Lehrer raises some classic issues, all of which were discussed when I was in graduate school. I had a whole course in the importance of proper experimental design — in particular, on selecting a representative sample and insuring that there is a well-posed hypothesis that is being tested fairly. Even his more esoteric philosophical ideas — like how paradigms sometimes

17 the science CHRONICLES January 2011 shape which questions scientists explore, or how selective reporting of results by scientists bi- ases the overall scientific literature — are common fodder for graduate seminars.

Instead of dissecting Lehrer’s argument, I want to thank him for writing it. Facts have meaning to scientists, and while it may hurt our pride a bit to hear these issues discussed pub- licly, it is healthy for the scientific method. Any fair criticism of the scientific method that aims to make our methodology and practices more accurate is, after all, part of the scientific method, part of the quest to learn something empirical true about the world. Unlike most claimed sources of “knowledge,” science has no need to rely on received wisdom. If the scientists Lehrer cites in his article have a point about the severity of this issue in the sciences, then let’s all work to solve the problem by doing better science.

What pisses me off is the over-the-top headline, questioning whether “there’s something wrong with the scientific method?” The Atlantic Monthly had another article recently on the same topic, interviewing the same scientists, and titled it “Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Sci- ence” (David Freedman, November 2010). In reality, both pieces are somewhat nuanced looks at how the scientific method could become more accurate. I suppose editors want to sell maga- zines, and there is something to be said for a pithy title. What is dangerous, though, is that there are many politicians lining up to attack scientists, particularly on the issue of climate change research, and they will use these headlines to suggest that there is no difference at all between science and personal opinion. I want to see Lehrer and Freedman, when this inevitably hap- pens, forcefully tell these politicians how wrong they are. Lehrer’s blog piece defending climate science is a good step in that direction.

Churchill once said that democracy is “the worst form of government except all the oth- ers that have been tried.” The scientific method is perhaps the worst form of discovering em- pirical truth about the world…except for all the other methods humanity has devised. The At- lantic Monthly article noted that one scientist’s review of medical research suggests that 80 per- cent of observational studies are proven wrong, as are 25 percent of randomized trials and 10 percent of large randomized trials. This clearly indicates the scientific method can get better; but it is also evidence for why science works — the properly designed, statistically rigorous ex- periments are much more accurate than the observational studies. What, do you suppose, is the error rate of politicians when they are making forecasts? Or editorial writers when they are pon- tificating? In 2002, 77 percent of the U.S. Senate voted to pass the resolution allowing the inva- sion of Iraq, chiefly because there was a widespread belief at the time in the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that have yet to be found. Can we expect Lehrer soon to write an article asking: “Is there something wrong with political rhetoric?”

—Rob McDonald, vanguard scientist, Analysis Team, The Nature Conservancy

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Joe Fargione: “The cure for bad science is more science.”

1. Is there a real issue here? Yes. Scientific conclusions from one study are subsequently overturned more often than would be ideal.

2. Is it a problem? Yes and no. If you’ve taken a drug or invested in a conservation strat- egy that doesn’t actually work, that’s a problem. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that something is wrong with the scientific method. If something is real, it is repeatable. When subsequent stud- ies disprove an earlier result, this shows that science works. Because science doesn’t prove (it only disproves), no result is ever written in stone. Science simply provides the best available explanation for observations recorded to date, subject to reevaluation when more data are re- ceived. It’s a laudable goal for scientists to try to get it right on the first try more often through a more skillful application of the scientific method. The cure for bad science is more science.

3. What is the cause? Actual scientific fraud is exceedingly rare, but biases are ubiqui- tous. Because journals and media attention favor novelty and significant results, scientists go to great lengths to achieve…novelty and significant results. The problem isn’t that scientists con- duct studies designed to produce such results (scientific studies are boring enough already without scientists trying to conduct redundant and insignificant studies!), but rather that the results of these studies are selectively reported. The incentive for novel and significant results can also encourage scientists to over-interpret data when original results don’t provide signifi- cant findings, conducting statistical “fishing expeditions” to test for correlations between nu- merous variables. Chance alone dictates they will find some correlations. When these “signifi- cant” correlations are presented as if they indicated real, causal relationships, the literature be- comes polluted with spurious claims. A third cause of inconsistency: context. Different popula- tions or ecosystems respond differently to the same stimuli. When the importance of context is ignored, studies conducted in different settings can appear contradictory, even when both re- sults accurately reflect real patterns.

4. What can we do about it? Journals can reduce publication bias by not using novelty and statistical significance as criteria for accepting manuscripts. This step is currently in prac- tice, especially in online publications, which can afford to be more inclusive because they’re not limited by page counts. Some of these journals, such as PLoS One, have explicit policies that ac- ceptance should be based on scientific merit, not novelty. In addition, as mentioned in the arti- cle, studies can be held to higher statistical standards (such as greater sample sizes) that reduce the occurrence of spurious results. Finally, meta-analyses are currently often limited to simply analyzing effect sizes, because other data are not available from studies. Smarter publicly acces- sible databases will allow meta-analyses that include more contextual data, allowing greater scientific insights (e.g. is the effect depending on total annual precipitation, or whether a patient is overweight?). —Joe Fargione, lead scientist, North America Region, The Nature Conservancy SC

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Peer Review: Sophie Parker on Water Bears, Digging Deep Pits & Why Soil Organisms Matter to Conservation

Name: Sophie Parker

Title: Ecoregional Ecologist for the South Coast and Deserts of California, The Nature Conservancy

Location: Los Angeles, California USA

Tenure with the Conservancy: 3 years

What She Does at TNC: Provide science leadership and support to a variety of Conservancy projects, in- cluding the Mojave Desert Renewable Energy Project, the Amargosa River Project, the Tehachapi Project, and the L.A.-Ventura Project.

!So you just published a paper in Biodiversity and Conservation called “Buried Treas- ure: Soil Organisms and Conservation,” arguing that conservation too often ignores these or- ganisms. What kind of organisms are we talking about? Worms? Rats? Microbes? Stuff that crawls away when you turn rocks over?

! SOPHIE PARKER: All those things and so much more. Soil organisms are very, very diverse, in terms of their position on the tree of life and also in terms of their body size. They can range in size from very large organisms (such as tree roots) that grow underground down to very small viruses, and everything in between.

!You quoted somebody as calling soil the “poor man’s tropical rainforest.” How many species are we talking about?

! PARKER: It’s in the millions. We just don't know exactly how many. Part of the issue is that the majority of them are microscopic. And when it comes to bacteria, the species concept doesn't work as well because bacteria reproduce very rapidly. What it means to have a different species of bacteria isn’t the same as having different species of, say, birds or fish.

!Because they're evolving so quickly?

! PARKER: Yes, and because it's difficult to distinguish them based on morphological characteristics. It's difficult to isolate them from soils. Less than 1 percent of the bacteria that are found in soil can actually be cultured in a lab. So the way they’re often studied is within the soil

20 the science CHRONICLES January 2011 itself. You take a sample of soil, and then you characterize the bacteria in it based not on their identity but on what they do.

!So it’s not form, but function? Give me an example.

! PARKER: Nitrifier bacteria convert one type of nitrogen, ammonium, into another type of nitrogen, which is nitrate. That is metabolically what they have evolved to do. It's a very spe- cific process, and a lot of other bacteria can't do that.

! So when we're studying soil bacteria, we may not be interested in how many different species of soil nitrifiers are there. We might just be interested in how much nitrification can take place in 1 gram of soil. There isn’t a Natural Heritage database for soil organisms, because the reasons people studied soils in the past are different than the reasons they’ve studied birds or other organisms that we typically focus our conservation efforts on.

!Why is there all this diversity in soil?

! PARKER: Because the niches underground are both very, very small and very, very complex. You have huge gradients under the ground in temperature, in moisture, and in the availability of air, carbon and nutrients. In everything that the organisms need to survive there are huge gradients, and it is a constantly changing environment as rock is eroding and dead ma- terials fall to earth and the microorganisms are decomposing it and creating soil. It's the com- plexity that drives biodiversity — there are lots of different roles because there are so many things to do. There are so many ways to survive.

!I bet that makes for some cool organisms. Do you have favorites?

! PARKER: I love water bears. These are organisms that are about 200 microns long, so about the size of a period at the end of a sentence in a book, really tiny but not as tiny as bacte- ria. They can survive extreme dessication, extreme heat, and extreme cold. They can even sur- vive the vacuum of outer space. They look like little eight-legged bears with claws. They're an example of charismatic microfauna.

!What else?

! PARKER: There are lots of examples. There are species of fungus that can trap nematode worms, and the way they do it is by creating a nooselike structure. The nematode worm digs its way through the soil, and when it intersects, when it goes through the loop, the fungus can feel it. The fungus then tightens the noose, strangles the worm, and eats it.

!Wow!

! PARKER: Here’s another one, a kind of reconnaissance troop for plant roots. As a root grows, it produces a layer of mucilage. It's a slippery material that helps the root to glide

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Image: Scanning electron micrograph of an adult water bear (tardigrade), Hypsibius dujardini. Image credit: Goldstein lab/Flickr through a Creative Commons license.)

through the soil, and as part of that layer, there are these little cells that slough off called "border cells." The cells have the same genetic material as the rest of the plant, but they actually separate from the plant and move off into the soil and are still alive. They have been found to survive in the soil for long periods of time — on the order of weeks. Here’s the cool part: As they move off into the soil, they send information back to the root about the conditions in the soil.

!What are they saying?

! PARKER: Well, they could be telling the root which way to grow. We don't know very well why roots grow the way they do. We know about the molecular triggers that make a root turn to the left or turn to the right, but we don't know how well roots can sense their environ- ment. Can they sense water from a distance away and grow towards it? These border cells are part of the answer to that question — they are kind of like foot soldiers that go out and investi-

22 the science CHRONICLES January 2011 gate the soil and send information back about the condition to the root. But how those messages get back and forth is a mystery.

!Is it peaceful down there, or is it Wild Kingdom Underground?

! PARKER: It's pretty vicious down there. Life as a soil bacterium is not an easy life. You are subject to drying out at any point in time. There's patchiness in your food resources, so try- ing to get enough food is difficult. You've got these protozoa that are scavenging, like big graz- ers just waiting to suck you up and eat you. If you're a pathogenic bacterium, you can try to at- tack a root, but there are all these things that the roots can do to defend themselves from you. If all this was blown up millions of times, it would be very dramatic. It's just that we humans can't experience it.

!It sounds like an alien war movie. But here’s the So What Question: Why should con- servationists care?

! PARKER: Let me give you an example. Mycorrhizal fungi — they are ubiquitous soil organisms found all over the world, on the roots of most plants. We’re just beginning to under- stand the relationships between these fungi and their plants. One mycorrhizal fungus species may cause one plant species to grow more, but it may cause another plant species to grow less, and so depending on the mix and match between fungi and plants, you get different outcomes for the plant community above ground.

This can have big, very important outcomes for conservation. There are some species of weedy plants, for example, that can take advantage of relationships with mycorrhizal fungi and become more successful than they would be otherwise.

!So could we promote the presence of particular species of the fungi in the soil?

! PARKER: Yes — this is potentially valuable for restoration, for example. In places where topsoil has been scraped off, a lot of the mycorrhizal spores may have been removed and are no longer on the site. If you left the site alone, eventually a lot of them may recolonize naturally just being blown in by wind or what not, but you could speed that process along by reintroduc- ing mycorrhizal spores to the site. There are a lot of companies that do this. That's one practical application of understanding these relationships that could lead to better conservation out- comes on the ground.

Deserts provide another example of how soils matter for conservation. In desert ecosys- tems, there are species of organisms that are called collectively "soil biological crust organisms." They form a cohesive layer across the surface of the soil that binds the soil together and pre- vents it from being eroded by wind and water. These crust organisms also allow for recycling of nitrogen, and they prevent the invasion of nonnative species by forming a protective layer over the soil. They perform a lot of ecosystem services.

23 the science CHRONICLES January 2011

But it’s simple to disturb these crust organisms – as simple as walking or driving or grazing cattle on them. Loss of that protective membrane of species might result in wind ero- sion and possibly water erosion, the invasion of non-native plant species, and the loss of other ecosystem services provided by the living crust. Conservationists can incorporate information about where these crust species are into our plans, and reintroduce crust species to help the crust regenerate more quickly. By preserving the crust, we can help preserve the deserts where they are found.

!But one of your paper’s big takeaways is that, while there’s a lot of science on these or- ganisms, conservation has largely ignored them. Why is that?

! PARKER: First, soil taxonomy is completely unfamiliar to many people who work in conservation. It’s based on a binomial nomenclature system that allows soil scientists to key out soils in the field, using features that the soils have. The soil names are really funny sounding, and I think it turns people off. “I have no idea what Vitritorrandic Argixeroll means. What is that?”

Second, every biology department in the United States that's at a large university has somebody who studies something to do with the soil. But the questions that are being asked are often not at a scale that’s applicable to landscape-scale conservation. It’s just not the level at which many soil biologists are working. So part of the problem has to do with bringing folks that have been studying soils into the conservation community and extending the conservation community to include that knowledge.

!Is the Conservancy paying attention to this?

! PARKER: Some of these things we’re already doing. For instance, we often single out for conservation special elements like sand dunes and particular edaphic features, because spe- cial rock types like serpentine rock or limestone rock can support species of plants that are only associated with the soils derived from those types of rock. It’s easy to incorporate this into con- servation planning. Finding those situations where it's very clear that there is a link between soil type and a conservation target, that's the easiest thing to do. That's where we should start.

We’re in the infancy of understanding soil organisms, so understanding how soil biota play into conservation outcomes is going to take longer. But I think it is worthwhile because so much of what we try to conserve above ground is so dependent on what soil organisms do. Carbon sequestration, water filtration, air quality regulation — these are the big things that eco- systems provide, and a lot of it is done in the soil.

How did you get interested in this stuff?

! PARKER: I studied nitrogen cycling in soils in California grasslands for my doctoral work. The first time I dug a soil pit was actually on Cape Cod in a forest ecosystem there. The

24 the science CHRONICLES January 2011 amazing thing about digging a soil pit is each time you dig one, you don't really know what you're going to see. Each time is a different layering of colors and textures, and soils can be very beautiful, kind of like a layer cake as you're digging down through the soil. You have no idea what it is going to look like until you begin to recognize patterns between plants and soils, be- cause there are strong associations there. It’s always kind of a mystery.

!How big are these pits?

! PARKER: Big enough so that you can climb in it, typically. There's a standard method- ology for classifying soils that involves digging a pit. It has to be a sunny day, so that you can see the colors of the soil clearly, because color is one of the very important defining characteris- tics that helps you tell one soil type from another.

To determine the color of a soil sample, you use what’s called a Munsell color chart. The chart has little paint blocks of color that you hold up to your soil sample, and you compare the color of the soil to the colors in the chart. You must also squeeze the soil through your hands and see how easily it falls apart, and then you sift it to measure rock fragment. Sometimes soils have a lot of worms in them, and that can be a diagnostic characteristic of a soil. It's something that, in order to do it well, you have to be willing to get dirty, and that's really appealing. It's a lot of fun. It's like making mud pies when you were a kid, you know?

!How do you find out what organisms are in the soil? Do you just harvest a sample and bring it back?

! PARKER: It depends on which organism you're interested in. The sampling technique and the filtration technique are unique for each thing that you might want to study. If you're sampling for earthworms, you would probably want to dig a bigger hole and take a larger sam- ple, so that you can have a chance of actually getting some.

If you're sampling for bacteria, then it's a lot easier. You can take what's called a "soil core," which is basically big tube you pound into the ground and then pull out again, take that back to the lab and use a series of procedures to try and figure out which bacteria are in that sample.

If you're interested in everything that's in a particular soil in a particular area, you are going to have to do multiple techniques. That’s why it takes so long to figure out what’s in soil. It's not like bird watching, where you can use just one set of binoculars. It's kind of like you'd need to have 50 different sets of binoculars in order to see 50 different bird species. SC

25 the science CHRONICLES January 2011

New Conservancy Research

Trading Carbon for Crops: Managing Lands to Meet Conservation and Food Production Goals

West P.C., H.K. Gibbs, C. Monfreda, J. Wagner, C. Barford, S.R. Carpenter, and J.A. Foley. 010. Trading carbon for food: global comparison of carbon stocks vs. crop yields on agricultural land. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107(46):19645-19648. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1011078107.

Agriculture is the biggest driver of land use change on the planet. Globally, croplands currently cover as much land as the South American continent. Pastures add another chunk of production land the size of Africa. These lands continue to expand to feed (a) a growing popula- tion, (b) shifts to more people eating meat-based diets, and (c) demand for biofuels.

Most conservation groups only focus on the negative impacts of agriculture on biodiver- sity. But let’s be honest, biodiversity conservation generally takes a backseat role to agriculture, particularly in places where production is essential for local food security. Can conservation groups, industry and governments work together to meet both food production and environ- mental goals?

I recently published a paper with several colleagues (link above) that illustrates the type of analysis that can be used to target efforts to meet agriculture and environmental goals. We calculated the amount of carbon released from vegetation and soils for each ton of crops that are produced when croplands expand into natural ecosystems. Our work analyzed massive amounts of data using math no more complicated than balancing a checkbook. As part of the analysis, we calculated the average crop yields for 175 crops everywhere they are grown; we also developed a new data set of carbon stocks in potential natural vegetation and croplands.

The differences in the tradeoffs of carbon and crops across the world are quite striking. For example, crop from newly cleared land in the tropics releases about twice as much carbon, yet only produces less than half the annual crop yield in temperate areas. In general, this pattern occurs because of lush vegetation produced in warm, moist climates coupled with low input agriculture on cleared lands. This “double whammy” illustrates the importance of increasing crop yields on existing croplands, particularly in the tropics.

When we unpack the data a little more, we see high variability in yields and carbon val- ues. Yields can be increased in many areas, particularly the tropics, through changes in man- agement practices. By understanding the main drivers of yield variability, we can identify the places where yields can be increased the most with limited additional inputs.

26 the science CHRONICLES January 2011

However, the choices to increase production through intensification or expanding the land base depend on many factors such as technology, food security and tradition. Ideally, con- servation groups will work with agribusiness, academia, foundations, governments and multi- lateral funding institutions to meet both food production and environmental goals. Our ap- proach for quantifying the tradeoffs of crops and carbon is now being expanded to include wa- ter availability, nitrogen and phosphorus. These analyses can be used to target both conserva- tion and agricultural innovation efforts. SC

--Paul West, senior scientist, The Nature Conservancy in Wisconsin [email protected]

Note: Paul is now managing collaborations and doing research with the University of Minnesota’s Global Landscapes Initiative, focusing on agriculture and the environment.

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Viewpoints

Professionalization and Its Discontents By Jonathan Adams, Program Manager, The Nature Conservancy [email protected]

A distressing thought crossed my mind as I stood among the appreciative throng at Brad Northrup’s retirement bash in December: If someone with Brad’s skills and background applied for a job at the Conservancy today, would we hire him? I’m not so sure. Given what Brad ac- complished in nearly 40 years here, the loss to our mission would be enormous. The same goes for many people who began careers in conservation in the 1970s. They came with little formal training but great passion and intelligence, and they achieved great things. Will we be able to say the same of others 30 or 40 years from now?

All this leads to a second, equally troubling question: Has the professionalization of con- servation been entirely a good thing? Without a doubt, the people coming into conservation to- day bring with them a depth of skills and training unimaginable in the 1970s. Conservation bi- ology did not even exist as a field of study until the 1980s, and the widespread emergence of graduated training programs in conservation science is an even more recent phenomenon. Those skills allow for more informed analysis and, one hopes, sounder policies and practices.

Yet emphasizing professional credentials at the expense of other skills may end up cost- ing more than we can afford. At a time when conservation is struggling to become a broad- based social movement, emphasizing the creation of a technocratic elite may be a mistake. There are several risks. The first is that we take professionalization too far, and create a class of experts with alleged access to knowledge the rest of us cannot fathom. From there it is an easy step for the public at large to assume that conservation questions are too complex for them to under- stand and that making changes in our values and behavior is someone else’s responsibility.

The second risk of professionalization is that advanced training implies increased spe- cialization, when conservation (perhaps more than any other field) requires understanding how things fit together at ever-broader scales. So while training of next-generation conservationists moves in one direction, the solutions to the problems they will actually face lie in the other.

At the risk of sounding heretical, we don’t need more scientists. What we need are more people who think like scientists. This may sound like hair-splitting, but the point of being a science-based organization is not that we have a cadre of smart people with Ph.D.’s who tell us the right things to do; it is that we all think rigorously about problems, make predictions about the outcomes of our actions, measure the results, learn from them and adapt accordingly. In a complex world, perhaps everyone needs some training in order to do this well. But if we value such training over passion, commitment and native intelligence, we do so at our peril. SC

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Viewpoints

Chinese Whispers in Indonesian Conservation (Or, The Curiously Persistent and Wildly Divergent Football-Field Metaphor)

By Erik Meijaard, People and Nature Consulting International [email protected]

You can call me a scientific nitpicker, but I am confused.

For almost a decade, conservationists have been trying to give a more comprehensive picture about deforestation. Rather than talking about hectares, square kilometers or acres lost, we are now increasingly using the popular measure of “football fields.”

I guess the thinking is that Joe Public doesn’t quite get the standard scientific units of measurements. But as he sits in front on his TV to watch men run up and down grassy fields, he will have some picture of the size of a football field.

Deforestation as measured by numbers of football fields, however, acts like Chinese whispers. I did a quick Google search on “deforestation,” “football field,” and “Indonesia” and found the following conflicting statements:

29 the science CHRONICLES January 2011

• Indonesia’s forests are eradicated at a rate of 300 football fields every hour. (=300 fields/hr) • Indonesia loses an area the size of approximately 12 football fields every day to deforestation (=0.5 field/hr) • Every minute, an area of forest the size of 10 football fields is lost in Indonesia (=600 fields/ hr) • Indonesia’s forests are being destroyed at a rate equivalent to 6 football fields a minute (=360 fields/hr) • Acts of deforestation alone are taking out 7 American football fields of Indonesian rainforest every minute • Indonesia loses 300 football fields of forest every hour to palm oil (=300 fields/hr because of oil palm)

According to the English Football Association, the length of a full-size soccer pitch must be between 90 and 120 meters and the width between 45 and 90 meters, i.e. between 0.4 and 1.08 ha. An American football pitch measures about 0.45 ha, without the end zone.

Based on the above statements and the variation in the size of football fields, deforesta- tion rates in Indonesia vary from 0.2 ha per hour at the lowest to 648 ha per hour at the highest. Or in the more usual measurements, between 1,752 and 5.7 million ha per year. That’s a 3,000- fold difference! And at least one source ascribes most of that deforestation to oil palm.

Deforestation rates are notoriously difficult to get hold of. They are obscured by defini- tion of what is forest, methods of detection, and willingness of governments to report to the FAO who keep the official data. More transparency and more frequent information on defores- tation is badly needed to see whether we are making any progress towards reducing it. I doubt, however, that football field estimates make things any clearer.

I don’t know who started measuring deforestation in football fields. The obvious idea was to drive home the severity of deforestation, especially in the tropics. But I really don’t think the present confusing reporting is making things any clearer.

As conservationists, we are also obviously opening ourselves up to the criticism that we can’t even get our facts right. Ultimately, I believe this wild variety in measurements puts us in a weaker position to influence the forest conservation agenda. Let’s stick to the deforestation facts. And let’s stick to measures that everyone understands and that are unambiguous.

Or if you do need to simplify, use something that is clear. For example, when you talk to a U.S. audience, tell them that Indonesia is losing a forest area the size of New Hampshire every year, which will work a lot better than saying that a forest area the size of 190 king-size mat- tresses is being lost every half second. Anyway, you get the point. SC

30 the science CHRONICLES January 2011

Reviews A Singular Friendship

Just Kids. By Patti Smith. Ecco, 2009. 304 pages.

In her new memoir, Just Kids, Patti Smith eloquently and tenderly describes her life with and love for her dearest friend, Robert Mapplethorpe. It moves from her birth and first years in the Logan Square neighborhood in Chicago to breaking through as a rock artist with the album “Horses,” and ends with Robert’s death. The book focuses on the sources and products of their creativity and love while living as bohemian artists in New York City as she wrote poetry and drew and as Robert built art installations. He goes on to discover both photography and a different orientation in life, she to performing poetry and rock and roll. They also move on to other relationships, yet maintain an everlasting bond built on uncommon degrees of unbound honesty, commit- ment and generosity from their souls.

Throughout her telling of their compelling story — from sleeping on the streets of New York City, having just enough money so that only one of them could go into an art museum while the other waited outside, Patti caring for a terribly ill Robert, living with Sam Shepard and writing Cowboy Mouth, performing poetry to unaccepting crowds, touring the world as a rock-and-roll star, to Patti’s breaking heart as Robert dies — Patti Smith provides contexts for their personal and artistic growth and the influences of the many friends, poets, visual artists and musicians upon which she and Robert built their creative approaches. This is a beautiful book written with humility and affection.

—Jonathan Higgins, senior freshwater ecologist, The Nature Conservancy [email protected]

Forget Everything TNC Has Taught You About Work

Rework. By Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson. Crown Business, 2010. 288 pages.

Meetings are toxic. Planning is guessing. Say no by default. Fire the workaholics. Just start making something. If any or all of those phrases sound like music to your ears (and to mine, they sound like the whole goddamn Metropolitan Opera), may I gently steer you to Re- work, a hand grenade of a book that will detonate all your assumptions about working effec- tively and make you a menace to your colleagues...until they start to see how well you produce.

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Here’s the beauty part: The authors of Rework run an extremely successful and highly praised Web com- pany — 37 Signals — which puts out cloud collaboration tools like Basecamp, Backpack and Highrise (which blow Sharepoint away). They’re Web guys. They’re supposed to work like dogs and be whipping their employees to do the same. They’re supposed to have four-color business plans in calfskin binders and be meeting ‘round the clock with angel investors and constantly planning their 3.0 versions. Except...they’re not, and they don’t. Instead, they launch things without having a way for customers to pay for them. They iterate slowly if at all. They go days without talking to each other. And they’re still wildly profitable. What are they doing?

Avoiding long projects. Avoiding policies. Avoid- ing management layers. Setting two-week deadlines and meeting them. Calling bullshit when it needs to be called, and hiring others who can do likewise on you. Keeping staff numbers low and breaking into even smaller, autonomous project teams, so they can improvise and pivot quickly. Enforcing “alone zones,” half-days in which everyone works without interruption. Sending everyone home at 5, because busy people with lives work more efficiently. Focusing on doing the work and shipping the work, not planning the work or meeting about the work or emailing about the work or building consensus for the work or branding the work. Getting stuff done, using common sense, trusting your co-workers.

The first time you read Rework, the top of your head might sail off, or you might alter- nate between sobbing and hysterical laughter, or you might shout “Yes!” with your fist in the air three times for every page. The second time you read it, as someone has already said, you will simply want to rip out page after page and tape them to your wall as a reminder of how work life should be.

If you’re not convinced, here’s a random quote. See if it applies to a certain OGSP near you:

“Why don’t we just call plans what they really are: guesses. Start referring to your busi- ness plans as business guesses, your financial plans as financial guesses, and your strategic plans as strategic guesses. Now you can stop worrying about them as much. They just aren’t worth the stress....Give up on the guesswork. Decide what you’re going to do this week, not this year.”

I know: It won’t work here. Especially not here. Especially not....if none of us tries it. SC

—Bob Lalasz, director of science communications, The Nature Conservancy

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Science Shorts

Compact Urban Development for the Sake of Our Watersheds

Bierwagen, B. et al. 2010. National housing and impervious surface scenarios for integrated cli- mate impact assessments. PNAS 107: 20887-20892

Using census data and regressions that relate the extent of impervious surfaces to housing pat- terns, Bierwagen and colleagues examine different storylines for emissions and urban develop- ment in the conterminous United States. What they find is totally expected — but it is useful to see some numbers attached to our platitudes. High population growth and low-density housing can cause a 50 percent increase in impervious surfaces compared with the increase caused by lower population growth and compact urban development. Smart growth alone (i.e., concen- trating development in compact cites or on old commercial and industrial land) can reduce the expansion of impervious surfaces by 20-30 percent. Why does this matter to conservation? Be- cause when you get over 5 percent of a watershed in impervious surface, it stresses watersheds and harms water quality. This is an additional reminder that what goes on in our cities matters to the rivers and estuaries we care about.

—Peter Karevia, chief scientist, The Nature Conservancy [email protected]

Being Analytical and Smart about Setting Priorities Could Save Conservation a Lot of Money

Murdoch, W. et al 2010. Using return on investment to maximize conservation effectiveness in Argentine grasslands. PNAS 107: 20855-20862.

Conservation is cash-poor and stretched thin. Given that, you would think we would take the time to compare returns per dollar on the places and strategies that we have to choose among. Using TNC’s own data for grasslands in Argentina, Bill Murdoch and Steve Polasky (both TNC Board members) and two junior scientists apply a formal return on investment analysis to iden- tify how to most cost-effectively conserve Argentina’s grasslands. They find that an ROI ap- proach outperforms the more standard “maximize benefit” approach (which is what a 10% goal does) by a factor of ten. Yes, that’s right — by a factor of ten. And it leads to a different geogra- phy of work. So why doesn’t TNC apply these ROI approaches in deciding where to work and how to work? You tell me.

—Peter Karevia, chief scientist, The Nature Conservancy [email protected]

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No Evidence That Clouds Will Help Cool Off Global Warming

Dressler, A. 2010. A determination of the cloud feedback from climatic variations over the past decade. Science 330: 1523-1526

One of the big uncertainties that climate skeptics love to point out is that maybe warming will enhance the formation of low-lying clouds that then reflect solar energy back into space and cool the world. Taking advantage of climate variations over the last decade, Dressler finds no evidence that such clouds do arise with warming, and hence no evidence for this cooling feed- back. I am sure this will not settle the controversy, and there remains plenty of other sources of uncertainty with climate projections. But the next time a climate skeptic starts talking about clouds and how maybe they will cool us down, tell them that analyses looking for such an effect fail to see any evidence for it.

—Peter Karevia, chief scientist, The Nature Conservancy [email protected]

The Difference Between 2 and 3 Degrees Warming to Polar Bears

Amstrup, S. et al. 2010. Greenhouse gas mitigation can reduce sea-ice loss and increase polar bear persistence. Nature 468: 955-960.

Because of model complexity, it is often hard to draw conclusions about what would be the cost of a degree of global warming — but it is these extra degrees that are the focus of policy. In an elegant analysis of Arctic sheet-ice dynamics, Amstrup and colleagues find a simple linear rela- tionship between warming and loss of sheet-ice (roughly a loss of 20 percent for every degree of warming) and no evidence of a tipping point whereby there is abrupt melting. If this conclusion holds up, it is clear that polar bears can be aided by every degree of warming we mitigate — to the extent that polar bears may actually survive throughout their range. I would not be making policy off this one paper — but if you are a scientist this is a really nice piece of work to read because of the way it pieces together data and models.

—Peter Karevia, chief scientist, The Nature Conservancy [email protected]

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Improving Yields: A Way Out of Agricultural Pressure for Land Conversion

Licker, R. et al. 2010. Mind the gap: how do climate and agricultural management explain the “yield gap” of croplands around the world. Global Ecology and Biogeography 19:769-782.

We will need to increase crop production by at least 50 percent and perhaps much more in the next 40 years. One way of doing so is closing the “yield gaps” that exist in much of the world — in other words, by using existing conventional farming technology to harvest more food per acre. Africa and parts of Asia have the highest yield gaps — but even the United States and parts of Latin America underperform for some major crops. Licker and her colleagues conclude “50% more maize, nearly 40% more rice, 20% more soybean and 60% more wheat could be pro- duced” if current croplands met their potential. Of course, there remain questions about trade- offs in terms of sustainability. But thinking about agriculture should be a preoccupation of con- servationists.

—Peter Karevia, chief scientist, The Nature Conservancy [email protected] SC

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News, Announcements and Orgspeak

Wanted: Ecosystem Services Scientist

JOB TITLE: Ecosystem Services Scientist Full-Time / Regular Job ID: 12817

To access full position announcement and to apply: https://careers.nature.org/psp/P89HTNC_APP/APPLICANT/HRMS/c/HRS_HRAM.HRS_C E.GBL

Closing date: January 25, 2011

RESPONSIBILITIES: The Ecosystem Services Scientist will provide subject matter and analytical expertise on ecosys- tem services to an interdisciplinary Conservancy team that will be developing methods for in- corporating biodiversity and ecosystem services into decision-making. The project team will work closely with Conservancy field staff and corporations and other end users to develop and test decision-support frameworks at individual pilot sites, including mapping biodiversity, modeling and valuing ecosystem services, and estimating the reliance on and impacts to these resources by the user.

The Ecosystem Services Scientist reports to the manager of the Analysis Team in the Conservancy’s Central Science Program. The Analysis Team is responsible for producing high impact analyses that identify, test, and develop new approaches that improve how conservation benefits both nature and people.

Preferred location for this position is at the Worldwide Office in Arlington, VA.

Hail, @nature_brains: TNC Science is Now on Twitter (!?)

That’s right -- we’ve arrived: Tweeting daily links to interesting conservation science studies and news (including the Conservancy’s). Scientists, send me your Twitter handle and we’ll follow you. What? You’re not on Twitter? Holy flying Luddite! Then see what all the fuss is about at http://www.twitter.com/nature_brains.

—Bob Lalasz, director of science communications, The Nature Conservancy [email protected]

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Nature Magazine Names Jane Lubchenco ‘Newsmaker of the Year’

Nature named Jane Lubchenco newsmaker of the year for 2010. I cannot think of many scientists, and certainly no conservation scientists, who have had such an impact on the world as Jane. Thirty years ago I recall Jane taking a lot of heat for being the lead author of the “Sus- tainable Biosphere Initiative,” which pushed the then arcane Ecological Society of America to begin addressing important environmental and conservation questions. She has spent much of her career urging scientists to get out of the ivory tower and become socially relevant. In her short time at NOAA, she has implemented a new ocean policy that has as its centerpiece marine spatial planning, and she has been a champion of quality science within NOAA by making it so that skilled scientists can advance in seniority and salary without having to become managers. Scientists at TNC should look up to Jane and take their cues from her, heeding especially her words: “meaningful change is not for the timid.”

—Peter Karevia, chief scientist, The Nature Conservancy [email protected]

Science Chronicles Partners with Conservation Gateway: World Now Much Better Place

Conservation Gateway is a new public TNC website for conservation practitioners — and the new online home for Science Chronicles. Within the Gateway you can subscribe to the Chronicles, view archived issues and discuss current articles online. Each month, several Chroni- cles articles will also be published online as a Conservation Gateway Posts, where you can comment and discuss ideas with other scientists and practitioners. Consider it the Op/Ed sec- tion of the Gateway. So if you’ve ever been provoked by opinions shared in the Science Chroni- cles, you can now do more than kick the desk chair, grumble to your colleague in the next cube, procrastinate writing a letter to the editor, or think to yourself “Yes! And…”

We’ll also be publishing a “Top 5 Posts” list — drawn from Chronicles content on the Gateway and original Gateway content in each issue of the Chronicles. Want more than five? Click on the “Latest Posts” tab from the homepage of the Gateway. This month’s Top 5 Posts:

1. Learn more about the work of the Planning Evolution Team in Evolving our Conservation Planning by Robin Cox. 2. Join the debate on ESRI vs. Google for spatial mapping applications in Zach Ferdana’s The Debate de Jour for Conservation Science Mapping Online. 3. Do ecosystem services help or hurt the quest for biodiversity conservation? Read Rebecca Goldman’s opinion in Ecosystem Services: Mission Drift for Conservation, or Business as Usual?

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4. Monitor-phobe or monitor-phile: Which are you and why? Jensen Montambault discusses the fear of monitoring and how it could be such beautiful thing in Why the monitoring pho- bia? 5. Want to chime in on the Protected Areas debate? Comment on Nigel Dudley’s Catch-22: Pro- tected Areas and the Future of Life on Earth or one of several other Posts published on this topic.

Questions? Contact Bob Lalasz ([email protected]) or Rebecca Esselman ([email protected]).

Science Peer Review Help Desk: For More Than Just Papers

Most of us working in science can sometimes use input from our peers, but find it a pain to chase people down to get their review. The good news is that there’s a service to do it for you, the TNC Science Peer Review Help Desk! In the past 8 months we’ve provided review for 19 submissions across TNC.

* Have a paper you are working on that you want reviewed with no writing workshop in sight? * Need feedback on a monitoring plan or protocol? * Have a cool new science method or tool you want to use but need a sounding board? * Been asked to write up the science for your programs business plan and want feedback?

If you answered “yes” to any of the above questions or find yourself in a similar situation to those described, then send your work to the Science Peer Review Help Desk. The help desk is designed for any and all science at TNC. Your submission can be “half baked” – i.e. just begin- ning – or nearly done. No matter the stage, you will receive thoughtful feedback from a set of peer reviewers.

Some examples of potential submissions: * Monitoring plans * Science that will inform a business plan * New science methodologies * Social science methods or approaches * Draft funding proposals * Draft papers to be submitted for peer-review * Potentially high impact science analyses with policy implications

How will this work? 1. Send your submission to the help desk manager (Jon Fisher) at [email protected], and specify what you're looking for

38 the science CHRONICLES January 2011

2. Jon will send your submission to 2-3 expert reviewers within TNC 3. Reviewers will have up to 3 weeks to provide a review 4. Jon will then send all reviews back to you 5. Reviewers have the option to remain anonymous 6. For large file size submissions please use Accellion or another file transfer service.

Central Science is piloting this idea until July 2011, so take advantage of this help desk now!

—Jon Fisher, data analyst, The Nature Conservancy jfi[email protected]

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Conservancy Publications

Please send new citations and the PDF (when possible) to: [email protected] and [email protected]

NOTE: New additions since last month in red; Conservancy-affiliated authors highlighted in bold.

Almany, G.R., R.J. Hamilton, D.H. Williamson, R. D. Evans, G. P. Jones, M. Matawai, T. Potuku, K. L. Rhodes, G. R. Russ, and B. Sawynok. 2010. Research partnerships with local com- munities: two case studies from Papua New Guinea and Australia. Coral Reefs doi: 10.1007/s00338-010-0624-3 Anderson M.G., Ferree CE (2010) Conserving the Stage: Climate Change and the Geophysical Underpinnings of Species Diversity. PLoS ONE 5(7): e11554. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0011554 Benítez, S., A. Blanco, J. Cole, M. Ibáñez, J. J. Rodríguez, and S. Halloy. 2010. Using water funds to finance watershed conservation in the Andes and Costa Rica. Mountain Forum 10:71-73. Beger, M., S. Linke, E. T. Game, I. R. Ball, M. Watts, and H. P. Possingham. 2010. Incorporating asymmetric connectivity into spatial decision making for conservation. Conservation Letters doi: 10.1111/j.1755-263X.2010.00123.x. Biggs, R., M. W. Diebel, D. Gilroy, A. M. Kamarainen, M. S. Kornis, N. D. Preston, J. E. Schmitz, C. K. Uejio, M. C. Van De Botert, B. C. Weindel, P. C. West, D. P. M. Zaks, and S. R. Car- penter. In press. Preparing for the future: teaching scenario planning at the graduate level. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment doi: 10.1890/080075. Brown, J., L. Bach, A. Aldous, A. Wyers, and J. DeGagne. In press. Groundwater-dependent ecosystems in Oregon: an assessment of their distribution and associated threats. Fron- tiers in Ecology and Environment doi:10.1890/090108. Brumbaugh, R.D., Beck, M.W., Hancock, B., Meadows, A.W., Spalding, M., and P. zu Ermgas- sen. 2010. Changing a management paradigm and rescuing a globally imperiled habitat. National Wetlands Newsletter, 32(6):16-20. Burdett, C. L., K. R. Crooks, D. M. Theobald, K. R. Wilson, E. E. Boydston, L. M. Lyren, R. N. Fisher, T. W. Vickers, S. A. Morrison, and W. M. Boyce. 2010. Interfacing models of wild- life habitat and human development to predict the future distribution of puma habitat. Ecosphere 1(1):art4. doi:10.1890/ES10-00005.1 Butchart, S.H.M., et al. (incl. 44 co-authors, and TNC's C. Revenga. (2010). Global Biodiversity: Indicators of Recent Declines. ScienceExpress 29 April 2010. 10.1126/science.1187512. Cardillo, M., and E. Meijaard. In press. Phylogeny and the co-occurrence of mammal species on southeast Asian islands. Global Ecology & Biogeography. Clarke, P., S. Jupiter (and with contributions from J. Wilson, C. Rotinsulu and others). 2010. Principles and Practice of Ecosystem-Based Management: A Guide for Conservation Practitioners in the Tropical Western Pacific. Wildlife Conservation Society, Suva, Fiji.

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Coffey, B., J.A. Fitzsimons, and R. Gormly, (2011) Strategic public land use assessment and planning in Victoria, Australia: Four decades of trailblazing but where to from here? Land Use Policy 28:306-313. doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2010.06.011 Cohen, J. B., S. M. Karpanty, J. D. Fraser, and B. R. Truitt. 2010. The effect of benthic prey abun- dance and size on red knot (Calidris canutus) distribution at an alternative migratory stopover site on the US Atlantic Coast. Journal of Ornithology 151:355-364. Corser, J. 2010. Status and ecology of a rare gomphid dragonfly at the northern extent of its range. Notes of the Northeastern Naturalist 17(2):341-45 Copeland, H. E., S. A. Tessman, E. H. Girvetz, L. Roberts, C. Enquist, A. Orabona, S. Patla, and J. M. Kiesecker. 2010. A geospatial assessment on the distribution, condition, and vul- nerability of Wyoming’s wetlands. Ecological Indicators 10:869-879. Denning, C. A., J. Christensen, and R. I. McDonald. In press. Did land protection in Silicon Val- ley reduce the housing stock? Landscape and Urban Planning doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2010.01.025. Doherty, K. E., D. E. Naugle, H. Copeland, A. Pocewicz, and J. Kiesecker. in press. Energy de- velopment and conservation tradeoffs: systematic planning for sage-grouse in their east- ern range. Studies in Avian Biology: http://sagemap.wr.usgs.gov/monograph.aspx. Drever, C.R., Snider, J., Drever, M.C., 2010. Rare forest types in northeastern Ontario: a classifi- cation and analysis of representation in protected areas. Canadian Journal Forest Re- search 40, 423-435. Drummond, S. P., K. Wilson, E. Meijaard, M. Watts, R. Dennis, L. Christy, and H. P. Possing- ham. 2010. Influence of a Threatened-Species Focus on Conservation Planning. Conser- vation Biology 24: 441-449. Duane, T.P., and J. J. Opperman. 2010. Comparing the conservation effectiveness of private wa- ter transactions and public policy reforms in the Conserving California Landscapes Ini- tiative. Water Policy 12: 913-931. Enderson, E. F., A. Quijada-Mascareñas, D. S. Turner, R. L. Bezy, and P. C. Rosen. 2010. Una si- nopsis de la herpetofauna con comentarios sobre las prioridades en investigación y con- servación. Pages 357-383 in F. Molina and T. Van Devender, editors. Diversidad Biológica de Sonora. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Esselman, P. and J. Opperman. 2010. Overcoming information limitations for developing an en- vironmental flow prescription for a Central American River. Ecology and Society 15: ar- ticle 6 (online) Fargione J.E., R.J. Plevin, J.D. Hill. 2010. The ecological impact of biofuels. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 41:351–77. Fitzsimons, J., S. Legge, B. Traill, B. and J. Woinarski. 2010 Into Oblivion? The disappearing na- tive mammals of northern Australia. The Nature Conservancy, Melbourne. Available:http://www.nature.org/wherewework/asiapacific/australia/files/ausmam mals.pdf

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Fitzsimons, J.A. (2010) Notes on the roost sites of the Sulawesi Masked Owl Tyto rosenbergii. Forktail 26: 142-145. Fitzsimons, J.A. and A.B. Rose. 2010. Diet of Powerful Owls Ninox strenua in inner city Mel- bourne parks, Victoria. Australian Field Ornithology 27:76-80. Fitzsimons, J.A. and J.L. Thomas. 2010. Ctenotus regius (Regal Striped Skink). Predation. Herpetological Review 41:76-77. Flesch, A.D., D.E. Swann, D.S. Turner, and B.F. Powell. 2010. Herpetofauna of the Rincon Mountains, Southeastern Arizona. Southwestern Naturalist 55(2): 240-253. Fletcher, R.J.J., Robertson, B.A., Evans, J.S., Doran, P.J., Alavalapati, J.R.R., Schemske, D.W., 2010. Biodiversity conservation in the era of biofuels: risks and opportunities. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment doi: 10.1890/090091. Fuller, D., E. Meijaard, L. Christy, and T. C. Jessup. In press. Spatial assessment of threats to biodiversity within East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Applied Geography. Game, E. T., H. Grantham, A. J. Hobday, R. L. Pressey, A. T. Lombard, L. E. Beckley, K. Gjerde, R. Bustamante, H. P. Possingham, and A. J. Richardson. 2010. Pelagic MPAs: The devil you know. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 25:63-64. Game, E.T., G. Lipsett-Moore, R. Hamilton, N. Peterson, J. Kereseka, W. Atu, M. Watts, and H. Possingham. In press. Informed opportunism for conservation planning in the Solomon Islands. Conservation Letters. doi: 10.1111/j.1755-263X.2010.00140.x Glaser, M., W. Baitoningsih, S.C.A. Ferse, M. Neil, R. Deswandi. 2010. Whose sustainability? Top-down participation and emergent rules in marine protected area management in Indonesia. Marine Policy 34(6):1215-1225. Gleason, M., S. McCreary, M. Miller-Henson, J. Ugoretz, E. Fox, M. Merrifield, W. McClintock, P. Serpa, and K. Hoffman. 2010. Science-based and stakeholder-driven marine protected area network planning: A successful case study from north central California. Ocean & Coastal Management 53:52–68. Goetz, S.J., D. Steinberg, M.G. Betts, R.T. Holmes, P.J. Doran, R. Dubayah, M. Hofton. 2010. Li- dar remote sensing variables predict breeding habitat of a Neotropical migrant bird. Ecology: 91:1569-1576. doi: 10.1890/09-1670.1 Golet, G. H., T. Gardali, J. Hunt, D. Koenig, and N. Williams. In press. Temporal and taxonomic variability in response of fauna to riparian restoration. Restoration Ecology. Gordon, D.R., B. Mitterdorfer, P.C. Pheloung, S. Ansari, C. Buddenhagen, C. Chimera, C.C. Daehler, W. Dawson, J.S. Denslow, A. LaRosa, T. Nishida, D.A. Onderdonk, F.D. Panetta, P. Pyšek, R.P. Randall, D.M. Richardson, N.J. Tshidada, J.G. Virtue, and P.A. Williams. 2010. Guidance for addressing the Australian Weed Risk Assessment questions. Plant Protection Quarterly 25(2): 56-74. Gordon, D.R., K.J. Tancig, D.A. Onderdonk and C.A. Gantz. In press. Assessing the invasive potential of biofuel species proposed for Florida and the United States using the Austra- lian weed risk assessment. Biomass and Bioenergy doi:10.1016/j.biombioe.2010.08.029.

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Graham, N. A. J., M. D. Spalding, and C. R. C. Sheppard. 2010. Reef shark declines in remote atolls highlight the need for multi-faceted conservation action. Aquatic Conservation: Marine & Freshwater Ecosystems. DOI: 10.1002/aqc.1116. Grantham, H. S., M. Bode, E. McDonald-Madden, E. T. Game, A. T. Knight, and H. P. Possing- ham. 2010. Effective conservation planning requires learning and adaptation. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment doi: 10.1890/080151. Griscom, B., H. Griscom, and S. Deacon. In press. Species-specific barriers to tree regeneration in high elevation habitats of West Virginia. Restoration Ecology. Haisfield, K.M., H.E. Fox, S. Yen, S. Mangubhai, and P.J. Mous. 2010. An ounce of prevention: cost-effectiveness of coral reef rehabilitation relative to enforcement. Conservation Let- ters 3:243-250. doi: 10.1111/j.1755-263X.2010.00104.x Heiner, M., J.V. Higgins, X. Li and B. Baker. 2010. Identifying freshwater conservation priori- ties in the Upper Yangtze River Basin. Freshwater Biology. DOI:10.1111/j.1365-2427.2010.02466.x Herbert, M.E., McIntyre, P.B., Doran, P.J., Allan, J.D., Abell, R., In press. Terrestrial reserve net- works do not adequately represent aquatic ecosystems. Conservation Biology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2010.01460.x. Hobday, A. J., E. T. Game, H. S. Grantham and A. J. Richardson. 2010. Conserving the largest habitat on earth: protected areas in the pelagic ocean. In Marine Protected Areas: Effects, networks and monitoring - A multidisciplinary approach. J. Claudet, Cambridge Univer- sity Press - Ecology, Biodiversity and Conservation Series. Holman, M.L., R.G. Carey, and P.W. Dunwiddie. 2010. Effective Strategies for Landscape-Scale Weed Control: a Case Study of the Skagit Knotweed Working Group, Washington. Natu- ral Areas Journal 30(3):338-345. Howard J., and M. Merrifield. 2010. Mapping groundwater dependent ecosystems in California. PLoS ONE 5(6): e11249. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0011249. Hoekstra, J. M., J. L. Molnar, M. Jennings, C. Revenga, M. D. Spalding, T. M. Boucher, J. C. Robertson, T. J. Heibel, and K. Ellison 2010. The Atlas of Global Conservation: Changes, Challenges, and Opportunities to Make a Difference. University of California Press, Berkeley, USA. Hunter, M., E. Dinerstein, J. Hoekstra, and D. Lindenmayer. 2010. Conserving biodiversity in the face of climate change: A call to action. Conservation Biology 24:1169-1171. Imbach, P., L. Molina, B. Locatelli, O. Roupsard, P. Ciais, L. Corrales, and G. Mahe. 2010. Re- gional modeling of vegetation and long term runoff for Mesoamerica. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 7:801-846. Jenkins, D.H. and S. Repasch. 2010. The Forest-Drinking Water Connection: Making Woodlands Work for People and Nature. American Water Works Authority Journal 108(7):46-49. John, K., S. Otuokon and C.L. Harris (2010) Seeking and securing sacred natural sites among Jamaica’s Windward Maroons. Pages 146-155 in B. Verschuuren, R. Wild, J. McNeely &

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G. Oviedo (eds) Sacred Natural Sites: Conserving nature and culture. IUCN/Earthscan, London, U.K. Kareiva, P. 2010. Conservation science: Trade-in to trade-up. Nature 466:322-323 doi:10.1038/466322a Kareiva, P. 2010. Am I Making Myself Clear? A Scientist's Guide to Talking to the Public. Science 327:34-35. Khoury, M., J. Higgins, and R. Weitzell. 2010. A Freshwater Conservation Assessment of the Upper Mississippi River Basin Using a Coarse- and Fine-Filter Approach. Freshwater Biology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2427.2010.02468.x. Kittel. T.G.F., B.B. Baker, J.V. Higgins, and J.C. Haney. 2010. Climate vulnerability of ecosystems and landscapes on Alaska’s North Slope. Reg Environ Change. DOI 10.1007/s10113-010-0180-y. Krosby, M., J. Tewksbury, N. M. Haddad, and J. Hoekstra. 2010. Ecological connectivity for a changing climate. Conservation Biology DOI: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2010.01585.x LaDeau, S.L., C.A. Calder, P.J. Doran, and P.P. Marra. 2010. West Nile virus impacts in American crow populations are associated with human land use and climate. Ecological Research. DOI: 10.1007/s11284-010-0725-z. Langin, K. M., T. S. Sillett, J. Yoon, H.R. Sofaer, S. A. Morrison, and C. K. Ghalambor. 2010. Re- productive consequences of an extreme drought for Orange-crowned Warblers on Santa Catalina and Santa Cruz islands. Pp 293-300. In C. C. Damiani and D. K. Garcelon, eds. Proceedings of the Seventh California Islands Symposium. Institute for Wildlife Studies, Arcata, CA. Lawler, J. J., T. H. Tear, C. Pyke, M. R. Shaw, P. Gonzalez, P. Kareiva, L. Hansen, L. Hannah, K. Klausmeyer, A. Aldous, C. Bienz, and S. Pearsall. 2010. Resource management in a changing and uncertain climate. Frontiers in Ecology & the Environment 8:35-43. Louys, J., and E. Meijaard. in press. Palaeoecology of Southeast Asian megafauna-bearing sites from the Pleistocene and a review of environmental changes in the region. Journal of Biogeography. Low, G., L. Provencher, and S. L. Abele. 2010. Enhanced conservation action planning: assess- ing landscape condition and predicting benefits of conservation strategies. Journal of Conservation Planning 6. Available online at: http://www.journalconsplanning.org/ 2010/index.html. Kiesecker, J.M., H. Copeland, A. Pocewicz, and B. McKenney. in press. Development by de- sign: blending landscape-level planning with the mitigation hierarchy. Frontiers in Ecol- ogy & the Environment doi:10.1890/090005. Madeira, E.M., M.J. Coren, and C. Streck. 2010. The feasible supply of RED credits: Less than predicted by technical models. Resources for the Future Issue Brief 10-18.

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