22 June 2012
New way of monitoring environmental impact could help save rural communities in China
Researchers from the Universities of Dundee and Southampton are pioneering a new way of measuring and monitoring the impact of industrial and agricultural development on the environment.
Working in collaboration with East China Normal University, the Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology and the Durham University, the team has created the world's first long-term record of ecosystem health, which examines the past condition of environmental resources in China's Yangtze basin region, and helps develop forecasts for the future.
The team drilled core samples at two lakes in the region, west of Shanghai, and made detailed studies of the sediment they retrieved. This allows them to examine the effect that modern intensive farming techniques have had on 'ecosystem services' - things like food, fuel, soil and clean water - in the Yangtze basin area.
From this, they have compiled an overview of the condition of these resources, which are essential for the survival of local communities and are an issue of growing concern as China industrialises at an exponential rate.
"This research is an excellent example of the trade-offs that society is making with regarding to economic development, food security and the environment," explained Professor Terry Dawson from SAGES Chair in Global Environmental Change at the University of Dundee.
"Unfortunately our results demonstrate that for China, as has been shown in other developing economies, economic growth and intensification of agriculture has resulted in degradation of biodiversity and soils and water quality, which has negative repercussions for the health and well-being of society in the long-term."
Professor John Dearing, from the University of Southampton, said, "The data we have compiled came from the analysis of microfossils, geo-chemistry, mineral magnetism, and sediment accumulation rates. These different analyses give us clues about the past health of the environment - for example, pollen samples tell us about the diversity of plant species at a given time, while metal content can be used to measure air quality.
"By bringing all the information together, we have been able to track the condition of environmental resources over a 200-year period."
In addition, researchers have examined official statistical records and climate models to give trends on land use, population, gross domestic product (GDP), temperature and precipitation. By comparing these statistics with the core sample data they have seen that as GDP in the Yangtze region increased sharply in the 1970s, the quality of ecosystem services suffered a downward trend.
Improved environmental regulation and policies encouraged a partial stabilisation in the 1980s, but the downward trend continued sharply in the 1990s and beyond. The study findings have been published in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Professor Dearing added, "Intensive agriculture has lifted many Chinese rural communities out of poverty in the last 30 years, but irrigation, mechanisation and fertilisers that came with it have degraded soils badly and there is already evidence of declining water quality.
"Economic development and an increase in regional wealth are clear trade-offs for the decline in ecosystem services. However, in the long-term, this decline will be a threat to local livelihoods and could reach a 'tipping point', becoming irreversible.
"Financial indexes, like the FTSE 100 or Dow Jones, are used to monitor the health of an economy, and this project has led us to consider that palaeoecological records could provide the basis for a regional 'ecosystem service index', monitoring the health of a region's environment."
Where suitable, researchers hope to use the technique they have developed in China for other areas of the world, with the aim of helping policymakers to prioritise the most urgent environmental problems and identify which strategies work best to tackle them.
This £250,000 project is part of the Ecosystem Services and Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) programme funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, Department for International Development and Economic and Social Research Council to the universities of Southampton, Dundee and Durham: www.nerc.ac.uk/research/programmes/espa/.
ESPA is a programme accredited under the Living With Environmental Change partnership: www.lwec.org.uk.
Additional funding was from the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme Past Global Changes, National Natural Science Fund of China, the National Basic Research Program of China and the National Major Projects on Control and Rectification of Water Body Pollution.
Notes to Editors:
About the University of Southampton:
The University of Southampton is celebrating its 60th anniversary during 2012.
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II granted the Royal Charter that enabled the University of Southampton to award its own degrees in the early weeks of her reign in 1952
In the six decades to follow, Southampton has risen to become one of the leading universities in the UK with a global reputation for innovation through academic excellence and world-leading research.
This year, the University's reputation continues to grow with the recent awarding of a Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education in recognition of Southampton's long-standing expertise in performance sports engineering.
www.southampton.ac.uk/60.
About the University of Dundee:
The University of Dundee has an international reputation for excellence across a range of disciplines including science, medicine, engineering and art and was voted number one in this year's Times Higher Education Student Experience Survey.
The calibre of research at Dundee is high, with 95% of staff working in areas of national or international excellence. The University ranks in the UK's top three for research income per capita and in the top 20 for research income.
www.dundee.ac.uk.
About Durham University:
Durham University is a world top-100 university with a global reputation and performance in research and education. The most recent UK league tables place Durham in the top echelon of British universities academically.
Durham is ranked in the top 3 UK universities in the influential Sunday Times University Guide 2012; is 26th in the world for the impact of its research (THE citations ratings) and 15th in the world for the employability of its students by blue-chip companies world wide. We are a residential Collegiate University: England's third oldest university and at our heart is a medieval UNESCO World Heritage Site, jointly owned with Durham Cathedral. Durham has accepted an invitation to join the Russell Group of leading research-intensive UK universities.
www.dur.ac.uk.
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