in this paper, we report an investigation of changes in land use and ecosystem services on loess plateau in northern shaanxi province from 1978 to 2004. we used three landsat tm and/or etm data sets to estimate changes in the size of five land-cover/land-use categories, and we also used previously published value coefficients to estimate changes in the value of ecosystem services delivered by e...

introduction due to its multifunctional nature agriculture play important roles in ecological processes such as carbon sequestration, flood control, groundwater recharge, nutrient cycling, and purifying water, soil and air in addition to providing food, feed and fiber. these cover almost all ecological services provided by natural ecosystems, including provisioning services, regulating services...

introduCtion ELEPHANTS PLAY a huge role within any landscape where they occur. They are habitat engineers. As charismatic species they awaken emotions among people like few others. As keystone species, they contribute significantly to the integrity of ecosystems and must be very carefully managed. From an economic perspective, they are also value generators. In this broad context, we first cons...

3 The distinction between forecast quality and economic value in a cost-loss 4 formulation is well known. Also well-known is their complex relationship, even 5 with some instances of a reversal between the two, where higher quality is 6 associated with lower economic value, and vice versa. It is reasonable to expect 7 such counter-intuitive results when forecast quality and economic value both,...

This paper describes ways to evaluate the value of walking (the activity) and walkability (the quality of walking conditions, including safety, comfort and convenience). Walking and walkability provide a variety of benefits, including basic mobility, consumer cost savings, cost savings (reduced external costs), efficient land use, community livability, improved fitness and public health, econom...

As agriculture faces documented decline in bees and other insect pollinators, empirical assessments of potential economic losses are critical for contextualizing the impacts of this decline and for prioritizing research needs. For the state of Georgia, we show that the annual economic value of biotic pollinators is substantial--US$367 million, equivalent to 13 percent of the total production va...

The Standard Model plus gravitation is derived from a Kaluza-Klein theory of pure gravitation in six dimensions with two higher dimensions of time. The theory is called 3DT, which stands for three dimensions of time. The theory of 3DT is different than other KaluzaKlein theories because it allows dependence upon the higher-dimensional coordinates. It shows how predictions at the Planck mass can...