Twelve years ago, a team led by Jianguo “Jack” Liu at Michigan State University showed that China needed to revisit how it was protecting its pandas. Now research on tiger habitat in Nepal, published in Ecosphere journal of the Ecological Society of America, again shows that conservation demands not only good policy, but also monitoring even years down the road.
“Understanding long-term outcomes of conservation programs is crucial and requires innovative methods,” Liu said. “Now we’re learning that Nepal’s outstanding efforts to protect tigers are best supported with close monitoring because conservation situations are so dynamic. In both cases, the key is to understand how the people who live near the valued wildlife are faring as well.” (more…)
China, with its enormous cities and vast countryside, is a potential star in the ongoing global drama of slashing carbon emissions.
In this week’s Nature, a Michigan State University researcher and an international team of sustainability experts propose a script.
China already is a star in unleashing carbon dioxide emissions. In 2011, it accounted for a quarter of the world’s total. The problems – air pollution, squandered energy resources and economic stresses that squelch growth – also come with tremendous opportunity for China to be leader in slashing emissions. Along the way, China’s vast variety of economic and geographic circumstances offers a chance to set examples for its global neighbors. (more…)
China’s 34-year-old Environmental Protection Law was created when it made sense for legislators in a developing country to trade environmental well-being for a boost to the gross domestic product.
Today, China wrestles with pollution that is leaving its citizens gasping for clean air, worried about water quality and concerned for the safety of the food grown there. In the current issue of Science, a team of researchers, including a Michigan State University sustainability expert, offers guidelines for revising the EPL to protect both humans and nature. (more…)
China’s endangered wild pandas may need new dinner reservations–and quickly, based on models that indicate climate change may kill off swaths of bamboo that pandas need to survive
In this week’s Nature Climate Change, an international journal, scientists from Michigan State University (MSU) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences provide comprehensive forecasts of how changing climate may affect the most common species of bamboo that carpet the forest floors of prime panda habitat in northwestern China. Even the most optimistic scenarios show that bamboo die-offs would effectively cause prime panda habitat to become inhospitable by the end of the 21st century.
The scientists studied possible scenarios of climate change in the Qinling Mountains in Shaanxi Province. At the northern boundary of China’s panda distributional range, the Qinling Mountains are home to about 275 wild pandas, which account for about 17 percent of the remaining wild population. The Qinling pandas, which have been isolated because of thousands of years of human habitation around the mountain range, vary genetically from other giant pandas. The geographic isolation of these pandas makes them particularly valuable forconservation, but vulnerable to climate change. (more…)
EAST LANSING, Mich. — As the world’s biodiversity hotspots are increasingly stressed by their human neighbors, zoning is becoming a common strategy to balance environmental protection and human needs. But a recent study conducted by Michigan State University researchers shows zoning for conservation demands reality checks.
“Zoning ordinances are rarely evaluated for their ability to make positive changes using empirical data on both human and biodiversity characteristics,” said Jianguo (Jack) Liu, Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability at MSU. “It’s critical to examine both human and natural systems to see if ordinances are working and understand what changes might be needed.” (more…)
*Study of Chinese citizens says jobs more important than salary when it comes to pro-environmental behavior*
People with good jobs found in large cities are more likely to engage in pro-environmental activities. So says a new study of China’s environmental behavior published this week in the British journal Environmental Conservation.
For the first time, scientists weighed employment and leadership when considering how people act regarding their natural surroundings. They found the status and political power of companies in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin strongly influence the conservation practices of their employees. (more…)
