Gretchen C Daily

Stanford University | SU · Department of Biology

The spatial configuration and management of agricultural and other land-use practices can affect ecological assemblages, but how resident and migratory species respond to land uses is not well known, hindering our understanding of the effects of land use on biodiversity. Here, we compare alpha and beta diversity and ecosystem functioning for reside...

Land use change is crucial to addressing the existential threats of climate change and biodiversity loss while enhancing food security [M. Zurek et al. , Science 376 , 1416–1421 (2022)]. The interconnected and spatially varying nature of the impacts of land use change means that these challenges must be addressed simultaneously [H.-O. Pörtner et al...

The large-scale loss of ecosystem assets around the world, and the resultant reduction in the provision of nature’s benefits to people, underscores the urgent need for better metrics of ecological performance as well as their integration into decision-making. Gross ecosystem product (GEP) is a measure of the aggregate monetary value of final ecosys...

Globally, rising food demand has caused widespread biodiversity and ecosystem services loss, prompting growing efforts in ecological protection and restoration. However, these efforts have been significantly undercut by further reclamation for cropland. Focusing on China, the world’s largest grain producer, we found that at the national level from...

As humanity has become increasingly urban, a growing number of people have been deprived of access to nature and the benefits it provides. This is especially true for marginalized groups, who often live in neighbourhoods where nature has been so diminished and degraded that it provides fewer types, and much lower levels of benefits. We review the l...

How human modification of native habitats changes the feeding patterns and nutritional ecology of tropical birds is critical to conserving avian biodiversity, but tropical bird diets are laborious to investigate using the traditional methods of diet analysis. Stable isotope analysis provides a cost-effective and efficient proxy to identify general...

We lack an understanding of how diverse policymakers interact to govern biodiversity. Taking Colombia as a focal case, we examined six decades of biodiversity governance (1959–2018). Here we analysed the composition of the policy mix, and how it has evolved over time, how policies differ among lead actors and ecosystems, and whether the policy mix...

The economic value that the world’s ecosystems provide was first estimated in 1997, eliciting a wide range of reactions. How have such valuations advanced since then, and what are today’s frontiers in using these values for decision-making? Calculating the economic value of ecosystems has driven policy changes.

Significance Tourism accounts for roughly 10% of global gross domestic product, with nature-based tourism its fastest-growing sector in the past 10 years. Nature-based tourism can theoretically contribute to local and sustainable development by creating attractive livelihoods that support biodiversity conservation, but whether tourists prefer to vi...

Ecosystems are employed to effectively protect people and communities in coastal areas from tropical cyclone (TC) hazards. Although a spatially explicit TC hazard mitigation service (TCHMS) is essential for devising adaptation strategy and resilience policy, the process and delivery of this program are unclear. We improved a capacity–exposure–deman...

Well-managed rangelands provide important economic, environmental, and cultural benefits. Yet, many rangelands worldwide are experiencing pressures of land-use change, overgrazing, fire, and drought, causing rapid degradation. These pressures are especially acute in the Hawaiian Islands, which we explore as a microcosm with some broadly relevant le...

Globally, cities face massive environmental and societal challenges such as rapid population growth and climate change. In response, natural infrastructure is increasingly recognized for its potential to enhance resilience and improve human well-being. Here, we examine the role of the ecosystem services and resilience approaches in urban planning,...

Natural infrastructure such as parks, forests, street trees, green roofs, and coastal vegetation is central to sustainable urban management. Despite recent progress, it remains challenging for urban decision-makers to incorporate the benefits of natural infrastructure into urban design and planning. Here, we present an approach to support the green...

Nature underpins human well-being in critical ways, especially in health. Nature provides pollination of nutritious crops, purification of drinking water, protection from floods, and climate security, among other well-studied health benefits. A crucial, yet challenging, research frontier is clarifying how nature promotes physical activity for its m...

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed an interconnected and tightly coupled globalized world in rapid change. This article sets the scientific stage for understanding and responding to such change for global sustainability and resilient societies. We provide a systemic overview of the current situation where people and nature are dynamically intertwine...

Mounting evidence shows that nature contact is associated with affective benefits. However, the psychological mechanisms responsible for these effects are not well understood. In this study, we examined whether more time spent in nature was associated with higher levels of positive affect in general, and lower levels of negative affect and ruminati...

In response to extreme societal consequences of ecosystem degradation and climate change, attention to ecological restoration is increasing globally. In China, investments in restoration exceeded USD 378.5 billion over the past decade. However, restoration programs are experiments that can cause marked unintended consequences, with trade-offs acros...

The ecosystem service (ES) community aspires to illuminate how nature contributes to human well-being, and thereby elevate consideration of nature in decision making. So far, however, policy impact of ES research has been limited. To understand why, we identify five key elements of ES research that help inform decisions by connecting the supply of...

With about 70% of its territory covered with mountains and hills, China faces the serious challenge of soil erosion. Its particular geographical features, socioeconomic conditions as well as improper ways of land development and utilization work together to exacerbate the problem, producing far-reaching and wide-ranging impacts.

In the following three chapters, we look at ecological compensation policies, a subject that has drawn great concern from academic circles, the government and the broader public in China and which are also practiced extensively in the country. There are many kinds of ecological compensation policies and implementation mechanisms. In this volume, we...

In this chapter, we use data from a survey of rural residents in Xi’an, Yan’an and other places undertaken by Xi’an Jiaotong University to perform an empirical analysis of the impact of ecological compensation policies on rural livelihoods and on the poverty alleviation efforts in the western mountainous areas.

The Five-pronged Poverty Alleviation Measures were first proposed at the National Conference on Poverty Alleviation and Development held in end-2015. One of the five prongs is resettling poor residents from inhospitable areas, the most challenging part of the poverty alleviation program. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, a total of 9.81 millio...

In this chapter, we conduct an empirical analysis of the perceptions of rural household regarding the fairness of the Grain-for-Green program and of the welfare impact of the Grain-for-Green policy for rural households in the western mountainous regions based on the theoretical examination of evaluation standards for ecological compensation program...

Livelihood choices are one of the main topics in the study of rural livelihood. This chapter offers an empirical analysis of the livelihood choices of rural households in poverty-stricken mountainous areas in western China. As relative poverty has become an increasingly prominent problem among rural households in China, it is necessary for us to as...

The term “shengji”, the Chinese term for “livelihood”, first appeared in the 1978 edition of the Modern Chinese Dictionary (Xiandai Hanyu Cidian). Two definitions for the term were given: (1) a means of sustaining life; and (2) a term used to describe living itself. Here, “living” encompasses elements such as clothing, food, housing, and travel/tra...

Poverty and environmental deterioration are the two major problems that many developing countries face. Population growth and rapid economic development in China have been often accompanied by the irrational use of natural resources, environmental deterioration, and shrinking biodiversity. The conflict between the population and economy on the one...

Relations of households in poor mountainous areas to the environment are reflected on the one hand by households’ behavior of forest resource utilization and production, forestry-related production and direct utilization of forest resources—e.g., non-timber forest products and wildcrafting, and dependence for livelihood on forest resources, and on...

In the previous chapters, we have described rural livelihoods and their various components, and rural residents’ choice of livelihood activities and their strategies in this area, etc.; analyzed how forest resources are used in rural livelihoods and how rural households feel about forestry and ecological-protection policies, etc.; and examined the...

The book considers the challenge of poverty and deterioration of the ecological environment in China, particularly in rural areas. Examining key factors such as the overuse of natural resources and the loss of biodiversity in the face of an expanding population and rapidly developing economy. It focuses on examining the frameworks of rural househol...

Gross domestic product (GDP) summarizes a vast amount of economic information in a single monetary metric that is widely used by decision makers around the world. However, GDP fails to capture fully the contributions of nature to economic activity and human well-being. To address this critical omission, we develop a measure of gross ecosystem produ...

Eminent public intellectual who served science and society

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Aim Biomes, biogeographical realms and ecoregions have become central concepts of biotic organization and biodiversity research. Recent data‐intensive analysis has shown that, while ecoregions do delineate biotic communities, how distinct they are from one another varies considerably across regions and taxa. Given their central importance to global...

Fifty years have passed since the first Earth Day, on 22 April 1970. This accessible, incisive, and timely collection of essays brings together a diverse set of expert voices to examine how the Earth’s environment has changed over this past half century, and what lies in store for our planet over the coming fifty years. Earth 2020: An Insider’s Gui...

Agricultural practices constitute both the greatest cause of biodiversity loss and the greatest opportunity for conservation1,2, given the shrinking scope of protected areas in many regions. Recent studies have documented the high levels of biodiversity—across many taxa and biomes—that agricultural landscapes can support over the short term1,3,4. H...

Human modification of the environment, particularly through land-use change, often reduces animal species diversity. However, the effect of land-use change on the gut microbiome of wildlife in human-dominated landscapes is not well understood despite its potential consequences for host health. We sought to quantify the effect of land-use change on...

The future of nature's contributions A recent Global Assessment by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services has emphasized the urgent need to determine where and how nature's contribution matters most to people. Chaplin-Kramer et al. have developed a globalscale modeling of ecosystem services, focusing on...

A growing body of empirical evidence is revealing the value of nature experience for mental health. With rapid urbanization and declines in human contact with nature globally, crucial decisions must be made about how to preserve and enhance opportunities for nature experience. Here, we first provide points of consensus across the natural, social, a...

Significance As agricultural lands rapidly expand in the tropics, they become critical for the future of tropical biodiversity, but little is known about their long-term conservation value. Over 12 years in Costa Rica, we measured the abundance and diversity of birds in agricultural areas and embedded forest remnants. We recorded 185 bird species i...

Growth in human population and economic activity has dramatically transformed our planet since the Industrial Revolution. While driving significant improvements in human well-being, these forms of growth also deeply eroded the natural capital embodied in Earth’s lands, waters, and biodiversity. Rapid economic development has lifted hundreds of mill...

Protecting and restoring natural capital—Earth’s lands, waters, and biodiversity, and the life-supporting goods and services that flow from these—have been promoted by many as the best hope for conserving biodiversity while also supporting sustainable, inclusive growth. Evidence is growing that illuminating the ways in which people depend on nature...

Decades of double-digit economic growth make China the fastest expanding major economy in history while saddling the country with likely the most severe environmental crisis faced by any civilization. China’s ecosystems are quite fragile due to severe land degradation, erosion, desertification, water scarcity, and pollution. Ecological threats cont...

Article impact statement: New collaborations with accounting research can improve conservation impact of ecosystem‐based information systems.

Poverty is increasingly stressed in Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes, from targeting to outcomes. As the world’s largest PES scheme of its kind, the Sloping Land Conversion Program in China started its new stage (NSLCP), aiming to convert another 2.9 million ha sloping croplands into forest or grasslands. This paper examines whether and...

Aim Ecological restoration is critical for recovering biodiversity and ecosystem services, yet designing interventions to achieve particular outcomes remains fraught with challenges. In the extensive regions where non‐native species are firmly established, it is unlikely that historical conditions can be fully reinstated. To what degree, and how ra...

China’s largest-ever resettlement program is underway, aiming to restore ecosystems and lift ecosystem service providers out of the poverty trap and into sustainable livelihoods. We examine the impact of the relocation and settlement program (RSP) to date, reporting on an ecosystem services (ES) assessment and a 1400-household survey. The RSP gener...

Watersheds are under increasing pressure worldwide, as expanding human activities coupled with global climate change threaten the water security of people downstream. In response, some communities have initiated investments in watershed services (IWS), a general term for policy-finance mechanisms that mitigate diverse watershed threats and promote...

Watersheds are under increasing pressure worldwide, as expanding human activities coupled with global climate change threaten the water security of people downstream. In response, some communities have initiated investments in watershed services (IWS), a general term for policy-finance mechanisms that mitigate diverse watershed threats and promote...

Many decision-makers are looking to science to clarify how nature supports human well-being. Scientists' responses have typically focused on empirical models of the provision of ecosystem services (ES) and resulting decision-support tools. Although such tools have captured some of the complexities of ES, they can be difficult to adapt to new situat...

If species’ evolutionary pasts predetermine their responses to evolutionarily novel stressors, then phylogeny could predict species survival in an increasingly human-dominated world. To understand the role of phylogenetic relatedness in structuring responses to rapid environmental change, we focused on assemblages of Neotropical bats, an ecological...

Significance Following severe environmental degradation from rapid economic development, China is now advancing policies to secure biodiversity and ecosystem services. We report the first nationwide assessment, showing that protected areas (PAs) are not well delineated to protect either biodiversity or key ecosystem services. This serious deficienc...

Environmental managers and policy makers are increasingly discussing trade-offs between ecosystem services, but few studies have analyzed these trade-offs with a view to informing land-use planning. Using specialized models, we quantify ecosystem services in several land-use scenarios relative to actual land-use change over a 9-year period. These s...

Decision-makers increasingly seek scientific guidance on investing in nature, but biodiversity remains difficult to estimate across diverse landscapes. Here, we develop empirically based models for quantifying biodiversity across space. We focus on agricultural lands in the tropical forest biome, wherein lies the greatest potential to conserve or l...

Land-use change and climate change are driving a global biodiversity crisis. Yet, how species' responses to climate change are correlated with their responses to land-use change is poorly understood. Here, we assess the linkages between climate and land-use change on birds in Neotropical forest and agriculture. Across > 300 species, we show that af...

While anthropogenic impacts on parasitism of wildlife are receiving growing atten- tion, whether these impacts vary in a sex-specific manner remains little explored. Differences between the sexes in the effect of parasites, linked to anthropogenic activity, could lead to uneven sex ratios and higher population endangerment. We sampled 1108 individu...

Appendix S3. Data on bat captures, bat and bat fly identities and tree cover at each site.

Figure S1. Assemblage change across sites in the study years is similar to assemblage change across sites in a 5 year capture dataset. Figure S2. Bat species accumulation curves show adequate sampling of most species. Figure S3. Correlation of bat and bat fly communities with tree cover at different spatial scales. Table S1. Bat and bat fly summ...

We conducted extensive mist netting and radio tracking of common frugivorous, seed-dispersing and tropical forest-dwelling blue-crowned manakins (Lepidothrix coronata; BCMA) and white-ruffed manakins (Corapipo altera; WRMA) to study their habitat use, movements, breeding success, and seed dispersal potential in the fragmented landscape of southern...

Kirchhoff (1) highlights inherent difficulties in organizing the rationales that motivate conservation. The author provides two critiques: first, that our conservation objective typology aggregates conflicting subgoals, and second that the objectives are not mutually exclusive (2). We contend that homogenous and mutually exclusive typologies are ne...

Significance Conservationists have become embroiled in debates over different motivations for conserving nature. One path forward is to acknowledge that nature is valued for many reasons and that managing for one objective can fail to achieve others. We categorize conservation objectives and provide a framework for comparing trade-offs between alte...

Significance More than 50% of people now live in urban areas. By 2050 this proportion will be 70%. Urbanization is associated with increased levels of mental illness, but it’s not yet clear why. Through a controlled experiment, we investigated whether nature experience would influence rumination (repetitive thought focused on negative aspects of th...

Habitat conversion is a major driver of the biodiversity crisis, yet why some species undergo local extinction while others thrive under novel conditions remains unclear. We suggest that focusing on species' niches, rather than traits, may provide the predictive power needed to forecast biodiversity change. We first examine two Neotropical frog con...

The central challenge of the 21st century is to develop economic, social, and governance systems capable of ending poverty and achieving sustainable levels of population and consumption while securing the life-support systems underpinning current and future human well-being. Essential to meeting this challenge is the incorporation of natural capita...

Significance Understanding costs and benefits to multiple stakeholders, and how they change through time, is essential to designing effective conservation and human development policies. Where, when, and to whom benefits are delivered are rarely analyzed, however. We examine one of China’s conservation–development policies—the Relocation and Settle...

This is the accepted manuscript of a paper that will be published in PNAS. It is currently under an infinite embargo.

The central challenge of the 21st century is to develop economic, social, and governance systems capable of ending poverty and achieving sustainable levels of population and consumption while securing the life-support systems underpinning current and future human well-being. Essential to meeting this challenge is the incorporation of natural capita...

This study investigated the impact of nature experience on affect and cognition. We randomly assigned sixty participants to a 50-min walk in either a natural or an urban environment in and around Stanford, California. Before and after their walk, participants completed a series of psychological assessments of affective and cognitive functioning. Co...