Harold Alfred Mooney

Stanford University | SU · Department of Biology

The first Global Assessment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) found widespread, accelerating declines in Earth’s biodiversity and associated benefits to people from nature. Addressing these trends will require science-based policy responses to reduce impacts, especially at national to lo...

The original paper was published without unique DOIs for GBIF occurrence downloads. These have now been inserted as references 70–76, and the error has been corrected in the PDF and HTML versions of the article.

A foundational paradigm in biological and Earth sciences is that our planet is divided into distinct ecoregions and biomes demarking unique assemblages of species. This notion has profoundly influenced scientific research and environmental policy. Given recent advances in technology and data availability, however, we are now poised to ask whether e...

Understanding why some species are common and others are rare is a central question in ecology, and is critical for developing conservation strategies under global change. Rare species are typically considered to be more prone to extinction—but the fact they are rare can impede a general understanding of rarity vs. abundance. Here we develop and em...

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was modeled on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It was carried out as a pilot of an assessment mechanism designed to meet decision-makers’ needs for information on how human actions were changing biodiversity and ecosystems, how those changes were affecting ecosystem services and human well-b...

Significance Achieving global environmental sustainability and food security is among the world’s biggest challenges. International food trade plays an important role in global food security. It is widely believed that importing countries benefit environmentally from international food trade at the environmental cost of exporting countries. Contrar...

Actions and priorities to connect the global community of plant scientists with the world's changing societies are today more imperative than ever. Environmental degradation, unsustainable resource use, and biodiversity loss all require integrated, collaborative solutions.

Ecosystem services are increasingly incorporated into explicit policy targets and can be an effective tool for informing decisions about the use and management of the planet's resources, especially when trade-offs and synergies need to be taken into account. The challenge is to find meaningful and robust indicators to quantify ecosystem services, m...

The massive investment of resources devoted to monitoring and assessment of economic and societal indicators in the United States is neither matched by nor linked to efforts to monitor and assess the ecosystem services and biodiversity that support economic and social well-being. Although national-scale assessments of biodiversity ( 1 ) and ecosyst...

The call for integrated social–environmental science, complete with outreach to applications and solutions, is escalating worldwide. Drawing on several decades of experience, researchers engaged in such science, completed an assessment of the design and management attributes and impact pathways that lead to successful projects and programs and to u...

Natural and managed ecosystems provide food, water, and other valuable services to human societies. Unnoticed by many in the scientific community, the values associated with ecosystem services have been integrated into U.S. government policy. A recent administration memo ([ 1 ][1]) put U.S. federal

The first public product of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is its Conceptual Framework. This conceptual and analytical tool, presented here in detail, will underpin all IPBES functions and provide structure and comparability to the syntheses that IPBES will produce at different spatial scales, on diffe...

Ecosystem services research needs to become more transdisciplinary.•ecoSERVICES will advance co-designed, transdisciplinary ecosystem service research. Ecosystem services have become a mainstream concept for the expression of values assigned by people to various functions of ecosystems. Even though the introduction of the concept has initiated a va...

35 Ecosystem services have become a mainstream concept for the expression of values assigned by people to various functions of ecosystems. Even though the introduction of the concept has initiated a vast amount of research, progress in using this knowledge for sustainable resource use remains insufficient. We see a need to broaden the scope of rese...

Global sustainability challenges, from maintaining biodiversity to providing clean air and water, are closely interconnected yet often separately studied and managed. Systems integration—holistic approaches to integrating various components of coupled human and natural systems—is critical to understand socioeconomic and environmental interconnectio...

An age-old conflict around a seemingly simple question has resurfaced: why do we conserve nature? Contention around this issue has come and gone many times, but in the past several years we believe that it has reappeared as an increasingly acrimonious debate between, in essence, those who argue that nature should be protected for its own sake (intr...

The Policy Forum “Wildlife decline and social conflict” (J. S. Brashares et al. , 25 July, p. [376][1]) points to the need for a formalized, international, multidisciplinary program with government involvement that can address the detrimental environmental and social consequences of wildlife

The Anthropocene is recognized (though not yet formally defined) as the time when human impacts are widespread on Earth. While some of the impacts are essential to supporting large human populations and can be sustainable in the long run, others can irretrievably damage the life support systems upon which the global society has come to depend, or s...

Earth is rapidly approaching a tipping point. Human impacts are causing alarming levels of harm to our planet. As scientists who study the interaction of people with the rest of the biosphere using a wide range of approaches, we agree that the evidence that humans are damaging their ecological life-support systems is overwhelming. We further agree...

Ecological restoration is an increasingly important component of sustainable land management. We explore potential facilitative relationships for enhancing the cost-effectiveness of restoring native forest understory, focusing on two factors: (1) overstory shade and (2) possible facilitation by a fern (Dryopteris wallichiana), one of few native col...

This chapter discusses how more effective multilateral biodiversity agreements might be built post-2010, including creating targets that are likely to have more impact, and enhancing the links between science and policy. The chapter talks about three sets of biodiversity targets. First one is ‘red’ targets to address changes in biodiversity that ha...

Efforts to develop a global understanding of the functioning of the Earth as a system began in the mid-1980s. This effort necessitated linking knowledge from both the physical and biological realms. A motivation for this development was the growing impact of humans on the Earth system and need to provide solutions, but the study of the social drive...

Earth's life-support systems are in flux, yet no centralized system to monitor and report these changes exists. Recognizing this, 77 nations agreed to establish the Group on Earth Observations (GEO). The GEO Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) integrates existing data streams into one platform in order to provide a more complete picture of E...

Background/Question/Methods The Issue -- How can the scientific community stimulate intergovernmental action on critical biological diversity issues? The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) brought nations together in 2002 to address the biodiversity crisis. This convention was built on values, and not so much science, although scientists...

Recently, some members of the conservation community have used ecosystem services as a strategy to conserve biodiversity. Others in the community have criticized this strategy as a distraction from the mission of biodiversity conservation. The debate continues, and it remains unclear whether the concerns expressed are significant enough to merit th...

24 DIVERSITAS, the international programme on biodiversity science, is releasing a strategic vision presenting scientific challenges for the next decade of research on biodiversity and ecosystem services: ''Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Science for a Sustainable Planet''. This new vision is a response of the biodiversity and ecosystem service...

The Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) has been in formal existence for three years, following several years of design and discussion. It is the realisation of the biodiversity societal benefit area envisaged in the GEO System of Systems (GEOSS). GEO BON links together existing networks, each covering particular...

Highlights ► Human well-being depends on multiple ecosystem services, many of them being underpinned by biodiversity. ► Biodiversity continues to be lost at an unprecedented rate. ► Decision-makers and policy-makers require sound scientific foundation to secure the planet's biodiversity and ecosystem services, while contributing to human well-being...

Supplementary information to: Non-natives: 141 scientists object Full list of co-signatories to a Correspondence published in Nature 475, 36 (2011); doi: 10.1038/475036a. Daniel Simberloff University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA. dsimberloff@utk.edu Jake Alexander Institute of Integrative Biology, Zurich, Switzerland. Fred Allendorf Univ...

![Figure][1] Land sharing. A wildlife-friendly landscape in Romania. CREDIT: KIMBERLIE RAWLINGS According to B. Phalan et al. (“Reconciling food production and biodiversity conservation: Land sharing and land sparing compared,” Reports, 2 September, p. [1289][2]), land sparing—

After the collective failure to achieve the Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD’s) 2010 target to substantially reduce biodiversity losses, the CBD adopted a plan composed of five strategic goals and 20 “SMART” (Specific, Measurable, Ambitious, Realistic, and Time-bound) targets, to be achieved by 2020. Here, an interdisciplinary group of sci...

In this chapter we will review the current status of biological diversity in the mediterranean-climate regions of the world, making comparisons among them, as well as examining the threats to biological systems now and in the future. Mediterranean-type climates, which are characterized by a predominantly winter rainfall regime, exist in five region...

Although there is a strong relationship between genetically based variability of a given character and the potential for natural selection to act on that character, most studies of the effects of environmental factors on plants examine the mean responses of plants in a population and not the variability among plants in the population. Yet variabili...

In the mid 1990s the first global synthesis of our knowledge of the biology of seasonally dry tropical forests (SDTFs) was published (Bullock et al. 1995). The motivation for that synthesis was the fact that vast areas of tropical dry forests of the world were poorly studied and yet they represent one of the most threatened ecosystems of the world....

The Convention on Biological Diversity's 2020 targets are an improvement over the 2010 target, but they could be strengthened.

Efforts to establish an ‘IPCC-like mechanism for biodiversity’, or an IPBES (Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services), may culminate soon — as governments, the scientific community and other stakeholders are getting ready for a third round of negotiations on IPBES. This paper provides firstly, a brief histor...

The bold commitment made by the world's governments to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010 will soon be tested. On the basis of the continuing declines measured by most indicators, it now seems inevitable that the outcome will be that it has not been achieved. Here, in order to build on the momentum created by the 2010 target, we propose a...

Bioinvasions and Globalization synthesises our current knowledge of the ecology and economics of biological invasions, providing an in-depth evaluation of the science and its implications for managing the causes and consequences of one of the most pressing environmental issues facing humanity today. Emergent zoonotic diseases such as HIV and SARS h...

We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts. There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions; science never absolutely proves anything. When someone says that society should...

The losses that are being incurred of the Earth's biological diversity, at all levels, are now staggering. The trend lines for future loss are steeply upward as new adverse drivers of change come into play. The political processes for matching this crisis are now inadequate and the science needs to address this issue are huge and slow to fulfil, ev...

This chapter reviews the literature to understand the significance of making decisions about the prevention and/or control of invasive alien species (IAS) that ignore impacts on ecosystem services. It reports damage costs associated with IAS in monetary terms. The costs presented for various provisioning, regulating, and cultural services may be ro...

The Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP) was established in 2001 by four global environmental change (GEC) research programmes: DIVERSITAS, IGBP, IHDP and WCRP. ESSP facilitates the study of the Earth's environment as an integrated system in order to understand how and why it is changing, and to explore the implications of these changes for glob...

Although the effects of invasive alien species (IAS) on native species are well documented, the many ways in which such species impact ecosystem services are still emerging. Here we assess the costs and benefits of IAS for provisioning, regulating and cultural services, and illustrate the synergies and tradeoffs associated with these impacts using...

IntroductionBackground Environmental influences on photosynthetic capacitySeasonality of photosynthesisPhotosynthetic capacity and defence against herbivoresVariations on the basic photosynthetic pathwayEcological consequences of different photosynthetic pathwaysClimate change and photosynthesisConclusions

Over the past decade, efforts to value and protect ecosystem services have been promoted by many as the last, best hope for making conservation mainstream - attractive and commonplace worldwide. In theory, if we can help individuals and institutions to recognize the value of nature, then this should greatly increase investments in conservation, whi...

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) introduced a new framework for analyzing social-ecological systems that has had wide influence in the policy and scientific communities. Studies after the MA are taking up new challenges in the basic science needed to assess, project, and manage flows of ecosystem services and effects on human well-being. Ye...

Humans obtain metabolic energy by eating food. Nitrogen is required to grow food, but natural supplies of N for human purposes have been inadequate since the beginning of the twentieth century. The Haber-Bosch process now provides a virtually inexhaustible supply of nitrogen, limited primarily by the cost of energy. However, most nitrogen used in f...

The biocultural conservation and research initiative of Omora Ethnobotanical Park and the UNESCO Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve was born in a remote part of South America and has rapidly expanded to attain regional, national, and international relevance. The park and the biosphere reserve, led by Ricardo Rozzi and his team, have made significant progr...

Observations of shifting plant phenology in recent decades have demonstrated that species and ecosystems are already responding to global environmental change. Earlier flowering and an extended period of active plant growth across much of the northern hemisphere have been interpreted as responses to warming. However, several kinds of environmental...

Tracking biodiversity change is increasingly important in sustaining ecosystems and ultimately human well-being.

As the demands on agricultural lands to produce food, fuel, and fiber continue to expand, effective strategies are urgently needed to balance biodiversity conservation and agricultural production. "Land sparing" and "wildlife-friendly farming" have been proposed as seemingly opposing strategies to achieve this balance. In land sparing, homogeneous...

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This paper provides an original account of global land, water, and nitrogen use in support of industrialized livestock production and trade, with emphasis on two of the fastest-growing sectors, pork and poultry. Our analysis focuses on trade in feed and animal products, using a new model that calculates the amount of "virtual" nitrogen, water, and...

Ecosystem services, the benefits that people obtain from ecosystems, are a powerful lens through which to understand human relationships with the environment and to design environmental policy. The explicit inclusion of beneficiaries makes values intrinsic to ecosystem services; whether or not those values are monetized, the ecosystem services fram...

We conducted a long-term experiment in grassland with the aim of elucidating grassland dynamics in relation to variations in rainfall amount and spatial and temporal variation in disturbance. In particular we aimed to increase our understanding of ecosystem dynamics and function, species redundancy, invasion biology, and other related topics. We st...

Plants are finely tuned to the seasonality of their environment, and shifts in the timing of plant activity (i.e. phenology) provide some of the most compelling evidence that species and ecosystems are being influenced by global environmental change. Researchers across disciplines have observed shifting phenology at multiple scales, including earli...

Terrestrial gastropods have been shown to exert major impacts on the plant structure and species composition of temperate grasslands and other terrestrial plant communities. In order to develop predictions of plant community responses to changing environments, it is critical to understand how factors structuring plant communities will be influenced...

Globalization facilitates the spread of invasive alien species (IAS) as international commerce develops new trade routes, markets, and products. New technologies increase the pace at which humans and commodities can move around the world. Recent research on IAS at the global scale has examined commerce and travel in order to inform predictions, ris...

Although it is widely accepted that elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen (N) deposition, and climate change will alter ecosystem productivity and function in the coming decades, the combined effects of these environmental changes may be nonadditive, and their interactions may be altered by disturbances, such as fire. We examined the...

Recent projections of climatic change have focused a great deal of scientific and public attention on patterns of carbon (C) cycling as well as its controls, particularly the factors that determine whether an ecosystem is a net source or sink of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). Net ecosystem production (NEP), a central concept in C-cycling researc...

Copyright: 2006 Nature Publishing Group Historically, conservation has largely relied on the considerations of intrinsic value that McCauley sees as the only solution. This has been manifestly insufficient as a response to the increasing threats to biodiversity, particularly in the world’s poorest regions, where considerations of intrinsic and spir...