Kai Ming Adam Chan

University of British Columbia | UBC · Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES)

Despite increasing attention to the human dimension of conservation projects, a rigorous, systematic methodology for planning for ecosystem services has not been developed. This is in part because flows of ecosystem services remain poorly characterized at local-to-regional scales, and their protection has not generally been made a priority. We used...

Ecological forecasts are increasingly seen as central to integrated management. However, to use such predictions, decision-makers require some understanding of how likely the forecasts are—or at least how likely one is over another. This cannot be achieved without considering model assumptions and their associated uncertainties. To illustrate, we f...

Scientists are increasingly called upon to engage in policy formulation, but the literature on engagement is strong on speculation and weak on evidence. Using a survey administered at several broadly "ecological" conferences, we investigated: (1) the extent to which respondents engage in policy-related activities (including reporting scientific res...

A focus on ecosystem services (ES) is seen as a means for improving decisionmaking. In the research to date, the valuation of the material contributions of ecosystems to human well-being has been emphasized, with less attention to important cultural ES and nonmaterial values. This gap persists because there is no commonly accepted framework for eli...

The exotic pet trade poses a major threat to biodiversity conservation. To combat biodiversity loss, it is essential to reduce demand for exotic pets and engage people in civic actions for wildlife conservation. Although messaging has been extensively used in conservation practice, little is known about how it can influence attitudes and various ty...

Climate change is increasing stream temperatures and thereby changing habitat suitability for a variety of freshwater fishes. We investigate how suitable stream habitat for rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), a valuable cold-water species, may change in British Columbia, Canada, currently near the north end of their range. We examine a no-mitigati...

This pre-registered experiment develops a novel audience segmentation approach to test the diverse impact of conservation messaging on reducing demand for exotic pets (private action) and fostering citizen engagement for system change (civic action). We show that the success of conservation messaging depends on the type of action and actor.

Machine learning is a popular tool in ecology but many scientific applications suffer from data leakage, causing misleading results. We highlight common pitfalls in ecological machine-learning methods and argue that discipline-specific model info sheets must be developed to aid in model evaluations.

1. In the pathway toward environmental sustainability, it is important that we understand how individuals can make a difference through diverse types of engagement. Theories suggest that transformative change toward a sustainable future requires individuals to engage in not only private actions (e.g., household energy saving, recycling) but also so...

Privately protected areas (PPAs) are a potential innovative conservation tool for the protection of nature. Legal recognition is necessary for their success, especially in countries where there are institutional challenges to nature conservation, such as those in South America. Although PPAs have increased in the region since the early 2000s, there...

Interdependent relationships among humans and nature often go overlooked, delaying better environmental, social and public health outcomes. Emerging approaches have emphasized thinking through relationships, which we call ‘relational thinking’. Threads of relational thinking have matured in areas such as anthropology and Indigenous scholarship, and...

Understanding the cumulative effects of multiple stressors is a research priority in environmental science. Ecological models are a key component of tackling this challenge because they can simulate interactions between the components of an ecosystem. Here, we ask, how has the popular modeling platform Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) been used to model h...

Mainstreaming of ecosystem service approaches has been proposed as one path toward sustainable development. Meanwhile, critics of ecosystem services question if the approach can account for the multiple values of ecosystems to diverse groups of people, or for aspects of inter- and intra-generational justice. In particular, an ecosystem service appr...

* Springer SharedIt link to article: https://rdcu.be/cYmnK * Fisheries are important sources of nutrients for people, but fisheries science and management do not consider nutrient information. The result is that fisheries are conducted without knowledge of how exploited species portfolios produce nutrients, how these yields have changed over time...

Understanding the cumulative effects of multiple stressors is a research priority in environmental science. Ecological models are a key component of tackling this challenge because they can simulate interactions between the components of an ecosystem. Here, we ask, how has the popular modeling platform Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) been used to model h...

Understanding why people do what they do is central to advancing equitable and sustainable futures. Yet, theories about human action are fragmented across many social science disciplines, each with its own jargon and implicit assumptions. This fragmentation has hindered theory integration and accessibility of theories relevant to a given challenge....

Human‐shared landscapes cover much of Earth, yet their conservation value is contested. This controversy may persist because previous studies have examined species diversity, rather than the processes through which such diversity is maintained. For example, a site exhibiting high diversity may not actually bolster populations if the diversity is on...

Efforts to achieve sustainable food systems are impeded by inefficiencies associated with the use of agricultural land and resources to grow feed for animals, rather than food for direct consumption by people. In contrast, the unspoken assumption about fisheries, which are a key source of protein and micronutrients, is that they are inherently net-...

Ecotourism helps sustain protected areas (PAs) that in turn conserve Africa's declining fauna. Identifying ecotourist preferences and which species and landscapes benefit from ecotourism could therefore support African biodiversity conservation efforts. Due to historic associations with trophy hunting and subsequent ecotourism marketing efforts, ec...

This paper expands the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) values framing about nature and its contributions to people by exploring the notion of ‘disvalues’, which pertains to aspects of nature that reduce well being (instrumental disvalues), relationships that are detrimental to a dignified and flourishing li...

Widespread, common species continue to decline, disrupting ecosystems and human connections with nature. New strategies to motivate people to protect widespread species are needed. Drawing on a relational values framework, we deploy a discrete choice experiment survey (n = 646) to test whether foregrounding the genetic distinctiveness of local popu...

To achieve a sustainable future, it is imperative to transform human actions collectively and underlying social structures. Decades of research in social sciences have offered complementary insights into how such transformations might occur. However, these insights largely remain disjunct and of limited scope, such that strategies for solving globa...

Abstract Given the massive and growing environmental impacts of conventional agriculture, humanity needs new methods for growing food that not only meet dietary needs but also provide for multiple ecosystem functions with potential benefits to people and biodiversity. Concepts from ecology and complex adaptive systems suggest that persistent struct...

Agricultural producers, academics and policy‐makers are increasingly interested in multifunctional tree crop systems as a solution for maintaining ecosystem services and producing food. The US Midwest is emerging as a hotbed of such systems in the temperate North in the form of farm‐scale woody perennial polyculture enterprises, but they are curren...

Determining where environmental management is best applied, either through regulating single sectors of human activities or across sectors, is complicated by interactions between human impacts and the environment. In this article, we show how an explicit representation of human-environment interactions can help, via “impact networks” including acti...

Aim The global decline of megafauna is believed to have had significant and widespread ecological impacts. One such extinction of likely important consequence is the 18th century extinction of the Steller’s sea cow ( Hydrodamalis gigas ); however, little has been written about how the loss of this megaherbivore may have impacted coastal ecosystem d...

Peak water describes the hydrological response of glacier-fed rivers to climate change, indicating that warming first drives increasing discharge until a glacier mass loss threshold is surpassed and discharge falls below values observed prior to contemporary climate warming. Although the physical principles of peak water are well understood and acc...

New migrants display unique use patterns and relationships with their host country's natural spaces. Understanding migrants' values about and interactions with nature requires identifying the meanings, benefits and capabilities that arise from their socio‐ecological interactions. This research seeks to understand how new migrants' engagement with t...

The first UNEP synthesis report is titled: “Making Peace With Nature: A scientific blueprint to tackle the climate, biodiversity and pollution emergencies” and is based on evidence from global environmental assessments. The resulting synthesis communicates how climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution can be tackled jointly within the framewo...

To achieve a sustainable future, it is imperative to transform human action and underlying social structures. Decades of research in social sciences have variously offered insights into understanding how such bold transformations might occur. However, these insights remain disjunct and of limited scope, providing only partial explanations on the pr...

To address the ongoing global biodiversity crisis, conservation approaches must be underpinned by robust information. Canada is uniquely positioned to contribute to meeting global biodiversity targets, with some of the world's largest remaining intact ecosystems, and a commitment to co-application of Indigenous ways of knowing alongside scientific,...

In the sustainability and conservation sciences, “social learning” is defined as a group process which depends on trust and social capital and tends to boost conservation outcomes. We term this “collaborative social learning.” Meanwhile, the behavioral sciences define social learning as the individual use of socially acquired information and seek t...

Effectively conserving ecosystem services in order to maintain human wellbeing is a global need that requires an understanding of where ecosystem services are produced by ecosystems and where people benefit from these services. However, approaches to effectively identify key locations that have the capacity to supply ecosystem services and actually...

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Staple crops, which have large amounts of carbohydrates, proteins, and/or fats, provide the bulk of calories in people's diets. Perennial plants, which can be productive for many years without the need for replanting, can produce staple foods and environmental benefits, but their agronomic and nutritional properties haven't been considered syntheti...

Improving the management of multiple ecosystem services (e.g., food provision, water and air quality regulation, carbon storage, and erosion control) in agricultural landscapes is a critical challenge to improve food system sustainability. However, we currently lack spatially-resolved national-level assessments of the relationships among services i...

ContextPlanning for multifunctional landscapes is a way to restore ecological processes that benefit human well-being (ecosystem services—ES). By accounting for the effects of the spatial arrangement of restored areas, planners can enhance the positive outcomes of restoration activities. However, while there are many models for individual ES provis...

Adaptation needs in high mountain communities are increasingly well documented, yet most efforts to address these needs continue to befall mountain people who have contributed little to the problem of climate change. This situation represents a contravention of accepted norms of climate justice and calls attention to the need for better understandi...

1. Marine ecosystems play a key role in human wellbeing, particularly in the Global South through small-scale fisheries (SSF). While many have speculated that such activities are central to the provision of cultural benefits (such as cultural identity and heritage values), there are key information gaps regarding SSF cultural contributions to socie...

The current biodiversity crisis involves major shifts in biological communities at local and regional scales. The consequences for Earth's life‐support systems are increasingly well‐studied, but knowledge of how community shifts affect cultural services associated with wildlife lags behind. We integrated bird census data (3 years across 150 point‐c...

The concept of ecosystem services (ES) has risen to prominence based on its promise to vastly improve environmental decision‐making and to represent nature's many benefits to people. Yet the field has continued to be plagued by fundamental concerns, leading some to believe that the field of ES must mature or be replaced. In this paper, we quantitat...

Low carbon energy infrastructure has been controversial for economic, social and environmental reasons: relatively high capital costs compared to fossil fuels; dissatisfaction with who owns the infrastructure; visual impacts; and habitat harm. Our research takes an initial step to assess the relative salience of these challenges with a choice exper...

Humanity is on a deeply unsustainable trajectory. We are exceeding planetary boundaries and unlikely to meet many international sustainable development goals and global environmental targets. Until recently, there was no broadly accepted framework of interventions that could ignite the transformations needed to achieve these desired targets and goa...

The benefits of ecosystem restoration Human activities have fundamentally altered many ecosystems. Recent successful restoration efforts have led to healthier ecosystems, but this has led to a disruption in economies dependent on the altered state of the system. One of the best-known trophic cascades is the sea otter–kelp forest system, wherein rec...

Ecosystem services are impacted through restricting service supply, through limiting people from accessing services, and by affecting the quality of services. We map cumulative impacts to 8 different ecosystem services in coastal British Columbia using InVEST models, spatial data, and expert elicitation to quantify risk to each service from anthrop...

Conservation policy relies on input from science, yet scientists are often frustrated by the ‘gap’ between their recommendations and policy decisions. In this paper we examine one such ‘gap’: how a long-standing conflict of values functioned to ‘infect’ the synthesis and application of riparian science for salmon habitat restoration projects. We do...

• Facing public concern over costs related to top‐predator reintroductions and conservation, ecosystem services such as ecotourism are often used to evoke benefits that outweigh or offset those costs. Quantifying these benefits using rigorous scientific methods can provide confidence to policymakers and other stakeholders that predators can in fact...

Governments around the world rely on environmental impact assessment (EIA) to understand the environmental risks of proposed developments. To examine the basis for these appraisals, we examine the output of EIA processes in jurisdictions within seven countries, focusing on scope (spatial and temporal), mitigation actions and whether impacts were id...

Financial incentives are increasingly popular in development and conservation. A common application involves paying for conservation activities, such as for farmers to set aside land for forests, known as payments for ecosystem services (PES). Debates about incentives such as PES center around the promise and perils of applying market logics to con...

The ideas of relational values and social values are gaining prominence in sustainability science. Here, we ask: how well do these value conceptions resonate with one Indigenous worldview? The relational values concept broadened conceptions of values beyond instrumental and intrinsic values to encompass preferences and principles about human relati...

The time is now For decades, scientists have been raising calls for societal changes that will reduce our impacts on nature. Though much conservation has occurred, our natural environment continues to decline under the weight of our consumption. Humanity depends directly on the output of nature; thus, this decline will affect us, just as it does th...

Scholars and policy-makers are advocating for increasing the resilience of water systems, both social and biophysical, to climate change impacts, and global environmental change more broadly. But what is "water resilience," and what does it imply for water resources management and water governance? Generally, water resilience may include ecological...

Costa Rica is a global ecotourism destination, yet tourism growth has contributed to conflicts over water use. Given the potential for tourism revenue to address important environmental challenges, this study examined factors that influence financial support for conservation, evaluating the role of relational values both as an independent measure a...

The functional trait diversity of species assemblages can predict the provision of ecosystem services such as pollination and carbon sequestration, but it is unclear whether the same trait‐based framework can be applied to identify the factors that underpin cultural ecosystem services and disservices. To explore the relationship between traits and...

Despite the great cultural and economic benefits associated with birdwatching and other bird-related cultural ecosystem services (CES), little is known about the bird-related CES and disservices perceived by people, and how they differ across stakeholders and species. The goal of this study was to explore CES and disservices across three stakeholde...

The ideas of relational values and social values are gaining prominence in sustainability science. Here, we ask: how well do these value conceptions resonate with one Indigenous worldview? The relational values concept broadens conceptions of values beyond instrumental and intrinsic values to encompass preferences and principles about human relatio...

Our paper, “The Insignificance of Thresholds in Environmental Impact Assessment: An Illustrative Case Study in Canada” received a critique that challenged us on a number of grounds. Namely, that we defame EIA practitioners, that we advocate EIAs to become a scientific enterprise, that we do not recognize the complexity inherent in EIA, and that EIA...

Ecosystem services are impacted through restricting service supply, through limiting people from accessing services, and by affecting the quality of services. We map cumulative impacts to 8 different ecosystem services in coastal British Columbia using InVEST models, spatial data, and expert elicitation to quantify risk to each service from anthrop...

Maintaining the continued flow of benefits from science, as well as societal support for science, requires sustained engagement between the research community and the general public. On the basis of data from an international survey of 1092 participants (634 established researchers and 458 students) in 55 countries and 315 research institutions, we...

The outcome of the ongoing biodiversity crisis depends on the capacity of the Earth’s wildlife to persist in working landscapes. Yet, the species that occupy working landscapes are often distinct from those in protected areas, with a large group of “sensitive species” thought to rarely venture into human‐dominated landscapes. As governments have co...