Global efforts to conserve biodiversity have the potential to deliver economic benefits to people (i.e., ''ecosystem services''). However, regions for which conservation benefits both biodiversity and ecosystem services cannot be identified unless ecosystem services can be quantified and valued and their areas of production mapped. Here we review the theory, data, and analyses needed to produce such maps and find that data availability allows us to quantify imperfect global proxies for only four ecosystem services. Using this incomplete set as an illustration, we compare ecosystem service maps with the global distributions of conventional targets for biodiversity conservation. Our preliminary results show that regions selected to maximize biodiversity provide no more ecosystem services than regions chosen randomly. Furthermore, spatial concordance among different services, and between ecosystem services and established conservation priorities, varies widely. Despite this lack of general concordance, ''win-win'' areasregions important for both ecosystem services and biodiversitycan be usefully identified, both among ecoregions and at finer scales within them. An ambitious interdisciplinary research effort is needed to move beyond these preliminary and illustrative analyses to fully assess synergies and trade-offs in conserving biodiversity and ecosystem services.biodiversity ͉ carbon ͉ hotspots ͉ Global 200 ͉ conservation planning

There are important challenges associated with assessing potential groundwater vulnerability hazards that may result from regional scale applications of agrochemicals. The increasing availability of Geographic Information System (GIS) software to those involved in assisting with landuse decisions has resulted in the widespread production of multicolored risk management maps for many environmentally sensitive issues. Soil‐based GIS's have recently been coupled to various solute‐leaching models to make near‐surface groundwater vulnerability assessments for guidance in pesticide regulation in several states. In general, these assessments rest on soil, climatic, and chemical data that are extremely sparse and contain considerable uncertainty. It is also important to acknowledge the uncertainty associated with the transport/fate processes that are not accounted for by the modeling approach used to make the assessment. In this paper, we review the results from a series of papers that have focused on characterization of uncertainty in pesticide mobility estimates, using the attenuation and retardation indices (AF and RF), for the Pearl Harbor Basin on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. Relative to data error uncertainties, we discuss the impacts of: (i) soil, climatic, and chemical data base uncertainties, (ii) reductions in data base uncertainties, (iii) extrapolation of soil data base information based on soil taxonomy and soil survey, and (iv) importing information from outside the region of interest. Relative to model error uncertainties, we compare pesticide leaching estimates from the simple AF and RF mobility indices with simulations from the EPA's Pesticide Root Zone Model (PRZM) and field observations. Finally, we outline a Regional Integrated Risk Assessment approach for characterizing regional scale groundwater vulnerability for near‐surface nonpoint sources.“Hey farmer farmer put away that DDT” Joni Mitchell, “Big Yellow Taxi”

Intensification of agricultural practices over the last 50 years has resulted in the impoverishment of the wildlife associated with lowland farmland across much of Western Europe. This is perhaps best documented in birds. In England, populations of 15 species associated with lowland farmland have fallen by between 50% and 100%. Several species have become rare and localised. Others, formerly abundant and ubiquitous, remain relatively common and widespread, but nonetheless in need of conservation action. Agri-environment schemes are widely held as a solution to this generic problem, but the track record of many prototype schemes in delivering biodiversity is far from good. The efficacy of any scheme in recovering the population of a given species will depend upon deployment of effective prescriptive management at the right time and in the right place. We argue that a twotiered approach is required in the design of any scheme, to cope with the requirements of both localised and widespread species. We illustrate this by using case studies of two ground-nesting bird species, Stone-curlew Burhinus oedicnemus and Skylark Alauda arvensis, whose populations have declined for similar reasons, but for which the prescriptive management solutions and the means of their deployment differ radically.