Final BNPP Act 2 Protocol and link to website

final version Act. 2 Impl. Protocol [includes Protocol and appendices]

T.Tomich

Tue 11/27/2003

Dear colleagues, 

Attached is a zip file with final version of the Activity 2 implementation protocol, revised as requested by Ken.  Thanks to Meine and to Jeff for their input and especially to Dagmar and Sandra for editing and production.

Like the final version for the Activity 1 protocol, sent to you on Tuesday, this Activity 2 implementation protocol is intended to capture the 'state of play' in our project through the end of October of this year.  I will bring hard copies to DC.   

Today Sandra expects to complete uploading 'implementation' material on our 'web-based management tool,' which already is publicly accessible  So, as I mentioned earlier, it is set up to provide a public-access home for metadata, datasets, and various model products, including maps. 

The link is: http://www.asb.cgiar.org/BNPP/phase2/bnpp_phase2_general.htm  

BNPP Activity 2 -- Layout for technical report 

BNPP_TechnReport_3.zip 

BNPP_TechnReport_4A.zip 

Dear all Further to my message from yesterday, I have now reached a version of the 'introduction' for the activity 2 report that in my view passes the test of being sufficiently 'stand alone' to serve the function. Section 2 is all the site descriptions and methods -- that's the target for tomorrow (David I may need some help -- I saw your two chapters in the MMSEA_III proceedings -- it would help a lot to have soft copies of those, but I assume they are bulky files -- can you 'upload' them on a web site?) Section 3 is then to be filled with the 'results'... We've been working hard on a better understanding of the rainfall patterns in Mae Chaem -- the Game-T set when compared to the long-term records suggest an interesting difference between the first half of the rainy season (when the SW monsoon causes the strongest elevational effects on rainfall on SW facing slopes) and the second half when the Mae Chaem station may be in a sort of 'rain shadow' from Doi Inthanon -- altogether we're at least 50% uncertain on the spatially averaged rainfall for the area, so plenty of excuses for whatever model out come we have (but it seems that we'd have to 'crank up' evapotranspiration to high levels before we can account for measured river flow...) Anyway, we will go ahead with SpatRain versions that extrapolate the Mae Chaem climate station data to the whole area with and without our current best guess on topographic effects. David/Ngeaw -- if there was any light on this from the Game-T workshop we would really like to hear it soon.... My idea for an 'implementation protocol' is to essentially take parts 1 and 2 of the technical report and add the list of intended publications -- the rest is either outdated or spurious detail... Comments with a fine-comb on the section 1 of the attached are welcome! Meine

Re: BNPP Activity 2 Report -- two Game-T papers

MC orthographic rainfall enhacement

MC altitude increase in rainfall

D.Thomas

Tue 11/20/2003

BNPP Activity 2 report part 1 

FVOBAct2_1_Introduction

Hi Tom, David, Jeff and all 

Attached please find a version of the first chapter of the Activity 2 report that is ready for a 'fine comb'.... I included a draft 'executive summary' that obviously needs updating when we have final results -- Jeff a couple of lines need your input.... In the next message I will send a pdf'ed version of the start of chapter 2, describing the MSEA background of the study -- David as you see I have freely cut ands pasted from your MMSEA file, but the story line needs to be strengthened. I will include a word version stripped of figures for editing the text (and re-inserting figures on this end). Jeff, when can we expect text from your side? Pushing on with the rest Meine 

BNPP Activity 2 report part 1 

BNPP_FVOB_Chapter2_Part1.pdf

FVOBAct2_2A_Southeast Asia_Stripped.zip

Hi Tom, David, Jeff and all 

Attached please find a version of the first chapter of the Activity 2 report that is ready for a 'fine comb'.... I included a draft 'executive summary' that obviously needs updating when we have final results -- Jeff a couple of lines need your input.... In the next message I will send a pdf'ed version of the start of chapter 2, describing the MSEA background of the study -- Daviod as you see I have freely cut ands pasted from yuour MMSEA file, but the story line needs to be strenghtened. I will include a word version stripped of figures for editing the text (and re-insering figures on this end). Jeff, when can we expect text from your side? Pushing on with the rest, Meine

Executive summary Activity 2 _ draft 1 

Executive summary Activity 2 _ draft 1.doc

Attachments for photocopying

Activity2_Report_attachments_cover.doc

Dear Tom, This is the list of attachments that I have compiled for the Activity 2 report from our side -- as I state in the disclaimer, these are not necessarily products of the BNPP project per se, but they are key references to the material summarized in the technical report... How many copies shall I bring of this and the technical report 5?, 10? I will bring the originals for further copying out there Meine

Greetings Meine, Dagmar and I just tried to call, but got no answer. Is ICRAF Bogor closed for the week? We wanted to talk with you briefly about the Activity 2 Implementation Protocol. Dagmar was going to do some work on editing that today - but we wonder whether or not that would be useful. 

It seems from Ken's perspective that the main gap was the outlines for the papers for Activity 2 - do you have the most recent versions of those (Spat Rain and then the van Noordwijk Ranieri, et al paper, I suppose). 

But Ken also had some suggestions about restructuring the protocol. Did he agree to accept it with structure as it is? Or are those revisions still pending? If the latter, then the is something on which Dagmar might be able to help. Please advise Also, are you planning to print those in Bogor - or should we print them here? I'd be happy to do that - but if we do, we need to move on that tomorrow (Tuesday). Today, I'm hoping to complete the updates for the Activity 1 protocols requested by Ken. Then on to two policybriefs and work on the outline for the talk for 3 Dec - which we will complete together as a team in DC. Kind regards, Tom

Meine, Thanks. Replies inserted in CAPS below. Tom 

-----Original Message----- 

From: Meine van Noordwijk 

Sent: Monday, November 24, 2003 1:34 PM 

Subject: RE: BNPP Activity 2 protocol 

Dear Tom I was in the office today, but it was very quiet -- tomorrow is Lebaran so most staff is mudik already. ENAAAK! As I mentioned, my view now is that the Part 1 (introduction) and Part 2 (material and methods) of the Activity 2 report form the 'implementation protocol'. David is (hopefully) going through the introduction with a fine comb and I might have a final version by tomorrow -- any thoughts from your side or Dagmar (esp. re the hypotheses and questions is welcome). 

The M&M section isn't quite there yet, I'm working my way through in conjunction with the results. I'll be working at home tomorrow and be in the office part time on thursday and friday for printing etc. 

OK IF I UNDERSTAND THEN, WHAT YOU PLAN IS TO SUBMIT A FINAL CONSOLIDATED REPORT (IMPLEMENTATION PROTOCOL + TECHNICAL REPORT). THAT MAKES SENSE TO ME. BUT DID KEN ACCEPT THAT? NO MATTER HOW REASONABLE YOUR APPROACH, I WORRY ABOUT FULFILMENT OF THE SPECIFIC DELIVERABLES. 

HERE'S WHAT I SUGGEST: 

1) YOU AND YOUR TEAM PROCEED AS YOU DESCRIBED. 

2) ON OUR SIDE: 

A) DAGMAR WILL LOOK AT THE OLD IMPLEMENTATION PROTOCOLS (OF OCTOBER) AND SEE IF THERE ARE ANY OPPORTUNITIES TO CLARIFY BY REFORMATTING OTHER STRUCTURAL CHANGES. 

B) WE HAVE YOUR NEW ABSTRACT FOR SPATRAIN, COULD YOU PLEASE SEND ABSTRACTS FOR THE 'OTHER' MANUSCRIPTS MENTIONED BELOW (I ASSUME BUFFERING AND SHOULD WE ALSO INCLUDE THE LANDSCAPE ONE - ie van N, RANIERI ET AL. 

C) DID JEFF RICHEY SEND AN ABSTRACT TO YOU FOR THE UofW PAPER? HE MENTIONED IT, BUT I CANT FIND IT. D) WE WILL TAKE THE OUTPUT OF (A) AND ADD THE ABSTRACTS FROM (B) YOU AND (C) JEFF PRINT AND I WILL BRING 5 COPIES OF THAT OCTOBER IMPLEMENTATION PROTOCOL TO WASHINGTON TO GIVE TO KEN. OK? I KNOW THIS SOUNDS LIKE A WASTE OF EFFORT (AND PAPER) BUT I'M A BIT WORRIED ABOUT COVERING EVERY POSSIBLE ANGLE. I HOPE I DON'T SOUND COMPLETELY PARANOID (ONLY A LITTLE). 

I'm attaching the current draft of SpatRain -- it has some loose ends that will wait for after Lebaran to address, when Desi is back -- as I mentioned we found some limitations to the platform in which we implemented it and Desi took up the challenge to translate to Java (-- his Bahasa Java is excellent, but his programming experience in Java is a learning curve...), for platform-independent (Windows, Linux) use and thus probably greater value... We don't need to wait for this before submitting the manuscript, though. THAT IS GOOD NEWS. 

I'll start moving on the other manuscripts once I have the results nailed down -- there's too much nuance still emerging to know for sure what the tone should be. With Ken's concern for details and expectations for plans to be implemented it is probably best to make no plans untill everything is done. YES, BUT COULD YOU SEND ABSTRACTS ANYWAY - NOT WITH RESULTS BUT WITH THE OVERALL APPROACH? Meine

RE: BNPP Activity 2 protocol

SPATRAIN_ paper_draft8_stripped.zip

New abstract for MvN 'Spatrain' paper for activity 2 implementation protocol

Spatrain Abstract Nov 2003

Tom , After a couple of games of badminton... Comments in your text, preceded by ** 

-----Original Message----- 

From: Tomich, Tom (ICRAF) [mailto:t.tomich@cgiar.org] 

Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2003 3:24 PM To: 'Meine van Noordwijk' 

Cc: Velarde, Sandra (ICRAF); Kasyoki, Joyce (ICRAF); Timmer, Dagmar W. (ICRAF) 

Subject: RE: hope 

Meine, 

Thanks for your efforts on this. I think our only hope is some sort of 'modular structure' in which ICRAF SE and UofW have specific sections and we slip them together at the end of this month. ** I think the UW report clearly falls into 4 sections in this report, two for methods, two for results and then we need to glue discussion and conclusions together 

I just wanted to warn you that the US Thanksgiving holiday (second only to Christmas in the US and my personal favorite) fall on Thurs-Fri 27-28 November -- so things will be closed in the US from 27 - 30 Nov. Sorry about that. Of course we are working here, although I wont be staying late on Thurs 27 and may even try to get away a bit early. ** I know -- with Lebaran here I'll have no backup, bit also less distractions... 

I scrolled through all the messages below -- it frightens me because it is clear how little I know of these activities. 

** don't bother -- we should have at least some results from Louis' group 

** Please do have a look at the first couple of pages of what I sent -- are these the questions/hypotheses we should focus on? I added biodiversity where feasible 

That raises issue about the implementation protocol too. Have you had a chance to see Ken's comments? I think it is important to respond to those -- and I fear it will require some restructuring of that document. Is there anything Sandra, Dagmar, Joyce or I could do to help you there? 

** in an earlier exchange with Ken we sort of agreed that we first finalize the real work, it simply isn't worth the effort to try and explain why things are done unless there are results to show. I got to a dead end with Ken's structure, hope that the new one is clearer 

One thought re Implementation Protocol for Activity 2 was that maybe Dagmar could have a look at Ken's comments and the current draft. While she cannot do the actual writing, maybe she could help with two other things: structural suggestions and also flagging gaps in the current doc that were highlighted by Ken. Meine, would that help? 

** that would be great 

Meanwhile, I'm working today to update the Activity 1 implementation protocol with the discussions in Prague, as Ken insisted. It's not what understood the protocols were for and I dare not ask the IFPRI and UNH folks to do this [...]. On the other hand, the brighter side is that we have a head start on final technical reports. 

** as before, it doesn't work that way for me 

Looking a little further ahead: We decided to revise the van Noordwijk, Ranieri, Tomich chapter -- possibly for submission to Ian Calder's on-line journal -- as one of two manuscripts for Activity 2; right? [The other being a manuscript from Jeff and the U of W team -- the idea is that it's not really feasible to integrate those two lines of work by 15 December, although we can do that in 2004.] 

** we're nearly done with the SpatRain manuscript, which is a solid piece of work in my view, although we never got any comment from BNPP colleagues If you agree, then the questions is: do we try to start that before the end of November, or do we tackle that revision after the technical report is done? Problem is that my travel will not get me back to Nairobi until 11 Dec and there wont be much time before the 15 December deadline. 

Related question is: how long will you stay in DC? In know you plan to go to N. Carolina, but would you be able to say in DC for a day or so after 3 Dec? 

** I'm still waitlisted on part of the journey, but with the schedule I sent yesterday 

I'd have a chance to come to NY -- hope to confirm tomorrow I certainly am looking forward to being done with this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

** so do I

 Cordially Tom 

FORWARDED MESSAGES attached here. 

RE: VERY URGENT - need some scenario text TODAY 

BNPP_Short_Rpt_3.zip

Mae_Chaem_ScenariosYear50.xls

Short Summary 

A set of four scenarios was developed for the Upper Ping River Basin placing emphasis on contrasting evolution of amount and spatial distribution of land cover (Figure 1). The four scenarios, "Fields and Fallow", "Food Bowl", "Parks and Cities" and "Agro-forests", in turn, can be thought of as being nested in larger scale scenarios about national and regional global development, here given alternative names (larger boxes in which main scenarios are nested). These larger scale scenarios are not discussed in detailed here, but were intentionally constructed to as consistent as possible with those being developed by Global Scenarios working group of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. The scenarios at both scales differ in the assumptions they make about economic development and social organization (Figures 2 and 3). 

In this study the four scenarios for the Ping Basin were applied to the Mae Chaem sub-basin. This was done in three steps. 

First, historical analysis of land-use change over the past 10 and 20 years were made using multiple regression techniques. This required substantial effort at acquiring and preparing datasets. In the end we adopted a consistent 1km and 10km grid-based system to facilitate future cross-scale work for variables measured at various resolutions. With the gridded system land-covers take on % cover values for each cell.

Second, soft models were constructed to make explicit some of the main assumptions underlying each of the scenarios and how they could be articulated in a quantitative landscape evolution model (Figure 4). 

Third, a platform for modelling and visualization landscape evolution was built in Visual C++. This allowed us to both include systems of differential equations based on regressions of land-use change on a set of categorically transformed predictor variables and rule-based processes. The first version of the model with which the set of simulated landscapes presented here is based largely on modifying small subsets of the underlying regression coefficients guided by the soft models. Land-covers modelled were: orchard, paddy, field crop, hi-value intensified crop, fallow/secondary shrub, human settlements. Other land-uses such as water bodies were assumed to stay constant. Predictor variables were similar to those shown in the soft model diagrams (Figure 4), including, for example, elevation, past land use, estimates of travel times and distance to water. 

The next version of the model refines this with four modelled processes: extension of the road network, extension and excisement of park area, the addition of new villages (above and beyond expansion of existing human settlements) and the expansion of irrigation. These additional processes are assumed to have very different characteristics in each of the scenarios. The next version of the model also includes spatial and temporal variability. Based on preliminary results with the road model these extensions create more complex temporal and spatial dynamics then the initial model. 

The simulation results with first version of the model are summarized in a set of figures. Very briefly, aggregate changes in land-cover show simple dynamics that varies according to the scenario (Figure 5). Spatial patterns for each cover are more complex reflecting interactions between travel time, roads, elevation and competition between land covers (Figure 6 ). 

The modelled landscape trajectories need to be interpreted within the qualitative context provided by the scenarios. In the Parks scenario for example.... Louis Lebel 

-----Original Message----- 

From: David E. Thomas [mailto:thomas2@loxinfo.co.th] 

Sent: Friday, November 28, 2003 6:27 AM 

Subject: VERY URGENT - need some scenario text TODAY 

Dear Louis, Thanks very much for getting the output from the scenario output run to us. Meine is putting together a first draft of the technical report for these activities now, and really needs something from you in terms of text description about the runs. He must have an initial draft finished today (Friday 28 Nov), since he will leave for BNPP meetings in Washington DC where they will discuss the draft. We are all desperately trying to get pieces in at least preliminary shape - I have been helping edit materials in my hotel room in Vientiane most of the night before my meetings tomorrow. So we all appreciate the pressure on us. In any event, I hope you will be able to get something (even in rought draft form) off to Meine, most hopefully before mid-day or so. Thanks very much for any help you can lend in this. I should be back in Chiang Mai by tomorrow afternoon, and look forward to talking with you after my return. With best regards, David