The impact of gender-blindness on social-ecological resilience: The case of a communal pasture in the highlands of Ethiopia

We studied how the failure to take into account gendered roles in the management of a communal pasture can affect the resilience of this social-ecological system. Data were collected using qualitative methods, including focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, and participant observations from one community in the highlands of Ethiopia. The results show that women are excluded from the informal institution that defines the access and use rules which guide the management of the communal pasture. Consequently, women’s knowledge, preferences, and needs are not taken into account. This negatively affects the resilience of the communal pasture in two ways. Firstly, the exclusion of women’s knowledge leads to future adaptation options being overlooked. Secondly, as a result of the failure to address women’s needs, they start to question the legitimacy of the informal institution. The case study thus shows how excluding women, i.e., side-lining their knowledge and needs, weakens social learning and the adaptiveness of the management rules. Being blind to gender-related issues may thus undermine the resilience of a social-ecological system.     

An expanded conceptual framework for solution-focused management of chemical pollution in European waters

Background

This paper describes a conceptual framework for solutions-focused management of chemical contaminants built on novel and systematic approaches for identifying, quantifying and reducing risks of these substances.

Methods

The conceptual framework was developed in interaction with stakeholders representing relevant authorities and organisations responsible for managing environmental quality of water bodies. Stakeholder needs were compiled via a survey and dialogue. The content of the conceptual framework was thereafter developed with inputs from relevant scientific disciplines.

Results

The conceptual framework consists of four access points: Chemicals, Environment, Abatement and Society, representing different aspects and approaches to engaging in the issue of chemical contamination of surface waters. It widens the scope for assessment and management of chemicals in comparison to a traditional (mostly) perchemical risk assessment approaches by including abatement- and societal approaches as optional solutions. The solution-focused approach implies an identification of abatement- and policy options upfront in the risk assessment process. The conceptual framework was designed for use in current and future chemical pollution assessments for the aquatic environment, including the specific challenges encountered in prioritising individual chemicals and mixtures, and is applicable for the development of approaches for safe chemical management in a broader sense. The four access points of the conceptual framework are interlinked by four key topics representing the main scientific challenges that need to be addressed, i.e.: identifying and prioritising hazardous chemicals at different scales; selecting relevant and efficient abatement options; providing regulatory support for chemicals management; predicting and prioritising future chemical risks. The conceptual framework aligns current challenges in the safe production and use of chemicals. The current state of knowledge and implementation of these challenges is described.

Conclusions

The use of the conceptual framework, and addressing the challenges, is intended to support: (1) forwarding sustainable use of chemicals, (2) identification of pollutants of priority concern for cost-effective management, (3) the selection of optimal abatement options and (4) the development and use of optimised legal and policy instruments.

     

Legacies,socio-economic and biophysical processes and drivers: the case of future forest cover expansion in the Polish Carpathians and Swiss Alps

Mountain forest areas are key for providing a wide range of ecosystem services and are hot spots for land use change processes, in particular, increase in forest cover at the expense of mountain pastures and meadows. Mountain forest systems in eastern and western Europe have likely similar future socio-economic situations but significantly different socio-economic history. Using a scenario-based land use modelling approach (Dyna-CLUE framework) we model three scenarios (trend, liberalisation and self-sufficiency) of future land use in the Polish Carpathians and the Swiss Alps, focussing on forest cover change. We find that forest cover increase can be expected to continue in European mountainous regions under all likely scenarios, limited only by relatively strict policy interventions. Biophysical factors, rather than socio-economic ones, are key for defining the suitability for, and therefore likely locations of future forest cover, but land use legacy plays a very important role in the spatial patterns of future forest cover, particularly in eastern Europe.

     

Agrochemical spray drift; assessment and mitigation--a review

During application of agrochemicals spray droplets can drift beyond the intended target to non-target receptors, including water, plants and animals. Factors affecting this spray drift include mode of application, droplet size, which can be modified by the nozzle types, formulation adjuvants, wind direction, wind speed, air stability, relative humidity, temperature and height of released spray relative to the crop canopy. The rate of fall of spray droplets depends upon the size of the droplets but is modified by entrainment in a mobile air mass and is also influenced by the rate of evaporation of the liquid constituting the aerosol. The longer the aerosol remains in the air before falling to the ground (or alternatively striking an object above ground) the greater the opportunity for it to be carried away from its intended target. In general, all size classes of droplets are capable of movement off target, but the smallest are likely to move the farthest before depositing on the ground or a non-target receptor. It is not possible to avoid spray drift completely but it can be minimized by using best-management practices. These include using appropriate nozzle types, shields, spray pressure, volumes per area sprayed, tractor speed and only spraying when climatic conditions are suitable. Field layout can also influence spray drift, whilst crop-free and spray-free buffer zones and windbreak crops can also have a mitigating effect. Various models are available to estimate the environmental exposure from spray drift at the time of application.     

Identifying Change-Points in Biological Sequences via Sequential Importance Sampling

The genomes of complex organisms, including the human genome, are highly structured. This structure takes the form of segmental patterns of variation in various properties and may be caused by the division of genomes into regions of distinct function, by the contingent evolutionary processes that gave rise to genomes, or by a combination of both. Whatever the cause, identifying the change-points between segments is potentially important, as a means of discovering the functional components of a genome, understanding the evolutionary processes involved, and fully describing genomic architecture. One property of genomes that is known to display a segmental pattern of variation is GC content. The GC content of a portion of DNA is the proportion of GC pairs that it contains. Sharp changes in GC content can be observed in human and other genomes. Such change-points may be the boundaries of functional elements or may play a structural role. We model genome sequences as a multiple change-point process, that is, a process in which sequential data are separated into segments by an unknown number of change-points, with each segment supposed to have been generated by a different process. We consider a Sequential Importance Sampling approach to change-point modeling using Monte Carlo simulation to find estimates of change-points as well as parameters of the process on each segment. Numerical experiments illustrate the effectiveness of the approach. We obtain estimates for the locations of change-points in artificially generated sequences and compare the accuracy of these estimates to those obtained via Markov chain Monte Carlo and a well-known method, IsoFinder. We also provide examples with real data sets to illustrate the usefulness of this method.     

Pteris vittata – Revisited: Uptake of As and its speciation, impact of P, role of phytochelatins and S

Pteris vittata is known to hyperaccumulate As but the mechanism is poorly understood. We found an increase of As concentration with increasing soil solution As concentrations, but P application had no impact, although plant P concentrations responded to different rates of P supply. As in fronds was dominantly (82–89%) present in the form of AsIII. In roots we detected 45% as AsIII which is higher than reported in previous studies and supports substantial As-reduction to take place in roots. We detected PC2/3GS–AsIII, PC2–GS–AsIII and (PC2)2–AsIII in increasing amounts with application of As. The total amount of PC was in the range reported previously and far too small to assign a significant role in As detoxification to PCs. The close correlation between S and As in fronds and the lack of data on sulphur uptake and metabolism indicates the need for a detailed investigation on sulphur nutritional status and As metabolism in P. vittata.     

DNA barcoding of Pacific Canada’s fishes

DNA barcoding—sequencing a standard region of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase 1 gene (COI)—promises a rapid, accurate means of identifying animals to a species level. This study establishes that sequence variability in the barcode region permits discrimination of 98% of 201 fish species from the Canadian Pacific. The average sequence variation within species was 0.25%, while the average distance separating species within genera was 3.75%. The latter value was considerably lower than values reported in other studies, reflecting the dominance of the Canadian fauna by members of the young and highly diverse genus Sebastes. Although most sebastids possessed distinctive COI sequences, four species did not. As a partial offset to these cases, the barcode records indicated the presence of a new, broadly distributed species of Paraliparis and the possibility that Paraliparis pectoralis is actually a species pair. The present study shows that most fish species in Pacific Canadian waters correspond to a single, tightly cohesive array of barcode sequences that are distinct from those of any other species, but also highlights some taxonomic issues that need further investigation.     

What catch data can tell us about the status of global fisheries

The only available data set on the catches of global fisheries are the official landings reported annually by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Attempts to detect and interpret trends in these data have been criticized as being both technically and conceptually flawed. Here, we explore and refute these claims. We show explicitly that trends in catch data are not an artifact of the applied method and are consistent with trends in biomass data of fully assessed stocks. We also show that, while comprehensive stock assessments are the preferred method for evaluating single stocks, they are a biased subsample of the stocks in a given area, strongly underestimating the percentage of collapsed stocks. We concur with a recent assessment-based analysis by FAO that the increasing trends in the percentage of overexploited, depleted, and recovering stocks and the decreasing trends in underexploited and moderately exploited stocks give cause for concern. We show that these trends are much more pronounced if all available data are considered.