POSTFIRE SUSPENDED SEDIMENT FROM YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK,WYOMING1

ABSTRACT: Wildfires in 1988 burned over 2000 square miles of the greater Yellowstone area in Montana and Wyoming in the largest fires in the history of Yellowstone National Park (YNP). A four-year postfire study to estimate fire-related changes in suspended sediment transport on the Yellowstone River and its principal tributary in YNP, the Lamar River, benefitted from a recently completed three-year prefire baseline study. Both studies took daily depth-integrated samples from April through September. Fire-related changes in suspended sediment were distinguished from natural climatic variations by two methods: comparison of forecast postfire sediment loads estimated with prefire sediment-rating equations to measured postfire loads; and by postfire changes in suspended sediment load expressed per unit volume runoff. Both methods indicated postfire sediment increases that varied according to season. The higher elevation Lamar River basin had little postfire increase in spring snowmelt season sediment but large increases in summer sediment load. The Yellowstone River had postfire increases in sediment load for the spring but did not reflect the large summer increases of its upstream tributary. The reasons for the difference in postfire snowmelt sediment response are unclear but may relate to basin elevation differences, the effects of unburned watersheds, and cooler postfire springs. The few high streamflow snowmelt events in the postfire period mitigated postfire sediment increases.     

Ecological Compensation in Dutch Highway Planning

The ecological compensation principle was introduced by the Dutch government in 1993. This principle is designed to enhance the input of nature conservation interests in decision-making on large-scale development projects and to counterbalance the ecological impacts of such developments when implemented. This article evaluates the application of the Dutch compensation principle in highway planning. Six current highway projects reveal consistent implementation of this principle, although provincial policies on compensation and a national method for identifying compensation measures are still under development. As the planning process has not yet been completed for all the projects, no general conclusions can be drawn on the impact of the compensation principle on highway decision-making. Nevertheless, several examples show that the principle stimulates project initiators to develop alternative routes or route sections in order to avoid or reduce ecological impacts and the need for coherent compensation measures. If the compensation principle is to be properly implemented in the context of highway planning, particular attention should be paid to the following aspects: (1) sequential assessment of overall project legitimacy and the necessity of intersecting protected areas and compensation measures, (2) the initiator's attempts to avoid and mitigate ecological impacts in developing alternative routes prior to compensation for impacts, and (3) the role of uncertain ecological impacts in identifying compensation measures, especially those concerning habitat isolation.     

LANDCARE AND COMMUNITY-LED WATERSHED MANAGEMENT IN VICTORIA,AUSTRALIA1

ABSTRACT: Australia's ‘Landcare’ program is a community-based participatory program established by government to tackle the problem of land degradation. Landcare involves thousands of Australians working together in locally based groups, tackling problems of common concern. Government and community are now looking to ‘scale up’ the Landcare idea to a regional level. State and territory governments have moved to create regional (often watershed-based) frameworks for land management planning and resource conservation, in accordance with the concept of integrated watershed management. Growing out of the success of community involvement in Landcare, many of these approaches involve the community. However scaling up of the Landcare idea introduces problems of both time and space. There have been a number of problems experienced in the implementation of Landcare and integrated watershed management. These problems include the equitable delineation of membership on decision-making bodies; the raising of sufficient funds for program implementation; and the coordination of a diversity of governmental layers, planning processes and management programs. This paper reviews how the State of Victoria has responded to these challenges and suggests what challenges remain.     

不同植被对工业污染区盐渍土的改良效果

以包头市西郊工业污染区盐渍化弃耕地为对象，研究了不同植被对土壤水盐动态和体积质量的影响。研究表明，造林后使林地内草本植物得到较快恢复，且归还土壤的枯落物比木本植物多，改良盐渍土壤和促进脱盐的作用较好；随植被盖度增加，盐渍土土壤含盐量和体积质量降低，盐渍土性状逐步改善。因此，在实施以耐盐树种造林为先导的工业污染区盐渍土恢复植被工程时，应适当降低造林密度，以利于林地内草本植物的恢复和建立林草复合植被，提高工业污染区盐渍土的生物治理效果。     

Local Capacity for Groundwater Protection in Ontario

Preventing groundwater contamination is vastly cheaper than remediation. Recognizing this, attention in water and land management agencies in North America increasingly turn to groundwater protection. Local agencies, such as municipalities and watershed management districts, are vital to successful groundwater protection, but they face daunting challenges. In the United States, senior governments have recognized these challenges and provide considerable support for local agencies. In Ontario, Canada, local agencies are, to a much greater extent, on their own. The aims in this paper are to analyze factors that shape local capacity for groundwater protection, focusing on Ontario, and to recommend avenues for capacity building. Interrelationships among five dimensions of capacity (technical, financial, institutional, social, and political) are explored through an analysis of three smaller Ontario communities: City of Guelph (population 93,400), Town of Orangeville (population 22,188), and Town of Erin (population 11,000). Size clearly influences capacity for groundwater protection. However, other considerations unrelated to size appear to be as important. These other factors include the ability to form horizontal and vertical linkages with external agencies, political leadership and commitment, and citizen involvement. Thus, smaller communities in Ontario (and other jurisdictions with limited senior government support) would do well to focus on these areas at the same time as they develop their technical, financial, and institutional capacity.     

Procedures for ensuring community involvement in multijurisdictional river basins: a comparison of the Murray-Darling and Mekong river basins

Community involvement is fundamental to the management of multijurisdictional river basins but, in practice, is very difficult to achieve. The Murray-Darling basin, in Australia, and the Mekong River basin in Southeast Asia are both cooperatively managed multijurisdictional river basins where the management authorities have expressed an aim of community involvement. In the Murray-Darling basin vigorous efforts have promoted a culture of community consultation throughout each of the state jurisdictions involved, although true participation has not necessarily been achieved. In the Mekong basin the community is much more diverse and the successes so far have been largely at the local level, involving action in subsections of the basin. These case studies suggest that community involvement in the form of community consultation across large multijurisdictional river basins is achievable, but more comprehensive participation is not necessarily possible.     

Changing Trends in World Metal Demand: The Case of Tin

This paper examines the changing trends in world tin demand for the period 1962–1985. In the early 1970s tin production peaked, and has since declined. The reasons for the decline are examined in terms of changes in product composition of income (i.e. mix of goods and services), changes in material composition of products, decline in gross domestic investment and the rising price of tin.     

The European Water Framework Directive: Water Quality Classification and Implications to Engineering Planning

The European Water framework directive (WFD) is probably the most important environmental management directive that has been enacted over the last decade in the European Union. The directive aims at achieving an overall good ecological status in all European water bodies. In this article, we discuss the implementation steps of the WFD and their implications for environmental engineering practice while focusing on rivers as the main receiving waters. Arising challenges for engineers and scientists are seen in the quantitative assessment of water quality, where standardized systems are needed to estimate the biological status. This is equally of concern in engineering planning, where the prediction of ecological impacts is required. Studies dealing with both classification and prediction of the ecological water quality are reviewed. Further, the combined emission–water quality approach is discussed. Common understanding of this combined approach is to apply the most stringent of either water quality or emission standard to a certain case. In contrast, for example, the Austrian water act enables the application of only the water quality based approach - at least on a temporary basis.     

Parent cultural control through organizational acculturation: HCN employees learning new work values in foreign business subsidiaries

Local employees in foreign business subsidiaries could learn new work values from the parent organizational culture through a process of organizational acculturation. As this is a new concept in academic research, it is important to explore organizational acculturation and its ramifications, especially since it may be used as a strategy of cultural control applied by the parent organization. Following a discussion of the theoretical foundation of this concept, the consequences of organizational acculturation are exemplified by an investigation of middle managers in Singapore. The study was undertaken in two stages. The first stage included a comparison of work values of Singaporean managers, employed by Swedish companies in Singapore, and those of a control group of Singaporean managers, not employed by Swedish companies. In the second stage, work values of managers in Singapore and Sweden were compared. Our results imply that some Swedish work values had been adopted, suggesting that the local managers had experienced organizational acculturation. Practical implications and possible further research are discussed.     

Oxidative DNA damage levels and catalase activity in the clam Ruditapes decussatus as pollution biomarkers of Tunisian marine environment

Levels of the oxidative DNA damage 7, 8-dihydro-8-oxo-2′-deoxyguanosine (8-oxodG) and catalase (CAT) activity were measured in the digestive gland and gills of clams Ruditapes decussatus, related to the presence of pollutants along Tunisian marine environment. Increased levels of CAT were observed in tissues of clams from all the sites studied, compared to control values, and elevated 8-oxodG levels were observed at specific sites. Results obtained in this work indicate that the measurement of 8-oxodG levels and CAT activity in tissues of R. decussatus is promising in pollution monitoring studies of the Tunisian marine environment.