Sustainability speak: Discourse and practice paradigms in subdivision design

In the last decade the concept of sustainable development has been widely embraced as the key to environmentally friendly development. However, in many instances the physical sustainability side of the equation stops at a rhetorical level and the ensuing developments fail to respond to ecological imperatives or to protect existing ecological values. Nowhere is this failure more evident than at the urban fringes of Melbourne, Australia, where residential land estate developments relentlessly engulf degraded agricultural lands that often contain the remnants of vegetative and hydrological ecological systems.

This paper postulates that while landscape design practitioners claim the 'authority of nature' (and, by extension, the land) for their design inspiration, in reality narrow practice foci and instrumental approaches have meant that the design of estates and subdivisions often make only token reference to ecological underpinnings. It is argued that instrumental influences on design decision-making are embedded in landscape-architectural professional culture and glossed over with an elusive rhetoric of care and concern for the environment. It is further postulated that individual expressions of interest in the land and its systems can make a substantive contribution to sustainable design practice and practical outcomes.     

Mid-trimester fetal ultrasound: Diagnostic dilemmas

Two cases are reported in which an unusual ultrasound finding preceded diagnostic amniocentesis and led to further work-up. In both cases a decision was made to terminate the pregnancy. One fetus in which a neck mass was detected by ultrasound was shown to be normal on post-mortem examination. The second fetus was aborted because of Rh sensitization and had the abnormality seen by ultrasound. However, this lesion, calcified intrahepatic plaques, had no presumed pathological significance. These cases suggest caution in the interpretation of results obtained with the new technologies used for prenatal diagnosis.     

Power and Sample Size Calculations for Linear Hypotheses Associated with Mixtures of Many Components using Fixed-Ratio Ray Designs

Response surface methodology, often supported by factorial designs, is the classical experimental approach that is widely accepted for detecting and characterizing interactions among chemicals in a mixture. In an effort to reduce the experimental effort as the number of compounds under study is increased, ray designs have been proposed to study combinations of chemicals. When interest is restricted to relevant mixing ratios, we are only interested in making inference along the specific rays of interest, as opposed to methods which use designs that require more experimental effort to support the estimation of a response surface over a broader experimental region. Methods have been developed for the test of additivity along multiple fixed-ratio rays. Of primary importance is the detection of interactions with reasonable power. The objective of this paper is to address power and sample size issues related to the hypothesis of no interaction.     

GRADUATE EDUCATION IN WATER RESOURCES: AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH Part II: Post-Production Techniques1

ABSTRACT: The production of a documentary video in a graduate seminar offers advantages over the traditional term paper. These advantages derive from the nature of the videotape medium. The most distinct difference between a written document and a video production is the use of the video camera to record events. In using the camera, the student is required to become involved both in front of the video camera, for example, as an interviewer, and behind the camera as a camera operator. Next, as an editor, the student is required to review the events that she/he has taped for inclusion in the final product. By participating in these three roles, the student has the opportunity to learn interviewing skills while interacting with professionals in the field, to learn videotaping skills, and to see him/herself as he/she appears to others. The student can use the video feedback to improve his/her professional presentation; posture, dress, gestures, speech, and facial expressions all have an impact on how we are perceived by others. Additionally, the painstaking process of reviewing the taped material leads to an intimate knowledge of the topic, and the process of choosing portions out of entire interviews hones the ability to select the crucial or central themes and ideas from any discussion. Finally, the power of video lies in its ability to communicate information to a wide audience. Although the nature of video for the general public does not permit highly detailed or rigorous coverage of any topic, it is a major source of information. Accordingly, video is an important tool that can be used to inform the public about the importance of wise water resource management.     

Optimal management of a confined groundwater system

Dynamic programming is applied to a relatively simple economic and hydrologic model of a confined aquifer system in Southwest Montana to determine an optimal interseasonal allocation schedule. The derived decision rule demonstrates the economic advantage of maintaining a confined groundwater system. While localized intraseasonal loss of the artesian pressure may occur, it is important to maintain this pressure from year to year because of its role in reducing extraction costs. The welfare gap, as measured by differences in the net present value of economic returns to the basin under an optimal use policy versus an uncontrolled, “common pool” situation, is not trivial. Sensitivity analysis indicates that assumptions about uniformity of land productivity, vis-à-vis their impact on the shape of the returns function, the discount rate, and the level of electric power rates are particularly critical with respect to the magnitude of the commonality problem.     

Climate change and coastal vulnerability assessment: scenarios for integrated assessment

Coastal vulnerability assessments still focus mainly on sea-level rise, with less attention paid to other dimensions of climate change. The influence of non-climatic environmental change or socio-economic change is even less considered, and is often completely ignored. Given that the profound coastal changes of the twentieth century are likely to continue through the twenty-first century, this is a major omission, which may overstate the importance of climate change, and may also miss significant interactions of climate change with other non-climate drivers. To better support climate and coastal management policy development, more integrated assessments of climatic change in coastal areas are required, including the significant non-climatic changes. This paper explores the development of relevant climate and non-climate drivers, with an emphasis on the non-climate drivers. While these issues are applicable within any scenario framework, our ideas are illustrated using the widely used SRES scenarios, with both impacts and adaptation being considered. Importantly, scenario development is a process, and the assumptions that are made about future conditions concerning the coast need to be explicit, transparent and open to scientific debate concerning their realism and likelihood. These issues are generic across other sectors.

Marine protected areas for deepwater fish populations: an evaluation of their effects in Hawai’i

The success of marine protected areas (MPAs) as a tool for conservation and fisheries management has been well documented. However, these results have typically been seen in shallow water systems and questions remain whether this management strategy could be successfully applied to deepwater ecosystems. Our objectives were to determine the efficacy of four deepwater MPAs called bottomfish restricted fishing areas (BRFAs), with various time spans of protection, monitored at depths between 90 and 310 m from 2007 to 2011 for six species of deepwater snapper and one grouper harvested in the Main Hawaiian Islands. Our results suggested that the duration of protection influenced reserve effects, particularly for target species. Mean fish length, and in some cases abundance, increased for one or more of the most economically important target species inside nearly all tested BRFAs. In addition, more mature fish were seen inside the BRFA with the longest duration of protection (~14 years); species richness increased outside this area while inside it remained the same. Here, we provide the first evidence that deepwater MPAs can have positive effects on deepwater species and that many protection effects were consistent with results found in shallow water ecosystems. While these findings are novel, additional data over greater temporal scales will be necessary to determine whether these trends will continue and if others will become important over time.