Prototyping a Vision for Inter-Agency Terrestrial Inventory and Monitoring: a Statistical Perspective

A demonstration project in Oregon examined the feasibility of combining Federal environmental monitoring surveys. An integrated approach should remove duplication of effort and reduce the possibility of providing apparently conflicting information to policy makers and the public. Data collection teams made photo interpretation measurements and on-site soil/vegetation/animal observations at locations that were selected from the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA), National Forest System (NFS) Region 6, and National Resource Inventory (NRI) surveys in a six-county area in Northern Oregon. The project demonstrated the feasibility of conducting a combined FIA/NFS/NRI survey and suggests an approach that will preserve the utility of the critical historical information from these surveys. We suggest a framework for estimating the extent of forest and range land that explains FIA/NRI differences and provides a common basis for both surveys. We suggest indicator and protocol criteria that will allow consistent national and regional estimates over all vegetation types, and stress the importance of including measurement repeatability in the design of the combined survey.     

Macrobenthic Monitoring in the Lower St. Johns River, Florida

The macrobenthos in the oligohaline 132 km reach of the Lower St. Johns River, Florida, is an unusual blend of freshwater and marine organisms within the annelid, mollusk, aquatic insect, and crustacean groups. During 1993–1994, the community composition was freshwater-oriented in the 47 km (seg I) and estuarine-dominated in the lower 85 km (seg II). Of the total 146 taxa collected, 89% were euryecious 'eutrophic' and 'pollution-tolerant' organisms. Densities ranged between 5000 and 20 000 individuals/m² ann av and maximum densities (85 000 individuals/m²) occurred in the muck substrate at the confluence of major tributaries and embayments. Throughout the lake-like seg II, benthic hypoxia existed during much of summer through fall. Biotic index values for grab, artificial substrate, and sled trawl samples reflected greatest stresses to the macrobenthos then. Both low taxonomic diversity and densities of organisms at the most downriver stations nearest the port of Jacksonville indicated that toxic substances also adversely affected the macrobenthos. Maintenance of the narrow band of littoral submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) and adjacent shoreline riparian vegetation is important to sustain macrobenthic communities and other kinds of aquatic life in the river.     

Acid Runoff Caused Fish Loss as an Early Warning of Forest Decline

Sulfate, nitrogen, and hydrogen ion deposition in the Laurel Hill region of the Appalachian Plateau province in Pennsylvania has been very high. Records indicate that losses of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) first occurred about 1960, although unrecorded losses probably preceded that date. Research has also attributed loss of brook trout (Salvelinus fontinalis) in this region to chronic and episodic stream acidification. Relatively recently, mortality of northern red oak has become a problem in parts of the region with mortalities as high as 60 percent of standing trees evident in some areas. Preliminary analysis indicates that soil acidification may play a significant role in the observed mortality. If this is the case, it would appear that fish losses due to watershed acidification in the region were evident about 30 years prior to the current mortality of northern red oak. Therefore, fish loss caused by acidification may be a prelude to more widespread ecosystem damage as a consequence of chronic deposition of acidifying elements.     

Why bad things happen to good people

Accidents in the process industries are extensively investigated to determine root causes, for lessons learned, and many times in search of the “guilty”. Accidents are seldom simple and most accidents have human elements that led to or facilitated the accident. Many times the people involved in these accidents, when considered individually on their merit, would be considered “good” people yet “bad things” (accidents) still occur.Human errors can be classified as individual, group, and organizational. Individual human errors have been addressed in a number of studies and papers. Many of these classify human errors and treat them probabilistically or cognitively. Less has been said regarding the individual psychological/sociological response/interaction mechanisms that might contribute to an industrial accident. These elements also contribute to a lack of situational awareness which often plays a large part in human error. Group and organizational interactions/dynamics can also contribute negatively to situational awareness and to the chain of events of an accident. Organization errors, which are typically latent, can also facilitate an accident and are many times people enabled for personal and business vested interests.This paper will discuss the effect of human error at the practical plant level in contributing to accidents in the process industries from individual, group, and organizational perspective. The discussion will include psychological/sociological response/interaction mechanisms that can contribute to situational awareness and human error. It will also discuss how complexity, veracity, and quantity of available information can affect the human decision-making process leading to mistakes.Accidents are seldom simple and most accidents have a number of elements that led to or facilitated the accident. When looking at individual elements probabilistically, multiplying probabilities together, it is hard to see how an accident could have occurred. A common refrain “That’s double jeopardy and we don’t have to consider that” is essentially a qualitative probabilistic analysis. Yet we have cases of triple, quadruple, n-jeopardy occurring to cause accidents. The paper will discuss the superimposition of causes and a similar concept of functional resonance in causing accidents.     

Organizational neuroscience: The promise and prospects of an emerging discipline

We review and discuss an Organizational Neuroscience perspective on management science research. Reviewing recent findings in the brain sciences, we provide concrete examples of how an organizational neuroscience perspective can advance organizational behavior research. We conclude that this new paradigm offers powerful insights and tools that complement traditional organizational research. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Development of a New Approach to Cumulative Effects Assessment: A Northern River Ecosystem Example

If sustainable development of Canadian waters is to be achieved, a realistic and manageable framework is required for assessing cumulative effects. The objective of this paper is to describe an approach for aquatic cumulative effects assessment that was developed under the Northern Rivers Ecosystem Initiative. The approach is based on a review of existing monitoring practices in Canada and the presence of existing thresholds for aquatic ecosystem health assessments. It suggests that a sustainable framework is possible for cumulative effects assessment of Canadian waters that would result in integration of national indicators of aquatic health, integration of national initiatives (e.g., water quality index, environmental effects monitoring), and provide an avenue where long-term monitoring programs could be integrated with baseline and follow-up monitoring conducted under the environmental assessment process.     

Removal of Hg2+ ions by adsorption using (TiO2@MnO2)-NPs nanocomposite

Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management - Waste water contaminated with inorganic mercury is considered a serious environmental problem, mainly due to the hazardous effects this contaminant...     

Environmental load of Cryptosporidium parvum oocysts from cattle manure in feedlots from the central and western United States

The first step in assessing the risk of water contamination by Cryptosporidium parvum oocysts from feedlot cattle (Bos taurus) production systems is to quantify the number of C. parvum oocysts present in the fecal material deposited by feedlot cattle. Our primary objective for this project was to estimate the daily environmental load of C. parvum oocysts in fecal material deposited by feedlot cattle from across the central and western USA. Our secondary goal was to genotype isolates of C. parvum from feedlot cattle to help facilitate proper identification of mammalian sources of waterborne C. parvum. Based on 5274 fecal samples from 22 feedlots in seven states (California, Washington, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska, and South Dakota), we estimated a point prevalence of C. parvum of 0.99 to 1.08% in fecal material from feedlot pens from a wide range of climates and a diverse range of feedlot management systems. On average, fresh fecal material from throughout feedlot systems (recent arrivals to nearing slaughter) contained about 1.3 to 3.6 oocysts/g feces, which roughly translates to about 2.8 x 10(4) to 1.4 x 10(5) oocysts/animal per day.     

Importance of Riparian Forests in Urban Catchments Contingent on Sediment and Hydrologic Regimes

Forested riparian corridors are thought to minimize impacts of landscape disturbance on stream ecosystems; yet, the effectiveness of streamside forests in mitigating disturbance in urbanizing catchments is unknown. We expected that riparian forests would provide minimal benefits for fish assemblages in streams that are highly impaired by sediment or hydrologic alteration. We tested this hypothesis in 30 small streams along a gradient of urban disturbance (1–65% urban land cover). Species expected to be sensitive to disturbance (i.e., fluvial specialists and “sensitive” species that respond negatively to urbanization) were best predicted by models including percent forest cover in the riparian corridor and a principal components axis describing sediment disturbance. Only sites with coarse bed sediment and low bed mobility (vs. sites with high amounts of fine sediment) had increased richness and abundances of sensitive species with higher percent riparian forests, supporting our hypothesis that response to riparian forests is contingent on the sediment regime. Abundances of Etheostoma scotti, the federally threatened Cherokee darter, were best predicted by models with single variables representing stormflow (r² = 0.34) and sediment (r² = 0.23) conditions. Lentic-tolerant species richness and abundance responded only to a variable representing prolonged duration of low-flow conditions. For these species, hydrologic alteration overwhelmed any influence of riparian forests on stream biota. These results suggest that, at a minimum, catchment management strategies must simultaneously address hydrologic, sediment, and riparian disturbance in order to protect all aspects of fish assemblage integrity.