Stalled regime transition in the upper Tisza River Basin: the dynamics of linked action situations

In river basins transformation from traditions of reactive flood defense to more adaptive management regimes is difficult. How regime components reinforce each other to set its development path may induce inertia and path dependency. Transformation may require profound shifts in the institutions, technologies, and personnel as well as the ecological, economic and social processes they influence in setting the basin's trajectory. Regime change has become an issue in Hungary following repeated failures of conventional management policies to handle a series of floods on the Tisza river starting in 1997. Increasing public participation pushed water policy debate toward more experimentation with alternatives, but implementation appears stalled. In this paper we review hypotheses about what factors are bridges or barriers to transformation and then use the Management Transition Framework to examine how the interactions linking action situations, operational outcomes, knowledge and institutions influenced the river management policy debate in Hungary from 1997 to 2009. Specifically we examined which factors characteristic of conventional Control vs. progressive Adaptive management regimes influenced these interactions in ways that contributed to or hindered transformation. We found that governance and social learning issues predominated, with lesser roles played by factors related to integration of sectors and different levels in the science and policy of river management.     

Passive air sampling for persistent organic pollutants: introductory remarks to the special issue

There have been a number of developments in the need, design and use of passive air samplers (PAS) for persistent organic pollutants (POPs). This article is the first in a Special Issue of the journal to review these developments and some of the data arising from them. We explain the need and benefit of developing PAS for POPs, the different approaches that can be used, and highlight future developments and needs.     

Knowledge coproduction on the impact of decisions for waterbird habitat in a changing climate

Scientists, resource managers, and decision makers increasingly use knowledge coproduction to guide the stewardship of future landscapes under climate change. This process was applied in the California Central Valley (USA) to solve complex conservation problems, where managed wetlands and croplands are flooded between fall and spring to support some of the largest concentrations of shorebirds and waterfowl in the world. We coproduced scenario narratives, spatially explicit flooded waterbird habitat models, data products, and new knowledge about climate adaptation potential. We documented our coproduction process, and using the coproduced models, we determined when and where management actions make a difference and when climate overrides these actions. The outcomes of this process provide lessons learned on how to cocreate usable information and how to increase climate adaptive capacity in a highly managed landscape. Actions to restore wetlands and prioritize their water supply created habitat outcomes resilient to climate change impacts particularly in March, when habitat was most limited; land protection combined with management can increase the ecosystem's resilience to climate change; and uptake and use of this information was influenced by the roles of different stakeholders, rapidly changing water policies, discrepancies in decision-making time frames, and immediate crises of extreme drought. Although a broad stakeholder group contributed knowledge to scenario narratives and model development, to coproduce usable information, data products were tailored to a small set of decision contexts, leading to fewer stakeholder participants over time. A boundary organization convened stakeholders across a large landscape, and early adopters helped build legitimacy. Yet, broadscale use of climate adaptation knowledge depends on state and local policies, engagement with decision makers that have legislative and budgetary authority, and the capacity to fit data products to specific decision needs.     

Exploring work unit context and leader–member exchange: a multi‐level perspective

Leader–member exchange relationships have rarely been explored within the context of the work unit. Employing a sample of 285 employees of a southeastern county library system, the work unit contextual factors of work group size, work group cohesiveness, organizational climate, and leader power were examined for their relationship with LMX from the subordinate's perspective, using a within and between analysis (WABA) approach. All of the contextual variables except size were significantly related to LMX. The WABA and r_WG analyses revealed that effects occurred at both within‐ and between‐group levels, indicating individual difference effects. Thus, practitioners should emphasize enhancements to group and organizational processes as well as contributions toward relationship building in LMX dyads. Future research should expand the network of contextual variables that may have potential relevance with LMX, since this study demonstrated that the work context in which the dyad resides contributes in part to the LMX phenomenon. Additional study of the work unit size and LMX relationship is also warranted, as the current research failed to replicate previous research with a predicted negative relationship. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Applying assessments of adaptive capacity to inform natural-resource management in a changing climate

Adaptive capacity (AC)—the ability of a species to cope with or accommodate climate change—is a critical determinant of species vulnerability. Using information on species’ AC in conservation planning is key to ensuring successful outcomes. We identified connections between a list of species’ attributes (e.g., traits, population metrics, and behaviors) that were recently proposed for assessing species’ AC and management actions that may enhance AC for species at risk of extinction. Management actions were identified based on evidence from the literature, a review of actions used in other climate adaptation guidance, and our collective experience in diverse fields of global-change ecology and climate adaptation. Selected management actions support the general AC pathways of persist in place or shift in space, in response to contemporary climate change. Some actions, such as genetic manipulations, can be used to directly alter the ability of species to cope with climate change, whereas other actions can indirectly enhance AC by addressing ecological or anthropogenic constraints on the expression of a species’ innate abilities to adapt. Ours is the first synthesis of potential management actions directly linked to AC. Focusing on AC attributes helps improve understanding of how and why aspects of climate are affecting organisms, as well as the mechanisms by which management interventions affect a species’ AC and climate change vulnerability. Adaptive-capacity-informed climate adaptation is needed to build connections among the causes of vulnerability, AC, and proposed management actions that can facilitate AC and reduce vulnerability in support of evolving conservation paradigms.     

The effect of the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic on the use of personal protective equipment in hospitals

The Covid pandemic has strongly affected the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the medical sector. Our aim was to assess the influence of Covid on PPE use within a German hospital by analyzing PPE use in four years prior to Covid and in 2020/2021. Numbers of items and mass of different types of PPE were determined based on procurement data. The results show that for the use of gloves the pandemic only had a small effect on the number of items. For body protection there was a clear trend toward a decrease in the number of items used in the years before the pandemic due to actions by the hospital toward a better environmental footprint which was partially reversed by the pandemic. The number of masks on the other hand doubled during the pandemic. Expressed in mass of PPE per patient and day, 15 g of masks, 121 g of gloves, and 183 g of body protection are used, resulting in a total of 319 g of PPE per patient and day. As medical waste has a specific treatment, no direct environmental effects of PPE use in hospitals in a region with well-developed waste treatment system are expected.