Planning for environmental justice in an urban national park

Urban national parks were designed in the 1970s to bring nature and recreational opportunities to socio-economically disadvantaged communities in the USA. Using the theoretical frame of environmental justice, this paper discusses findings of a recent survey of visitors to Los Angeles' Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area – the United States' largest urban national park. Findings show park visitors were predominantly white, affluent, and lived nearby. People of colour travelled further, were significantly less likely to be return visitors, and were less inclined to use the park for active recreation. Seemingly, this park fails to meet the needs of the disadvantaged urban communities for whom it was created, a problem that may also affect other parks in the United States and potentially parks in other countries. Park planners and managers can take practical steps to increase accessibility to this park for people of colour and low-income earners, and should monitor other parks for patterns of ethno-racially differentiated access and utilisation.     

Natural Resource Assessment: An Approach to Science Based Planning in National Parks

We conducted a natural resource assessment at two national parks, New River Gorge National River and Shenandoah National Park, to help meet the goals of the Natural Resource Challenge—a program to help strengthen natural resource management at national parks. We met this challenge by synthesizing and interpreting natural resource information for planning purposes and we identified information gaps and natural significance of resources. We identified a variety of natural resources at both parks as being globally and/or nationally significant, including large expanses of unfragmented, mixed-mesophytic forests that qualify for wilderness protection, rare plant communities, diverse assemblages of neotropical migratory birds and salamanders, and outstanding aquatic recreational resources. In addition, these parks function, in part, as ecological reserves for plants in and wildlife. With these significant natural resources in mind, we also developed a suite of natural resource management recommendations in light of increasing threats from within and outside park boundaries. We hope that our approach can provide a blueprint for natural resource conservation at publically owned lands.     

Conceptual Framework of Tourism Carrying Capacity for a Tourism City： Experiences from National Parks in the United States

There is no universally-accepted definition of tourism carrying capacity(TCC).Numerical TCC focuses on use level and is considered as"a magic number"of the saturation point for tourism.There are several reasons why numerical tourism capacity is inadequate.Alternatively,tourism capacity can be defined in terms of limits of acceptable change,which shifts the focus from"how much use is too much"to"how much change is acceptable".This article proposes an improved conceptual framework for evaluating carrying capacity for the tourism city based on approaches used in US national parks,which consider the impact of human use on a city's economic,environmental/resource,and socio-cultural conditions.Based on the basic data of indicator values and relevant standards,the framework monitors the current indicators and predicts future indicator values; it can also be used to assess and predict TCC.     

Public parks as an element of urban planning: a missing piece in Accra's growth and development

Public parks are important to urban environments, residents, and visitors. Among other functions, they provide environmental services, such as air and water purification, and they increase both recreational opportunities and the attractiveness of the urban environment. Because of their importance, urban parks serve as public spaces that provide visitors and urban residents with rights to the city. This paper identifies the dearth of urban public parks in Accra-Tema city-region as worrying. The Accra Plan 1958 underscored the significance of green spaces and designated the coastal strip for parks development but the areas have been lost to various urban uses. We argue that the continual neglect of public parks within urban planning and community development schemes in the Accra-Tema city-region is a major concern because it is depriving the citizens a right to the city and its public spaces. A number of factors have worked adversely against the provision of public parks and green spaces in the city-region. These include development pressures, undue political interference, a complex land delivery system, and ad hoc planning. The paper concludes by offering policy suggestions as to how to resolve the dearth of parks and green spaces in the city-region.     

基于DEA模型的太湖流域企业污水治理效率

运用数据包络分析DEA方法,建立了太湖殷村港流域工业园区企业污水治理效率评价体系,并利用该体系对园区内企业污水治理效率进行了实证研究。利用效率评价函数对园区内20家企业进行评价,结果表明,其中4家企业达到环境治理效率相对高效;20家企业的废水排放量、COD和NH3-N排放削减总量分别为3 691 860、217.53和14.64 t/a,削减潜力较大。实证研究结果表明,该环境绩效评价系统可为园区企业污水治理调控提出定量化的调整建议。     

河北省建设生态工业园的对策研究

生态工业园通过将循环经济与工业生态学理论相结合,有效实现能流物复。针对目前河北省未获得批准建设的国家生态工业示范园区的现状,首先分析了生态工业园的内涵与特征,进而介绍了我国生态工业园区建设的现状,并对河北省如何建设生态工业园区提出了对策建议。     

Impacts of Marine Protected Areas on Fishing Communities

Abstract: Marine protected areas (MPAs) are a popular conservation strategy, but their impacts on human welfare are poorly understood. To inform future research and policy decisions, we reviewed the scientific literature to assess MPA impacts on five indicators of human welfare: food security, resource rights, employment, community organization, and income. Following MPA establishment, food security generally remained stable or increased in older and smaller MPAs. The ability of most fishing groups to govern MPA resources changed. Increased resource rights were positively correlated with MPA zoning and compliance with MPA regulations. Small sample sizes precluded statistical tests of the impacts of MPAs on employment, community organization, and income. Our results demonstrate that MPAs shape the social well‐being and political power of fishing communities; impacts (positive and negative) vary within and among social groups; and social impacts are correlated with some—but not all—commonly hypothesized explanatory factors. Accordingly, MPAs may represent a viable strategy for enhancing food security and empowering local communities, but current practices negatively affect at least a minority of fishers. To inform policy making, further research must better document and explain variation in the positive and negative social impacts of MPAs.     

化工园区安全生产监管存在问题及对策

系统分析了我国现阶段化工园区的基本特点及其安全监管中存在的问题，提出了建立以政府为主导、社会中介机构技术支撑、企业落实一体化的化工园区综合管理体系。实现化：亡园区应急救援资源整合及资源共享，提高化工园区应急救援资源有效利用率。数字化管理对化工园区的整体安全性的提高将发挥巨大的作用。     

Heavy metal concentrations in plants and soils at roadside locations and parks of urban Guangzhou

Introduction In 2003, 48 per cent of the world's population is estimated to live in urban areas with the proportion that is urban projected to rise to 61 per cent by 2030 (United Nations, 2004). Moreover, during 2000— 2030 the world's urban population is…     

Measuring Protected‐Area Isolation and Correlations of Isolation with Land‐Use Intensity and Protection Status

Abstract: Protected areas cover over 12% of the terrestrial surface of Earth, and yet many fail to protect species and ecological processes as originally envisioned. Results of recent studies suggest that a critical reason for this failure is an increasing contrast between the protected lands and the surrounding matrix of often highly altered land cover. We measured the isolation of 114 protected areas distributed worldwide by comparing vegetation‐cover heterogeneity inside protected areas with heterogeneity outside the protected areas. We quantified heterogeneity as the contagion of greenness on the basis of NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) values, for which a higher value of contagion indicates less heterogeneous land cover. We then measured isolation as the difference between mean contagion inside the protected area and mean contagion in 3 buffer areas of increasing distance from the protected‐area border. The isolation of protected areas was significantly positive in 110 of the 114 areas, indicating that vegetation cover was consistently more heterogeneous 10–20 km outside protected areas than inside their borders. Unlike previous researchers, we found that protected areas in which low levels of human activity are allowed were more isolated than areas in which high levels are allowed. Our method is a novel way to assess the isolation of protected areas in different environmental contexts and regions.