科尔沁沙地沙漠化研究进展

科尔沁沙地是目前我国沙漠化发展较为迅速的地区之一,也是我国沙漠化研究程度比较高的地区之一.近50年来,该区沙漠化研究经历了流沙治理、沙漠化过程及其整治的区域性综合研究和沙漠化机理及其整治的典型研究3个阶段,在沙漠化过程、动态监测、灾害评估、综合整治防治等方面都取得了大量成果.根据目前的研究现状和存在问题,以及科尔沁沙地的实际情况,提出了今后应进一步加强研究的4个领域,即:沙漠化监测评估标准的统一和规范化;农田土壤风蚀的实验观测和控制措施的试验示范研究;沙尘暴灾害的监测、预警和影响评估;防沙治沙技术与模式的集成和进一步推广等.     

地球系统科学提出前我国科学界的某些思维

列举了在1988年美国提出"地球系统科学"前我国学者在该领域的某些思维:人与天地相应的观点,东亚大陆磁异常与我国人群健康关系的观点,天地生三位一体的观点,地球表层学的观点以及灾害系统的观点等.这些观点虽不如"地球系统科学"着眼于全球整体,但也包括了很大的系统,且不空洞.     

生物降解高分子材料的研究现状及应用前景

目前,处理高分子材料的一些传统方法,如焚烧法、掩埋法、熔融共混挤出法、回收利用等都存在一定的缺陷和局限性,给环境保护带来严重的困难。因此,开发环境可接受的降解性高分子材料是解决环境污染的重要途径。生物降解高分子是指通过自然界或添加的微生物的化学作用,将高分子物质分解成小分子化合物,再进入自然的循环过程。论述了生物降解高分子材料的研究现状,并对生物降解高分子材料的降解机理、影响因素及其在医学、农业、包装业和其他领域的潜在应用前景进行了探讨。     

安全科学学科建设理论研究

安全科学是一门新兴的大交叉综合学科,为促进安全科学的快速发展,运用科学学思想和知识溯源等方法,从安全学科建设的高度,首先阐述交叉科学的属性、研究层次、交叉形式、知识命名和现有交叉科学研究存在的问题,在此基础上提出了安全科学研究的创新思路、安全科学研究的多视角与分类和安全科学研究成果的多样性特征,最后给出了安全科学新分支创建的实例。研究结果表明:只有了解交叉学科的基础问题,才能理解安全科学的发展,才能快速地创新安全科学。     

Food justice youth development: using Photovoice to study urban school food systems*

How do youth learn through participation in efforts to study and change the school food system? Through our participatory youth action research (YPAR) project, we move beyond the “youth as consumer” frame to a food justice youth development (FJYD) approach. We track how a group of youth learned about food and the public policy process through their efforts to transform their own school food systems by conducting a participatory evaluation of farm-to-school efforts in collaboration with university and community partners. We used the Photovoice research method, placing cameras in the hands of young people so that they themselves could document and discuss their concerns and perspectives. The research was designed to gain insight about youths’ knowledge of food, health, and community food systems. Drawing upon the youth group’s insights, we build a framework for building critical consciousness through FJYD.     

An interdisciplinary review of current and future approaches to improving human–predator relations

In a world of shrinking habitats and increasing competition for natural resources, potentially dangerous predators bring the challenges of coexisting with wildlife sharply into focus. Through interdisciplinary collaboration among authors trained in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, we reviewed current approaches to mitigating adverse human–predator encounters and devised a vision for future approaches to understanding and mitigating such encounters. Limitations to current approaches to mitigation include too much focus on negative impacts; oversimplified equating of levels of damage with levels of conflict; and unsuccessful technical fixes resulting from failure to engage locals, address hidden costs, or understand cultural (nonscientific) explanations of the causality of attacks. An emerging interdisciplinary literature suggests that to better frame and successfully mitigate negative human–predator relations conservation professionals need to consider dispensing with conflict as the dominant framework for thinking about human–predator encounters; work out what conflicts are really about (they may be human–human conflicts); unravel the historical contexts of particular conflicts; and explore different cultural ways of thinking about animals. The idea of cosmopolitan natures may help conservation professionals think more clearly about human–predator relations in both local and global context. These new perspectives for future research practice include a recommendation for focused interdisciplinary research and the use of new approaches, including human‐animal geography, multispecies ethnography, and approaches from the environmental humanities notably environmental history. Managers should think carefully about how they engage with local cultural beliefs about wildlife, work with all parties to agree on what constitutes good evidence, develop processes and methods to mitigate conflicts, and decide how to monitor and evaluate these. Demand for immediate solutions that benefit both conservation and development favors dispute resolution and technical fixes, which obscures important underlying drivers of conflicts. If these drivers are not considered, well‐intentioned efforts focused on human–wildlife conflicts will fail.     

Arts as a vehicle for community building and post‐disaster development

Use of the arts in international aid is common in an ad hoc form, but it has not been systematically theorised or evaluated. The arts have the potential to be a culturally contextualised and sustainable intervention for adults and children in the aftermath of war or disaster. On the micro level, the arts are a method to enable the retrieval and reprocessing of traumatic memories that are often encoded in images rather than in words. On a macro level, they can help to reconstruct a group narrative of a disaster as well as mobilise people back into control of their lives. This paper researches a long‐term project using arts in Sri Lanka following the civil war and tsunami. A central finding is the need to understand arts within their cultural context, and their usefulness in strengthening the voices and problem‐solving capacities of the victims of the disaster.     

A Guide to Understanding Social Science Research for Natural Scientists

Natural scientists are increasingly interested in social research because they recognize that conservation problems are commonly social problems. Interpreting social research, however, requires at least a basic understanding of the philosophical principles and theoretical assumptions of the discipline, which are embedded in the design of social research. Natural scientists who engage in social science but are unfamiliar with these principles and assumptions can misinterpret their results. We developed a guide to assist natural scientists in understanding the philosophical basis of social science to support the meaningful interpretation of social research outcomes. The 3 fundamental elements of research are ontology, what exists in the human world that researchers can acquire knowledge about; epistemology, how knowledge is created; and philosophical perspective, the philosophical orientation of the researcher that guides her or his action. Many elements of the guide also apply to the natural sciences. Natural scientists can use the guide to assist them in interpreting social science research to determine how the ontological position of the researcher can influence the nature of the research; how the epistemological position can be used to support the legitimacy of different types of knowledge; and how philosophical perspective can shape the researcher's choice of methods and affect interpretation, communication, and application of results. The use of this guide can also support and promote the effective integration of the natural and social sciences to generate more insightful and relevant conservation research outcomes. Una Guía para Entender la Investigación de Ciencias Sociales para las Ciencias Naturales Katie Moon     

When and how to use Q methodology to understand perspectives in conservation research

Understanding human perspectives is critical in a range of conservation contexts, for example, in overcoming conflicts or developing projects that are acceptable to relevant stakeholders. The Q methodology is a unique semiquantitative technique used to explore human perspectives. It has been applied for decades in other disciplines and recently gained traction in conservation. This paper helps researchers assess when Q is useful for a given conservation question and what its use involves. To do so, we explained the steps necessary to conduct a Q study, from the research design to the interpretation of results. We provided recommendations to minimize biases in conducting a Q study, which can affect mostly when designing the study and collecting the data. We conducted a structured literature review of 52 studies to examine in what empirical conservation contexts Q has been used. Most studies were subnational or national cases, but some also address multinational or global questions. We found that Q has been applied to 4 broad types of conservation goals: addressing conflict, devising management alternatives, understanding policy acceptability, and critically reflecting on the values that implicitly influence research and practice. Through these applications, researchers found hidden views, understood opinions in depth and discovered points of consensus that facilitated unlocking difficult disagreements. The Q methodology has a clear procedure but is also flexible, allowing researchers explore long‐term views, or views about items other than statements, such as landscape images. We also found some inconsistencies in applying and, mainly, in reporting Q studies, whereby it was not possible to fully understand how the research was conducted or why some atypical research decisions had been taken in some studies. Accordingly, we suggest a reporting checklist.     

The role of digital data entry in participatory environmental monitoring

Many argue that monitoring conducted exclusively by scientists is insufficient to address ongoing environmental challenges. One solution entails the use of mobile digital devices in participatory monitoring (PM) programs. But how digital data entry affects programs with varying levels of stakeholder participation, from nonscientists collecting field data to nonscientists administering every step of a monitoring program, remains unclear. We reviewed the successes, in terms of management interventions and sustainability, of 107 monitoring programs described in the literature (hereafter programs) and compared these with case studies from our PM experiences in Australia, Canada, Ethiopia, Ghana, Greenland, and Vietnam (hereafter cases). Our literature review showed that participatory programs were less likely to use digital devices, and 2 of our 3 more participatory cases were also slow to adopt digital data entry. Programs that were participatory and used digital devices were more likely to report management actions, which was consistent with cases in Ethiopia, Greenland, and Australia. Programs engaging volunteers were more frequently reported as ongoing, but those involving digital data entry were less often sustained when data collectors were volunteers. For the Vietnamese and Canadian cases, sustainability was undermined by a mismatch in stakeholder objectives. In the Ghanaian case, complex field protocols diminished monitoring sustainability. Innovative technologies attract interest, but the foundation of effective participatory adaptive monitoring depends more on collaboratively defined questions, objectives, conceptual models, and monitoring approaches. When this foundation is built through effective partnerships, digital data entry can enable the collection of more data of higher quality. Without this foundation, or when implemented ineffectively or unnecessarily, digital data entry can be an additional expense that distracts from core monitoring objectives and undermines project sustainability. The appropriate role of digital data entry in PM likely depends more on the context in which it is used and less on the technology itself.