Considering the needs of indigenous and local populations in conservation programs

Local rural and indigenous communities have assumed increasing responsibility for conservation within and between areas buffering the impacts of agricultural or resource‐extraction zones and protected areas. Empowering local communities as central partners in conservation and climate‐change mitigation has allowed many people to gain access to land and citizenship rights but has provided limited improvements in access to social services and economic opportunities even as expectation about their role as environmental stewards grows. These expectations, however, are inconsistent with reality. We conducted multiple field studies in Brazil since the mid‐1980s to illustrate the discrepancies between conservation programs and local conditions and expectations. We suggest that public policies and conservation programs should not delegate responsibility for managing protected areas to local and indigenous communities without considering local needs and expectations and locals’ attitudes toward conservation. In other words, behavior that maintains or improves the environment should not be treated as traditional based on the expectations of outsiders. Framing local populations as traditional environmentalists creates contradictions and frustrations for local populations and for conservation professionals and policy makers.     

Understanding the distribution of bushmeat hunting effort across landscapes by testing hypotheses about human foraging

Mitigating the massive impacts of defaunation on natural ecosystems requires understanding and predicting hunting effort across the landscape. But such understanding has been hindered by the difficulty of assessing the movement patterns of hunters in thick forests and across complex terrain. We statistically tested hypotheses about the spatial distribution of hunting with circuit theory and structural equation models. We used a data set of >7000 known kill locations in Guyana and hunter movement models to test these methods. Comparing models with different resistance layers (i.e., different estimates of how terrain and land cover influence human movement speed) showed that rivers, on average, limited movement rather than serving as transport arteries. Moreover, far more kills occurred close to villages than in remote areas. This, combined with the lack of support for structural equation models that included latent terms for prey depletion driven by past overhunting, suggests that kill locations in this system tended to be driven by where hunters were currently foraging rather than by influences of historical harvest. These analyses are generalizable to a variety of ecosystems, species, and data types, providing a powerful way of enhancing maps and predictions of hunting effort across complex landscapes.     

Dynamics of local governance in natural resource conservation in the Okavango Delta,Botswana

There has been a shift in natural resource management worldwide. This paper describes how modern institutions and policies influence management and shape access to and utilization of resources by rural communities in the Okavango Delta, Botswana. It is rooted in the framework of adaptive co‐governance within social‐ecological systems, and employs a critical literature review to analyse access to and use of natural resources in rural Botswana. Prior to the establishment of community‐based natural resource management (CBNRM) in Botswana in 1989, resource governance was dominated by strong traditional institutions that were responsible for natural resource management and decision‐making. Contemporary natural resource governance is characterized by a bureaucratic system that invariably undermines the role of traditional institutions in natural resource governance. Findings indicate that policies and regulatory instruments deny rural communities adequate access to and utilization of resources available within their immediate environment. In spite of an orientation towards an anthropocentric approach to natural resource management (as in the case of CBNRM), the current governance system continues to undermine the inclusion of local resource users as legitimate stakeholders in the decision‐making process.     

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.     

Using lysosomal membrane stability of haemocytes in Ruditapes philippinarum as a biomarker of cellular stress to assess contamination by caffeine, ibuprofen, carbamazepine and novobiocin

Although pharmaceuticals have been detected in the environment only in the range from ng/L to g/L, it has been demonstrated that they can adversely affect the health status of aquatic organisms. Lysosomal membrane stability (LMS) has previously been applied as an indicator of cellular well-being to determine health status in bivalve mussels. The objective of this study is to evaluate LMS in Ruditapes philippinarum haemolymph using the neutral red retention assay (NRRA). Clams were exposed in laboratory conditions to caffeine (0.1, 5, 15, 50 μg/L), ibuprofen (0.1, 5, 10, 50 μg/L), carbamazepine and novobiocin (both at 0.1, 1, 10, 50 μg/L) for 35 days. Results show a dose-dependent effect of the pharmaceuticals. The neutral red retention time measured at the end of the bioassay was significantly reduced by 50% after exposure to environmental concentrations (p < 0.05) (caffeine = 15 μg/L; ibuprofen = 10 μg/L; carbamazepine = 1 μg/L and novobiocin = 1 μg/L), compared to controls. Clams exposed to these pharmaceuticals were considered to present a diminished health status (retention time < 45 min), significantly worse than controls (96 min) (p < 0.05). The predicted no environmental effect concentration (PNEC) results showed that these pharmaceuticals are very toxic at the environmental concentrations tested. Measurement of the alteration of LMS has been found to be a sensitive technique that enables evaluation of the health status of clams after exposure to pharmaceuticals under laboratory conditions, thus representing a robust Tier-1 screening biomarker.     

荷电超滤膜对天然有机物去除及膜污染行为的影响

以Aldrich 腐殖酸溶液为水样,研究比较了溶液环境(pH值、离子强度和钙离子)对荷电改性再生纤维素超滤膜和传统中性未改性再生纤维素超滤膜过滤过程的影响.结果表明, ①pH值主要通过质子化作用影响荷电膜以及腐殖酸分子的荷电量,进而影响荷电超滤过程.溶液pH值从7.5下降到3.5时,荷电超滤膜对腐殖酸的截留率从92%减少到79%,超滤4 h时,膜通量下降从26%增加到36%.②离子强度的改变是通过影响腐殖酸分子的物化性质和静电屏蔽作用来影响超滤过程的.当溶液离子强度为0、 3和100 mmol/L时,初始截留率依次降低,分别为92%、 87%和48%,超滤4 h时,荷电超滤膜的通量下降依次增加,分别为26%、 35%和63%.③Ca2+浓度的影响,需要综合考虑静电屏蔽作用、Ca2+的架桥作用以及滤饼层的压实性等各方面的影响.④pH值、离子强度和钙离子对中性超滤膜过滤行为的影响趋势与荷电超滤膜相似,但其影响程度有着较大的差别.研究结果对荷电超滤膜技术在实际应用中选择合适环境条件提供了参考.     

淀山湖浮游植物营养限制因子的研究

通过藻类增长的生物学评价(Nutrient Enrichment Bioassay)研究淀山湖浮游植物生长限制性因子，并采用析因方差分析和事后比较方法分析营养盐（PO^3-₄P、NH₃N、NO^-₃N）对浮游植物生长速度、平均最大现存量和平均最大特定增长率的影响。研究表明：磷对浮游植物生长有明显的促进作用，能提高浮游植物的生长速度和现存量，且促进作用随磷浓度（0.13～0.53 mg/L）的增加而加强，磷是淀山湖浮游植物增长的第一限制性因子；低浓度硝氮（2.91～5.91 mg/L）对浮游植物生长有微小的促进作用，但高浓度（5.91～8.91 mg/L）的硝氮表现出抑制作用；氨氮对浮游植物生长有抑制作用，并随浓度（1.25～7.25 mg/L）的增加而增大；添加磷+硝氮能明显促进浮游植物生长，磷与硝氮之间存在一定的交互作用.     

中药生产中的综合利用途径

综合利用中药资源,开展中药生产中的废料综合利用工作,是保证中药资源永续利用的重要措施和手段。本文概述了中药生产中的综合利用及研究情况,探讨了中药生产中废料资源化技术的开发。     

Sustainable Agriculture: New Paradigms and Old Practices? Increased Production with Management of Organic Inputs in Senegal

Farmers in Sahelian countries are confronted with a variety of soil fertility and management problems. During the last two decades, NGOs have worked with farmers and research institutions to develop and test practices that will increase food production, while at the same time enhance the natural resource base.Since 1987, The Rodale Institute (RI) has worked closely with farmers' associations and government institutions to promote regenerative agriculture-farming systems that prioritize the use of local resources while improving them as they are used to grow food, using agro-ecological methods. The Senegalese Agricultural Research Institute has collaborated in this program as a partner of RI. The Senegal Regenerative Agriculture Resource Center model has been applied as a new and viable approach that builds on traditional knowledge and farmer-to-farmer exchange.Research results on soil conservation and improvement have shown that fields spread with amended animal manure or compost yield greater harvests than fields farmed with traditional methods.