The Value of Better Information on Technology R&D Programs in Response to Climate Change

Expert elicitations are a promising method for determining how R&D investments are likely to have an impact on technological advance in climate change energy technologies. But, expert elicitations are time consuming and resource intensive. Thus, we investigate the value of the information gained in expert elicitations. More specifically, given baseline elicitations from one study, we estimate the expected value of better information (EVBI) from revisiting and improving these assessments. We find that the EVBI is very large in comparison with the cost of performing expert elicitations. We also find that EVBI is higher on technologies with larger budgets and with net values that are not too high or too low.     

Social signals and sustainability: ambiguity about motivations can affect status perceptions of efficiency and curtailment behaviors

Perceived status can affect the diffusion of pro-environmental behaviors and sustainable consumption. However, the status of different forms of sustainable consumption has not been adequately explored. Previous studies suggest that curtailment behaviors are associated with low or neutral status, while efficiency behaviors are associated with high status. However, these studies have generally examined a small number of behaviors. Drawing from costly signaling theory, we developed a mixed methods study to explore whether and why pro-environmental behaviors are perceived to be associated with high or low status, the perceived motivation for those behaviors, and the relationship between motivation and status. We conducted structured, interactive interviews with 71 participants to explore perceptions of 19 behaviors. Using quantitative and qualitative analyses, we find that efficiency is rated higher status than curtailment largely due to monetary considerations. Efficiency is also perceived to be motivated by environmental concern to a greater degree than curtailment. Understanding the motivation for behaviors clarifies the social signal because it provides insights into whether one is incurring personal costs. Importantly, it is often unclear whether low-cost curtailment behaviors are adopted by choice rather than financial need. Ambiguity about the intentionality of behaviors results in such behaviors being perceived as lower status. Those who argue that curtailment will be necessary for long-term sustainability must address status perceptions because social stigmas could hinder their adoption. Overcoming such stigmas may require, indicating that curtailment behaviors are voluntary, but it may be more effective to use social or economic mechanisms to increase efficiency behaviors.     

IDW‐Plus: An ArcGIS Toolset for Calculating Spatially Explicit Watershed Attributes for Survey Sites

Watershed characteristics such as land‐use and land‐cover affect stream condition at multiple scales, but it is widely accepted that conditions in close proximity to the stream or survey site tend to have a stronger influence. Although spatially weighted watershed metrics have existed for years, nonspatial lumped landscape metrics (i.e., areal mean or percentage) are still widely used because relatively few technical skills are needed to implement them. The Inverse Distance Weighted Percent Land Use for Streams (IDW‐Plus) custom ArcGIS toolset provides the functionality to efficiently calculate six spatially explicit watershed metrics which account for the Euclidean or flow length distance to the stream or outlet, as well as the probability for overland runoff. These include four distance‐weighted metrics, those being inverse Euclidean distance to the stream or outlet, and the inverse flow length to the stream or outlet. Two tools are also included to generate hydrologically active (i.e., runoff potential), inverse flow length to the stream or outlet metrics. We demonstrate the tools using real data from Southeast Queensland, Australia. We also provide detailed instructions, so readers can recreate the examples themselves before applying the tools to their own data.     

Linking soil respiration and water table depth in tropical peatlands with remotely sensed changes in water storage from the gravity recovery and climate experiment

Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change - Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from Southeast Asia peatlands are contributing substantially to global anthropogenic emissions to the...     

Institutional,Individual, and Socio-Cultural Domains of Partnerships: A Typology of USDA Forest Service Recreation Partners

Federal land management agencies, such as the USDA Forest Service, have expanded the role of recreation partners reflecting constrained growth in appropriations and broader societal trends towards civic environmental governance. Partnerships with individual volunteers, service groups, commercial outfitters, and other government agencies provide the USDA Forest Service with the resources necessary to complete projects and meet goals under fiscal constraints. Existing partnership typologies typically focus on collaborative or strategic alliances and highlight organizational dimensions (e.g., structure and process) defined by researchers. This paper presents a partner typology constructed from USDA Forest Service partnership practitioners’ conceptualizations of 35 common partner types. Multidimensional scaling of data from unconstrained pile sorts identified 3 distinct cultural dimensions of recreation partners—specifically, partnership character, partner impact, and partner motivations—that represent institutional, individual, and socio-cultural cognitive domains. A hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis provides further insight into the various domains of agency personnel’s conceptualizations. While three dimensions with high reliability (RSQ = 0.83) and corresponding hierarchical clusters illustrate commonality between agency personnel’s partnership suppositions, this study also reveals variance in personnel’s familiarity and affinity for specific partnership types. This real-world perspective on partner types highlights that agency practitioners not only make strategic choices when selecting and cultivating partnerships to accomplish critical task, but also elect to work with partners for the primary purpose of providing public service and fostering land stewardship.