Sagoff [Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 18 (2005), 215–236] argues, against growing empirical evidence, that major environmental impacts of non-native species are
unproven. However, many such impacts, including extinctions of both island and continental species, have both been demonstrated
and judged by the public to be harmful. Although more public attention has been focused on non-native animals than non-native
plants, the latter more often cause ecosystem-wide impacts. Increased regulation of introduction of non-native species is,
therefore, warranted, and, contra Sagoff’s assertions, invasion biologists have recently developed methods that greatly aid prediction of which introduced
species will harm the environment and thus enable more efficient regulation. The fact that introduced species may increase
local biodiversity in certain instances has not been shown to result in desired changes in ecosystem function. In other locales,
they decrease biodiversity, as they do globally. 相似文献
As part of the program monitoring the ecosystem health of Moreton Bay, Queensland, Australia, we developed a means for assessing
ecosystem health that allows quantitative evaluation and spatial representations of the assessments. The management objectives
for achieving ecosystem health were grouped into ecosystem objectives, water quality objectives, and human health objectives.
For the first two groups, aspects of the ecosystem (e.g., trophic status) were identified, and an indicator was chosen for
each aspect. Reference values for each indicator were derived from management objectives and compared with the mapped survey
values. Subregions for which the indicator statistic was equal to or better than the assigned reference value are referred
to as “compliant zones.” High-resolution surface maps were created from spatial predictions on a fine hexagonal grid for each
of the indicators. Eight reporting subregions were established based on the depth and predicted residence times of the water.
Within each reporting subregion, the proportion that was compliant was calculated. These results then were averaged to create
an integrated ecosystem health index. The ratings by a team of ecosystem experts and the calculated ecosystem health indices
had good correspondence, providing assurance that the approach was internally consistent, and that the management objectives
covered the relevant biologic issues for the region. This method of calculating and mapping ecosystem health, relating it
directly to management objectives, may have widespread applicability for ecosystem assessment. 相似文献
While public health and urban planning were closely linked in the past, today both domains are institutionally separate. In most cases, health intersects with spatial planning processes only through obligatory evaluations, such as environmental impact assessments, or restrictive environmental legislation. This institutionalisation of health criteria in most western countries has difficulty in dealing with recent environmental health challenges, leading to continual distrust and conflict between citizens and the government. This impasse has recently been discussed by academics who acknowledge the complexity of both city and health issues. It seems, however, that the full extent of the issue has not been covered yet, leading to recommendations and frameworks that are useful but fixed and retrospective. This paper moves beyond those fixed frameworks to develop a better understanding of the complexity of the current disconnect and explores ideas for a future planning approach, grounded on new ideas of co-evolutionary and adaptive planning. 相似文献
Mitigation and offset programs designed to compensate for ecosystem function losses due to development must balance losses from affected ecosystems with gains in restored ecosystems. Aggregation rules applied to ecosystem functions to assess site equivalence are based on implicit assumptions about the substitutability of functions among sites and can profoundly influence the distribution of restored ecosystem functions on the landscape. We investigated the consequences of rules applied to the aggregation of ecosystem functions for wetland offsets in the Beaverhill watershed in Alberta, Canada. We considered the fate of 3 ecosystem functions: hydrology, water purification, and biodiversity. We set up an affect‐and‐offset algorithm to simulate the effect of aggregation rules on ecosystem function for wetland offsets. Cobenefits and trade‐offs among functions and the constraints posed by the quantity and quality of restorable sites resulted in a redistribution of functions between affected and offset wetlands. Hydrology and water purification functions were positively correlated with one another and negatively correlated with biodiversity function. Weighted‐average rules did not replace functions in proportion to their weights. Rules prioritizing biodiversity function led to more monofunctional wetlands and landscapes. The minimum rule, for which the wetland score was equal to the worst performing function, promoted multifunctional wetlands and landscapes. The maximum rule, for which the wetland score was equal to the best performing function, promoted monofunctional wetlands and multifunctional landscapes. Because of implicit trade‐offs among ecosystem functions, no‐net‐loss objectives for multiple functions should be constructed within a landscape context. Based on our results, we suggest criteria for the design of aggregation rules for no net loss of ecosystem functions within a landscape context include the concepts of substitutability, cobenefits and trade‐offs, landscape constraints, heterogeneity, and the precautionary principle. 相似文献
Objective: The objective of this article was the construction of injury risk functions (IRFs) for front row occupants in oblique frontal crashes and a comparison to IRF of nonoblique frontal crashes from the same data set.
Method: Crashes of modern vehicles from GIDAS (German In-Depth Accident Study) were used as the basis for the construction of a logistic injury risk model. Static deformation, measured via displaced voxels on the postcrash vehicles, was used to calculate the energy dissipated in the crash. This measure of accident severity was termed objective equivalent speed (oEES) because it does not depend on the accident reconstruction and thus eliminates reconstruction biases like impact direction and vehicle model year. Imputation from property damage cases was used to describe underrepresented low-severity crashes―a known shortcoming of GIDAS. Binary logistic regression was used to relate the stimuli (oEES) to the binary outcome variable (injured or not injured).
Results: IRFs for the oblique frontal impact and nonoblique frontal impact were computed for the Maximum Abbreviated Injury Scale (MAIS) 2+ and 3+ levels for adults (18–64 years). For a given stimulus, the probability of injury for a belted driver was higher in oblique crashes than in nonoblique frontal crashes. For the 25% injury risk at MAIS 2+ level, the corresponding stimulus for oblique crashes was 40 km/h but it was 64 km/h for nonoblique frontal crashes.
Conclusions: The risk of obtaining MAIS 2+ injuries is significantly higher in oblique crashes than in nonoblique crashes. In the real world, most MAIS 2+ injuries occur in an oEES range from 30 to 60 km/h. 相似文献