Despite long-standing knowledge of the benefits of riparian buffers for mitigating nonpoint source pollution, many streams are unprotected by buffers. Even landowners who understand ecological values of buffers mow riparian vegetation to the streambank. Do trends in rural riparian conditions reflect the development of riparian forest science? What motivates residential riparian management actions? Using high-resolution orthoimagery, we quantified riparian conditions and trends between 1998 and 2015 in the rural upper Little Tennessee River basin in Macon County, North Carolina and explored how landowners view riparian zone management and riparian restoration programs. Buffer composition in 2015 was as follows: no buffer (32.5%), narrow (19.3%), forested (26.7%), shrub (7.2%), and intermediate (7.0%). Relative to 1998, the greatest decrease occurred in the no buffer class (−17.7%, 46 km) and the largest increases occurred in the shrub (+72.5%, 20 km) and narrow (12.6%, 14 km) classes. Forested buffer marginally increased. Semi-structured interview data suggest that landowners prioritize recreational and scenic aspects of riparian buffers over ecological functions such as filtration and bank stabilization. Riparian restoration programs might be made more enticing to non-adopters if outreach language appealed to landowner priorities, design elements demonstrated intentional management, and program managers highlighted areas where ecological goals and landowner values align. 相似文献
In the Lister region in the southern part of Norway, attempts are currently being made to facilitate for a green shift. The paper discusses two different approaches towards such a challenge. The first is procedural, where success or failure hinges on the methods applied in the effort to convince locals to incorporate climate considerations. The alternative is to reflect upon how a green ideology blends into pre-existing ideological elements in the region. It is claimed that an important reason for the failure so far to place the environment at the core of regional development, is that too much emphasis has been put on the first approach, on procedure and dialogue, whereas few efforts have been made to understand the structure of the discursive terrain in the region. What prevents a green shift has less to do with methods and is more connected to the dominance of a logic of economic growth and the fact that locals are confident that nature is already dealt with in a sensible manner. The conclusion is that we need to understand what people are concerned about and what prevents them to change, before we start telling them how to think and do development. 相似文献
Traditional water harvesting systems are multi-functional in nature and provide a variety of ecosystem services that contribute to the overall wellbeing of local people. This study aims to identify and analyze the factors influencing the variations in the level of awareness across households residing around three selected traditional water bodies in the Indian state of West Bengal. Ordinary least square (OLS) regression models have been used to identify and analyze the determinants of household perception on ecosystem services from tank water bodies. Results show that while a majority of households have strong perceptions on the provisioning and cultural ecosystem services of the tanks, the household perceptions on regulating and supporting services of the tank is found to be relatively weak. Households belonging to lower caste and poor are likely to be more dependent on ecosystem services from tanks than upper caste and rich households, and hence they have better perceptions of provisioning ecosystem services. Households’ awareness about provisioning ecosystem services is negatively related to their level of education and wealth. It is observed that household awareness about regulating and supporting ecosystem services is positively associated with the level of education of the households, ownership of tube well and private tanks. While it is essential to consider household perception on all the ecosystem services for sustainable use and management of traditional water harvesting systems, incorporating the local norms, customs and preferences in policy design are critical for achieving effective conservation outcomes. 相似文献
The concept of shifting baselines in conservation science implies advocacy for the use of historical knowledge to inform these baselines but does not address the feasibility of restoring sites to those baselines. In many regions, conservation feasibility varies among sites due to differences in resource availability, statutory power, and land‐owner participation. We used zooarchaeological records to identify a historical baseline of the freshwater mussel community's composition before Euro‐American influence at a river‐reach scale (i.e., a kilometer stretch of river that is abiotically similar) in the Leon River of central Texas (U.S.A.). We evaluated how the community reference position and the feasibility of conservation might enable identification of sites where conservation actions would preserve historically representative communities and be likely to succeed. We devised a conceptual model that incorporated community information and landscape factors to link the best conservation areas to potential cost and conservation benefits. Using fuzzy ordination, we identified modern mussel beds that were most like the historical baseline. We then quantified housing density and land use near each river reach identified to estimate feasibility of habitat restoration. Using our conceptual framework, we identified reaches of high conservation value (i.e., contain the best mussel beds) and where restoration actions would be most likely to succeed. Reaches above Lake Belton were most similar in species composition and relative abundance to zooarchaeological sites. A subset of these mussel beds occurred in locations where conservation actions appeared most feasible. Our results show how to use zooarchaeological data (biodiversity data often readily available) and estimates of conservation feasibility to inform conservation priorities at a local spatial scale. 相似文献
Objective: The purpose of this study was to identify and better understand the features of fatal injuries in cyclists aged 75 years and over involved in collisions with either hood- or van-type vehicles.
Methods: This study investigated the fatal injuries of cyclists aged 75 years old and over by analyzing accident data. We focused on the body regions to which the fatal injury occurred using vehicle–bicycle accident data from the Institute for Traffic Accident Research and Data Analysis (ITARDA) in Japan. Using data from 2009 to 2013, we examined the frequency of fatally injured body region by gender, age, and actual vehicle travel speed. We investigated any significant differences in distributions of fatal injuries by body region for cyclists aged 75 years and over using chi-square tests to compare with cyclists in other age groups. We also investigated the cause of fatal head injuries, such as impact with a road surface or vehicle.
Results: The results indicated that head injuries were the most common cause of fatalities among the study group. At low vehicle travel speeds for both hood- and van-type vehicles, fatalities were most likely to be the result of head impacts against the road surface.
The percentage of fatalities following hip injuries was significantly higher for cyclists aged 75 years and over than for those aged 65–74 or 13–59 in impacts with hood-type vehicles. It was also higher for women than men in the over-75 age group in impacts with these vehicles.
Conclusions: For cyclists aged 75 years and over, wearing a helmet may be helpful to prevent head injuries in vehicle-to-cyclist accidents. It may also be helpful to introduce some safety measures to prevent hip injuries, given the higher level of fatalities following hip injury among all cyclists aged 75 and over, particularly women. 相似文献
Former ranges of wild animals have been reestablished in many developed countries. However, this reestablishment has led to increasing human–wildlife conflict in agroforest ecosystems. In Japan, human–wildlife conflict, such as crop raiding by and ecological impacts of wild ungulates and primates, is a serious problem in depopulated rural areas due to these animal range expansions and increased abundances. Japan's human population is predicted to decline by 24% by 2050, and approximately 20% of agricultural settlements will become completely depopulated. In this scenario, anthropogenic pressures on wildlife (e.g., hunting and habitat alteration) will continue to decrease and human–wildlife conflict will increase due to increasing wildlife recovery. Japan's local governments plan to slow range recovery, prevent species reestablishment, or remove recolonizing large mammals through lethal control. This strategy, however, is not cost-effective, and workforce shortages in depopulated communities make it infeasible. Moreover, the suppression of wildlife prevents the recovery of ecological functions and thus would degrade regional biodiversity. The declining pressure on wildlife that accompanies human depopulation will prevent the restoration of any past states of human–wildlife interaction. We suggest human-used areas in rural landscapes be aggregated in compact cities and that in transition zones between human settlements and depopulated lands that land-sharing approaches be applied. Concentrating management efforts in compact cities may effectively decrease human–wildlife conflict, rather than intensifying human pressures. Reforestation of depopulated lands may lead to recovery of wildlife habitats, their ecosystem functions, and regional biodiversity due to minimization of negative anthropogenic effects (land-sparing approach). Balancing resolution of human–wildlife conflict and ecological rewilding could become a new, challenging task for regional wildlife managers. 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