Factors influencing property selection for conservation revolving funds

Finding sustainable ways to increase the amount of private land protected for biodiversity is challenging for many conservation organizations. In some countries, organizations use revolving‐fund programs, whereby land is purchased and then sold to conservation‐minded owners under condition they enter into a conservation covenant or easement. The sale proceeds are used to purchase, protect, and sell additional properties, incrementally increasing the amount of protected private land. Because the effectiveness of this approach relies on selecting appropriate properties, we explored factors currently considered by practitioners and how these are integrated into decision making. We conducted exploratory, semistructured interviews with managers from each of the 5 major revolving funds in Australia. Responses indicated although conservation factors are important, financial and social factors are also highly influential. A major determinant was whether the property could be resold within a reasonable period at a price that replenishes the fund. To facilitate resale, often selected properties include the potential for the construction of a dwelling. Practitioners face with clear trade‐offs between conservation, financial, amenity, and other factors in selecting properties and 3 main challenges: recovering the costs of acquisition, protection, and resale; reselling the property; and meeting conservation goals. Our findings suggest the complexity of these decisions may constrain revolving‐fund effectiveness. Drawing from participant responses, we identified potential strategies to mitigate these risks, such as providing adequate recreational space without jeopardizing ecological assets. We suggest managers could benefit from a shared‐learning and adaptive approach to property selection given the commonalities between programs. Understanding how practitioners deal with complex decisions in the implementation of revolving funds helps identify future research to improve the performance of this conservation tool.     

呼吸效应对矿井封闭火区氧浓度的影响分析

为避免因火区封闭导致重大安全事故发生，通过采集某矿井1 d内3个不同监测点的大气压力变化情况，建立大气压力波动模型并分析计算，同时建立火区内外压差100，750 Pa情形下的氧浓度模型进而获得火区内侧氧气浓度因呼吸效应，在不同压差、体积大小火区、风阻、瓦斯涌出量、封闭时刻等多因素耦合影响下随时间的变化规律，以评估火区危险性。研究结果表明:井下大气随地面大气周期波动，封闭火区内、外侧之间的气压差因外界大气波动呈现16 h的余弦波动和8 h的线性波动周期变化；密闭质量好的火区具有更好地抗干扰性，内侧氧浓度的降低主要依靠瓦斯稀释；密闭质量差的火区，内侧氧浓度易受到火区涌出瓦斯、外界涌入大气双重影响；火区氧浓度在2%~12%之间波动，以至火区存在发生瓦斯爆炸的可能性；火区内外压差较大时，氧浓度波动变化幅度更大，危险作用持续时间更长。结合火区氧浓度波动模型，可有效地对矿井火区采取安全的防范措施，避免瓦斯爆炸事故发生。     

Use of genetic,climatic, and microbiological data to inform reintroduction of a regionally extinct butterfly

Species reintroductions are increasingly used as means of mitigating biodiversity loss. Besides habitat quality at the site targeted for reintroduction, the choice of source population can be critical for success. The butterfly Melanargia russiae (Esper´s marbled white) was extirpated from Hungary over 100 years ago, and a reintroduction program has recently been approved. We used museum specimens of this butterfly, mitochondrial DNA data (mtDNA), endosymbiont screening, and climatic‐similarity analyses to determine which extant populations should be used for its reintroduction. The species displayed 2 main mtDNA lineages across its range: 1 restricted to Iberia and southern France (Iberian lineage) and another found throughout the rest of its range (Eurasian lineage). These 2 lineages possessed highly divergent wsp alleles of the bacterial endosymbiont Wolbachia. The century‐old Hungarian specimens represented an endemic haplotype belonging to the Eurasian lineage, differing by one mutation from the Balkan and eastern European populations. The Hungarian populations of M. russiae occurred in areas with a colder and drier climate relative to most sites with extant known populations. Our results suggest the populations used for reintroduction to Hungary should belong to the Eurasian lineage, preferably from eastern Ukraine (genetically close and living in areas with the highest climatic similarity). Materials stored in museum collections can provide unique opportunities to document historical genetic diversity and help direct conservation.     

Estimating abundance without recaptures of marked pallid sturgeon in the Mississippi River

Abundance estimates are essential for assessing the viability of populations and the risks posed by alternative management actions. An effort to estimate abundance via a repeated mark‐recapture experiment may fail to recapture marked individuals. We devised a method for obtaining lower bounds on abundance in the absence of recaptures for both panmictic and spatially structured populations. The method assumes few enough recaptures were expected to be missed by random chance. The upper Bayesian credible limit on expected recaptures allows probabilistic statements about the minimum number of individuals present in the population. We applied this method to data from a 12‐year survey of pallid sturgeon (Scaphirhynchus albus) in the lower and middle Mississippi River (U.S.A.). None of the 241 individuals marked was recaptured in the survey. After accounting for survival and movement, our model‐averaged estimate of the total abundance of pallid sturgeon ≥3 years old in the study area had a 1%, 5%, or 25% chance of being <4,600, 7,000, or 15,000, respectively. When we assumed fish were distributed in proportion to survey catch per unit effort, the farthest downstream reach in the survey hosted at least 4.5–15 fish per river kilometer (rkm), whereas the remainder of the reaches in the lower and middle Mississippi River hosted at least 2.6–8.5 fish/rkm for all model variations examined. The lower Mississippi River had an average density of pallid sturgeon ≥3 years old of at least 3.0–9.8 fish/rkm. The choice of Bayesian prior was the largest source of uncertainty we considered but did not alter the order of magnitude of lower bounds. Nil‐recapture estimates of abundance are highly uncertain and require careful communication but can deliver insights from experiments that might otherwise be considered a failure.     

对氯气校正法测定高氯废水化学需氧量的方法研究

氯气校正法(HJ/T70-2001)是测定高氯废水化学需氧量的国标方法,为了减少样品测定过程带来的环境污染,研究在不改变HJ/T70-2001氧化体系及测试条件的情况下,将取样体积由20 mL减半为10 mL,试剂的使用量相应减半,对方法的检出限、相对误差、相对标准偏差等指标进行验证。结果表明,该方法的检出限符合要求,准确度较高,精密度较好,可用于高氯废水化学需氧量的测定。     

移动通信技术发展对安全生产影响研究*

为了深入揭示安全生产水平同移动通信技术发展的内在联系，提出安全生产信息技术能力的概念及其监控管理连接、救援响应监测、定位导航追踪3方面子能力的定义，进而通过构建3方面子能力同移动通信主要性能指标之间的关系模型（SPITCMC），并对其进行深入分析和研究。研究结果表明:SPITCMC模型可以准确诠释过去移动通信技术发展对安全生产水平产生的影响，同时可用于预判未来移动通信技术发展对安全生产可能产生的影响程度，从而为后续相关工作的开展提供参考和借鉴。     

Forecasting China’s primary energy demand based on an improved AI model

An improved energy demand forecasting model is built based on the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach and an adaptive genetic algorithm (AGA) to obtain credible energy demand forecasting results. The ARDL bounds analysis is first employed to select the appropriate input variables of the energy demand model. After the existence of a cointegration relationship in the model is confirmed, the AGA is then employed to optimize the coefficients of both linear and quadratic forms with gross domestic product, economic structure, urbanization, and technological progress as the input variables. On the basis of historical annual data from 1985 to 2015, the simulation results indicate that the proposed model has greater accuracy and reliability than conventional optimization methods. The predicted results of the proposed model also demonstrate that China will demand approximately 4.9, 5.6, and 6.1 billion standard tons of coal equivalent in 2020, 2025, and 2030, respectively.     

Impacts of rural to urban migration,urbanization, and generational change on consumption of wild animals in the Amazon

For the first time in history, more people live in urban areas than in rural areas. This trend is likely to continue, driven largely by rural-to-urban migration. We investigated how rural-to-urban migration, urbanization, and generational change affect the consumption of wild animals. We used chelonian (tortoises and freshwater turtles), one of the most hunted taxa in the Amazon, as a model. We surveyed 1356 households and 2776 school children across 10 urban areas of the Brazilian Amazon (6 small towns, 3 large towns, and Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon Basin) with a randomized response technique and anonymous questionnaires. Urban demand for wild meat (i.e., meat from wild animals) was alarmingly high. Approximately 1.7 million turtles and tortoises were consumed in urban areas of Amazonas during 2018. Consumption rates declined as size of the urban area increased and were greater for adults than children. Furthermore, the longer rural-to-urban migrants lived in urban areas, the lower their consumption rates. These results suggest that wild meat consumption is a rural-related tradition that decreases as urbanization increases and over time after people move to urban areas. However, it is unclear whether the observed decline will be fast enough to conserve hunted species, or whether children's consumption rate will remain the same as they become adults. Thus, conservation actions in urban areas are still needed. Current conservation efforts in the Amazon do not address urban demand for wildlife and may be insufficient to ensure the survival of traded species in the face of urbanization and human population growth. Our results suggest that conservation interventions must target the urban demand for wildlife, especially by focusing on young people and recent rural to urban migrants. Article impact statement: Amazon urbanite consumption of wildlife is high but decreases with urbanization, over time for rural to urban migrants, and between generations. Impactos de la Migración del Campo a la Ciudad, la Urbanización y del Cambio Generacional sobre el Consumo de Animales Silvestres en el Amazonas     

Understanding implications of consumer behavior for wildlife farming and sustainable wildlife trade

Unsustainable wildlife trade affects biodiversity and the livelihoods of communities dependent upon those resources. Wildlife farming has been proposed to promote sustainable trade, but characterizing markets and understanding consumer behavior remain neglected but essential steps in the design and evaluation of such operations. We used sea turtle trade in the Cayman Islands, where turtles have been farm raised for human consumption for almost 50 years, as a case study to explore consumer preferences toward wild‐sourced (illegal) and farmed (legal) products and potential conservation implications. Combining methods innovatively (including indirect questioning and choice experiments), we conducted a nationwide trade assessment through in‐person interviews from September to December 2014. Households were randomly selected using disproportionate stratified sampling, and responses were weighted based on district population size. We approached 597 individuals, of which 37 (6.2%) refused to participate. Although 30% of households had consumed turtle in the previous 12 months, the purchase and consumption of wild products was rare (e.g., 64–742 resident households consumed wild turtle meat [i.e., 0.3–3.5% of households] but represented a large threat to wild turtles in the area due to their reduced populations). Differences among groups of consumers were marked, as identified through choice experiments, and price and source of product played important roles in their decisions. Despite the long‐term practice of farming turtles, 13.5% of consumers showed a strong preference for wild products, which demonstrates the limitations of wildlife farming as a single tool for sustainable wildlife trade. By using a combination of indirect questioning, choice experiments, and sales data to investigate demand for wildlife products, we obtained insights about consumer behavior that can be used to develop conservation‐demand‐focused initiatives. Lack of data from long‐term social–ecological assessments hinders the evaluation of and learning from wildlife farming. This information is key to understanding under which conditions different interventions (e.g., bans, wildlife farming, social marketing) are likely to succeed.     

Arbuscular mycorrhiza confers lead tolerance and uptake in Miscanthus sacchariflorus

The effects of an arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) association on the growth, survival capabilities, nutrients and lead (Pb) uptake of Miscanthus sacchariflorus under different Pb concentrations were studied in the form of pot cultures. The treatments comprised inoculation or non-inoculation of the AMF, Gigaspora margarita, and the addition of three Pb concentrations to the soil (0, 100 and 1000?mg?kg^?1). The addition of Pb significantly decreased mycorrhizal colonisation. The inoculation of AMF with Pb increased chlorophyll content, Fv/Fm, total dry mass, indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), total nitrogen, and total phosphorus, whereas H₂O₂ level, indole-3-acetic acid oxidase (IAAO) activity, and peroxidase (POD) activity were low compared to those in the non-inoculated treatments. Moreover, the application of AMF together with Pb doses induces concentrations of Pb in the plant, where the higher dose of Pb (1000?mg?kg^?1) induces a lower content of Pb in the aerial part of the plant but a higher content in the root. G. margarita enhanced the tolerance of M. sacchariflorus against Pb toxicity, and facilitated the accumulation of Pb in the plant roots, whereas translocation to the shoots was inhibited at the highest dose Pb (1000?mg?kg^?1). However, in contaminated soil, the Pb removal capability of M. sacchariflorus with AMF was remarkable.