Monitoring and economic factors affecting the economic viability of afforestation for carbon sequestration projects

The Kyoto Protocol is the first step towards achieving the objectives of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and aims among others to promote ‘the protection and enhancement of carbon sinks and reservoirs’. To encourage afforestation for carbon sequestration a project must be economically viable. This study uses a model to analyse the impact on project viability of a range of carbon monitoring options, international carbon credit value and discount rate, applied to a Pinus radiata afforestation project in New Zealand. Monitoring carbon in conjunction with conventional forest inventory shows the highest return. Long-term average carbon accounting has lower accounting costs, compared to annual and 5 yearly accounting, as monitoring is only required every 5–10 years until the long-term average is attained. In this study we conclude that monitoring soil carbon stocks is not economically feasible using any of the accounting methods, when carbon is valued at US$ 10/t. This conclusion may be relevant to forest carbon sequestration projects elsewhere in the world and suggests care is needed in selecting the appropriate carbon monitoring options to avoid the risk that costs could be higher than any monetary benefits from terrestrial carbon sequestration. This would remove any commercial incentive to afforest for carbon sequestration reasons and severely limit the use of forest sinks as part of any package of measures addressing the ultimate objective of the UNFCCC.     

Emotional social support and job burnout among high‐school teachers: is it all due to dispositional affectivity?

The authors investigated whether the relationship between the contents of emotional social support and job burnout among high‐school teachers is spurious because of the role of dispositional positive and negative affectivity. A national sample of 339 teachers was surveyed via a web‐based procedure. Hierarchical regression analyses did not support spuriousness; emotional social support was uniquely predictive of three dimensions of burnout controlling for affectivity. As positive emotional social support increased, emotional exhaustion and cynicism decreased, and professional efficacy increased. As negative emotional social support increased, emotional exhaustion and cynicism also increased. Commonality analyses based on the present data and data reported by K. L. Zellars and P. L. Perrewé (2001; Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 459–467) provided additional support for the unique role of emotional social support on burnout, but these analyses suggest a greater role of affectivity than emotional social support. These findings have implications for research on burnout as well as the prevention of burnout among teachers. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interpreting workplace identities: the role of office décor

Using qualitative methods, I examine how employees in corporate office environments interpreted a variety of relatively permanent office décor (e.g., furniture, photos, personal mementos) as indicators of their colleagues' workplace identities (i.e., central and enduring categorizations regarding employees' status and distinctiveness in the workplace). Similar to the encoding of behavioral cues of identity, findings suggest that interpretation of physical identity markers begins with either (1) a top‐down process of social categorization, in which specific rules are applied to encoding a few, focal, and visually salient pieces of office decor as evidence of management prototypes, or (2) a bottom‐up process of social categorization, in which a variety of physical artifacts are examined and compared to specific managerial exemplars to develop a complex representation of workplace identity. Findings also suggest that some of the unique attributes of physical identity markers (i.e., their potential to be viewed independently from their displayer, and their relative permanence) may be associated with the focus of each profiling process (i.e., on interpreting status vs. distinctiveness, and consistency vs. change). Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

From Forest Regulation to Participatory Facilitation: Forest Employee Perspectives on Organizational Change and Transformation in India

Despite the critical role of government agencies in decentralizing natural resource governance, little work to date has focused on the organizational aspects of the responsible government bureaucracies. Based on a qualitative investigation of the perspectives of Forest Department employees involved in India's Joint Forest Management (JFM) program, this paper aims to provide an understanding of these internal dynamics. Elaborating on why bureaucracies with a learning orientation are essential if participatory natural resource management is to succeed, the paper underlines the constraints to transforming forest agencies' hierarchical work cultures. Foresters describe JFM as a radical departure from traditional forest governance, but suggest that corresponding transformation within the Forest Department has not occurred. Foresters cite as reasons: (1) a target-based incentive system that leaves little room for establishing the relationships with local people needed for collaborative management; (2) rigid rules and regulations that prevent the flexibility needed for adaptive, site-specific problem-solving; (3) a hierarchical, top-down style of communication that prevents the upper administration from learning what is happening on the ground and stifles initiative by field staff; (4) the need for a committed leadership to reverse this hierarchical culture. They point to the few such team-oriented leaders as the key to transforming the Forest Department and enabling participatory forest management to succeed. The authors also recommend accompanying changes in training and reward systems.     

Environmental contaminants in freshwater fish and their risk to piscivorous wildlife based on a national monitoring program

Organochlorine chemical residues and elemental concentrations were measured in piscivorous and benthivorous fish at 111 sites from large U.S. river basins. Potential contaminant sources such as urban and agricultural runoff, industrial discharges, mine drainage, and irrigation varied among the sampling sites. Our objectives were to provide summary statistics for chemical contaminants and to determine if contaminant concentrations in the fish were a risk to wildlife that forage at these sites. Concentrations of dieldrin, total DDT, total PCBs, toxaphene, TCDD-EQ, cadmium, chromium, mercury, lead, selenium, and zinc exceeded toxicity thresholds to protect fish and piscivorous wildlife in samples from at least one site; most exceedences were for total PCBs, mercury, and zinc. Chemical concentrations in fish from the Mississippi River Basin exceeded the greatest number of toxicity thresholds. Screening level wildlife risk analysis models were developed for bald eagle and mink using no adverse effect levels (NOAELs), which were derived from adult dietary exposure or tissue concentration studies and based primarily on reproductive endpoints. No effect hazard concentrations (NEHC) were calculated by comparing the NOAEL to the food ingestion rate (dietary-based NOAEL) or biomagnification factor (tissue-based NOAEL) of each receptor. Piscivorous wildlife may be at risk from a contaminant if the measured concentration in fish exceeds the NEHC. Concentrations of most organochlorine residues and elemental contaminants represented no to low risk to bald eagle and mink at most sites. The risk associated with pentachloroanisole, aldrin, Dacthal, methoxychlor, mirex, and toxaphene was unknown because NOAELs for these contaminants were not available for bald eagle or mink. Risk differed among modeled species and sites. Our screening level analysis indicates that the greatest risk to piscivorous wildlife was from total DDT, total PCBs, TCDD-EQ, mercury, and selenium. Bald eagles were at greater risk to total DDT and total PCBs than mink, whereas risks of TCDD-EQ, mercury, and selenium were greater to mink than bald eagle.     

A Pluralist–Expressivist Critique of the Pet Trade

Elizabeth Anderson’s “pluralist–expressivist” value theory, an alternative to the understanding of value and rationality underlying the “rational actor” model of human behavior, provides rich resources for addressing questions of environmental and animal ethics. It is particularly well-suited to help us think about the ethics of commodification, as I demonstrate in this critique of the pet trade. I argue that Anderson’s approach identifies the proper grounds for criticizing the commodification of animals, and directs our attention to the importance of maintaining social practices and institutions that respect the social meanings of animals. Her theory alone, however, does not adequately address the role of the state in this project. Drawing on social contract theory to fill this gap, I conclude that the state’s role in regulating the pet trade should be limited to ensuring the welfare of animals in the stream of commerce, not prohibiting their mass marketing altogether.     

ESTIMATED RUNOFF FROM MAN-MADE SNOW1

ABSTRACT: The consumptive loss from man-made snowmaking at six Colorado ski areas is calculated. The focus of the procedures in this investigation is on the consumptive loss that occurs to man-made snow particles during the period they reside on or in the snowpack until spring snowmelt (termed the watershed loss). Calculated watershed losses under a variety of precipitation and temperature conditions at six ski areas varied from 7 to 33 percent. These calculations were made using the calibrated Subalpine Water Balance Simulation Model (Leaf and Brink, 1973a, 1973b). The watershed loss of 7 to 33 percent indicates the range of likely watershed losses that can be expected at Colorado ski areas. A previous paper by the authors (Eisel et al., 1988) provided estimates of the mean consumptive loss during the snowmaking process (termed initial loss) for conditions existing at Colorado ski areas to be 6 percent of water applied. Therefore, based on the mean initial loss, the total consumptive loss from man-made snowmaking under conditions found at Colorado ski areas could be expected to range from 13 to 37 percent. These results demonstrate the range of total consumptive losses that could be expected in various years and for various watershed conditions. These total percentage losses cannot be extrapolated directly to other specific sites because the total consumptive loss is dependent on temperature during actual snowmaking, temperature and precipitation throughout the winter at the specific ski area, and watershed conditions at the ski area. Consumptive losses to man-made snow for a specific ski area should be estimated using the handbook procedures developed especially for this purpose (Colorado Ski Country USA, 1986b).     

Low intervention soil remediation approaches

Traditional bioremediation approaches have been used to treat petroleum source contamination in readily accessible soils and sludges. Contamination under existing structures is a greater challenge. Options to deal with this problem have usually been in the extreme (i.e., to dismantle the facility and excavate to an acceptable regulated residual, or to pump and treat for an inordinately long period of time). The excavated material must be further remediated and cleanfill must be added to close the excavation. If site assessments were too conservative or incomplete, new contamination adulterating fill soils may result in additional excavation at some later date. Innovative, cost-efficient technologies must be developed to remove preexisting wastes under structures and to reduce future remediation episodes. An innovative soil bioremediation treatment method was developed and evaluated in petroleum hydrocarbon contaminated (PHC) soils at compressor stations of a natural gas pipeline running through Louisiana. The in-situ protocol was developed for remediating significant acreage subjected to contamination by petroleum-based lubricants and other PHC products resulting from a chronic leakage of lubricating oil used to maintain the pipeline itself. Initial total petroleum hydrocarbon (TPH) measurements revealed values of up to 12,000 mg/kg soil dry weight. The aim of the remediation project was to reduce TPH concentration in the contaminated soils to a level of <200 mg/kg soil dry weight, a level negotiated to be acceptable to state and federal regulators. After monitoring the system for 122 days, all sites showed greater than 99-percent reduction in TPH concentration.     

Biosorption of copper (II) from chemical mechanical planarization wastewaters

Copper Chemical Mechanical Planarization (Cu-CMP) is a critical step in integrated circuit (IC) device manufacturing. CMP and post-CMP cleaning processes are projected to account for 30-40% of the water consumed by IC manufacturers in 2003. CMP wastewater is expected to contain increasing amounts of copper as the industry switches from Al-CMP to Cu-CMP causing some IC manufacturers to run the risk of violating discharge regulations. There are a variety of treatment schemes currently available for the removal of heavy metals from CMP wastewater, however, many introduce additional chemicals to the wastewater, have large space requirements, or are expensive. This work explores the use of microorganisms for waste treatment. A Staphylococcus sp. of bacteria was isolated and studied to determine the feasibility for use in removing copper from Cu-CMP wastewater. A model Cu-CMP wastewater was developed and tested, as well as actual Cu-CMP wastes. Continuous-flow packed column experiments were performed to obtain adsorption data and show copper recovery from the waste. A predictive, empirical model was used to accurately describe Cu removal. Additionally, the immobilized cells were regenerated, allowing for the concentration and potential recovery of copper from the wastewater.