Muskox status,recent variation,and uncertain future

Ambio - Muskoxen (Ovibos moschatus) are an integral component of Arctic biodiversity. Given low genetic diversity, their ability to respond to future and rapid Arctic change is unknown, although...     

Microtargeting for conservation

Widespread human action and behavior change is needed to achieve many conservation goals. Doing so at the requisite scale and pace will require the efficient delivery of outreach campaigns. Conservation gains will be greatest when efforts are directed toward places of high conservation value (or need) and tailored to critical actors. Recent strategic conservation planning has relied primarily on spatial assessments of biophysical attributes, largely ignoring the human dimensions. Elsewhere, marketers, political campaigns, and others use microtargeting—predictive analytics of big data—to identify people most likely to respond positively to particular messages or interventions. Conservationists have not yet widely capitalized on these techniques. To investigate the effectiveness of microtargeting to improve conservation, we developed a propensity model to predict restoration behavior among 203,645 private landowners in a 5,200,000 ha study area in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed (U.S.A.). To isolate the additional value microtargeting may offer beyond geospatial prioritization, we analyzed a new high-resolution land-cover data set and cadastral data to identify private owners of riparian areas needing restoration. Subsequently, we developed and evaluated a restoration propensity model based on a database of landowners who had conducted restoration in the past and those who had not (n = 4978). Model validation in a parallel database (n = 4989) showed owners with the highest scorers for propensity to conduct restoration (i.e., top decile) were over twice as likely as average landowners to have conducted restoration (135%). These results demonstrate that microtargeting techniques can dramatically increase the efficiency and efficacy of conservation programs, above and beyond the advances offered by biophysical prioritizations alone, as well as facilitate more robust research of many social–ecological systems.     

马斯格雷夫集团:把可持续性带给购物者

马斯格雷夫(Musgrave)集团是世界上第一个"按照"约翰内斯堡环境高峰会议发起的2002全球报告举措指南公布了可持续报告的公司.这个指南很快成为准备、交流和要求有关企业环境行为的普遍接受和广泛采纳的世界范围的框架.在这一点上,马斯格雷夫集团的成就是特别显著的,由于它是一个私营公司,因此在法律上不需要与股东和利益相关者讨论这些问题.该公司承认,在进行其可持续计划时,其目的是在经济和环境可持续发展两个方面取得同样多的进展.     

Seasonal and spatial distribution of metals in surface sediment of an urban estuary

Aquatic pollution by metals is of concern because of various toxic effects to marine life. The Tolka Estuary, Co. Dublin, Ireland, is a typical Irish urban estuary. It has a significant metal loading originating from the urban environment. Results of a 25month analysis of cadmium, copper, lead and zinc spatial and temporal distribution over 10 sample locations in this estuary are presented in this paper. Metal concentrations were analysed using differential pulse polarography. Significant seasonal and spatial trends in metal distribution were observed over the 25months. Sediment metal concentrations gradually increased (30-120%) in spring to a maximum at the end of summer which was followed by a decrease in winter months (30-60%). Sediment organic matter (OM) concentrations exhibited similar seasonal trends and a positive correlation between OM and metal distributions was observed, implying OM had an influence on metal distributions over time.     

Growth in the bivalve Yoldia eightsi at Signy Island,Antarctica, determined from internal shell increments and calcium-45 incorporation

The growth rate of the infaunal nuculanid bivalve Yoldia eightsi at Factory Cove, Signy Island, South Orkney Islands (maritime Antarctica), was estimated from internal shell increments and ⁴⁵Ca incorporation of individuals collected monthly from December 1987 to April 1989. Acetate peels of etched shells revealed clear first-order increments, with less well defined, narrower, second-and third-order increments. The first-order increments were assumed to be annual, although there is no independent confirmation of this assumption. Unfortunately abrasion of the umbo region and the small thin shells of Y. eightsi meant that in no case could a complete sequence of increments be measured realiably on any individual shell. Measurements of 1043 first-order increments from 130 shells where a minimum of two consecutive increments could be detected were therefore pooled, and a population growth curve constructed from a Ford-Walford plot. This indicated a slow growth rate, with a maximum shell height of 22.3 mm (equivalent to a shell length of 35.6 mm) being reached at an age >60 yr. The size-frequency distribution of 1521 individuals pooled from winter (July to October) samples revealed a distinct lack of smaller (younger) individuals, possibly reflecting poor recruitment in areas of dense adult populations. The largest shell recovered in the samples was 33.5 mm in length, with an estimated age of 52 yr. Short-term ⁴⁵Ca-incorporation experiments indicated a mean daily rate of growth increment of 3.8 m for individuals of 12 mm shell height, which matches the proposed annual growth rate if growth is assumed to occur for about 150 d each year and the first-order increments are assumed to be annual.     

A Structured Approach to Incidental Take Decision Making

Decision making related to incidental take of endangered species under U.S. law lends itself well to a structured decision making approach. Incidental take is the permitted killing, harming, or harassing of a protected species under the law as long as that harm is incidental to an otherwise lawful activity and does not “reduce appreciably the probability of survival and recovery in the wild.” There has been inconsistency in the process used for determining incidental take allowances across species and across time for the same species, and structured decision making has been proposed to improve decision making. I use an example decision analysis to demonstrate the process and its applicability to incidental take decisions, even under significant demographic uncertainty and multiple, competing objectives. I define the example problem, present an objectives statement and a value function, use a simulation model to assess the consequences of a set of management actions, and evaluate the tradeoffs among the different actions. The approach results in transparent and repeatable decisions.