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.     

Progress and challenges in consolidating the management of Amazonian protected areas and indigenous territories

Effective management refers to the ability of a protected area or indigenous territory to meet its objectives, particularly as they relate to the protection of biodiversity and forest cover. Effective management is achieved through a process of consolidation, which among other things requires legally protecting sites, integrating sites into land‐use planning, developing and implementing management and resource‐use plans, and securing long‐term funding to pay for recurrent costs. Effectively managing all protected areas and indigenous territories in the Amazon may be needed to avoid a deforestation tipping point beyond which regional climatic feedbacks and global climate change interact to catalyze irreversible drying and savannization of large areas. At present, protected areas and indigenous territories cover 45.5% (3.55 million km²) of the Amazon, most of the 60–70% forest cover required to maintain hydrologic and climatic function. Three independent evaluations of a long‐term large‐scale philanthropic initiative in the Amazon yielded insights into the challenges and advances toward achieving effective management of protected areas and indigenous territories. Over the life of the initiative, management of sites has improved considerably, particularly with respect to management planning and capacity building, but few sites are effectively managed and many lack sufficient long‐term financing, adequate governance, support of nongovernmental organizations, and the means to withstand economic pressures. The time and money required to complete consolidation is still poorly understood, but it is clear that philanthropic funding is critical so long as essential funding needs are not met by governments and other sources, which could be on the order of decades. Despite challenges, it is encouraging that legal protection has expanded greatly and management of sites is improving steadily. Management of protected areas in other developing countries could be informed by improvements that have occurred in Amazonian countries.     

高含盐废水脱盐处理技术研究进展

综述了几种常见的高含盐废水脱盐处理技术的发展历程、工艺原理、优缺点及目前的研究进展，分析了热分离、膜分离、电渗析、离子交换、电吸附、微生物脱盐等方法的优缺点，展望了未来废水脱盐工艺的发展方向。指出：脱盐方法将根据各类水体的水质特点更加精细化；多种脱盐技术联合应用也是今后废水脱盐的发展方向。     

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.     

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.     

Quantifying progress toward a conservation assessment for all plants

The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) set an ambitious target to achieve a conservation assessment for all known plant species by 2020. We consolidated digitally available plant conservation assessments and reconciled their scientific names and assessment status to predefined standards to provide a quantitative measure of progress toward this target. The 241,919 plant conservation assessments generated represent 111,824 accepted land plant species (vascular plants and bryophytes, not algae). At least 73,081 and up to 90,321 species have been assessed at the global scale, representing 21–26% of known plant species. Of these plant species, at least 27,148 and up to 32,542 are threatened. Eighty plant families, including some of the largest, such as Asteraceae, Orchidaceae, and Rubiaceae, are underassessed and should be the focus of assessment effort if the GSPC target is to be met by 2020. Our data set is accessible online (ThreatSearch) and is a baseline that can be used to directly support other GSPC targets and plant conservation action. Although around one‐quarter of a million plant assessments have been compiled, the majority of plants are still unassessed. The challenge now is to build on this progress and redouble efforts to document conservation status of unassessed plants to better inform conservation decisions and conserve the most threatened species.     

Measurement of air exchange rates in different indoor environments using continuous CO2 sensors

A new air exchange rate (AER) monitoring method using continuous CO₂ sensors was developed and validated through both laboratory experiments and field studies. Controlled laboratory simulation tests were conducted in a 1-m³ environmental chamber at different AERs (0.1-10.0 hr^-1). AERs were determined using the decay method based on box model assumptions. Field tests were conducted in classrooms, dormitories, meeting rooms and apartments during 2-5 weekdays using CO₂ sensors coupled with data loggers. Indoor temperature, relative humidity (RH), and CO₂ concentrations were continuously monitored while outdoor parameters combined with on-site climate conditions were recorded. Statistical results indicated that good laboratory performance was achieved: duplicate precision was within 10%, and the measured AERs were 90%-120% of the real AERs. Average AERs were 1.22, 1.37, 1.10, 1.91 and 0.73 hr^-1 in dormitories, air-conditioned classrooms, classrooms with an air circulation cooling system, reading rooms, and meeting rooms, respectively. In an elderly particulate matter exposure study, all the homes had AER values ranging from 0.29 to 3.46 hr??1 in fall, and 0.12 to 1.39 hr^-1 in winter with a median AER of 1.15.     

新型磁性聚谷氨酸吸附剂对水中Pb2+的吸附去除

德岛大学安澤幹人首次利用γ-PGA在Fe3O4磁性纳米颗粒上进行涂层,制得了γ-聚谷氨酸-Fe3O4磁性纳米颗粒（PG-M）.本实验利用透射电镜以及扫描电镜对PG-M吸附剂的形貌进行了分析,发现PG-M与未涂层的Fe3 O4具有相似的形状以及大小,均为不规则的层状结构,且晶粒直径在120～320 nm之间;实验中针对性地对水溶液中Pb2＋进行了吸附探讨.在振荡实验中,通过主要参数的变化（pH值、吸附时间、竞争离子浓度、腐殖酸浓度）,得到如下结果：吸附最佳pH值为7.0;吸附量随着吸附时间的延长而增长,吸附平衡时间为45 min;Na＋对PG-M去除Pb2＋没有很强的干扰性,而Ca2＋则显示出一定的干扰作用;腐殖酸对吸附效果的影响是复杂的,表现为先增强吸附效果,随后降低吸附效果;最佳条件时Pb2＋的最大吸附量为93.3 mg/g.PG-M对Pb2＋的吸附均能较好地符合Freundlich和Langmuir等温吸附模型,其中Langmuir方程能更好地描述PG-M的吸附特征,说明PG-M在水溶液中对金属离子的吸附为单分子层吸附.PG-M吸附符合准二级动力学模型（r2〉0.99）.不同浓度的HCl和HNO3溶液的再生实验发现,0.1 mol/L的HCl溶液作为吸附再生液,可取得较好的再生效果.表明PG-M是可再生的,具有较好的经济性和可持续性.     

聚合铝铁对A2/O系统 EPS及生物絮凝性能的影响

通过向实验室构建的A2/O模型好氧池末端投加聚合铝铁(PAFC)来强化系统的生物除磷,使得出水总磷达到《城市污水处理厂污染物排放标准GB 18918-2002》中的一级A标准,并重点分析投加的PAFC对A2/O系统中活性污泥胞外聚合物(EPS)和活性污泥生物絮凝性能的影响.结果表明,随着PAFC投药量的增加,A2/O系统活性污泥EPS总量变化不大,但EPS组分中蛋白/多糖含量的比值逐渐降低,由投药前的3.30降低至投药后的2.30;EPS中金属离子含量逐渐增加,在厌氧-缺氧-好氧的运行周期内,各处理单元污泥的EPS中金属铝离子含量增加.投加PAFC后,活性污泥颗粒变大,二沉池出水的Zeta电位明显降低,由投药前-15.83 mV降低至-21.20 mV,污泥产量增加.因此,适量投加PAFC后,生物絮凝性能得到改善,出水中悬浊颗粒减少,出水水质变好.     

温室气体的“源”与“汇”及其防治对策

从"源"与"汇"理论入手,分析大气中四种主要温室气体CO2、CH4、N2O和CFCs的"源"与"汇",并提出相应防治对策。