Prospective spatial prediction of infectious disease: experience of New York State (USA) with West Nile Virus and proposed directions for improved surveillance

Infectious disease surveillance has become an international top priority due to the perceived risk of bioterrorism. This is driving the improvement of real-time geo-spatial surveillance systems for monitoring disease indicators, which is expected to have many benefits beyond detecting a bioterror event. West Nile Virus surveillance in New York State (USA) is highlighted as a working system that uses dead American Crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos) to prospectively indicate viral activity prior to human onset. A cross-disciplinary review is then presented to argue that this system, and infectious disease surveillance in general, can be improved by complementing spatial cluster detection of an outcome variable with predictive “risk mapping” that incorporates spatiotemporal data on the environment, climate and human population through the flexible class of generalized linear mixed models.

Systems of innovation, the urban order and sustainable development.

Innovative cities are essential for the economic growth and development of countries. At the same time, however, social and environmental problems related to city growth can be serious threats to the full realisation of the socio-economic contribution that cities can make. City environments thus often provide both new problems and the creative and diverse environments, which make it possible to solve them. The question of whether or not sustainable development is possible largely will be answered in cities. This is also the case for problems related to waste management. Landfills may be located in the countryside, but if a country is to reduce environmental costs, the results will rest on the innovation power of cities. In this paper it is argued that the notion of a 'system of innovation' is helpful in understanding the factors that shape the processes of innovation and that determine the extent to which environmental problems may be solved. In this context, institutional innovation and political innovation as compared to technical innovation are of special importance.     

Community gardens and sustainable land use planning: A case-study of the Alex Wilson community garden

An analytical account of the history and aspirations of the Alex Wilson Community Garden in Toronto provides an ideal opportunity to examine the connections between two typically distinct enterprises: ecological restoration and community gardening. These are both important contemporary ecological movements, but are rarely combined in a single project that demonstrates the principles of sustainable land use and community planning. The garden is named in memory of Alex Wilson, a landscape designer, community activist and writer who worked and lived in Toronto, Canada. During his life, Wilson established a community garden which was eventually replaced by conventional urban development. After his death in 1993, friends and colleagues decided to honour his memory by establishing a permanent community garden in his name. The Alex Wilson Community Garden opened to the public in June 1998. The case-study explores how the garden reflects Wilson's work by linking community gardening and ecological restoration. These features are unified in Wilson's work as a means of nurturing relationships between people, communities and the landscape—relationships that are social, economic and ecological. In his book,The Culture of Nature: North American landscape from Disney to the Exxon Valdez (1991), Wilson argues that “we must build landscapes that heal and empower, that make intelligible our relations with each other and the natural world”. The Alex Wilson Community Garden illustrates in a practical manner the principles espoused by Wilson through its design, planning and functioning. The case-study reports on the innovative approach to landscape design taken in the garden, which reconstructs the natural and cultural history of southern Ontario, featuring lake-shore, agricultural and woodland sections. The garden has been planted exclusively with native plant species, and is expected to have a positive impact on local biodiversity. The planning process which led up to the design of the garden was participatory in nature, encompassing friends and colleagues of Alex Wilson, local residents and city planning officials, and made use of a number of planning tools not usually applied in an urban setting, including the granting of a conservation easement. The garden also addresses emerging issues associated with globalisation and large cities by providing food production opportunities for local residents, including a low-income housing complex and a nearby drop-in centre. Ecological monitoring and assessment of the naturalised area will be carried out by local residents.     

RECHARGE OF THE SNAKE RWER PLAIN AQUIFER: TRANSITIONING FROM INCIDENTAL TO MANAGED1

ABSTRACT: Declining ground-water levels and spring discharges have heightened water user concerns about the sustainability of the Snake River Plain aquifer in southern Idaho. Diminished recharge from surface water irrigation and increased irrigation pumping have been depleting the aquifer at a rate of about 350,000 acre-feet/year. Previously, aquifer conditions were treated as an uncontrollable consequence of weather and development activities. With increasing competition for available water, the State appears to be progressing through a three-stage process of recharge management. The first stage is that which has occurred historically, where recharge is largely an incidental effect of surface water irrigation. The second stage is the implementation of intentional recharge with little regard to identifying or maximizing benefits. Idaho has been at this stage for the past few years. The State is entering a third stage in which recharge sites will be located and designed to meet specific water user and environmental objectives. Preliminary estimates using numerical and analytical models demonstrate that managed recharge within a few miles of the river will result in short-term increases in spring discharge. More distant recharge sites are needed to provide longer-term benefits. The primary challenge facing implementation of the managed recharge program will be the balancing of economic and environmental costs and benefits and to whom they accrue.     

Use of computed tomography imaging for quantifying coarse roots, rhizomes, peat, and particle densities in marsh soils

Computed tomography (CT) imaging has been used to describe and quantify subtidal, benthic animals such as polychaetes, amphipods, and shrimp. Here, for the first time, CT imaging is used to quantify wet mass of coarse roots, rhizomes, and peat in cores collected from organic-rich (Jamaica Bay, New York) and mineral (North Inlet, South Carolina) Spartina alterniflora soils. Image analysis software was coupled with the CT images to measure abundance and diameter of the coarse roots and rhizomes in marsh soils. Previously, examination of marsh roots and rhizomes was limited to various hand-sieving methods that were often time-consuming, tedious, and error prone. CT imaging can discern the coarse roots, rhizomes, and peat based on their varying particle densities. Calibration rods composed of materials with standard densities (i.e., air, water, colloidal silica, and glass) were used to operationally define the specific x-ray attenuations of the coarse roots, rhizomes, and peat in the marsh cores. Significant regression relationships were found between the CT-determined wet mass of the coarse roots and rhizomes and the hand-sieved dry mass of the coarse roots and rhizomes in both the organic-rich and mineral marsh soils. There was also a significant relationship between the soil percentage organic matter and the CT-determined peat particle density among organic-rich and mineral soils. In only the mineral soils, there was a significant relationship between the soil percentage organic matter and the CT-determined peat wet mass. Using CT imaging, significant positive nitrogen fertilization effects on the wet masses of the coarse roots, rhizomes, and peat, and the abundance and diameter of rhizomes were measured in the mineral soils. In contrast, a deteriorating salt marsh island in Jamaica Bay had significantly less mass of coarse roots and rhizomes at depth (10-20 cm), and a significantly lower abundance of roots and rhizomes compared with a stable marsh. However, the diameters of the rhizomes in the deteriorating marsh were significantly greater than in the stable marsh. CT imaging is a rapid approach to quantify coarse roots, rhizomes, peat, and soil particle densities in coastal wetlands, but the method is unable at this time to quantify fine roots.     

Chaotic genetic patchiness in an intertidal limpet,Siphonaria sp.

Variation of 4 polymorphic enzymes was studied for 2 yr (1978 and 1979) in an undescribed species of Siphonaria, a pulmonate limpet, from a rocky shore at Rottnest Island, Western Australia. Depending on the locus, significant genetic differences were found among sites along 50 m of shore, between high and low portions of the shore within sites, between adults and recruits, and between recruits in the 2 yr. This genetic heterogeneity does not follow a simple, consistent pattern, but forms a shifting, ephemeral genetic patchiness best described as chaotic. This patchiness may result from temporal variation of numbers and genotypes of recruits, which leads to the proposal that planktonic dispersal, although causing uniformity on a large scale, can give rise to fine-scale genetic patchiness.     

Charcoal versus LPG grilling: A carbon-footprint comparison

Undoubtedly, grilling is popular. Britons fire up their barbeques some 60 million times a year, consuming many thousands of tonnes of fuel. In milder climates consumption is even higher, and in the developing world, charcoal continues to be an essential cooking fuel. So it is worth comparing the carbon footprints of the two major grill types, charcoal and LPG, and that was the purpose of the study this paper documents. Charcoal and LPG grill systems were defined, and their carbon footprints were calculated for a base case and for some plausible variations to that base case. In the base case, the charcoal grilling footprint of 998 kg CO₂e is almost three times as large as that for LPG grilling, 349 kg CO₂e. The relationship is robust under all plausible sensitivities. The overwhelming factors are that as a fuel, LPG is dramatically more efficient than charcoal in its production and considerably more efficient in cooking. Secondary factors are: use of firelighters, which LPG does not need; LPG's use of a heavier, more complicated grill; and LPG's use of cylinders that charcoal does not need.