In recent decades, public and private environmental entities have been purchasing or leasing water rights across the Western United States (U.S.) in efforts to restore river flows and aquatic ecosystems. The need to pay for flow restoration arises from the fact that state governments did not begin to reserve water for instream purposes until the 1970s, long after water rights had become over‐appropriated and flows were substantially depleted in most rivers. As a consequence, flow depletion has become the leading cause of fish endangerment in the U.S., including the imperilment of two‐thirds of all native fish species in the Colorado River system. This paper takes stock of the progress made in buying water for the environment, specifically by reviewing and analyzing more than 50 transactions executed by public and private entities and the sources of funding underpinning these transactions. We conclude that nongovernmental actors — such as environmental organizations and state water trusts — are integral to regional efforts to restore river flows; these nongovernmental actors executed more than two‐thirds of the transactions we documented. However, we also conclude that the long‐term success of these nongovernmental actors depends upon the availability of sustained public funding that enables them to build capacity and engage in the large number of transactions needed to restore flows across each state. 相似文献
This paper explores the application of the fuzzy logic for risk assessment of major hazards connected with transportation of flammable substances in long pipelines. As a basis for risk assessment, the framework of the fuzzy Layer of Protection Analysis (fLOPA) was used. fLOPA presents a new approach to risk assessment based on two assumptions: 1. different effects of the layer of protection functions on particular elements of the risks (frequency and severity of consequence), and 2. the application of fuzzy logic system (FLS) composed of three elements: fuzzification, inference process and defuzzification. A further calculation follows LOPA methodology with the use of fuzzy logic system where fuzzy risk matrix is used for risk assessment. A typical case study comprising section of a long pipeline failure is performed and a comparison between the classical LOPA approach and fuzzy approach is made. 相似文献
Previous work has identified two patterns of arthropod recovery after insecticide applications to arable crops: dispersal-mediated recolonisation from untreated areas (Type A) and recolonisation within treated areas assisted by reduced predation (Type B). In this study, connectivity between field-edge habitats was manipulated using barriers to investigate whether a crop edge and adjacent hedgerow influence recolonisation of an insecticide-treated crop by surface-active Collembola and other arthropods. Collembola recovery patterns differed among closely-related taxa. Epigeic collembolan and macroarthropod communities were more diverse and abundant, and rates of artificial prey predation were higher, in sprayed crop areas connected to both hedgerow and unsprayed crop edge than in sprayed areas connected to the unsprayed edge alone. These findings indicate that effectiveness of unsprayed crop edges as sources of field recolonisation may depend on adjoining field margin habitats. An assumption in risk assessment that unsprayed crop edges assist population recovery within treated areas is not supported. 相似文献
The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) has converted just over 36 million acres of cropland into potential wildlife habitat, primarily grassland. Thus, the CRP should benefit grassland songbirds, a group of species that is declining across the United States and is of conservation concern. Additionally, the CRP is an important part of multi-agency, regional efforts to restore northern bobwhite populations. However, comprehensive assessments of the wildlife benefits of CRP at regional scales are lacking. We used Breeding Bird Survey and National Resources Inventory data to assess the potential for the CRP to benefit northern bobwhite and other grassland birds with overlapping ranges and similar habitat associations. We built regression models for 15 species in seven different ecological regions. Forty-nine of 108 total models contained significant CRP effects (P < 0.05), and 48 of the 49 contained positive effects. Responses to CRP varied across ecological regions. Only eastern meadowlark was positively-related to CRP in all the ecological regions, and western meadowlark was the only species never related to CRP. CRP was a strong predictor of bird abundance compared to other land cover types. The potential for CRP habitat as a regional conservation tool to benefit declining grassland bird populations should continue to be assessed at a variety of spatial scales. We caution that bird-CRP relations varied from region to region and among species. Because the NRI provides relatively coarse resolution information on CRP, more detailed information about CRP habitats (spatial arrangement, age of the habitat (time since planting), specific conservation practices used) should be included in future assessments to fully understand where and to what extent CRP can benefit grassland birds. 相似文献
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that residential radon levels in the United States lead to approximately 13,600 lung cancer deaths per year. To address this problem, the Agency has identified three program initiatives that can provide substantial reductions in the public’s risks: (1) public information activities that urge the public to test for radon and reduce elevated concentrations in existing homes, (2) new construction standards to reduce radon entry, and (3) radon testing and mitigation during real estate transactions. This paper analyzes the costs and risk reductions that could result from the implementation of these major initiatives, showing how all three elements cost-effectively protect the public’s health. 相似文献
Objective: Rapid urbanization and motorization without corresponding increases in helmet usage have made traumatic brain injury due to road traffic accidents a major public health crisis in Cambodia. This analysis was conducted to quantify the impact of helmets on severity of injury, neurosurgical indication, and functional outcomes at discharge for motorcycle operators who required hospitalization for a traumatic brain injury following a road traffic accident in Cambodia.
Methods: The medical records of 491 motorcycle operators who presented to a major tertiary care center in Cambodia with traumatic brain injury were retrospectively analyzed using multivariate logistic regression.
Results: The most common injuries at presentation were contusions (47.0%), epidural hematomas (30.1%), subdural hematomas (27.9%), subarachnoid hemorrhages (12.4%), skull fractures (21.4%), and facial fractures (18.5%). Moderate-to-severe loss of consciousness was present in 36.3% of patients. Not wearing a helmet was associated with an odds ratio of 2.20 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.15–4.22) for presenting with moderate to severe loss of consciousness compared to helmeted patients. Craniotomy or craniectomy was indicated for evacuation of hematoma in 20.0% of cases, and nonhelmeted patients had 3.21-fold higher odds of requiring neurosurgical intervention (95% CI, 1.25–8.27). Furthermore, lack of helmet usage was associated with 2.72-fold higher odds of discharge with functional deficits (95% CI, 1.14–6.49). In total, 30.1% of patients were discharged with severe functional deficits.
Conclusions: Helmets demonstrate a protective effect and may be an effective public health intervention to significantly reduce the burden of traumatic brain injury in Cambodia and other developing countries with increasing rates of motorization across the world. 相似文献
The ecosystem services concept is used to make explicit the diverse benefits ecosystems provide to people, with the goal of improving assessment and, ultimately, decision-making. Alongside material benefits such as natural resources (e.g., clean water, timber), this concept includes—through the ‘cultural’ category of ecosystem services—diverse non-material benefits that people obtain through interactions with ecosystems (e.g., spiritual inspiration, cultural identity, recreation). Despite the longstanding focus of ecosystem services research on measurement, most cultural ecosystem services have defined measurement and inclusion alongside other more ‘material’ services. This gap in measurement of cultural ecosystem services is a product of several perceived problems, some of which are not real problems and some of which can be mitigated or even solved without undue difficulty. Because of the fractured nature of the literature, these problems continue to plague the discussion of cultural services. In this paper we discuss several such problems, which although they have been addressed singly, have not been brought together in a single discussion. There is a need for a single, accessible treatment of the importance and feasibility of integrating cultural ecosystem services alongside others. 相似文献
Anurans (frogs and toads) are among the most globally threatened taxonomic groups. Successful conservation of anurans will rely on improved data on the status and changes in local populations, particularly for rare and threatened species. Automated sensors, such as acoustic recorders, have the potential to provide such data by massively increasing the spatial and temporal scale of population sampling efforts. Analyzing such data sets will require robust and efficient tools that can automatically identify the presence of a species in audio recordings. Like bats and birds, many anuran species produce distinct vocalizations that can be captured by autonomous acoustic recorders and represent excellent candidates for automated recognition. However, in contrast to birds and bats, effective automated acoustic recognition tools for anurans are not yet widely available. An effective automated call-recognition method for anurans must be robust to the challenges of real-world field data and should not require extensive labeled data sets. We devised a vocalization identification tool that classifies anuran vocalizations in audio recordings based on their periodic structure: the repeat interval-based bioacoustic identification tool (RIBBIT). We applied RIBBIT to field recordings to study the boreal chorus frog (Pseudacris maculata) of temperate North American grasslands and the critically endangered variable harlequin frog (Atelopus varius) of tropical Central American rainforests. The tool accurately identified boreal chorus frogs, even when they vocalized in heavily overlapping choruses and identified variable harlequin frog vocalizations at a field site where it had been very rarely encountered in visual surveys. Using a few simple parameters, RIBBIT can detect any vocalization with a periodic structure, including those of many anurans, insects, birds, and mammals. We provide open-source implementations of RIBBIT in Python and R to support its use for other taxa and communities. 相似文献
Ambio - The phenomenon of collective action and the origin of collective action problems have been extensively and systematically studied in the social sciences. Yet, while we have substantial... 相似文献