Regional planning and sustainability: limits and potentials of South Africa's integrated development plans

This paper considers whether South Africa's Integrated Development Plans provide an adequate framework for achieving sustainable regional development, particularly for peripheral regions of developing countries. It examines the case of Integrated Development Planning in the Ugu District Municipality, which has been acclaimed for its emphasis on incorporating principles of sustainable development into its planning processes. While the emphasis on integration and the multi‐sectoral approach are strengths, greater attention needs to be given to environmental aspects, and the form of planning needs to be adapted to the context, and its social, economic and political dynamics.     

The role of lakeshore homeowner associations in environmental management

The purpose of this study was to determine what role lakeshore homeowner associations might play in environmental management. Lakeshore homeowner associations are formally organized groups of individuals owning property on or in the vicinity of a lake. Lakeshore homeowner associations in the Adirondack Park region of New York State were investigated by both a questionnaire mailed to all presidents and an informal field survey of some permanent lakeshore residents. The study showed that many of these organizations have become highly involved in an array of environmental management activities during their relatively long history. These activities include monitoring septic tank seepage, regulating the use of motorboats, restricting shoreline development, and assisting state and local planning agencies in detecting zoning violations. Some lakeshore homeowner associations are not highly involved in activities designed to maintain or improve quality of the lake environment. These associations are concerned instead primarily with organizing social events and performing other miscellaneous activities, such as access road maintenance. These associations, however, report lower overall water quality in their lakes than those associations with a high degree of involvement in environmental management. The study uncovered two important factors that tend to undermine the ability of lakeshore homeowner associations to undertake environmental management activities. One is the extent of cooperation that can be expected from nonmember residents of the lakeshore, such as seasonal vacationers. The second is an environmental problem that does not originate locally and therefore cannot be controlled by a local organization. Acid precipitation, rated by association presidents as their foremost water quality concern, is one such problem in the Adirondack Park Region.     

Conservation of biodiversity within Canadian agricultural landscapes: Integrating habitat for wildlife

Industrialized agriculture currently substitutes many of the ecological functions of soil micro-organisms, macroinvertebrates, wild plants, and vertebrate animals with high cost inputs of pesticides and fertilizers. Enhanced biological diversity potentially offers agricultural producers a means of reducing the cost of their production. Conservation of biodiversity in agricultural landscapes may be greatly enhanced by the adoption of certain crop management practices, such as reduced pesticide usage or measures to prevent soil erosion. Still, the vast monocultures comprising the crop area in many Canadian agricultural landscapes are often of limited conservation value, thus the inclusion of appropriate wildlife habitat in and around arable lands is a fundamental prerequisite for the integration of wild species within agricultural landscapes. This review of current literature considers the potential for non-crop areas within agricultural landscapes to be reservoirs of agronomically beneficial organisms including plants, invertebrates, and vertebrate species. Non-crop habitats adjacent to crop land have been identified as significant for the maintenance of plant species diversity, for the conservation of beneficial pollinating and predatory insects, and as essential habitat for birds. A key component for enhancement of biodiversity is the reintroduction of landscape heterogeneity by (1) protection and enhancement of key non-crop areas, (2) smaller fields and farms, and (3) a greater mixture of crops, through rotation, intercropping and regional diversification. The benefits of increased biodiversity within arable lands are reviewed for various species groups. In the Canadian context, any serious attempt to derive significant agronomic benefit from increased biodiversity will require considerable changes in the agricultural programs and policies which shape mainstream industrialized agriculture. The problems of crop depredation by vertebrate species, weed and insect competition, which still represent significant impediments to the creation and proper management of wildlife habitat, are also discussed.     

How might we model an ecosystem?

Predicting ecosystem effects is of crucial importance in a world at threat from natural and human-mediated change. Here we propose an ecologically defensible representation of an ecosystem that facilitates predictive modelling. The representation has its roots in the early trophic and energetic theory of ecosystem dynamics and more recent functional ecology and network theory. Using the arable ecosystem of the UK as an example, we show that the representation allows simplification from the many interacting plant and invertebrate species, typically present in arable fields, to a more tractable number of trophic-functional types. Our compound hypothesis is that “trophic-functional types of plants and invertebrates can be used to explain the structure, diversity and dynamics of arable ecosystems”. The trophic-functional types act as containers for individuals, within an individual-based model, sharing similar trophic behaviour and traits of biomass transformation. Biomass, or energy, flows between the types and this allows the key ecological properties of individual abundance and body mass, at each trophic height, to be followed through simulations. Our preliminary simulation results suggest that the model shows great promise. The simulation output for simple ecosystems, populated with realistic parameter values, is consistent with current laboratory observations and provides exciting indications that it could reproduce field scale phenomena. The model also produces output that links the individual, population and community scales, and may be analysed and tested using community, network (food web) and population dynamic theory. We show that we can include management effects, as perturbations to parameter values, for modelling the effects of change and indicating management responses to change. This model will require robust analysis, testing and validation, and we discuss how we will achieve this in the future.     

Mutualism as reciprocal exploitation: African plant-ants defend foliar but not reproductive structures

The foundation of many plant-ant mutualisms is ant protection of plants from herbivores in exchange for food and/or shelter. While the role of symbiotic ants in protecting plants from stem- and leaf-feeding herbivores has been intensively studied, the relationship between ant defense and measures of plant fitness has seldom been quantified. We studied ant aggression, damage by herbivores and seed predators, and fruit production among Acacia drepanolobium trees occupied by four different acacia-ant species in an East African savanna. Levels of ant aggression in response to experimental disturbance differed strongly among the four species. All four ant species recruited more strongly to new leaf growth on host plants following disturbance, while recruitment to developing fruits was on average an order of magnitude lower. Host plants occupied by more aggressive ant species suffered significantly less vegetative damage from leaf-feeding insects, stem-boring beetles, and vertebrate browsers than host plants occupied by less aggressive ant species. However, there were no differences among fruiting host plants occupied by different ant species in levels of seed predation by bruchid seed predators. Fruit production on host trees was significantly correlated with tree stem diameter but not with the identity of resident ants. Our results demonstrate that defense of host plants may differ substantially among ant species and between vegetative and reproductive structures and that fruit production is not necessarily correlated with high levels of aggression by resident ants.     

Host preference,site fidelity,and homing behavior of the symbiotically luminous cardinalfish,Siphamia tubifer (Perciformes: Apogonidae)

The sea urchin cardinalfish, Siphamia tubifer (Perciformes: Apogonidae), is unusual among coral reef fishes for its use of bioluminescence, produced by symbiotic bacteria, while foraging at night. As a foundation for understanding the relationship between the symbiosis and the ecology of the fish, this study examined the diel behavior, host urchin preference, site fidelity, and homing of S. tubifer in June and July of 2012 and 2013 at reefs near Sesoko Island, Okinawa, Japan (26°38′N, 127°52′E). After foraging, S. tubifer aggregated in groups among the spines of the longspine sea urchin, Diadema setosum, and the banded sea urchin, Echinothrix calamaris. A preference for D. setosum was evident (P < 0.001), especially by larger individuals (>25 mm standard length, P < 0.01), and choice experiments demonstrated the ability of S. tubifer to recognize and orient to a host urchin and to conspecifics. Tagging studies revealed that S. tubifer exhibits daily fidelity to a host urchin; 43–50 and 26–37 % of tagged individuals were associated with the same urchin after 3 and 7 days. Tagged fish also returned to their site of origin after displacement; by day two, 23–43 and 27–33 % of tagged individuals returned from displacement distances of 1 and 2 km. These results suggest that S. tubifer uses various environmental cues for homing and site fidelity; similar behaviors and cues might be used by larvae for recruitment to settlement sites and for the acquisition of luminous symbiotic bacteria.     

Observations of urban airborne particle number concentrations during rush-hour conditions: analysis of the number based size distributions and modal parameters

A summertime study of the number concentration and the size distribution of combustion derived nanometre sized particles (termed nanoparticles) from diesel and spark-ignition (SI) engine emissions were made under rush-hour and free-flow traffic conditions at an urban roadside location in Leeds, UK in July 2003. The measured total particle number concentrations (N(TOTAL)) were of the order 1.8 x 10(4) to 3.4 x 10(4) cm(-3), and tended to follow the diurnal traffic flow patterns. The N(TOTAL) was dominated by particles < or =100 nm in diameter which accounted for between 89-93% of the measured particle number. By use of a log-normal fitting procedure, the modal parameters of the number based particle size distribution of urban airborne particulates were derived from the roadside measurements. Four component modes were identified. Two nucleation modes were found, with a smaller, more minor, mode composed principally of sub-11 nm particles, believed to be derived from particles formed from the nucleation of gaseous species in the atmosphere. A second mode, much larger in terms of number, was composed of particles within the size range of 10-20 nm. This second mode was believed to be principally derived from the condensation of the unburned fuel and lube oil (the solvent organic fraction or SOF) as it cooled on leaving the engine exhaust. Third and fourth modes were noted within the size ranges of 28-65 nm and 100-160 nm, respectively. The third mode was believed to be representative of internally mixed Aitken mode particles composed of a soot/ash core with an adsorbed layer of readily volatilisable material. The fourth mode was believed to be composed of chemically aged, secondary particles. The larger nucleation and Aitken modes accounted for between 80-90% of the measured N(TOTAL), and the particles in these modes were believed to be derived from SI and diesel engine emissions. The overall size distribution, particularly in modes II-IV, was observed to be strongly related to the number of primary particle emissions, with larger count median diameters observed under conditions where low numbers of primary soot based particles were present.     

Willingness to accept mobility opportunities: Destination makes a difference

Previous research on employee willingness to accept mobility opportunities involving geographic relocation has generally not specified characteristics of potential destination communities. However, studies of employee adjustment following relocation suggest that community characteristics are critical to employee satisfaction. In order to better understand the factors that influence employees' acceptance of mobility opportunities, we investigated differences in both levels and antecedents of willingness to accept mobility opportunities involving relocation between similar communities and relocation between dissimilar communities. Results suggest that employees were particularly reluctant to accept moves between dissimilar communities, and that the role of career factors, community attachment, and location preferences as antecedents varied depending on the specific nature of the mobility opportunity. Implications for research and practice are discussed.