Collaborative governance for climate change adaptation in Canada: experimenting with adaptive co-management

The search for strategies to address ‘super wicked problems’ such as climate change is gaining urgency, and a collaborative governance approach, and adaptive co-management in particular, is increasingly recognized as one such strategy. However, the conditions for adaptive co-management to emerge and the resulting network structures and relational patterns remain unclear in the literature. To address these identified needs, this study examines social relationships from a network perspective while initiating a collaborative multiactor initiative aimed to develop into adaptive co-management for climate change adaptation, an action research project undertaken in the Niagara region of Canada. The project spanned 1 year, and a longitudinal analysis of participants’ networks and level of participation in the process was performed. Evidence of support for climate change adaptation from the process included the development of deliberative and adaptive responses to opportunities presented to the group and the development of a strong subgroup of participants where decision-making was centered. However, the complexity of the challenge of addressing climate change, funding constraints, competing initiatives, and the lack of common views among participants may have contributed to the group, highlighting the finding that beneficial network structural features and relational patterns are necessary but not sufficient condition for the development of an adaptive co-management process. The context of climate change adaptation may require a different social network structure and processes than other contexts for adaptive co-management to occur, and there may be limitations to adaptive co-management for dealing with super wicked problems.     

Structural and functional responses of benthic invertebrates to imidacloprid in outdoor stream mesocosms

Structural and functional responses of a benthic macroinvertebrate assemblage to pulses of the insecticide imidacloprid were assessed in outdoor stream mesocosms. Imidacloprid pulses reduced invertebrate abundance and community diversity in imidacloprid-dosed streams compared to control streams. These results correlated well with effects of imidacloprid on leaf litter decomposition and feeding rates of Pteronarcys comstocki, a stonefly, in artificial streams. Reductions in oxygen consumption of stoneflies exposed to imidacloprid were also observed in laboratory experiments. Our findings suggest that leaf litter degradation and single species responses can be sensitive ecotoxicological endpoints that can be used as early warning indicators and biomonitoring tools for pesticide contamination. The data generated illustrates the value of mesocosm experiments in environmental assessment and how the consideration of functional and structural endpoints of natural communities together with in situ single species bioassays can improve the evaluation and prediction of pesticide effects on stream ecosystems.     

Diet of the hatchetfish Sternoptyx diaphana

Sternoptyx diaphana Hermann is a non-migrating hatchetfish inhabiting the mesopelagic zone between 300 and 1500 m in temperate to tropical oceanic regions. An analysis is presented of the diet of this species, collected from 5 oceanic faunal provinces—the Pacific Subantarctic, and 4 subregions of the North Atlantic Ocean. Stomach analyses of 20 to 40 mm specimens revealed considerable intra-trawl (fish to fish), intraregional (Station to station), and inter-regional variation in size and composition of the diet. Generic composition of stomach contents differed noticeably from region to region, with the highest degree of faunal affinity being only 38%. The dominant food items both in terms of biomass and abundance also varied inter-regionally, with fish, euphausiids, or decapods predominant by weight; and euphaussids, copepods, or amphipods most prevalent by number. Differences in size distribution of food items from region to region were also noted. S. diaphana from regions of cooler overlying water masses fed on fewer but larger prey items, and diet was less diverse than that of fish from warmer waters. The diet consists primarily of omnivorous and carnivorous prey, and there is evidence that larger specimens feed on larger food items. The broad size-distribution and taxonomic spectrum of the prey, features of functional morphology, and low density as inferred from trawl catches, indicate that S. diaphana is a predator of limited pursuit capability. Feeding strategy appears to involve capture of the nearest available prey within its immediate vicinity.     

Linking Riparian Dynamics and Groundwater: An Ecohydrologic Approach to Modeling Groundwater and Riparian Vegetation

The growing use of global freshwater supplies is increasing the need for improved modeling of the linkage between groundwater and riparian vegetation. Traditional groundwater models such as MODFLOW have been used to predict changes in regional groundwater levels, and thus riparian vegetation potential attributable to anthropogenic water use. This article describes an approach that improves on these modeling techniques through several innovations. First, evapotranspiration from riparian/wetland systems is modeled in a manner that more realistically reflects plant ecophysiology and vegetation complexity. In the authors’ model programs (RIP-ET and PRE-RIP-ET), the single, monotonically increasing evapotranspiration flux curve in traditional groundwater models is replaced with a set of ecophysiologically based curves, one for each plant functional group present. For each group, the curve simulates transpiration declines that occur both as water levels decline below rooting depths and as waters rise to levels that produce anoxic soil conditions. Accuracy is further improved by more effective spatial handling of vegetation distribution, which allows modeling of surface elevation and depth to water for multiple vegetation types within each large model cell. The use of RIP-ET in groundwater models can improve the accuracy of basin scale estimates of riparian evapotranspiration rates, riparian vegetation water requirements, and water budgets. Two case studies are used to demonstrate that RIP-ET produces significantly different evapotranspiration estimates than the traditional method. When combined with vegetation mapping and a supporting program (RIP-GIS), RIP-ET also enables predictions of riparian vegetation response to water use and development scenarios. The RIP-GIS program links the head distribution from MODFLOW with surface digital elevation models, producing moderate- to high-resolution depth-to-groundwater maps. Together with information on plant rooting depths, these can be used to predict vegetation response to water allocation decisions. The different evapotranspiration outcomes produced by traditional and RIP-ET approaches affect resulting interpretations of hydro-vegetation dynamics, including the effects of groundwater pumping stress on existing habitats, and thus affect subsequent policy decisions.     

Biodiversity Conservation and Resource Tenure Regimes: A Case Study from Northeast Cambodia

The management of tropical protected areas is a contentious issue in resource management and often leads to an unproductive polarization of viewpoints supporting either protectionist or sustainable development paradigms. This paper argues for a context-driven approach whereby effective management requires inputs from both paradigms in different situations. A key element of context is understanding long-practiced resource tenures and their ability to meet future conservation and livelihood goals. Different types of tenure arrangements are often required for different resources. This approach is illustrated by analysis of Virachey National Park in NE Cambodia. This park encompasses part of the ancestral territory of ethnic Brao people, who rely upon swidden agriculture, fish, terrestrial wildlife, and various nontimber forest products (NTFPs) for their livelihoods. These people have developed a mix of resource tenure regimes to promote sustainable use and to maximize local benefits. In the face of contemporary pressures, some of these traditional approaches are effective, while others are not. The paper suggests avenues for building on long-established management practices of the Brao to achieve park management goals while enhancing the welfare of the Brao people. A mix of private ownership, common property management, and central government involvement may be required to maximize benefits to local people and ensure long-term protection of biodiversity.     

Analysis of polychlorobiphenyls from used transformers for polychlorodibenzofurans

The results of analyses for polychlorodibenzofuran (PCDF) content in two samples of polychlorobiphenyl (PCB) from used electrical transformers are presented and discussed. In neither sample was there evidence for enhanced PCDF concentrations even though one of them had been subjected to overheating while in service.     

Polychlorodibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans in technical pentachlorophenol - results of a collaborative analytical exercise

Results of analyses of eight samples of technical pentachlorophenol conducted by three different analytical methods are presented and discussed.     

Agroecology in context

Agriculture and medicine palpably manifest a culture's world view. Correspondingly, changes in agriculture and medicine may be barometers of change in a culture's overall outlook. Conventional industrial agriculture and modern surgical/chemical medicine clearly express the Newtonian mechanical model of nature. The modern classical world view represents nature to be an externally related, atomic, reductive, material, and mechanical aggregate. Modern medicine, correspondingly, treats the body as an elaborate mechanism and industrial agriculture regards soil as a substratum for monocultures assembled from fossil fuels, synthetic fertilizers, and chemical pesticides. The nascent agroecology and wellness movements each express and reflect the new paradigm variously emerging from ecology and quantum physics. Ecology and the new physics, each in its own way, represent nature to be an internally related, systemic, integrated, organic whole. Agroecology translates this abstract new vision into a concrete agricultural vocabulary: The farmstead is regarded as an artificial ecosystem with a multiplicity of diverse plant and animal constituents interacting with one another and with environing natural ecosystems in complex and mutually supporting ways.     

Examining motor vehicle crash involvement and readiness to change on drinking and driving behaviors among injured emergency department patients

Objective: To measure the effect of motor vehicle crash (MVC) involvement and readiness to change drinking and driving behaviors on subsequent driving and drinking behaviors among injured emergency department (ED) patients who use alcohol at harmful levels.

Methods: This was a secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial of injured ED patients who screened positive for harmful alcohol use, who at recruitment reported driving in the past 12 months and received at least one of the intended intervention sessions (brief behavioral intervention versus attention placebo control; N = 407). Outcome variables were as follows: (1) change in 6 impaired driving behaviors and (2) report of MVCs and traffic violations in the 12 months following recruitment; predictor variables were as follows: (1) treatment assignment, (2) MVC involvement at recruitment, and (3) baseline readiness to change alcohol use and drinking and driving.

Results: Modeling of change in the 6 impaired driving variables indicated that neither the recruitment visits being MVC related nor baseline readiness to change alcohol use and drinking and driving behaviors predicted greater changes in impaired driving over time. Baseline reports of past moving traffic violations and the ED visit being MVC related predicted a greater likelihood of each behavior at 12 months following study recruitment.

Conclusions: This study and others have demonstrated that ED patients with harmful alcohol use are willing to engage in behavioral interventions directed at changing risky behaviors. However, this study did not demonstrate that patients considered having the potential to be more engaged with the intervention because their ED visit was MVC related and/or they had expressed intent to change their risky alcohol use and drinking and driving behaviors were more likely to change these risky behaviors.     

Ecological Sustainability as a Conservation Concept

Neither the classic resource management concept of maximum sustainable yield nor the concept of sustainable development are useful to contemporary, nonanthropocentric, ecologically informed conservation biology. As an alternative, we advance an ecological definition of sustainability that is in better accord with biological conservation: meeting human needs without compromising the health of ecosystems. In addition to familiar benefit-cost constraints on human economic activity, we urge adding ecologic constraints. Projects are not choice-worthy if they compromise the health of the ecosystems in which human economic systems are embedded. Sustainability, so defined, is proffered as an approach to conservation that would complement wildlands preservation for ecological integrity, not substitute for wildlands preservation.