The role of digital data entry in participatory environmental monitoring

Many argue that monitoring conducted exclusively by scientists is insufficient to address ongoing environmental challenges. One solution entails the use of mobile digital devices in participatory monitoring (PM) programs. But how digital data entry affects programs with varying levels of stakeholder participation, from nonscientists collecting field data to nonscientists administering every step of a monitoring program, remains unclear. We reviewed the successes, in terms of management interventions and sustainability, of 107 monitoring programs described in the literature (hereafter programs) and compared these with case studies from our PM experiences in Australia, Canada, Ethiopia, Ghana, Greenland, and Vietnam (hereafter cases). Our literature review showed that participatory programs were less likely to use digital devices, and 2 of our 3 more participatory cases were also slow to adopt digital data entry. Programs that were participatory and used digital devices were more likely to report management actions, which was consistent with cases in Ethiopia, Greenland, and Australia. Programs engaging volunteers were more frequently reported as ongoing, but those involving digital data entry were less often sustained when data collectors were volunteers. For the Vietnamese and Canadian cases, sustainability was undermined by a mismatch in stakeholder objectives. In the Ghanaian case, complex field protocols diminished monitoring sustainability. Innovative technologies attract interest, but the foundation of effective participatory adaptive monitoring depends more on collaboratively defined questions, objectives, conceptual models, and monitoring approaches. When this foundation is built through effective partnerships, digital data entry can enable the collection of more data of higher quality. Without this foundation, or when implemented ineffectively or unnecessarily, digital data entry can be an additional expense that distracts from core monitoring objectives and undermines project sustainability. The appropriate role of digital data entry in PM likely depends more on the context in which it is used and less on the technology itself.     

Is the degrowth debate relevant to China?

In industrialized countries, the idea of degrowth has emerged as a response to environmental, social, and economic crises. Realizing environmental limits to and failures of more than half a century of continual economic growth in terms of social progress and environmental sustainability, the degrowth paradigm calls for a downscaling of consumption and production for social equity and ecological sustainability. The call for economic degrowth is generally considered to be delimited to rich countries, where reduced consumption can save “ecological space” enabling people in poor countries to enjoy the benefits of economic growth. China, as one of the economically most expanding countries in the world, has dramatically improved its living standards, particularly along the Eastern coast, over the latest 30 years. However, China is absent from the international debates on growth. This article discusses the implications of the Western degrowth debates for China. Given the distinctive features of China’s development, the paper aims to enrich the degrowth debates, which have hitherto been dominated by Western perspectives. Based upon reflections on social, environmental, and moral dimensions of economic growth, the paper argues that limited natural resources may not continuously support universal affluence at the current level of the rich countries, a level that China is likely to reach within a few decades. Priority for growth in China should therefore be given to the poor regions of the country, and future growth should be beneficial to social and environmental development.     

From food to pest: Conversion factors determine switches between ecosystem services and disservices

Ecosystem research focuses on goods and services, thereby ascribing beneficial values to the ecosystems. Depending on the context, however, outputs from ecosystems can be both positive and negative. We examined how provisioning services of wild animals and plants can switch between being services and disservices. We studied agricultural communities in Laos to illustrate when and why these switches take place. Government restrictions on land use combined with economic and cultural changes have created perceptions of rodents and plants as problem species in some communities. In other communities that are maintaining shifting cultivation practices, the very same taxa were perceived as beneficial. We propose conversion factors that in a given context can determine where an individual taxon is located along a spectrum from ecosystem service to disservice, when, and for whom. We argue that the omission of disservices in ecosystem service accounts may lead governments to direct investments at inappropriate targets.

     

Inorganic element uptake by barley from soil supplemented with flue-gas desulphurisation waste and fly-ash

Fresh snow and streamwater samples were collected on a daily basis throughout the winter and spring periods of 1984 and 1985 at a remote, upland catchment located within the Cairngorm Mountains, Scotland. Laboratory based partial-melt experiments undertaken on the snow samples demonstrated that both fractionation and preferential elution of trace-elements occur during melting, with the concentrations being 1.3 to 5.4 times greater than in the first 10 percent meltwater fractions than in the bulk snow (Abrahamset al., in press). At the onset of snowpack melting, the ions may be mobilised and redistributed within the snow profile, concentrating at depths from where they may be quickly removed during the early spring run-offf. The raised major- (Ca, Mg, Na, Cl, NO3 and SO4) and trace-element (Al, Cd, Cu, Fe, Mn and Pb) concentrations recorded in the streamwaters during the acid-flush episodes at the time of the first major periods of snow-melt, reflect both the meltwater composition and the influence of the catchment soils (Abrahamset al., submitted for publication). Differences in streamwater chemistry during the two periods of snow-melt which were studies can probably be related to the fact that snow-melt occurs under a variety of circumstances with significant variations in the sequence of precipitation, melt-events, temperature and snowcover occurring from year to year, even in the same catchment. The high concentrations of Al (up to 330 g L^–1) in the sireamwaters at the time of snow-melt, probably reflect leaching of this element from the soil. These elevated concentrations, in combination with other streamwater parameters, may prove toxic to aquatic life-forms at this time of year.     

Windblown dust contributes to high PM2.5 concentrations

The revised National Ambient Air Quality Standards for PM include fine particulate standards based upon mass measurements of PM2.5. It is possible in arid and semi-arid regions to observe significant coarse mode intrusion in the PM2.5 measurement. In this work, continuous PM10, PM2.5, and PM1.0 were measured during several windblown dust events in Spokane, WA. PM2.5 constituted approximately 30% of the PM10 during the dust event days, compared with approximately 48% on the non-dusty days preceding the dust events. Both PM10 and PM2.5 were enhanced during the dust events. However, PM1.0 was not enhanced during dust storms that originated within the state of Washington. During a dust storm that originated in Asia and impacted Spokane, PM1.0 was also enhanced, although the Asian dust reached Washington during a period of stagnation and poor dispersion, so that local sources were also contributing to high particulate levels. The "intermodal" region of PM, defined as particles ranging in aerodynamic size from 1.0 to 2.5 microns, was found to represent a significant fraction of PM2.5 (approximately 51%) during windblown dust events, compared with 28% during the non-dusty days before the dust events.     

Inorganic element uptake by barley from soil supplemented with flue gas desulphurization waste and fly ash

To evaluate the influence of waste products from coal- and oil-fired power plants on the inorganic element content of plants, barley was grown in pots each with 22 kg of sandy loam supplied with increasing amounts of six waste products. The plants were harvested at maturity and analysed for a number of inorganic elements. The salinity of the soil was the limiting factor for the amount added in terms of plant growth. Concerning the quality of the plants as fodder, addition of the waste to the soil at levels of about 0.5% by weight increased the Se concentration of the barley from a level deficient for animals to that approaching sufficiency for animals. The increase in Cd from the flue gas desulphurization (FGD) products was deemed undesirable, even though the concentrations following this single addition were far from toxic. All other increases in element concentrations were without any biological significance.Environmental Geochemistry and Health, 1988,10(1), 21–25