Stingray life history trade-offs associated with nursery habitat use inferred from a bioenergetics model

Consumption rates of marine predators are vital to assessing their trophic impacts and potential consequences of fisheries removal and habitat alteration, yet are rarely estimated. Standard metabolic rates were estimated for juvenile brown stingrays, Dasyatis lata, and used as input parameters for a bioenergetics model to predict consumption rates. Temperature and mass had significant effects on metabolic rates. The energy budget of juvenile brown stingrays was heavily weighted toward metabolism, accounting for 66 % of consumed energy. Growth accounted for 7 % of the energy budget indicating very slow growth potentially due to limited food resources. Population consumption rates suggest potential for strong top-down effects on prey populations due to stingray predation. This study suggests the use of Kāne‘ohe Bay as a nursery habitat for juvenile brown stingrays is a trade-off between increased juvenile survival through predator avoidance and a late age at first maturity due to slow growth rates resulting from low prey availability.     

The Estuarine Component of the Us E.P.A.'S Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program

The US Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Research and Development has initiated the Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) to monitor status and trends in the condition of the nation's near coastal waters, forests, wetlands, agro-ecosystems, surface waters, deserts and rangelands. the programme is also intended to evaluate the effectiveness of Agency policies at protecting ecological resources occurring in these systems. Monitoring data collected for all ecosystems will be integrated for regional and national status and trends assessments. the near coastal component of EMAP consists of estuaries, coastal waters, and the Great Lakes. Near coastal ecosystems have been regionalized and classified, and an integrated sampling strategy has been developed. EPA and NOAA have agreed to coordinate and, to the extent possible, integrate the near coastal component of EMAP with the NOAA National Status and Trends Program. A demonstration project was conducted in estuaries of the mid-Atlantic region (Chesapeake Bay to Cape Cod) in the summer of 1990. in 1991, monitoring continued in mid-Atlantic estuaries and was initiated in estuaries of a portion of the Gulf of Mexico. Preliminary results indicate: there are no insurmountable logistical problems with sampling on a regional scale; several of the selected indicators are practical and sensitive on the regional scale; and an efficient effort in future years will provide valuable information on condition of estuarine resources at regional scales.     

Mapping the economic costs and benefits of Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI) and Mangrove Rehabilitation Projects (MRP) in Solomon Islands: a study of two MPAs and one MRP

This paper reports a study of costs and benefits of Coral Triangle Initiatives (CTI) and Mangrove Rehabilitation Projects (MRP) in the Solomon Islands. It was observed that the communities have different attitudes and perceptions toward climate change challenges. The different scales and magnitudes of climate change impacts that are perceived at these sites, and the different subsistence realities make them have varied responses and points of view regarding such impacts. For instance, respondents from Oibola experienced the most adverse impacts from climatic change events compared to those living in the Naro and Sairaghi sites. Introduction of CTI and MRP has driven the villagers to travel out far from their traditional fishing grounds to catch enough fish to sell and support their families. This implies higher fishing costs and time for commute. From a social perspective, this weakens the communal bond in the community. In spite of these trade-offs, the respondents expressed satisfaction with the level of benefits received from the projects, which included the rehabilitation of the ecosystems and breeding grounds for fish and habitats around the area. We mapped the costs and benefits of these projects to the villagers, and although no amounts or figures were disclosed, the benefits are compared against corresponding costs. One key factor for the success of the initiatives was the cooperation and involvement of recipient villagers, and even including the management MPAs.     

Field Performance of Point Velocity Probes at a Tidally Influenced Site

Conventional methods to estimate groundwater velocity that rely on Darcy's Law and average hydrogeologic parameter values are insensitive to local‐scale heterogeneities and anisotropy that control advective flow velocity and direction. Furthermore, at sites that are tidally influenced or have extraction wells with variable pumping schedules, infrequent water‐level measurements may not adequately characterize the range and significance of transient hydraulic conditions. The point velocity probe (PVP) is a recently developed instrument capable of directly measuring local‐scale groundwater flow velocity and direction. In particular, PVPs may offer distinct advantages for sites with complex groundwater–surface water interactions and/or with spatially and temporally variable groundwater flow conditions. The PVP utilizes a small volume of saline tracer and inexpensive sensors to directly measure groundwater flow direction and velocity in situ at the centimeter‐scale and discrete times. The probes are installed in conventional direct‐push borings, rather than in wells, thus minimizing the changes and biases in the local flow field caused by well installation and construction. Six PVPs were installed at a tidally influenced site in North Carolina to evaluate their implementability, performance, and potential value as a new site characterization tool. For this study, a new PVP prototype was developed using a rapid prototyping machine (i.e., a “three‐dimensional printer'') and included both horizontally and vertically oriented tracer detectors. A site‐specific testing protocol was developed to account for the spatially and temporally variable hydraulic conditions and groundwater salinity. The PVPs were tested multiple times, and the results were compared to the results of several different groundwater flux and velocity estimation tools and methods, including a heat‐pulse flowmeter, passive flux meters, single‐well tracer tests, and high‐resolution hydraulic gradient analysis. Overall, the results confirmed that the PVP concept is valid and demonstrated that reliable estimates of groundwater velocity and direction can be obtained in simple settings. Also, PVPs can be successfully installed by conventional methods at sites where the formation consists primarily of noncohesive soils and the water table is relatively shallow. Although some PVP tests yielded consistent and reliable results, several tests did not. This is likely due to the highly transient flow conditions and limitations associated with the PVP design and testing procedures. PVPs offer particular advantages over, and can effectively complement, other groundwater flow characterization techniques for certain conditions, and objectives may be useful for characterizing complex flow patterns under steady conditions; however, this study suggests that PVPs are best suited for conditions where the flow hydraulics are not highly transient. For sites where the hydraulic conditions are highly transient, the most reliable approach for understanding groundwater flow behavior and groundwater–surface water interactions would generally involve both a high‐resolution hydraulic gradient analysis and another local‐scale method, such as tracer testing. This study also highlighted some aspects of the current PVP design and testing protocol that can be improved upon, including a more robust connection between the PVP and injection line and further assessment of tracer solution density effects on vertical flow. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Dechlorination comparison of mono-substituted PCBs with Mg/Pd in different solvent systems

It is widely recognized that polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are a dangerous environmental pollutant. Even though the use and production of PCBs have been restricted, heavy industrial use has made them a wide-spread environmental issue today. Dehalogenation using zero-valent metals has been a promising avenue of research for the remediation of chlorinated compounds and other contaminants that are present in the environment. However, zero-valent metals by themselves have shown little capability of dechlorinating polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Mechanically alloying the metal with a catalyst, such as palladium, creates a bimetallic system capable of dechlorinating PCBs very rapidly to biphenyl. This study primarily aims to evaluate the effects of solvent specificity on the kinetics of mono-substituted PCBs, in an attempt to determine the mechanism of degradation. Rate constants and final byproducts were determined for the contaminant systems in both water and methanol, and significant differences in the relative rates of reaction were observed between the two solvents.     

Development of solid phase adsorption toxin tracking (SPATT) for monitoring anatoxin-a and homoanatoxin-a in river water

Sampling and monitoring for cyanotoxins can be problematic as concentrations change with environmental and hydrological conditions. Current sampling practices (e.g. grab samples) provide data on cyanotoxins present only at one point in time and may miss areas or times of highest risk. Recent research has identified the widespread distribution of anatoxin-producing benthic cyanobacteria in rivers highlighting the need for development of effective sampling techniques. In this study we evaluated the potential of an in situ method known as solid phase adsorption toxin tracking (SPATT) for collecting and concentrating anatoxin-a (ATX) and homoanatoxin-a (HTX) in river water. Fifteen different adsorption substrates were screened for efficiency of ATX uptake, nine of which retained high proportions (>70%) of ATX. Four substrates were then selected for a 24-h trial in a SPATT bag format in the laboratory. The greatest decrease in ATX in the water was observed with powdered activated carbon (PAC) and Strata-X (a polymeric resin) SPATT bags. A 3-d field study in a river containing toxic benthic cyanobacterial mats was undertaken using PAC and Strata-X SPATT bags. ATX and HTX were detected in all SPATT bags. Surface grab samples were taken throughout the field study and ATX and HTX were only detected in one of the water samples, highlighting the limitations of this currently used method. Both Strata-X and PAC were found to be effective absorbent substrates. PAC has the advantage that it is cheap and readily available and appears to continue to sorb toxins over longer periods than Strata-X. SPATT has the potential to be integrated into current cyanobacterial monitoring programmes and would be a very useful and economical tool for early warning of ATX and HTX contamination in water.     

Procedural justice in local climate adaptation: political capabilities and transformational change

Climate adaptation politics presents both obstacles and opportunities for correcting inequities that leave some communities especially vulnerable to climate-related environmental harms. By revealing these obstacles and opportunities, theories of procedural justice can help to identify procedural reforms and political strategies that advance the interests of vulnerable populations. An account of procedural justice is proposed that foregrounds the capability for political control over one’s environment, defined as having the political power to influence adaptation decisions. While the variables shaping this capability in the politics of environmental injustice often interact in ways that reproduce environmental inequities, adaptation politics has the potential to produce more transformational outcomes. To illustrate this potential, differences between the politics of environmental injustice and the politics of climate adaptation are drawn on to sketch the basic features of a typology of vulnerable populations’ political capabilities in the politics of climate adaptation, before highlighting the potential points for intervention.     

Representative Landscapes in the Forested Area of Canada

Canada is a large nation with forested ecosystems that occupy over 60% of the national land base, and knowledge of the patterns of Canada’s land cover is important to proper environmental management of this vast resource. To this end, a circa 2000 Landsat-derived land cover map of the forested ecosystems of Canada has created a new window into understanding the composition and configuration of land cover patterns in forested Canada. Strategies for summarizing such large expanses of land cover are increasingly important, as land managers work to study and preserve distinctive areas, as well as to identify representative examples of current land-cover and land-use assemblages. Meanwhile, the development of extremely efficient clustering algorithms has become increasingly important in the world of computer science, in which billions of pieces of information on the internet are continually sifted for meaning for a vast variety of applications. One recently developed clustering algorithm quickly groups large numbers of items of any type in a given data set while simultaneously selecting a representative—or “exemplar”—from each cluster. In this context, the availability of both advanced data processing methods and a nationally available set of landscape metrics presents an opportunity to identify sets of representative landscapes to better understand landscape pattern, variation, and distribution across the forested area of Canada. In this research, we first identify and provide context for a small, interpretable set of exemplar landscapes that objectively represent land cover in each of Canada’s ten forested ecozones. Then, we demonstrate how this approach can be used to identify flagship and satellite long-term study areas inside and outside protected areas in the province of Ontario. These applications aid our understanding of Canada’s forest while augmenting its management toolbox, and may signal a broad range of applications for this versatile approach.     

Impact of alternative metrics on estimates of extent of occurrence for extinction risk assessment

In International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List assessments, extent of occurrence (EOO) is a key measure of extinction risk. However, the way assessors estimate EOO from maps of species’ distributions is inconsistent among assessments of different species and among major taxonomic groups. Assessors often estimate EOO from the area of mapped distribution, but these maps often exclude areas that are not habitat in idiosyncratic ways and are not created at the same spatial resolutions. We assessed the impact on extinction risk categories of applying different methods (minimum convex polygon, alpha hull) for estimating EOO for 21,763 species of mammals, birds, and amphibians. Overall, the percentage of threatened species requiring down listing to a lower category of threat (taking into account other Red List criteria under which they qualified) spanned 11–13% for all species combined (14–15% for mammals, 7–8% for birds, and 12–15% for amphibians). These down listings resulted from larger estimates of EOO and depended on the EOO calculation method. Using birds as an example, we found that 14% of threatened and near threatened species could require down listing based on the minimum convex polygon (MCP) approach, an approach that is now recommended by IUCN. Other metrics (such as alpha hull) had marginally smaller impacts. Our results suggest that uniformly applying the MCP approach may lead to a one‐time down listing of hundreds of species but ultimately ensure consistency across assessments and realign the calculation of EOO with the theoretical basis on which the metric was founded.