‘Natural’ disaster? A retrospect into the causes of the late-2004 typhoon disaster in Eastern Luzon, Philippines

Between 14 November and 4 December 2004, four successive tropical depressions and typhoons lashed the Eastern coast of Luzon in the Philippines. Heavy rainfall triggered massive landslides and devastating flash floods, which brought tremendous damage and killed more than 1600 people. Immediately after the disaster, there was a media and political consensus to incrimate ‘extraordinary’ natural phenomena and widespread deforestation as responsible for the catastrophe. We argue that the tragedy that befell the municipalities of General Nakar, Infanta and Real, among other devastated areas, is enmeshed in a deeper tangle of causal factors that are political, socio-economic and demographic in nature. These factors include unmanaged population growth, difficult access to land and resources, corruption within the government, and power of the elite.     

Population Density and Fertility in Farm Households: A Study of the Millennium Development Authority Zones in Ghana

Agriculture is mainly a rural preoccupation, and about three quarters of the population growth in developing countries emanate from agricultural households. Some demographers posit that the agricultural system affects birth rates; in addition, population pressures might put stress on agricultural land in farming communities. This paper focuses on the population to land ratio in the Millennium Development Authority (MiDA) Enumeration Areas (EAs) in Ghana and tackles the important question: Do households adjust to an increasing population/land ratio by having fewer children? The authors explore this theme in the context of rural population density and fertility in the three MiDA zones, drawing on data collected in 23 EAs in Ghana in 2008. The results suggest that fertility in the MiDA zones can be affected by density if nothing is done to regulate population density. The regression estimates for the pooled data show that all the coefficients are negative and statistically significant at the 0.05 level or better. Thus, children ever born is inversely correlated with density, agricultural production, female literacy and the trend variable (year). The estimates from the cross-sectional data as well as the spatial coefficient were consistent with those of the pooled data. The results under various model specifications are stable. We find from the Cox model that areas with higher education levels and a lower share of individuals working in agriculture, both correlated with land use. Agricultural production has at most a modest independent effect on fertility. Our findings suggest that population density has a reasonable inhibiting effect on fertility in the MiDA Zones.     

Kinetic and thermodynamic studies on partitioning of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) between aqueous solution and modeled individual soil particle grain sizes

The significance of soil mineral properties and secondary environmental conditions such as pH, temperature, ionic strength and time in the partitioning of eight selected polychlorinated biphenyl(PCB) congeners between aqueous solution and soil particles with different grain sizes was studied. The mineral properties of a model soil sample were determined, and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller(BET) adsorption–desorption isotherms were employed to observe the surface characteristics of the individual modeled soil particles.Batch adsorption experiments were conducted to determine the sorption of PCBs onto soil particles of different sizes. The results revealed that the sorption of PCB congeners onto the soil was dependent on the amount of soil organic matter, surface area, and pore size distribution of the various individual soil particles. Low pH favored the sorption of PCBs,with maximum sorption occurring between pH 6.5 and 7.5 with an equilibration period of 8 hr.Changes in the ionic strength were found to be less significant. Low temperature favored the sorption of PCBs onto the soil compared to high temperatures. Thermodynamic studies showed that the partition coefficient(K_d) decreased with increasing temperature, and negative and low values of ΔH° indicated an exothermic physisorption process. The data generated is critical and will help in further understanding remediation and cleanup strategies for polluted water.     

Assessment of ecotoxicological risks related to depositing dredged materials from canals in northern France on soil

The implementation of an ecological risk assessment framework is presented for dredged material deposits on soil close to a canal and groundwater, and tested with sediment samples from canals in northern France. This framework includes two steps: a simplified risk assessment based on contaminant concentrations and a detailed risk assessment based on toxicity bioassays and column leaching tests. The tested framework includes three related assumptions: (a) effects on plants (Lolium perenne L.), (b) effects on aquatic organisms (Escherichia coli, Pseudokirchneriella subcapitata, Ceriodaphnia dubia, and Xenopus laevis) and (c) effects on groundwater contamination. Several exposure conditions were tested using standardised bioassays. According to the specific dredged material tested, the three assumptions were more or less discriminatory, soil and groundwater pollution being the most sensitive. Several aspects of the assessment procedure must now be improved, in particular assessment endpoint design for risks to ecosystems (e.g., integration of pollutant bioaccumulation), bioassay protocols and column leaching test design.     

A Numerical and Field Investigation of Surface Heat Fluxes from Small Wind-Sheltered Waterbodies in Semi-Arid Western Australia

Shelterbelts are used for a variety of purposes in agricultural environments, primarily because of their ability to improve the downwind microclimate. Excessive evaporative losses from small, agricultural water supply reservoirs in semi-arid Western Australia motivated a combined numerical modelling and field investigation into the potential for using shelterbelts to reduce evaporation from these open waterbodies. A numerical model of the disturbed momentum and turbulence fields in the region modified by the wind-shelter was employed and accounted for the presence of a waterbody downwind. The model was coupled with conservation equations for heat and moisture and sensible and latent heat fluxes were estimated from the simulated momentum, temperature and humidity fields. The numerical simulations were tested against four days of field data from two experiments conducted in the agricultural districts of southwest Western Australia that measured boundary-layer evolution over a variety of small waterbodies protected by artifical and natural wind-shelters. The model provided good predictions of windspeed during neutral conditions, but inadequate specification of the upwind boundary during non-neutral stabilities resulted in the model failing to capture any sensitivity to atmospheric stability as seen in the field data. Despite this limitation, the temperature and humidity fields were adequately captured by the model, and evaporative mass flux predictions also agreed well with estimates taken from water-balance measurements. It is concluded that well-designed wind-shelters can reduce evaporation from open waterbodies by 20–30% as a result of reductions in the velocity scales responsible for removing moisture from the water surface. The model can be used to estimate the values of various shelterbelt design parameters (e.g., porosity, height) that could be applied in the field to provide optimum evaporation reductions.     

Database of PCDD/PCDF levels in ambient air and in samples related to the pulp and paper industry

A literature and questionnaire survey has been carried out in order that a database be developed for PCDD/PCDF levels in ambient air. The data received to date and entered into the database indicates that standardization in methodologies and reporting is required. The overall response to the survey, even with reminders, was disappointing.     

Validating graph-based connectivity models with independent presence–absence and genetic data sets

Habitat connectivity is a key objective of current conservation policies and is commonly modeled by landscape graphs (i.e., sets of habitat patches [nodes] connected by potential dispersal paths [links]). These graphs are often built based on expert opinion or species distribution models (SDMs) and therefore lack empirical validation from data more closely reflecting functional connectivity. Accordingly, we tested whether landscape graphs reflect how habitat connectivity influences gene flow, which is one of the main ecoevolutionary processes. To that purpose, we modeled the habitat network of a forest bird (plumbeous warbler [Setophaga plumbea]) on Guadeloupe with graphs based on expert opinion, Jacobs’ specialization indices, and an SDM. We used genetic data (712 birds from 27 populations) to compute local genetic indices and pairwise genetic distances. Finally, we assessed the relationships between genetic distances or indices and cost distances or connectivity metrics with maximum-likelihood population-effects distance models and Spearman correlations between metrics. Overall, the landscape graphs reliably reflected the influence of connectivity on population genetic structure; validation R² was up to 0.30 and correlation coefficients were up to 0.71. Yet, the relationship among graph ecological relevance, data requirements, and construction and analysis methods was not straightforward because the graph based on the most complex construction method (species distribution modeling) sometimes had less ecological relevance than the others. Cross-validation methods and sensitivity analyzes allowed us to make the advantages and limitations of each construction method spatially explicit. We confirmed the relevance of landscape graphs for conservation modeling but recommend a case-specific consideration of the cost-effectiveness of their construction methods. We hope the replication of independent validation approaches across species and landscapes will strengthen the ecological relevance of connectivity models.