Understanding behaviour to inform water supply management in developed nations – A review of literature, conceptual model and research agenda

Water is a scarce resource in many parts of the developed world. Two solutions are possible to address water scarcity: conservation of existing resources, or the further production of water from new sources e.g. through recycling of wastewater or desalination of seawater. However, the main hurdle to implementation of many of these solutions is often viewed as a lack of public willingness to adopt these alternative water behaviours. Research in this area is therefore crucial. Yet, and possibly due to the interdisciplinary nature of such research, there is currently no comprehensive overview of what has been done before. This study fills this gap by (1) choosing a general consumer behaviour perspective as a starting point, (2) developing a conceptual model of research required in the area of water-related public acceptance studies, (3) identifying eight key water-related behaviours which require future research attention, and (4) reviewing which areas of the conceptual model have been investigated in the past by conducting an extensive literature review of water-related social science research.The review established that the majority of work which has been conducted is located at the cross-roads of personal characteristics and behavioural intentions. Significant gaps exist in relation to researching the adoption of a wide range of demand-side water behaviours. This indicates a dominance of supply-side solutions in social-research exploration. The review identifies a number of research needs including: the exploration of actual adoption of water-related behaviours (rather than behavioural intentions); and to widen the scope of water behaviour enquiry to include more demand-side solutions. Given the increasing scarcity of water in many areas of the world, addressing these identified gaps will be of significant importance. Thus our model informs the social-research agenda for water policy.     

Edge effects on trophic cascades in tropical rainforests

The cascading effects of biodiversity loss on ecosystem functioning of forests have become more apparent. However, how edge effects shape these processes has yet to be established. We assessed how edge effects alter arthropod populations and the strength of any resultant trophic cascades on herbivory rate in tropical forests of Brazil. We established 7 paired forest edge and interior sites. Each site had a vertebrate-exclosure, procedural (exclosure framework with open walls), and control plot (total 42 plots). Forest patches were surrounded by pasture. Understory arthropods and leaf damage were sampled every 4 weeks for 11 months. We used path analysis to determine the strength of trophic cascades in the interior and edge sites. In forest interior exclosures, abundance of predaceous and herbivorous arthropods increased by 326% and 180%, respectively, compared with control plots, and there were significant cascading effects on herbivory. Edge-dwelling invertebrates responded weakly to exclusion and there was no evidence of trophic cascade. Our results suggest that the vertebrate community at forest edges controls invertebrate densities to a lesser extent than it does in the interior. Edge areas can support vertebrate communities with a smaller contingent of insectivores. This allows arthropods to flourish and indirectly accounts for higher levels of plant damage at these sites. Increased herbivory rates may have important consequences for floristic community composition and primary productivity, as well as cascading effects on nutrient cycling. By interspersing natural forest patches with agroforests, instead of pasture, abiotic edge effects can be softened and prevented from penetrating deep into the forest. This would ensure a greater proportion of forest remains habitable for sensitive species and could help retain ecosystem functions in edge zones.     

Listening to locals on payments for environmental services

Payments for Environmental Services (PES) is gaining recognition worldwide as a serious option for conservation of ecosystems, as well as potentially improving the livelihoods of people providing environmental services. However, little attention has been paid to research on views of local people in their potential roles as service providers. In this research we explore perspectives of poor people living in a National Park in Vietnam, where introduction of PES is being considered. In-depth interviews and workshops were conducted – with strong emphasis on the use of visual techniques, to help facilitate learning processes and provide insight into local perspectives. From the research, two models were developed to indicate general factors that influence the likelihood of people adopting, and adhering to, PES schemes. We suggest these models can be used to guide the design of PES. Our findings also reveal three main requirements important in design of pro-poor PES: (1) Thorough scoping studies for ensuring that schemes are based on sound understanding of potential providers' perspectives and context. (2) Such studies should emphasise qualitative research and draw on participatory tools, to facilitate open dialogue and co-learning by researchers and participants. (3) Policy makers should consider designing hybridized schemes, i.e., in which PES concepts are combined with integrated conservation and development.     

Priming concerns about pathogen threat versus resource scarcity: dissociable effects on women’s perceptions of men’s attractiveness and dominance

Previous experimental work suggests flexibility in women’s mate preferences that appears to reflect the advantages of choosing healthy mates under conditions of pathogen threat and of choosing prosocial mates under conditions of resource scarcity. Following this work, we used an established priming paradigm to examine the effects of priming women’s concerns about pathogen threat versus resource scarcity on their judgments of men’s facial attractiveness and dominance. We found that women reported stronger attraction to masculine men when their concerns about pathogens were activated than when their concerns about resource scarcity were activated. In contrast, we found that women were more likely to ascribe high dominance to masculine men when their concerns about resource scarcity were activated than when their concerns about pathogens were activated. This latter result may reflect the greater importance of identifying men who pose a substantial threat to women’s resources and personal safety when resources are scarce and violence towards women is particularly common. Together, these findings suggest a double dissociation between the effects of pathogen threat and resource scarcity on women’s perceptions of the attractiveness and dominance of masculine men, potentially revealing considerably greater specialization (i.e., context specificity) in the effects of environmental threats on women’s perceptions of men than was apparent in previous research.     

Habitat-tree protection concepts over 200 years

The protection and sustainable management of habitat trees is an integral part of modern forest nature conservation concepts such as retention forestry. Bats, cavity-nesting birds, arboreal marsupials, and many different saproxylic species depend on habitat trees and their great variety of microhabitats and old-growth characteristics. With a focus on insights from temperate forests, we traced the development of habitat-tree protection over 200 years. The idea was first conceptualized by foresters and natural scientists in the early 19th century. At that time, utilitarian conservation aimed to protect cavity trees that provided roosts and nesting holes for insectivorous bats and birds. By the second half of the 19th century, habitat-tree protection was well known to foresters and was occasionally implemented. Knowledge of the protection of large old trees, a special kind of habitat tree, for sociocultural and aesthetic reasons developed similarly. But, many foresters of that time and in the following decades fundamentally rejected protection of habitat trees for economic reasons. Beginning in the 1970s, forest conservation and integrative forest management became increasingly important issues worldwide. Since then, the protection of habitat trees has been implemented on a large scale. Long-term views on the development of conservation concepts are important to inform the implementation of conservation today. In particular, historical analyses of conservation concepts allow the testing of long-term conservation outcomes and make it possible to study the resilience of conservation approaches to changing social or ecological conditions. We encourage all conservation ecologists to assess the practical and conceptual impact of the initial ideas that led to modern conservation concepts in terms of long-term biodiversity conservation.     

Self-ignition of tetrafluoroethylene induced by rapid valve opening in small diameter pipes

This work investigates the ignition of tetrafluoroethylene induced by the adiabatic compression that can arise by activating a high speed valve separating two portions of a pipeline with a high pressure difference. In the tests performed the high pressure zone contained tetrafluoroethylene at pressures between 15 and 30 bar. For the low pressure zone, experiments with nitrogen, air and tetrafluoroethylene were carried out. The pressure range in the low pressure zone was comprised between 0.05 and 1 bar. The pipe diameters analyzed were 15 and 20 mm. For the analyzed geometries, special conditions were required in order to reach reproducible ignitions, namely air at temperatures of at least 105 °C had to be present in the compression pipe. Furthermore, a minimum length of the compression pipe had to be used. The current work describes the experimental setup employed for the tests and discusses the achieved results. Numerical simulations were performed in order to clarify unexpected findings.