Economic assessment of managing processionary moth in pine forests: a case-study in Portugal

This paper assesses the private and social profitability of current strategies for managing processionary moth (Thaumetopoea pityocampa) in Portuguese pine forests, looking at economic and environmental costs and benefits. Costs include the expenses for forest treatment and the social costs of threats to human health (dermatitis amongst others); benefits are assessed in terms of both revenue and social benefits such as carbon fixation and recreation. The evaluation was done using Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) as an analytical framework. While this tool is currently applied to forest and environmental assessment and specific applications to pest management strategies are to be found in agricultural economics, rather few attempts have been made in the field of forest pest management. In order to assess and compare with--without options, a case-study was analysed for the Setúbal Peninsula, south of Lisbon, an area where extensive stands of maritime pine (Pinus pinaster) grow. The exercise has shown that CBA can be a valuable tool for assessing the economic and social profitability of pest management. The results demonstrate that the loss of revenues in the no-management option is not sufficient to make pest management profitable for private forest owners in the short-term. Conversely, a social profit is gained as pest management minimizes health risks for humans and avoids possible recreational losses.     

Women and biodiversity: The long journey from users to policy-makers

Although there has been a broad acknowledgment that women's local and traditional knowledge is fundamental to guarantee food security and conserve biological diversity, few women are represented at the managerial and decision‐making level of environmental movements and organizations. The United Nations, its agencies and agreements have long promoted the full and effective participation of women in decision‐making processes. So how can commitments contained in international agreements be translated into concrete actions? By using the case of the Convention on Biological Diversity, one of the key agreements adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, this article analyses how gender‐equitable initiatives tend to assume an ad hoc character with few governments effectively involving women in their sustainable development strategies. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the United Nations or its subsidiary bodies.     

The AVI project: A bibliographical and archive inventory of landslides and floods in Italy

The AVI project was commissioned by the Minister of Civil Protection to the National Group for Prevention of Hydrogeologic Hazards to complete an inventory of areas historically affected by landslides and floods in Italy. More than 300 people, divided into 15 research teams and two support groups, worked for one year on the project. Twenty-two journals were systematically searched for the period 1918–1990, 350,000 newspaper issues were screened, and 39,953 articles were collected. About 150 experts on mass movement and floods were interviewed and 1482 published and unpublished technical and scientific reports were reviewed. The results of the AVI project, in spite of the limitations, represent the most comprehensive archiving of mass movement and floods ever prepared in Italy. The type and quality of the information collected and the methodologies and techniques used to make the inventory are discussed. Possible applications and future developments are also presented.     

Error Assessment for Height Above the Nearest Drainage Inundation Mapping

Real‐time flood inundation mapping is vital for emergency response to help protect life and property. Inundation mapping transforms rainfall forecasts into meaningful spatial information that can be utilized before, during, and after disasters. While inundation mapping has traditionally been conducted on a local scale, automated algorithms using topography data can be utilized to efficiently produce flood maps across the continental scale. The Height Above the Nearest Drainage method can be used in conjunction with synthetic rating curves (SRCs) to produce inundation maps, but the performance of these inundation maps needs to be assessed. Here we assess the accuracy of the SRCs and calculate statistics for comparing the SRCs to rating curves obtained from hydrodynamic models calibrated against observed stage heights. We find SRCs are accurate enough for large‐scale approximate inundation mapping while not as accurate when assessing individual reaches or cross sections. We investigate the effect of terrain and channel characteristics and observe reach length and slope predict divergence between the two types of rating curves, and SRCs perform poorly for short reaches with extreme slope values. We propose an approach to recalculate the slope in Manning’s equation as the weighted average over a minimum distance and assess accuracy for a range of moving window lengths.     

Assessment of the Water Quality of the River Arno in the Area of Florence, Italy

The quality of the waters collected from R. Arno was examined in the period September 1988 to December 1989. A first campaign in September/October 1988, during a period of low water, gives a general picture of pollution conditions along the river from the source to the mouth. the river appears to be heavily polluted immediately downstream of Florence and in the area of the textile industry.

In the second campaign, through the whole year 1989, particular attention has been given to the Florence area; the most significant results, compared with those from a previous investigation carried out in 1971, show only a small reduction of the pollution load, due to the shortage and inadequacy of wastewater depuration. Some considerations are reported on pollution drop with full spate.     

Exploring socio-cultural values of ecosystem service categories in the Central Alps: the influence of socio-demographic factors and landscape type

The socio-cultural assessment of ecosystem services has been proposed as a promising tool for eliciting people’s preferences towards ecosystem services. Despite an increasing integration of the socio-cultural perspective in ecosystem service research, little knowledge exists about linkages between landscape and the socio-cultural values people assign to ecosystem services. This paper combines a socio-cultural valuation approach with the use of landscape pictures to analyse and compare people’s perceived importance of the provisioning, regulating, and cultural ecosystem service categories across three landscape types (i.e. larch meadows, spruce forests, and hay meadow). A survey with 470 tourists visiting the region of South Tyrol (Italy) was conducted to link people’s perceived importance to their socio-demographic background and to the landscape types explored. The results show that regulating ecosystem services are preferred over provisioning and cultural services, whereby environmental awareness is found to be more influential than formal education levels regarding the perceived importance of regulating services. The results further demonstrate that cultural background is an important driver in determining people’s perceived importance of cultural services. The underlying landscape types, however, exert an even stronger influence on people’s socio-cultural valuation of ecosystem service categories. This finding suggests that the focus of most ecosystem services assessments on the study area as a whole risks mistakenly attributing differences in people’s socio-cultural values to socio-demographic characteristics only. A better knowledge of the spatial integration of socio-cultural values, however, could help with anticipating the consequences of changes in the landscape and provide better guidance for future landscape planning.     

Levels of plasma B-esterases and glutathione-S-transferase activities in three South American toad species

We determined the normal levels of butyrylcholinesterase (BChE), carboxylesterase (CbE), and glutathione S-transferases (GST) activities in three South American toad species in order to establish reference values for field pesticide monitoring purposes. Interspecies variations in B-esterase and GST activities were examined according to body mass. In addition, comparative inhibition of BChE and CbE activities using malaoxon, and chemical reactivation of malaoxon-inhibited BChE activity using pyridine-2-aldoxime methochloride (2-PAM) were investigated. Bufo fernandezae had average activity values for BChE: 17.31 mmol min^?1 ml^?1; CbE: 621.49 nmol min^?1 ml^?1 and GST: 1.94 mmol min^?1 ml^?1 while B. arenarum enzymatic average activities were BChE: 9.51 mmol min^?1 ml^?1; CbE: 270.07 nmol min^?1 ml^?1, and GST: 1.59 mmol min^?1 ml^?1; finally Bufo schneideri had enzymatic mean values of BChE: 2.08 mmol min^?1 ml^?1; CbE: 301.95 nmol min^?1 ml^?1, and GST: 1.60 mmol min^?1 ml^?1. Moreover, we found an allometric relationship between plasma BChE and CbE activities and body size for the three toad species. We suggest that B. fernandezae would be the species with a higher tolerance capacity to organophosphorous insecticides compared to the other toad species, while B. schneideri may be the most vulnerable toad species to field pesticide exposure, although some other factors (e.g., brain AChE sensitivity or pesticide metabolism by phosphotriesterases) should be also taken into account. The malaoxon-inhibited BChE activity of the three toad species was reactivated in the presence of 2-PAM, and it is recommended as a specific and sensitive methodology in the assessment of field exposure to OP insecticides together to compare BChE activity levels between OP-exposed and nonexposed individuals.     

Mesoscale variability related to iron speciation in a coastal Ross Sea area (Antarctica) during summer 2014

Dissolved iron (Fe) distribution and speciation was determined in water samples (0–200?m) collected in a coastal area near Terra Nova Bay during the austral summer of 2014. Nutrients, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll-a, phytoplankton composition and prokaryotic biomass distribution were investigated in combination with measurements of the physical properties of the water columns and its dynamics. The dFe value was above the limiting growth concentration, ranging from 0.52 to 4.51?nM, and it showed a spatial variability with a horizontal length scale of about 10?km, according to the variability of the water column physical properties and to iron sources. The organic ligands (L) maintained the concentrations of dFe at levels much higher than the inorganic solubility of Fe, keeping it available for phytoplankton and the log K’_FeL values found (from 22.1 to 23.6) highlighted the presence of complexes of differing stabilities.