Environmental Management Systems at the Industrial Park Level in China

Environmental management systems (EMSs), such as International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 14001, can be used as a tool in China by industrial park managers to improve their environmental performance. This article uses the case of the Dalian Economic and Technological Development Zone (DETDZ) to show how to establish a comprehensive environmental management system (CEMS) according to the ISO 14001 standard at the industrial park level by considering local realities. The particularly interesting feature of this case study is the use of a CEMS (in this case, ISO 14001) by the administrative group of the DETDZ to develop a more comprehensive approach to the wide range of environmental issues that they face in running the zone. In essence the goal is to address many of the issues at the level of the zone. The incentives, benefits, and barriers associated with implementing ISO 14001 are described. However, implementation of an EMS should not be thought of as the ultimate objective for an industrial parks environmental management. The next steps include encouraging further public participation and taking an integrated approach leading to an industrial ecosystem, which can realize better environmental performance at the industrial park level. Yong Geng is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Dalhousie University. Raymond Côté is a professor at Dalhousie University.     

Regional planning acceptance by residents of Northern New York,USA

This study compares the effectiveness of two regional planning agencies in terms of public support for various planning activities. The Adirondack Park Agency and the Temporary State Commission on Tug Hill have fundamentally different approaches to planning. The Adirondack Park Agency has implemented a restrictive regulatory program with little citizen participation by Adirondack residents. The Tug Hill Commission has implemented an advisory and coordinating program with an emphasis on public input. Residents of two towns in each region were surveyed to determine environmental concern and support for regional planning activities. Respondents from both regions favored a planning agency that incorporates citizen input; controls air, water, and toxic waste pollution; and develops recreation areas. They strongly opposed an agency that regulates private land-use. Basic demographic characteristics and levels of environmental concern were similar in all four towns, but receptivity to various planning activities was consistently greater among residents of the Tug Hill Region. Paired comparisons of the four towns demonstrated no differences between towns of the same region and significant differences between towns of different regions. Public support for regional planning is greater in the Tug Hill Region than in the Adirondack Park.     

Integration of the Pesticide Impact Rating Index with a Geographic Information System for the Assessment of Pesticide Impact on Water Quality

The pesticide impact rating index (PIRI) has been integrated with a Geographic Information System (GIS) to enable regional assessment of pesticide impact on groundwater and surface water resources. The GIS version of PIRI (PIRI-GIS) was used to assess the impact of pre-planting atrazine use in the pine plantations on the Gnangara Mound, Western Australia. The impact on groundwater was found to be spatially variable, mainly dependent on soil type and depth to groundwater, because land use variables were spatially constant. Areas with the greatest impact on groundwater were those where the soil had a low sorption capacity for atrazine. Knowledge of the spatial distribution of the sorption coefficient based on organic carbon (K _oc) for atrazine was found to significantly improve the results from PIRI-GIS. Average values for K _oc (i.e. based on overseas data) were too low for most of the local soil types, resulting in a general overestimation of pesticide impact on groundwater resources, but an underestimation of impact in areas that should be of greatest concern (i.e. where the soil has a low sorption capacity for atrazine).     

Texture Analysis for Mapping Tamarix parviflora Using Aerial Photographs along the Cache Creek, California

Natural color photographs were used to detect the coverage of saltcedar, Tamarix parviflora, along a 40 km portion of Cache Creek near Woodland, California. Historical aerial photographs from 2001 were retrospectively evaluated and compared with actual ground-based information to assess accuracy of the assessment process. The color aerial photos were sequentially digitized, georeferenced, classified using color and texture methods, and mosaiced into maps for field use. Eight types of ground cover (Tamarix, agricultural crops, roads, rocks, water bodies, evergreen trees, non-evergreen trees and shrubs (excluding Tamarix)) were selected from the digitized photos for separability analysis and supervised classification. Due to color similarities among the eight cover types, the average separability, based originally only on color, was very low. The separability was improved significantly through the inclusion of texture analysis. Six types of texture measures with various window sizes were evaluated. The best texture was used as an additional feature along with the color, for identifying Tamarix. A total of 29 color photographs were processed to detect Tamarix infestations using a combination of the original digital images and optimal texture features. It was found that the saltcedar covered a total of 3.96 km² (396 hectares) within the study area. For the accuracy assessment, 95 classified samples from the resulting map were checked in the field with a global position system (GPS) unit to verify Tamarix presence. The producer's accuracy was 77.89%. In addition, 157 independently located ground sites containing saltcedar were compared with the classified maps, producing a user's accuracy of 71.33%.     

Does climate denialism still matter? The prevalence of alternative frames in opposition to climate policy

Issue frames portraying climate science as uncertain are cited as a key impediment to new climate change and energy policies. However, some have recently argued that the debate over policy impacts, especially policy impacts on consumers, has become more politically salient than the debate over science. This study applies qualitative content analysis to 340 documents from the conservative think tank, the Heartland Institute, to test whether certain policy frames have become more common among leading opponents of climate policy in the United States. The results indicate a continued reliance on science framing, with more directed attacks on climate scientists and fewer frames stressing the uncertainty of climate science. An increase in the use of policy frames related to effects on consumers also suggests that opposition to climate policy is taking new forms as the political debate evolves, with ramifications for climate change policy opposition on an international scale.     

Ten years later: The progress and future of integrating sustainable principles,practices, and metrics into remediation projects

In 2009, the Sustainable Remediation Forum released a white paper entitled “Integrating sustainable principles, practices, and metrics into remediation projects” (Ellis & Hadley, 2009, Remediation, 19, pp. 5–114). Sustainable remediation was a relatively new concept, and the white paper explored a range of approaches on how sustainability could be integrated into traditional remediation projects. This paper revisits the 2009 white paper, providing an overview of the early days of the evolving sustainable remediation practice and an assessment of the progress of sustainable remediation over the last 10 years with a primary focus on the United States. The current state of the sustainable remediation practice includes published literature, current practices and resources, applications, room for improvement, international progress, the virtuous cycle that applying sustainable remediation creates, and the status of the objectives cited in the 2009 white paper. Over the last decade, several sustainable remediation frontiers have emerged that will likely be a focus in advancing the practice. These frontiers include climate change and resiliency, weighting and valuation to help better consolidate different sustainable remediation metrics, programmatic implementation, and better integration of the societal impacts of sustainable remediation. Finally, as was the case for the 2009 white paper, this paper explores how sustainable remediation may evolve over the next 10 years and focuses on the events and drivers that can be significant in the pace of further development of the practice. The events and drivers include transformation impacts, societal influences, and the continued development of new technologies, approaches, and tools by remediation practitioners. The remediation industry has made significant progress in developing the practice of sustainable remediation and has implemented it successfully into hundreds of projects. While progress has been significant, an opportunity exists to implement the tenets of sustainable remediation on many more projects and explore new frontiers to help improve the communication, integration, and derived benefits from implementing sustainable remediation into future remediation projects.     

Catalyzing sustainable fisheries management through behavior change interventions

Small-scale fisheries are an important livelihood and primary protein source for coastal communities in many of the poorest regions in the world, yet many are overfished and thus require effective and scalable management solutions. Positive ecological and socioeconomic responses to management typically lag behind immediate costs borne by fishers from fishing pressure reductions necessary for fisheries recovery. These short-term costs challenge the long-term success of these interventions. However, social marketing may increase perceptions of management benefits before ecological and socioeconomic benefits are fully realized, driving new social norms and ultimately long-term sustainable behavior change. By conducting underwater visual surveys to quantify ecological conditions and by conducting household surveys with community members to quantify their perceptions of management support and socioeconomic conditions, we assessed the impact of a standardized small-scale fisheries management intervention that was implemented across 41 sites in Brazil, Indonesia, and the Philippines. The intervention combines TURF reserves (community-based territorial use rights for fishing coupled with no-take marine reserves) with locally tailored social-marketing behavior change campaigns. Leveraging data across 22 indicators and 4 survey types, along with data from 3 control sites, we found that ecological and socioeconomic impacts varied and that communities supported the intervention and were already changing their fishing practices. These results suggest that communities were developing new social norms and fishing more sustainably before long-term ecological and socioeconomic benefits of fisheries management materialized.     

The Long Beach/Fort Lauderdale relative risk study

Problem

The role of alcohol as a major factor in traffic crash causation has been firmly established. However, controversy remains as to the precise shape of the relative risk function and the BAC at which crash risk begins to increase.

Methods

This study used a case-control design in two locations: Long Beach, California, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Data were collected on 2,871 crashes of all severities and a matched control group of drivers selected from the same time, location, and direction of travel as the crash drivers. Of the 14,985 sample drivers, 81.3% of the crash drivers and 97.9% of the controls provided a valid BAC specimen.

Results

When adjusted for covariates and nonparticipation bias, increases in relative risk were observed at BACs of .04-.05, and the elevations in risk became very pronounced when BACs exceeded .10.

Discussion

The results provide strong support for .08 per se laws and for state policies that increase sanctions for BACs in excess of .15.

Impact on Industry

This study provides further precision on the deleterious effects of alcohol on driving and, by implication, on other complex tasks.