Estimating the economic burden from illnesses associated with recreational coastal water pollution--a case study in Orange County, California

A cost-of-illness framework was applied to health and income data to quantify the health burden from illnesses associated with exposure to polluted recreational marine waters. Using data on illness severity due to exposure to polluted coastal water and estimates of mean annual salaries and medical costs (adjusted to 2001 values) for residents of Orange County, California, we estimated that the economic burden per gastrointestinal illness (GI) amounts to 36.58 dollars, the burden per acute respiratory disease is 76.76 dollars, the burden per ear ailment is 37.86 dollars, and the burden per eye ailment is 27.31 dollars. These costs can become a substantial public health burden when millions of exposures per year to polluted coastal waters result in hundreds of thousands of illnesses. For example, exposures to polluted waters at Orange County's Newport and Huntington Beaches were estimated to generate an average of 36,778 GI episodes per year. At this GI illness rate, one can also expect that approximately 38,000 more illness episodes occurred per year of other types, including respiratory, eye, and ear infections. The combination of excess illnesses associated with coastal water pollution resulted in a cumulative public health burden of 3.3 million dollars per year for these two beaches. This paper introduces a public health cost variable that can be applied in cost-benefit analyses when evaluating pollution abatement strategies.     

Implications of Spatial Data Variations for Protected Areas Management: An Example from East Africa

Geographic information systems and remote sensing technologies have become an important tool for visualizing conservation management and developing solutions to problems associated with conservation. When multiple organizations separately develop spatial data representations of protected areas, implicit error arises due to variation between data sets. We used boundary data produced by three conservation organizations (International Union for the Conservation of Nature, World Resource Institute, and Uganda Wildlife Authority), for seven Ugandan parks, to study variation in the size represented and the location of boundaries. We found variation in the extent of overlapping total area encompassed by the three data sources, ranging from miniscule (0.4 %) differences to quite large ones (9.0 %). To underscore how protected area boundary discrepancies may have implications to protected area management, we used a landcover classification, defining crop, shrub, forest, savanna, and grassland. The total area in the different landcover classes varied most in smaller protected areas (those less than 329 km²), with forest and cropland area estimates varying up to 65 %. The discrepancies introduced by boundary errors could, in this hypothetical case, generate erroneous findings and could have a significant impact on conservation, such as local-scale management for encroachment and larger-scale assessments of deforestation.     

Village-scale reserves in the forest frontier regions of Chenes and Calakmul,Mexico

ABSTRACT

Sketch-map-facilitated interviews were conducted in 23 villages in two adjacent regions in the southern Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico – the Maya (and increasingly Mennonite) forest-agriculture mosaic of the Chenes, and the late-20^th-century-settlement forest frontier of Calakmul – to determine the frequency and typology of local-scale reserves, including the external (e.g. Payments for Environmental Services programs) and internal sources of their generation. 9% of the study communities are found to satisfy the author’s criteria for deliberate, autochthonous reserves. The static polygon reserve and static map are found to have limited value for understanding the evolving cultural ecologies of these regions. Alternative approaches are discussed, particularly those employed by geographers.     

Effectiveness of biodiversity-conservation marketing

Conservation marketing holds potential as a means to engage audiences with biodiversity conservation and help to address the human dimensions of biodiversity loss. Empirical evaluations of conservation marketing indicatives are growing, so we reviewed the literature on this research to inform future directions in the field. We used a systematic search strategy to identify studies that evaluated the effects of conservation marketing interventions (techniques and campaigns) on psychosocial outcomes, categorized as cognitive, affective, or behavioral. Six academic databases (Business Source Complete, Communication & Mass Media Complete, Greenfile, Proquest, Scopus, and Web of Science Core Collections), 3 gray-literature databases (BASE, Zenodo, and Google Scholar), and 2 websites (Rare and WildAid) were searched. Articles were subjected to critical appraisal to assess their methodological quality, and data were extracted from each article and analyzed using narrative synthesis. Altogether 28 studies from 26 articles were included in the review. Twenty-five studies were conducted from 2014 through 2016. Methodological quality of most studies was weak (n = 16, 57%) (moderate quality n = 8, 29%; high quality n = 4, 14%). The proportion of studies that evaluated a conservation-marketing technique (e.g., variants of texts, images, or videos) versus a campaign (e.g., community-based campaigns targeting locally relevant issues, such as unsustainable palm oil agriculture, light pollution, or wood fuel fire use) was relatively balanced. Although many studies reported statistically significant results in the intended direction, the utility of findings was limited by persistent methodological limitations, such as a lack of a comparator group, use of non-validated assessment tools, and a focus on self-reported data and subjective outcomes. Conservation marketing is clearly a nascent field of scientific enquiry that warrants further, high-quality research investigations.     

Threats to intact tropical peatlands and opportunities for their conservation

Large, intact areas of tropical peatland are highly threatened at a global scale by the expansion of commercial agriculture and other forms of economic development. Conserving peatlands on a landscape scale, with their hydrology intact, is of international conservation importance to preserve their distinctive biodiversity and ecosystem services and maintain their resilience to future environmental change. We explored threats to and opportunities for conserving remaining intact tropical peatlands; thus, we excluded peatlands of Indonesia and Malaysia, where extensive deforestation, drainage, and conversion to plantations means conservation in this region can protect only small fragments of the original ecosystem. We focused on a case study, the Pastaza‐Marañón Foreland Basin (PMFB) in Peru, which is among the largest known intact tropical peatland landscapes in the world and is representative of peatland vulnerability. Maintenance of the hydrological conditions critical for carbon storage and ecosystem function of peatlands is, in the PMFB, primarily threatened by expansion of commercial agriculture linked to new transport infrastructure that is facilitating access to remote areas. There remain opportunities in the PMFB and elsewhere to develop alternative, more sustainable land‐use practices. Although some of the peatlands in the PMFB fall within existing legally protected areas, this protection does not include the most carbon‐dense (domed pole forest) areas. New carbon‐based conservation instruments (e.g., REDD+, Green Climate Fund), developing markets for sustainable peatland products, transferring land title to local communities, and expanding protected areas offer pathways to increased protection for intact tropical peatlands in Amazonia and elsewhere, such as those in New Guinea and Central Africa which remain, for the moment, broadly beyond the frontier of commercial development.     

弘文重教十余年的《文教资料简报》

创刊于1972年12月的《文教资料简报》是由南京师范学院(1984年易名为南京师范大学)内部编印的资料性月刊,主要目的是为文科教研服务。本文回顾该刊从创办至拥有"统一刊号"、从非正式出版物至成为正式出版物的历史沿革,具体观照该刊的编辑理念,总结该刊的内容特色、文献价值及经验启示。     

Use of ATP Readings to Predict a Successful Hygiene Intervention in the Workplace to Reduce the Spread of Viruses on Fomites

The purpose of this study was to validate the use of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) for evaluating hygiene intervention effectiveness in reducing viral dissemination in an office environment. The bacterial virus MS-2 was used to evaluate two scenarios, one where the hand of an individual was contaminated and another where a fomite was contaminated. MS-2 was selected as a model because its shape and size are similar to many human pathogenic viruses. Two separate experiments were conducted, one in which the entrance door push plate was inoculated and the other in which the hand of one selected employee was inoculated. In both scenarios, 54 selected surfaces in the office were tested to assess the dissemination of the virus within the office. Associated surface contamination was also measured employing an ATP meter. More than half of the tested hands and surfaces in the office were contaminated with MS-2 within 4 h. Next, an intervention was conducted, and each scenario was repeated. Half of the participating employees were provided hand sanitizer, facial tissues, and disinfecting wipes, and were instructed in their use. A significant (p < 0.05) reduction was observed in the number of surfaces contaminated with virus. This reduction in viral spread was evident from the results of both viral culture and the surface ATP measurements, although there was no direct correlation between ATP measurements with respect to viral concentration. Although ATP does not measure viruses, these results demonstrate that ATP measurements could be useful for evaluating the effectiveness of hygiene interventions aimed at preventing viral spread in the workplace.     

Effects of repeated exposure to malathion on growth, food consumption, and locomotor performance of the western fence lizard (Sceloporus occidentalis)

Effects of repeated pollutant exposure on growth, locomotor performance, and behavior have rarely been evaluated in reptiles. We administered three doses of malathion (2.0, 20, or 100mg/kg body weight) to western fence lizards (Sceloporus occidentalis) over an 81day period. Eight and 23% mortality occurred at 20 and 100mg/kg (p=0.079) and 85% of lizards in the 100mg/kg group exhibited clinical symptoms of poisoning. Growth, food consumption, body condition index, and terrestrial locomotor performance were not significantly influenced by malathion. However, arboreal sprint velocity was significantly reduced in lizards receiving 100mg/kg. Fifty percent of lizards in the 100mg/kg group also refused to sprint in the arboreal setting (p=0.085). Based on these results, arboreal locomotor performance was the most sensitive metric of exposure we evaluated. Further study of compounds such as malathion is warranted due to highly variable application rates and exposure scenarios.