<Emphasis Type="Italic">Aporrectodea caliginosa</Emphasis>, a relevant earthworm species for a posteriori pesticide risk assessment: current knowledge and recommendations for culture and experimental design

Ecotoxicological tests with earthworms are widely used and are mandatory for the risk assessment of pesticides prior to registration and commercial use. The current model species for standardized tests is Eisenia fetida or Eisenia andrei. However, these species are absent from agricultural soils and often less sensitive to pesticides than other earthworm species found in mineral soils. To move towards a better assessment of pesticide effects on non-target organisms, there is a need to perform a posteriori tests using relevant species. The endogeic species Aporrectodea caliginosa (Savigny, 1826) is representative of cultivated fields in temperate regions and is suggested as a relevant model test species. After providing information on its taxonomy, biology, and ecology, we reviewed current knowledge concerning its sensitivity towards pesticides. Moreover, we highlighted research gaps and promising perspectives. Finally, advice and recommendations are given for the establishment of laboratory cultures and experiments using this soil-dwelling earthworm species.     

“The End of the Ice Age?”: Disappearing World Heritage and the Climate Change Communication Imperative

Rapid environmental change in vulnerable destinations has stimulated a new form of travel termed “last chance tourism” (LCT). Studies have examined the risks of LCT, while leaving potential opportunities within this new tourism market largely underexplored. Results of survey (n?=?399) research in Jasper National Park, Canada reveal that a LCT motivation influences decisions to visit this iconic Canadian destination, and suggest that this motivation is linked to a desire to learn about the impacts of climate change on the Athabasca Glacier. Findings suggest there may be short to medium term opportunities associated with LCT, including promoting climate change ambassadorship through management interventions. This paper discusses a range of possible education, interpretive, and outreach activities that might be employed at LCT destinations. It outlines the relative merits (or what we refer to as “uneasy benefits”) of promoting the glacier and other LCT destinations within a protected areas management and climate change adaptation context.     

Using Nonprofit Narratives and News Media Framing to Depict Air Pollution in Delhi,India

How is the air pollution issue in Delhi framed by the news media and narrated by nonprofit organizations? To study news media framing, we employed an inductive approach based on automated text coding of news coverage of the issue. To study nonprofit organization narrations, a deductive approach guided by the Narrative Policy Framework was used to focus on the stories told via online documents as found on nonprofit websites. The findings confirm existing theory and empirical research regarding the leading causes and effects of air pollution; however, perceptions are mixed regarding the government’s ability to implement policy. The combined deductive and inductive approaches provide a systematic and multi-method research study for understanding perceptions of air pollution in one of the largest cities in the world. The result is a depiction of the priorities that influence public opinions, political decisions, and eventually public policies.     

Working with cognitively impaired drivers: Legal issues for mental health professionals to consider

Introduction

Mental health professionals are gatekeepers of patient confidentiality. Yet, confidentiality held too strictly, by allowing a potentially dangerous driver to assume control of a car, endangers society. Recent court cases have mandated that mental health professionals must warn those who may be potentially harmed by patients. In spite of this, disagreements linger as to whether it is the responsibility of governmental agencies or mental health professionals to decide who is unfit to operate a vehicle because of cognitive impairment. Methods: This article addresses the legally relevant considerations when working with cognitively compromised individuals who operate a motor vehicle. Legal issues surrounding confidentiality, patient rights, foreseeable risk, and the duty to warn and protect are presented in order to understand their relationship to recent court rulings.

Impact on industry

The impact on the mental health care industry includes not only concerns about increased insurance premiums or costs due to alleged negligence or litigation expenses secondary to failure to ensure the safety of an impaired client under their care. Mental health care providers are aware that the welfare of clients with impairment to cognitive decision making ability may require unique considerations for safety such as ensuring safe and appropriate transportation.     

Spray deposition from ground-based applications of carbaryl to protect individual trees from bark beetle attack

Bark beetles (Coleoptera: Curculionidae, Scolytinae) are recognized as the most important tree mortality agent in western coniferous forests. A common method of protecting trees from bark beetle attack is to saturate the tree bole with carbaryl (1-naphthyl methylcarbamate) using a hydraulic sprayer. In this study, we evaluate the amount of carbaryl drift (ground deposition) occurring at four distances from the tree bole (7.6, 15.2, 22.9, and 38.1 m) during conventional spray applications for protecting individual lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta Dougl. ex Loud.) from mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins) attack and Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmannii Parry ex Engelm.) from spruce beetle (D. rufipennis [Kirby]) attack. Mean deposition (carbaryl + alpha-naphthol) did not differ significantly among treatments (nozzle orifices) at any distance from the tree bole. Values ranged from 0.04 +/- 0.02 mg carbaryl m(-2) at 38.1 m to 13.30 +/- 2.54 mg carbaryl m(-2) at 7.6 m. Overall, distance from the tree bole significantly affected the amount of deposition. Deposition was greatest 7.6 m from the tree bole and quickly declined as distance from the tree bole increased. Approximately 97% of total spray deposition occurred within 15.2 m of the tree bole. Application efficiency (i.e., percentage of insecticide applied that is retained on trees) ranged from 80.9 to 87.2%. Based on review of the literature, this amount of drift poses little threat to adjacent aquatic environments. No-spray buffers of 7.6 m should be sufficient to protect freshwater fish, amphibians, crustaceans, bivalves, and most aquatic insects. Buffers >22.9 m appear sufficient to protect the most sensitive aquatic insects (Plecoptera).     

Investigating habitat value to inform contaminant remediation options: approach

Habitat valuation methods are most often developed and used to prioritize candidate lands for conservation. In this study the intent of habitat valuation was to inform the decision-making process for remediation of chemical contaminants on specific lands or surface water bodies. Methods were developed to summarize dimensions of habitat value for six representative aquatic and terrestrial contaminated sites at the East Tennessee Technology Park (ETTP) on the US Department of Energy Oak Ridge Reservation in Oak Ridge, TN, USA. Several general valuation metrics were developed for three broad categories: site use by groups of organisms, site rarity, and use value added from spatial context. Examples of use value metrics are taxa richness, a direct measure of number of species that inhabit an area, complexity of habitat structure, an indirect measure of potential number of species that may use the area, and land use designation, a measure of the length of time that the area will be available for use. Measures of rarity included presence of rare species or communities. Examples of metrics for habitat use value added from spatial context included similarity or complementarity of neighboring habitat patches and presence of habitat corridors. More specific metrics were developed for groups of organisms in contaminated streams, ponds, and terrestrial ecosystems. For each of these metrics, cutoff values for high, medium, and low habitat value were suggested, based on available information on distributions of organisms and landscape features, as well as habitat use information. A companion paper describes the implementation of these habitat valuation metrics and scoring criteria in the remedial investigation for ETTP.     

Impediments and Solutions to Sustainable,Watershed-Scale Urban Stormwater Management: Lessons from Australia and the United States

In urban and suburban areas, stormwater runoff is a primary stressor on surface waters. Conventional urban stormwater drainage systems often route runoff directly to streams and rivers, thus exacerbating pollutant inputs and hydrologic disturbance, and resulting in the degradation of ecosystem structure and function. Decentralized stormwater management tools, such as low impact development (LID) or water sensitive urban design (WSUD), may offer a more sustainable solution to stormwater management if implemented at a watershed scale. These tools are designed to pond, infiltrate, and harvest water at the source, encouraging evaporation, evapotranspiration, groundwater recharge, and re-use of stormwater. While there are numerous demonstrations of WSUD practices, there are few examples of widespread implementation at a watershed scale with the explicit objective of protecting or restoring a receiving stream. This article identifies seven major impediments to sustainable urban stormwater management: (1) uncertainties in performance and cost, (2) insufficient engineering standards and guidelines, (3) fragmented responsibilities, (4) lack of institutional capacity, (5) lack of legislative mandate, (6) lack of funding and effective market incentives, and (7) resistance to change. By comparing experiences from Australia and the United States, two developed countries with existing conventional stormwater infrastructure and escalating stream ecosystem degradation, we highlight challenges facing sustainable urban stormwater management and offer several examples of successful, regional WSUD implementation. We conclude by identifying solutions to each of the seven impediments that, when employed separately or in combination, should encourage widespread implementation of WSUD with watershed-based goals to protect human health and safety, and stream ecosystems.     

Modelling Interactions Between Economic Activity, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Biodiversity and Agricultural Production

In this article, we develop a modelling approach which examines selected drivers of ecosystem functioning and agricultural productivity. In particular, we develop linkages between land use and biodiversity and between biodiversity and agricultural productivity. We review the literature for quantitative estimates of key relationships and their parameters for modelling human consumption, land use, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions on biodiversity and agricultural productivity. We assemble these specifications into an iterative causal model and carry out a number of scenario projections of country-level consumption, production, land use, energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, species diversity, and agricultural production up to 2050. Finally, we dissect the projections into key drivers using structural decomposition and sensitivity analyses.     

Modeling Phosphate Influence on Arsenate Reduction Kinetics by a Freshwater Cyanobacterium

Arsenic speciation in natural surface-water systems can be highly impacted through biological processes that result in non-thermodynamically predicted species to dominate the system. In laboratory experiments, arsenate reduction by a freshwater cyanobacterium exhibited saturation kinetics increasingly inhibited by elevating solution phosphate concentrations. Approximately 100% arsenate reduction occurred by days 4, 7, and 10 in the low (0.35 μm), middle (3.5 μm), and high (35 μm) phosphate treatments, respectively, with maximum arsenate reduction rates ranged from 0.013 μmol As g C⁻¹ day⁻¹ in the high-phosphate treatment to 0.398 μmol As g C⁻¹ day⁻¹ in the low-phosphate treatment. Saturation kinetic models were utilized to evaluate the impact of cell growth and arsenate-phosphate uptake competition on arsenate reduction rates by the cyanobacterium. Results showed reduced arsenicals dominate arsenic speciation once growth reached steady state, indicating reduced arsenicals may dominate natural systems, even when considering conservatively high, abiotic arsenic reoxidation.     

Spatio-temporal analyses of cropland degradation in the irrigated lowlands of Uzbekistan using remote-sensing and logistic regression modeling

Advancing land degradation in the irrigated areas of Central Asia hinders sustainable development of this predominantly agricultural region. To support decisions on mitigating cropland degradation, this study combines linear trend analysis and spatial logistic regression modeling to expose a land degradation trend in the Khorezm region, Uzbekistan, and to analyze the causes. Time series of the 250-m MODIS NDVI, summed over the growing seasons of 2000–2010, were used to derive areas with an apparent negative vegetation trend; this was interpreted as an indicator of land degradation. About one third (161,000 ha) of the region’s area experienced negative trends of different magnitude. The vegetation decline was particularly evident on the low-fertility lands bordering on the natural sandy desert, suggesting that these areas should be prioritized in mitigation planning. The results of logistic modeling indicate that the spatial pattern of the observed trend is mainly associated with the level of the groundwater table (odds?=?330 %), land-use intensity (odds?=?103 %), low soil quality (odds?=?49 %), slope (odds?=?29 %), and salinity of the groundwater (odds?=?26 %). Areas, threatened by land degradation, were mapped by fitting the estimated model parameters to available data. The elaborated approach, combining remote-sensing and GIS, can form the basis for developing a common tool for monitoring land degradation trends in irrigated croplands of Central Asia.