Trajectories of rewilding: A taxonomy of wildland management

Rewilding, though a young term, already has numerous meanings. We use Q-methodology to investigate understandings and practices of rewilding amongst managers of wildland on 17 estates in the Scottish uplands. The estates, covering 207,200 ha, include all the main land ownership types in Scotland. All respondents value wildness and biodiversity highly, but the Q-study reveals significant divergence in the interpretations and practices of rewilding, especially concerning (i) the value of naturalness, (ii) the use of management interventions, (iii) the value of cultural heritage and traditional land uses, and (iv) the place of people within wildland. A tripartite taxonomy of wildland management approaches is developed, identifying three ‘centres of gravity’ along the continuum of viewpoints, emphasising, respectively, nature's autonomy, active restoration, and the maintenance of wildness within cultural landscapes. The taxonomy provides an analytic framework for evaluating the diverse and often conflicting aspirations for the management of wild places.     

Enhanced bioremediation using whey powder for a trichloroethene plume in a high‐sulfate,fractured granitic aquifer

An in situ bioremediation (ISB) pilot study, using whey powder as an electron donor, is being performed at Site 19, Edwards Air Force Base, California, to treat groundwater contaminated with trichloroethene (TCE) via anaerobic reductive dechlorination. Challenging site features include a fractured granitic aquifer, complex geochemistry, and limited biological capacity for reductive dechlorination. ISB was conducted in two phases with Phase I including one‐and‐a‐half years of biostimulation only using whey powder and Phase II including biostimulation with buffered whey powder and bioaugmentation. Results of Phase I demonstrated effective distribution of whey during injections resulting in depletion of high concentrations of sulfate and methanogenesis, but acid production due to whey fermentation and limited buffering capacity of the aquifer resulted in undesirable impacts to pH. In addition, cis‐1,2‐dichloroethene (cis‐1,2‐DCE) stall was observed, which correlated to the unsuccessful growth of native Dehalococcoides populations. Therefore, Phase II included the successful buffering of whey powder using bicarbonate, which mitigated negative pH effects. In addition, bioaugmentation resulted in successful transport of Dehalococcoides populations to greater than 50 feet away from the injection point four months after inoculation. A concomitant depletion of accumulated cis‐1,2‐DCE was observed at all wells affected by bioaugmented Dehalococcoides. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.