Poverty Alleviation and Environmental Restoration Using the Clean Development Mechanism: A Case Study from Humbo,Ethiopia

Poverty, hunger and demand for agricultural land have driven local communities to overexploit forest resources throughout Ethiopia. Forests surrounding the township of Humbo were largely destroyed by the late 1960s. In 2004, World Vision Australia and World Vision Ethiopia identified forestry-based carbon sequestration as a potential means to stimulate community development while engaging in environmental restoration. After two years of consultation, planning and negotiations, the Humbo Community-based Natural Regeneration Project began implementation—the Ethiopian organization’s first carbon sequestration initiative. The Humbo Project assists communities affected by environmental degradation including loss of biodiversity, soil erosion and flooding with an opportunity to benefit from carbon markets while reducing poverty and restoring the local agroecosystem. Involving the regeneration of 2,728 ha of degraded native forests, it brings social, economic and ecological benefits—facilitating adaptation to a changing climate and generating temporary certified emissions reductions (tCERs) under the Clean Development Mechanism. A key feature of the project has been facilitating communities to embrace new techniques and take responsibility for large-scale environmental change, most importantly involving Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR). This technique is low-cost, replicable, and provides direct benefits within a short time. Communities were able to harvest fodder and firewood within a year of project initiation and wild fruits and other non-timber forest products within three years. Farmers are using agroforestry for both environmental restoration and income generation. Establishment of user rights and local cooperatives has generated community ownership and enthusiasm for this project—empowering the community to more sustainably manage their communal lands.     

Background level of risk determines the intensity of predator neophobia in juvenile convict cichlids

Behavioural ecology is rife with examples of prey animals that are able to adjust the intensity of their anti-predator response to match background risk levels. Often, preys need experience with predators before they will invest in costly anti-predator responses. This means that prey animals often fail to respond to predators during their first encounter. Recently, we have shown that prey raised under high-risk conditions may exhibit avoidance of potential predation cues independent of experience (neophobia). Such phenotypically plastic neophobic predator responses may reduce the initial costs of learning ecologically relevant threats while maintaining sufficient behavioural plasticity to respond to variation in local conditions. Here, we test if induced neophobia results in threat-sensitive behavioural trade-offs in response to a novel chemosensory cue. Our first experiment shows that while juvenile convict cichlids (Amatitlania nigrofasciata) pre-exposed to high (but not low) risk conditions exhibited predator avoidance to a novel odour (rainbow trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss), the response intensity was not influenced by the concentration of trout odour detected. Our second experiment demonstrated that the intensity of anti-predator response towards a novel predator cue was dependent upon the level of background risk. Convict cichlids pre-exposed to high-risk conditions showed stronger responses than those pre-exposed to low-risk conditions, while cichlids pre-exposed to intermediate-risk conditions exhibited intermediate response intensities. Together, these data demonstrate that background levels of risk and not the concentration of novel cues detected shape the induced neophobic response pattern of juvenile convict cichlids.     

Reliance of mobile species on sensitive habitats: a case study of manta rays (Manta alfredi) and lagoons

Quantifying the ecological importance of individual habitats to highly mobile animals is challenging because patterns of habitat reliance for these taxa are complex and difficult to observe. We investigated the importance of lagoons to the manta ray, Manta alfredi, a wide-ranging and vulnerable species in a less-disturbed atoll ecosystem. Lagoons are highly sensitive to anthropogenic disturbance and are known to be ecologically important to a wide variety of mobile species. We used a novel combination of research tools to examine the reliance of M. alfredi on lagoon habitats. Stable isotope analysis was used to assay the recent energetic importance of lagoons to M. alfredi; high-resolution tracking data provided information about how M. alfredi utilised lagoonal habitats over long and short time periods; acoustic cameras logged patterns of animal entrances and departures from lagoons; and photo identification/laser photogrammetry provided some insight into why they may be using this habitat. M. alfredi showed strong evidence of energetic dependence on lagoon resources during the course of the study and spent long periods of residence within lagoons or frequently transited into them from elsewhere. While within lagoons, they demonstrated affinities for particular structural features within this habitat and showed evidence of temporal patterning in habitat utilization. This work sheds light on how and why M. alfredi uses lagoons and raises questions about how this use may be altered in disturbed settings. More generally, these observations contribute to our knowledge of how to assess the ecological importance of particular habitats situated within the broader home range of mobile consumers.     

Reassessment of the Cross-Florida Barge Canal: A probability approach

This reassessment of the Corps of Engineers' study of the Cross-Florida Canal demonstrates the application of the Weibull probability distribution to handle uncertainty in benefit-cost analysis and illustrates the distribution's use to incorporate environmental considerations in project analysis. With range and probability assumptions to reflect the criticisms of the Corps' study, it is shown that the Canal was a high-risk project even with the inappropriately low discount rate used. Use of the Weibull distribution is shown to be superior to the usual point estimates and range sensitivity tests in benefit-cost analysis.     

Gray Whales and the Value of Monitoring Data in Implementing the U.S. Endangered Species Act

Abstract: Many scientists lament the absence of data for endangered species and argue that more funds should be spent acquiring basic information about population trends. Using 19 years of abundance estimates for the eastern North Pacific gray whale ( Eschrichtius robustus ), we sampled subsets of the original survey data to identify the number of years of data required to remove the population from the U.S. Endangered Species Act's (ESA) list of endangered and threatened wildlife. For any given duration of monitoring, we selected all possible combinations of consecutive counts. To incorporate variability in growth rates, we extracted a maximum likelihood estimator of growth rate and confidence interval about that growth rate on the assumption that the population changes can be approximated by a simple diffusion process with drift. We then applied a new approach to determine ESA status for each subset of survey data and found that a quantitative decision to delist is unambiguously supported by 11 years of data but is precariously uncertain with fewer than 10 years of data. The data needed to produce an unequivocal decision to delist gray whales cost the National Marine Fisheries Service an estimated U.S. $660,000, a surprisingly modest expense given the fact that delisting can greatly simplify regulatory constraints. This example highlights the value of population monitoring in administering the ESA and provides a compelling example of the utility of such information in identifying both imperiled and recovered species. The economic value of such data is that they provide the foundation for delisting, which could ultimately save much more money than the collection of the data would ever cost.     

Differences in the importance of work outcomes between full-time and part-time hospital employees

This study examined differences in the importance of work outcomes between full-time and part-time hospital employees in a sample drawn from five western hospitals (N = 1,876). Work status was operationalized by classifying respondents into four categories based on hours worked per week. Exploratory factor analysis showed that work outcomes may be classified as extrinsic (pay and fringe benefits) and instrinsic (being informed about the job, participating in decision-making, and doing the job well). Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that this two-factor structure fits the data well for all four work status categories although the factor loadings differed across categories. Multivariate analyses of variance and covariance indicated that statistically significant differences in the importance of extrinsic and intrinsic outcomes exist for full-time and part-time employees and that these differences persist when various social and demographic variables are held constant. Employees who work fewer hours per week tend to assign less importance to the work outcomes measured in this study. The results suggest that theoretical models of variables such as job satisfaction should take into account work status differences in the importance of work-related outcomes. In addition, managers may find that workers respond to different reward structures depending on the degree of their involvement in the organization.     

Effect of automated versus manual emergency braking on rear seat adult and pediatric occupant precrash motion

Abstract

Objective: Emergency braking can potentially generate precrash occupant motion that may influence the effectiveness of restraints in the subsequent crash, particularly for rear-seated occupants who may be less aware of the impending crash. With the advent of automated emergency braking (AEB), the mechanism by which braking is achieved is changing, potentially altering precrash occupant motion. Further, due to anatomical and biomechanical differences across ages, kinematic differences between AEB and manual emergency braking (MEB) may vary between child and adult occupants. Therefore, the objective of this study was to quantify differences in rear-seated adult and pediatric kinematics and muscle activity during AEB and MEB scenarios.

Methods: Vehicle maneuvers were performed in a recent model year sedan traveling at 50?km/h. MEB (acceleration ～1?g) was achieved by the driver pressing the brake pedal with maximum effort. AEB (acceleration ～0.8?g) was triggered by the vehicle system. Inertial and Global Positioning System data were collected. Seventeen male participants aged 10–33 were restrained in the rear right passenger seat and experienced each maneuver twice. The subjects’ kinematics were recorded with an 8-camera 3D motion capture system. Electromyography (EMG) recorded muscle activity. Head and trunk displacements, raw and normalized by seated height, and peak head and trunk velocity were compared across age and between maneuvers. Mean EMG was calculated to interpret kinematic findings.

Results: Head and trunk displacement and peak velocity were greater in MEB than in AEB in both raw and normalized data (P?≤?.01). No effect of age was observed (P?≥?.21). Peak head and trunk velocities were greater in repetition 1 than in repetition 2 (P?≤?.006) in MEB but not in AEB. Sternocleidomastoid (SCM) mean EMG was greater in MEB compared to AEB, and muscle activity increased in repetition 2 in MEB.

Conclusions: Across all ages, head and trunk excursions were greater in MEB than AEB, despite increased muscle activity in MEB. This observation may suggest an ineffective attempt to brace the head or a startle reflex. The increased excursion in MEB compared to AEB may be attributed to differences in the acceleration pulses between the 2 scenarios. These results suggest that AEB systems can use specific deceleration profiles that have potential to reduce occupant motion across diverse age groups compared to sudden maximum emergency braking applied manually.