Assessment of monitoring power for highly mobile vertebrates

Monitoring of population trends is a critical component of conservation management, and development of practical methods remains a priority, particularly for species that challenge more standard approaches. We used field-parameterized simulation models to examine the effects of different errors on monitoring power and compared alternative methods used with two species of threatened pteropodids (flying-foxes), Pteropus conspicillatus and P. poliocephalus, whose mobility violates assumptions of closure on short and long timescales. The influence of three errors on time to 80% statistical power was assessed using a Monte Carlo approach. The errors were: (1) failure to count all animals at a roost, (2) errors associated with enumeration, and (3) variability in the proportion of the population counted due to the movement of individuals between roosts. Even with perfect accuracy and precision for these errors only marginal improvements in power accrued (-1%), with one exception. Improving certainty in the proportion of the population being counted reduced time to detection of a decline by over 6 yr (43%) for fly-out counts and almost 10 yr (71%) for walk-through counts. This error derives from the movement of animals between known and unknown roost sites, violating assumptions of population closure, and because it applies to the entire population, it dominates all other sources of error. Similar errors will accrue in monitoring of a wide variety of highly mobile species and will also result from population redistribution under climate change. The greatest improvements in monitoring performance of highly mobile species accrue through an improved understanding of the proportion of the population being counted, and consequently monitoring of such species must be done at the scale of the species or population range, not at the local level.     

Arsenic speciation and mobility in surface water at Lucky Shot Gold Mine, Alaska

Historical mining in Alaska has created a legacy of approximately 6,830 abandoned mine sites which include adits, tailing piles and contaminated land that continue to impact surface and groundwater quality through run-off and leaching of potentially toxic metals, especially arsenic (As). One such site is the Lucky Shot Gold Mine in Hatcher Pass, south-central Alaska, which operated from 1920 until 1942, mining gold-bearing quartz veins hosted in a Cretaceous tonalite intrusion. Arsenopyrite (FeAsS) and pyrite (FeS₂) present in the quartz veins contribute to elevated As levels in water draining, abandoned mine adits. As future underground mining at Lucky Shot may further adversely impact water quality, baseline geochemical studies were undertaken to assess As mobility in the vicinity of the mine adits. Water samples were collected from streams, adits and boreholes around the mine and analysed for major and minor elements using inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and for anions by ion chromatography (IC). Arsenic species separation was performed in the field to determine the ratio of inorganic As(III)/As(V) using anion-exchange chromatography, following established methods. It was determined that water draining the adits had elevated levels of As roughly seventy times the United States Environmental Protection Agency Drinking Water Standard of 10?μg?L^?1, although this was rapidly diluted downstream in Craigie Creek to <2?μg?L^?1. Adit and surface water pH was circum-neutral and displayed no characteristics of acid mine drainage. Despite being well oxygenated, As(III) is the dominant As species in adit water, accounting for close to 100?% of total As. The proportion of As(V) increases downstream of the adits, as some As(III) is oxidized, but the speciation enhances arsenic mobility at the site. The δ¹⁸O measurements indicate that the water in the system has a short residence time as it is very similar to meteoric water, supporting the observation that the predominance of As(III) in adit water results from the lack of thermodynamical equilibrium being attained and preferential absorbance of As(V).     

Who Plans Whose Sustainability? Alternative Roles for Planners

The paper examines alternative roles for planners in planning for sustainable development. First, it outlines the particular context of the task focusing on operational questions, critical issues and sustainable development planning principles. It then explores roles for planners in this context distinguishing broadly among technician, politician and hybrid planners. It evaluates broadly each role's effectiveness and challenges, in particular decision making and political contexts. Finally, it discusses, first, the implications of these roles for planning education and identifies the main groups of skills planning schools should offer. Second, it analyses briefly the implications of these roles for planning practice in terms of the spatial/organizational level of planning, time horizon, functional planning areas, political/decision making system and planning's position in this system.     

Building community resilience in a context of climate change: The role of social capital

Social capital is considered important for resilience across social levels, including communities, yet insights are scattered across disciplines. This meta-synthesis of 187 studies examines conceptual and empirical understandings of how social capital relates to resilience, identifying implications for community resilience and climate change practice. Different conceptualisations are highlighted, yet also limited focus on underlying dimensions of social capital and proactive types of resilience for engaging with the complex climate change challenge. Empirical insights show that structural and socio-cultural aspects of social capital, multiple other factors and formal actors are all important for shaping the role of social capital for guiding resilience outcomes. Thus, finding ways to work with these different elements is important. Greater attention on how and why outcomes emerge, interactions between factors, approaches of formal actors and different socio-cultural dimensions will advance understandings about how to nurture social capital for resilience in the context of climate change.     

Working Wetland Potential: An index to guide the sustainable development of African wetlands

Past experience shows that inappropriate agricultural development in wetlands can undermine sustainability and may have profound social and economic repercussions for people dependent on the range of ecosystem services provided by those wetlands. Nonetheless, there is escalating pressure to expand agriculture within wetlands due to increasing population, in conjunction with efforts to increase food security. This paper describes the development of a semi-analytical framework for identifying, organizing and analyzing the complex factors that link people, agriculture and wetland ecosystems — an index of Working Wetland Potential (WWP). The method is based on a form of multi-criteria analysis that integrates biophysical and socio-economic aspects of wetland utilization. The WWP index emerges from the aggregation of two values: the first arising from an appraisal of both the biophysical and socio-economic suitability of using the wetland for agriculture; and the second resulting from an assessment of the possible hazards, in relation to both social welfare and the ecological character of the wetland. Hence, the approach provides a way to explicitly integrate biophysical and social aspects of wetland utilization in a single index to enable an initial assessment of the suitability of using a wetland for agriculture. Results from three contrasting wetlands in sub-Saharan Africa are presented.     

Educating for sustainable production and consumption and sustainable livelihoods: learning from multi-stakeholder networks

This paper examines how education for sustainable development (ESD) can be concretely advanced using the theoretical approaches of sustainable consumption and production (SCP) and sustainable livelihoods (SL). Five case examples illustrate a diverse set of strategic educational interventions focusing on: (1) education of specific organizational actors about these theoretical frameworks illustrated with case examples (such as SCP training by the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies [UNU-IAS] and CSR-Asia of government and business representatives), (2) regional education strategies focused on production and consumption in specific sectors (such as the food sector in Sk?ne, Sweden), (3) social learning directed at innovation for sustainable development (such as competitions of solar boats developed by universities in the region of Friesland, the Netherlands), (4) education of consumers and firms made possible by the adoption of certification systems affirming SCP and SL (such as Cradle-to-Cradle certification of a paper company in the Netherlands or the establishment of Fair Trade cities in Sweden), or (5) reorienting communities to address underutilized productive physical capital within communities (such as the sharing productive capital project in rural areas of Saskatchewan, Canada). The cases are drawn from the projects that the UNU-IAS, four of its regional centers of expertise (RCE) on ESD and other affiliates have conducted. In addition to documenting the educational processes emerging from specific regions, the paper highlights findings related to the success of these projects and opportunities for further research, including regional and inter-regional approaches.     

Comparative chronic toxicity of nanoparticulate and ionic zinc to the earthworm Eisenia veneta in a soil matrix

Manufactured nanoparticles (NPs) are increasingly being used in a range of consumer products and are already entering the environment. NP ZnO is one of the most widely used and potentially toxic NPs in aquatic exposures. It is likely that ZnO nanoparticles will also be bioavailable to soil organisms, studies on ZnO NP toxicity in a soil matrix are lacking. We exposed the earthworm Eisenia veneta to uncoated NP ZnO (<100 nm) dosed to soil and food at 250 and 750 mg Zn kg(-1) for 21 d. Concurrent exposures of equivalent ionic Zn were conducted with ZnCl(2) and for both forms effects on life history traits, immune activity and Zn body concentrations were compared. Despite slightly higher measured body concentrations, NP ZnO generally had less impact than ZnCl(2) on measured traits. At 750 mg Zn kg(-1), reproduction declined by 50% when exposed to NP ZnO but was almost completely inhibited by ZnCl(2). Similarly, immune activity was unaffected by NP ZnO but was suppressed by 20% when exposed to ZnCl(2). Scanning electron microscopy analysis of worm tissues following 24h aqueous exposure showed the presence of ZnO particles suggesting that NPs can be taken up in particulate form. This may explain the reduced effects at similar body concentrations seen in the soil study. Our findings suggest that risk assessments do not need to go beyond considering the metal component of NP ZnO in soils at least for the larger size uncoated particles considered here.     

Vehicular air pollution and asthma: implications for education for health and environmental sustainability

Studies show a direct relationship between occurrence of asthma and increases of particulate matter in the air. Private transportation is found to be a significant contributor to this problem. The objective of this article is to explore this link between air pollution, asthma and vehicular dependency in order to provide recommendations for health and transport policy. This article focuses on the survey of literature on the relationship between vehicular air pollution and asthma; combining it with the literature on vehicular dependency or ‘car culture’ in the global context and in The Netherlands. This article exposes the imbalance of power between patient groups and polluting industries, and the government failure to protect the weaker party can be explained by corporate pressures. It will be argued that since air pollution is tied to the corporate support for the car industry and vested interests in promoting a ‘car culture’, strategic policy that claims to be concerned with public health should explicitly link the present pattern of mobility to public health. This article concludes with a recommendation for raising environmental health awareness by explicitly linking vehicular dependency to respiratory health through a combination of holistic and citizenship education.     

Computational fluid dynamics modeling of laboratory flames and an industrial flare

A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methodology for simulating the combustion process has been validated with experimental results. Three different types of experimental setups were used to validate the CFD model. These setups include an industrial-scale flare setups and two lab-scale flames. The CFD study also involved three different fuels: C₃H₆/CH₄/Air/N₂, C₂H₄/O₂/Ar, and CH₄/Air. In the first setup, flare efficiency data from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) 2010 field tests were used to validate the CFD model. In the second setup, a McKenna burner with flat flames was simulated. Temperature and mass fractions of important species were compared with the experimental data. Finally, results of an experimental study done at Sandia National Laboratories to generate a lifted jet flame were used for the purpose of validation. The reduced 50 species mechanism, LU 1.1, the realizable k-? turbulence model, and the EDC turbulence–chemistry interaction model were used for this work. Flare efficiency, axial profiles of temperature, and mass fractions of various intermediate species obtained in the simulation were compared with experimental data and a good agreement between the profiles was clearly observed. In particular, the simulation match with the TCEQ 2010 flare tests has been significantly improved (within 5% of the data) compared to the results reported by Singh et al. in 2012. Validation of the speciated flat flame data supports the view that flares can be a primary source of formaldehyde emission.

ImplicationsValidated computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models can be a useful tool to predict destruction and removal efficiency (DRE) and combustion efficiency (CE) under steam/air assist conditions in the face of many other flare operating variables such as fuel composition, exit jet velocity, and crosswind. Augmented with rigorous combustion chemistry, CFD is also a powerful tool to predict flare emissions such as formaldehyde. In fact, this study implicates flares emissions as a primary source of formaldehyde emissions. The rigorous CFD simulations, together with available controlled flare test data, can be fitted into simple response surface models for quick engineering use.