Addressing inequality and intolerance in human–wildlife coexistence

Millennia of human conflict with wildlife have built a culture of intolerance toward wildlife among some stakeholders. We explored 2 key obstacles to improved human–wildlife coexistence: coexistence inequality (how the costs and benefits of coexisting with wildlife are unequally shared) and intolerance. The costs of coexisting with wildlife are often disproportionately borne by the so-called global south and rural communities, and the benefits often flow to the global north and urban dwellers. Attitudes and behaviors toward wildlife (tolerance versus intolerance) vary with social and cultural norms. We suggest more empathetic advocacy is needed that, for example, promotes conservation while appropriately considering those who bear the costs of conflict with wildlife. To achieve more equitable cost-sharing, we suggest limiting the costs incurred by those most affected or by sharing those costs more widely. For example, we advocate for the development of improved wildlife compensation schemes, increasing the scale of rewilding efforts, and preventing wildlife-derived revenue leaching out of the local communities bearing the costs of coexistence.     

Understanding global sea levels: past, present and future

The coastal zone has changed profoundly during the 20th century and, as a result, society is becoming increasingly vulnerable to the impact of sea-level rise and variability. This demands improved understanding to facilitate appropriate planning to minimise potential losses. With this in mind, the World Climate Research Programme organised a workshop (held in June 2006) to document current understanding and to identify research and observations required to reduce current uncertainties associated with sea-level rise and variability. While sea levels have varied by over 120 m during glacial/interglacial cycles, there has been little net rise over the past several millennia until the 19th century and early 20th century, when geological and tide-gauge data indicate an increase in the rate of sea-level rise. Recent satellite-altimeter data and tide-gauge data have indicated that sea levels are now rising at over 3 mm year⁻¹. The major contributions to 20th and 21st century sea-level rise are thought to be a result of ocean thermal expansion and the melting of glaciers and ice caps. Ice sheets are thought to have been a minor contributor to 20th century sea-level rise, but are potentially the largest contributor in the longer term. Sea levels are currently rising at the upper limit of the projections of the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (TAR IPCC), and there is increasing concern of potentially large ice-sheet contributions during the 21st century and beyond, particularly if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated. A suite of ongoing satellite and in situ observational activities need to be sustained and new activities supported. To the extent that we are able to sustain these observations, research programmes utilising the resulting data should be able to significantly improve our understanding and narrow projections of future sea-level rise and variability.     

From pioneering to organised business: the development of ecological farming in China

ABSTRACT

Small-scale ecological farming and their associated alternative food networks, are increasingly important in China, as a response to poor farm incomes and as a contribution to widespread concerns about environmental degradation and food safety. However, despite the enormous market potential and the notable success of some ventures, this type of farming remains at the margins, with many businesses struggling to develop beyond their start-up phase and consumers struggling to build confidence in the new produce and routes to market. Many of these farms display the classic elements of pioneer businesses, including high reliance on charismatic individuals, insecure land rights, high transaction and monitoring costs and fragile routes to market. Empirically, many of these businesses fail because they cannot grow out of the pioneer phase before the pioneer grows tired of the business. While this is a problem for all small businesses, it is particularly acute in business sectors like ecological farming in China, where there is little evidence of suitable and sustainable developmental models. Using Bernardus Lievegoed's work on organisational development applied to two case study farms, we suggest that there are Western developmental models that are applicable to small-scale ecological farming and that have the potential to offer insights into how this might be achieved with Chinese characteristics. We conclude by arguing that, Chinese ecological farms have to plan explicitly for a form of development that allows them to remain committed to their ideals while moving them away from dependence on charismatic people, family labour and volatile customer bases.     

Photodegradation of polyaromatic hydrocarbons in passive air samplers: field testing different deployment chambers

Semi-permeable membrane devices (SPMDs) were loaded with deuterated anthracene and pyrene as performance reference compounds (PRCs) and deployed at a test site in four different chambers (open and closed box chamber, bowl chamber and cage chamber) for 29 days. The losses of PRCs and the uptake of polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from the ambient air were quantified. UV-B levels measured in each deployment chamber indicated that SPMDs would be exposed to the most UV-B in the cage chamber and open box chamber. Significantly less PAHs were quantified in SPMDs deployed in the cage chamber and open box chamber compared to samplers from the other two chambers, suggesting that photodegradation of PAHs had occurred. The loss of PRCs confirmed these results but also showed that photodegradation was occurring in the closed box chamber. The bowl chamber appears to provide the best protection from the influence of direct photodegradation.     

Retained nitrate, hydrated sulfates, and carbonaceous mass in federal reference method fine particulate matter for six eastern U.S. cities

Material balance of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) measured with the Federal Reference Method (FRM) is developed for one rural and five urban locations in the eastern half of the United States using routine Speciation Trends Network (STN) and FRM chemical measurements and thermodynamic models. The Aerosol Inorganics Model is used to estimate retained particle bound water, and an ammonium nitrate evaporation model is used to estimate nitrate concentrations retained on the Teflon-membrane filter of the FRM. To address large uncertainties in carbonaceous mass calculated from STN carbon measurements, retained carbonaceous mass is derived by material balance between PM2.5 FRM mass and estimates of its non-carbon constituents. The resulting sulfate, adjusted nitrate, derived water, inferred carbonaceous material balance approach (SANDWICH) is compared with reconstructed fine mass (RCFM) using the Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments monitoring program equation. For this study, the SANDWICH method resulted in approximately 21-27% higher sulfate mass and approximately 24-85% lower nitrate mass. The combined mass associated with sulfates and nitrates, however, are well within +/- 10% of the proportion derived using the more traditional RCFM method. The discrepancies between SANDWICH and measurement-derived carbonaceous mass vary from -21% to +56% on an annual basis and are attributed in part to urban-rural source influences and uncertainties in estimating FRM-retained carbonaceous mass.     

Adding complex trophic interactions to a size-spectral plankton model: Emergent diversity patterns and limits on predictability

A new model in the NPZ (nutrient-phytoplankton-zooplankton) style is presented, mechanistically simple but with 40 size classes each of phytoplankton (1-20 μm) and small zooplankton (2.1-460 μm), in order to resolve one level of trophic interactions in detail. General, empirical allometric relationships are used to parameterize both the optimal prey size and size selectivity for each grazer class, as is rarely done. This inclusion of complex predator-prey linkages and realistic prey preferences yields a system with an emergent pattern of phytoplankton diversity consistent with global ocean observations, i.e., a parabolic relationship between diversity (as measured by the Shannon evenness) and biomass. It also yields significant long-term time evolution, which places limits on the extent to which the community response to nutrient forcing can be predicted from forcing in a pragmatic sense. When a simple annual cycle in nutrient supply is repeated exactly for many years, transient fluctuations up to a factor of two in spring bloom magnitude persist for 10-20 years before a stable seasonal biomass cycle is achieved. When the amplitude of the nutrient-supply annual cycle is given a random interannual modulation, these long-lived transients add significant noise to a 100-year correlation between annual-mean nutrient supply and annual-mean biomass. This noise is 20% of total interannual variance in the model base case, and ranges from 0% to 40% depending on the grazer size selectivity. In general, unpredictability on the bloom timescale is damped when food-web complexity is increased by making grazers less selective, while unpredictability on the interannual scale shows the opposite pattern, increasing with increasing food-web complexity up to a high threshhold, past which community structure and biomass time evolution both suddenly simplify. These results suggests a new strategy for ensemble ecosystem forecasting and uncertainty estimation, analogous to methods common in circulation and climate modeling, in which internal variability (predator-prey interactions in the biological case; eddies and climate-system oscillations in the physical case) are resolved and quantified, rather than suppressed.     

Determination of response of real-time SidePak AM510 monitor to secondhand smoke, other common indoor aerosols, and outdoor aerosol

The amount of light scattered by airborne particles inside an aerosol photometer will vary not only with the mass concentration, but also with particle properties such as size, shape, and composition. This study conducted controlled experiments to compare the measurements of a real-time photometer, the SidePak AM510 monitor (SidePak), with gravimetric mass. PM sources tested were outdoor aerosols, and four indoor combustion sources: cigarettes, incense, wood chips, and toasting bread. The calibration factor for rescaling the SidePak measurements to agree with gravimetric mass was similar for the cigarette and incense sources, but different for burning wood chips and toasting bread. The calibration factors for ambient urban aerosols differed substantially from day to day, due to variations in the sources and composition of outdoor PM. A field evaluation inside a casino with active smokers yielded calibration factors consistent with those obtained in the controlled experiments with cigarette smoke.