Forest protection and economic development by offshoring wood extraction: Bhutan’s clean development path

With globalization, virtual exchanges of natural resources embodied in traded commodities redistribute geographically land use and its environmental impacts. Benefits of national forest protection may be undermined at the global-scale by leakage through international trade. We studied land use displacement associated with national policies to protect forests in Bhutan. This case study provides a simple situation: a dominant forest cover almost unaffected by agricultural expansion, a rural economy dominated by the primary sector, centralized forest conservation policies, and a dominant trading partner. We assessed the net effects at the international level of the Bhutanese forest protection policies by accounting for trade in wood products with India. Our results show that these policies have been effective in maintaining a high forest cover, but have been accompanied by an increasing displacement of forest use to India. In 1996–2011, the difference between the total volume of wood imported from India and the total volume exported from Bhutan—i.e., the net displacement—corresponds to 27 % of the total volume consumed in Bhutan. In 2011, 68 % of the total forest area required to produce the wood consumed in Bhutan was located in India. The wood imported by Bhutan was likely originating from tree plantations in the northeastern Indian states. Since Bhutan has few tree plantations and very valuable natural forests, the net international-level ecological impacts of this land use displacement is arguably positive. Most of the wood imports of Bhutan were wood charcoal for its emerging chemical industries. This case of displacement reflects functional upgrading in the value-chain rather than an externalization of consumption-based environmental costs. Through its government policies, Bhutan has managed to support its economic development while protecting its forests and leapfrogging the negative impacts on forests generally associated with the early stages of modernization.     

The role of research in coastal westlands management: Salt Marshes of Santoña and Noja (Spain)

Coastal environments, such as marshes, dunes, or estuaries, are characterized by their high natural values that usually cause them to be subjected to high protection levels, affecting activities taking place within them. This is why the action in these spaces must be based on the use of proper techniques and approaches, which integrate ecology with practical engineering necessities. In this context, the Department of Sciences and Techniques of the Water and Environment of the University of Cantabria, through methods developed in the natural reserve of the Salt Marshes of Santoña and Noja, proposes the use of a working methodology based on the discipline of “ecosystem management” combined with the “adaptive management” methodologies; the application of mathematical, statistical, and specific predictive instruments; and the utilization of an “ecologic niche” as a union between the scientific knowledge of the littoral environments and the true actuation scale of the projects and activities carried out within them.     

Genomic erosion in a demographically recovered bird species during conservation rescue

The pink pigeon (Nesoenas mayeri) is an endemic species of Mauritius that has made a remarkable recovery after a severe population bottleneck in the 1970s to early 1990s. Prior to this bottleneck, an ex situ population was established from which captive-bred individuals were released into free-living subpopulations to increase population size and genetic variation. This conservation rescue led to rapid population recovery to 400–480 individuals, and the species was twice downlisted on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. We analyzed the impacts of the bottleneck and genetic rescue on neutral genetic variation during and after population recovery (1993–2008) with restriction site-associated sequencing, microsatellite analyses, and quantitative genetic analysis of studbook data of 1112 birds from zoos in Europe and the United States. We used computer simulations to study the predicted changes in genetic variation and population viability from the past into the future. Genetic variation declined rapidly, despite the population rebound, and the effective population size was approximately an order of magnitude smaller than census size. The species carried a high genetic load of circa 15 lethal equivalents for longevity. Our computer simulations predicted continued inbreeding will likely result in increased expression of deleterious mutations (i.e., a high realized load) and severe inbreeding depression. Without continued conservation actions, it is likely that the pink pigeon will go extinct in the wild within 100 years. Conservation rescue of the pink pigeon has been instrumental in the recovery of the free-living population. However, further genetic rescue with captive-bred birds from zoos is required to recover lost variation, reduce expression of harmful deleterious variation, and prevent extinction. The use of genomics and modeling data can inform IUCN assessments of the viability and extinction risk of species, and it helps in assessments of the conservation dependency of populations.     

The temporal changes of the concentration level of typical toxic organics in the river sediments around Beijing

In this study, the current situation of five types of toxic organics and endocrine disrupters in the sediments of rivers around Beijing, i.e., polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), phthalic acid esters (PAEs), organic chlorinated pesticides (OCPs), estrogens (Es), and bisphenol A (BPA), which included 56 contaminants, was analyzed and compared with that registered by the historical literatures. The ecological risks were also assessed. The total concentration of PAHs, PAEs, OCPs, Es, and BPA ranged from 232.5 ng·g^–1 to 5429.7 ng·g^–1, 2047.2 ng·g^–1 to 18051.5 ng·g^–1, 4.5 ng·g^–1 to 11.7 ng·g^–1, 18.1 ng·g^–1 to 105.2 ng·g^–1, and 36.3 ng·g^–1 to 69.6 ng·g^–1, respectively. Among these five types of organic compounds, the concentration levels of PAHs and OCPs have decreased significantly in the last ten years, while those of PAEs and Es had an upward trend compared with the previous studies. BPA still remained at a moderately high level, as it was ten years ago. The risks of the PAEs in all of the sample sites, and fluoranthene, benzo[a]anthrene, and benzo[a]pyrene in the Wenyu River sediment, were relatively high. These results supplemented the database of toxic organics’ concentration levels in the sediments of Beijing rivers.

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Empirical likelihood confidence intervals for adaptive cluster sampling

Adaptive cluster sampling (ACS) is an efficient sampling design for estimating parameters of rare and clustered populations. It is widely used in ecological research. The modified Hansen-Hurwitz (HH) and Horvitz-Thompson (HT) estimators based on small samples under ACS have often highly skewed distributions. In such situations, confidence intervals based on traditional normal approximation can lead to unsatisfactory results, with poor coverage properties. Christman and Pontius (Biometrics 56:503–510, 2000) showed that bootstrap percentile methods are appropriate for constructing confidence intervals from the HH estimator. But Perez and Pontius (J Stat Comput Simul 76:755–764, 2006) showed that bootstrap confidence intervals from the HT estimator are even worse than the normal approximation confidence intervals. In this article, we consider two pseudo empirical likelihood functions under the ACS design. One leads to the HH estimator and the other leads to a HT type estimator known as the Hájek estimator. Based on these two empirical likelihood functions, we derive confidence intervals for the population mean. Using a simulation study, we show that the confidence intervals obtained from the first EL function perform as good as the bootstrap confidence intervals from the HH estimator but the confidence intervals obtained from the second EL function perform much better than the bootstrap confidence intervals from the HT estimator, in terms of coverage rate.     

Kinetics of heat-assisted persulfate oxidation of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE)

The kinetics of heat-assisted persulfate oxidation of methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) in aqueous solutions at various pH, temperature, oxidant concentration and ionic strength levels was studied. The MTBE degradation was found to follow a pseudo-first-order decay model. The pseudo-first-order rate constants of MTBE degradation by persulfate (31.5 mM) at pH 7.0 and ionic strength 0.11 M are approximately 0.13 x 10(-4), 0.48 x 10(-4), 2.4 x 10(-4) and 5.8 x 10(-4) S(-1) at 20, 30, 40 and 50 degrees C, respectively. Under the above reaction conditions, the reaction has an activation energy of 24.5 +/- 1.6 kcal/ mol and is influenced by temperature, oxidant concentration, pH and ionic strength. Raising the reaction temperature and persulfate concentration may significantly accelerate the MTBE degradation. However, increasing both pH (over the range of 2.5-11) and ionic strength (over the range of 0.11-0.53 M) will decrease the reaction rate. Reaction intermediates including tert-butyl formate, tert-butyl alcohol, acetone and methyl acetate were observed. These intermediate compounds were also degraded by persulfate under the experimental conditions. Additionally, MTBE degradation by persulfate in a groundwater was much slower than in phosphate-buffer solutions, most likely due to the presence of bicarbonate ions (radical scavengers) in the groundwater.     

Living in an oasis: Rapid transformations,resilience, and resistance in the North Water Area societies and ecosystems

Based on lake sediment data, archaeological findings, and historical records, we describe rapid transformations, resilience and resistance in societies and ecosystems, and their interactions in the past in the North Water area related to changes in climate and historical events. Examples are the formation of the polynya itself and the early arrival of people, ca. 4500 years ago, and later major human immigrations (different societies, cultural encounters, or abandonment) from other regions in the Arctic. While the early immigrations had relatively modest and localised effect on the ecosystem, the later-incoming culture in the early thirteenth century was marked by extensive migrations into and out of the area and abrupt shifts in hunting technologies. This has had long-lasting consequences for the local lake ecosystems. Large natural transformations in the ecosystems have also occurred over relatively short time periods related to changes in the polynya. Finally, we discuss the future perspectives for the North Water area given the many threats, but also opportunities.