Local and Indigenous management of climate change risks to archaeological sites

Hundreds of thousands of significant archaeological and cultural heritage sites (cultural sites) along the coasts of every continent are threatened by sea level rise, and many will be destroyed. This wealth of artefacts and monuments testifies to human history, cosmology and identity. While cultural sites are especially important to local and Indigenous communities, a stall in coordinated global action means adaptation at a local scale is often unsupported. In response, this paper produces a practical climate change risk analysis methodology designed for independent, community-scale management of cultural sites. It builds on existing methods that prioritise sites most at risk from climate impacts, proposing a field survey that integrates an assessment of the relative cultural value of sites with assessment of exposure and sensitivity to climate impacts. The field survey also stands as a monitoring program and complements an assessment of organisational adaptive capacity. The preliminary field survey was tested by Indigenous land managers in remote northern Australia at midden and rock art sites threatened by sea level rise, extreme flood events and a range of non-climactic hazards. A participatory action research methodology—incorporating planning workshops, semi-structured interviews and participant observations—gave rise to significant modifications to the preliminary field survey as well as management prioritisation of 120 sites. The field survey is anticipated to have global application, particularly among marginalised and remote Indigenous communities. Well-planned and informed participation, with community control, monitoring and well-informed actions, will contribute significantly to coordinated global and regional adaptation strategies.     

Coastal retreat and/or advance adjacent to defences in England and Wales

Retreat and advance of shoreline position occurs naturally, and also as a result of defences which are constructed to prevent erosion and flooding. Retreat more commonly manifests itself down-drift of defences due to a sediment deficit causing the coast to become ‘set-back’. Advance normally develops due to sediment accumulation up-drift of a barrier inhibiting longshore drift, resulting in the coast becoming ‘set-forward’. Many examples of set-backs and set-forwards are recorded, but their location, number and cause is not known on a national scale. Using the Futurecoast aerial photographs, approximately 200 localities were identified as set-back or set-forward in England and Wales, with half situated in the Eastern and South East regions of England. Half of the total set-backs or set-forwards were on cliffed coasts, and half on low-lying coasts. Without local knowledge it is difficult to distinguish between set-backs and set-forwards. Set-backs often indicate higher retreat rates, thus threatening cliff-top infrastructure which requires defence upgrade and extensions, as well as raising maintenance costs. Monitoring set-backs is important for shoreline management, because as retreat continues, set-backs evolve and artificial headlands form and grow. This is reinforced by the shift from hard defence policies towards softer engineering approaches, managed realignment and limited intervention.     

Idealized tracer transport models with time-varying transport: applications to ocean boundary currents

One-dimensional advection–diffusion and advection–diffusion–dilution (or “leaky-pipe”) models have been widely used to interpret a variety of geophysical phenomena. For example, in the ocean these tools have been used to interpret the penetration and spreading of tracers such as Chlorofluorocarbons(CFCs) along the Deep Western boundary current (DWBC). Usually, the transport coefficients of such models are taken to be constant in time, thus assuming the transport to be in steady state. Here, we relax this assumption and calculate tracer-signal variability in two simple 1D models for the boundary current having low-amplitude time-varying coefficients. Given a background tracer gradient due, for example, to a steady-state source in a boundary region, the resulting tracer field exhibits fluctuations due to the transport acting on the gradients. We compare the transport-induced tracer fluctuations to propagated fluctuations occurring in steady-state models with a periodic source in the boundary region. Using coefficients fitted to DWBC tracer observations, we find that in the North Atlantic propagated tracer fluctuations are larger, while in the sub-tropics transport-induced fluctuations dominate. This contrasts a common view that subtropical and tropical DWBC fluctuations in tracers such as CFCs, temperature and salinity anomalies are propagated signals from the northern formation region. However, the predicted transport-induced fluctuations in these models are still smaller than the observed fluctuations.     

Quantifying structural physical habitat attributes using LIDAR and hyperspectral imagery

Structural physical habitat attributes include indices of stream size, channel gradient, substrate size, habitat complexity, and riparian vegetation cover and structure. The Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP) is designed to assess the status and trends of ecological resources at different scales. High-resolution remote sensing provides unique capabilities in detecting a variety of features and indicators of environmental health and condition. LIDAR is an airborne scanning laser system that provides data on topography, channel dimensions (width, depth), slope, channel complexity (residual pools, volume, morphometric complexity, hydraulic roughness), riparian vegetation (height and density), dimensions of riparian zone, anthropogenic alterations and disturbances, and channel and riparian interaction. Hyperspectral aerial imagery offers the advantage of high spectral and spatial resolution allowing for the detection and identification of riparian vegetation and natural and anthropogenic features at a resolution not possible with satellite imagery. When combined, or fused, these technologies comprise a powerful geospatial data set for assessing and monitoring lentic and lotic environmental characteristics and condition.     

Trends in anecdotal fox sightings in Tasmania accounted for by psychological factors

There has been little evaluation of anecdotal sightings as a means to confirm new incursions of invasive species. This paper explores the potential for equivocal information communicated by the media to account for patterns of anecdotal reports. In 2001, it was widely reported that red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) had been deliberately released in the island state of Tasmania (Australia), although this claim was later revealed to be baseless. Regardless, by 2013 a total of 3153 anecdotal fox sightings had been reported by members of the public, which implied their distribution was wide. For each month in 2001–2003, we defined a monthly media index (MMI) of fox‐related media coverage, an index of their relative seasonal abundance (abundance), and a factor denoting claims of fox evidence (claimed evidence) regardless of its evidentiary quality. We fitted a generalized linear model with Poisson error for monthly totals of anecdotal sightings with factors of year and claimed evidence and covariates of MMI, abundance, and hours of darkness. The collective effect of psychological factors (MMI, claimed evidence, and year) relative to biophysical factors (photoperiod and abundance) was highly significant (χ² = 122.1, df = 6, p < 0.0001), whereas anticipated changes in abundance had no significant influence on reported sightings (p = 0.15). An annual index of fox media from 2001 to 2010 was strongly associated with the yearly tally of anecdotal sightings (p = 0.018). The odds ratio of sightings ranked as reliable by the fox eradication program in any year decreased exponentially at a rate of 0.00643 as the total number of sightings increased (p < 0.0001) and was indicative of an observer‐expectancy bias. Our results suggest anecdotal sightings are highly susceptible to cognitive biases and when used to qualify and quantify species presence can contribute to flawed risk assessments.     

Big society,little justice? Community renewable energy and the politics of localism

This paper challenges “Big Society (BS) Localism”, seeing it as an example of impoverished localist thinking which neglects social justice considerations. We do this through a critical examination of recent turns in the localist discourse in the UK which emphasise self-reliant communities and envisage a diminished role for the state. We establish a heuristic distinction between positive and negative approaches to localism. We argue that the Coalition Government's BS programme fits with a negative localist frame as it starts from an ideological assumption that the state acts as a barrier to community-level associational activity and that it should play a minimal role. “BS localism” (as we call it) has been influential over the making of social policy, but it also has implications for the achievement of environmental goals. We argue that this latest incarnation of localism is largely ineffective in solving problems requiring collective action because it neglects the important role that inequalities play in inhibiting the development of associational society. Drawing upon preliminary research being undertaken at the community scale, we argue that staking environmental policy success on the ability of local civil society to fill the gap left after state retrenchment runs the risk of no activity at all.     

Recent trends and projections of primary NO2 emissions in Europe

An assessment of recent trends in primary NO₂ emissions has been carried out for ten case study locations across the European Union. Estimates of the percentage of NO_x from road traffic emitted as primary NO₂ (f-NO₂) have been derived for 1995, 2000 and 2005 by combining the results of a literature survey of primary NO₂ emission factors for different vehicle types and technologies with an emission inventory. Estimates of f-NO₂ have also been derived from ambient monitoring data at roadside sites in each case study location using a model.The results of the analysis of trends show that f-NO₂ has increased in recent years and that the rate of increase has been greatest since 2000. f-NO₂ has increased from 8.6% in 2000 to 12.4% in 2004 as an average across the monitoring sites and from an average of 6.3% in 2000 to 10.6% in 2005 as an average of the emission inventory based calculations for the case study countries. f-NO₂ is predicted to increase further to an average of 19.6% in 2010 and 32.0% in 2020 as a result of the further penetration of exhaust after treatment technologies for diesel vehicles in the fleets. This increase is expected to be offset by the large reduction in NO_x emissions over this period, resulting in an increase in NO₂ emissions from road traffic to 2015, followed by a decline to close to 2004 levels by 2020. Estimates of future ambient NO₂ concentrations have also been calculated for the roadside monitoring sites included in the study. At 29 out of 45 of these sites the annual mean NO₂ limit value is predicted to be exceeded in 2010. At 22 of these sites, the annual mean concentration is expected to remain above the limit value until 2020 and beyond.     

REVIVING URBAN STREAMS: LAND USE,HYDROLOGY, BIOLOGY,AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR1

ABSTRACT: Successful stream rehabilitation requires a shift from narrow analysis and management to integrated understanding of the links between human actions and changing river health. At study sites in the Puget Sound lowlands of western Washington State, landscape, hydrological, and biological conditions were evaluated for streams flowing through watersheds with varying levels of urban development. At all spatial scales, stream biological condition measured by the benthic index of biological integrity (B‐IBI) declined as impervious area increased. Impervious area alone, however, is a flawed surrogate of river health. Hydrologic metrics that reflect chronic altered streamflows, for example, provide a direct mechanistic link between the changes associated with urban development and declines in stream biological condition. These measures provide a more sensitive understanding of stream basin response to urban development than do treatment of each increment of impervious area equally. Land use in residential backyards adjacent to streams also heavily influences stream condition. Successful stream rehabilitation thus requires coordinated diagnosis of the causes of degradation and integrative management to treat the range of ecological stressors within each urban area, and it depends on remedies appropriate at scales from backyards to regional storm water systems.