Adolescents’ environmental worldview and personality: An explorative study

There is a growing interest among scholars in instruments based on environmental worldview. Several studies have used instruments of this kind to compare groups of children or to assess the impact of environmental education initiatives (EEIs) on children’s environmental worldview. When using scales of this nature, it is important to control for factors that might blur the true impact of EEIs. One such factor - and which may have been neglected - is personality. This study (n = 957) examines the link between environmental worldview of Belgian adolescents (as measured by the New Environmental Paradigm scale for children - NEP) and their personality (as measured by the Hierarchical Personality Inventory for Children - HiPIC). The results show that adolescents who are willing to take responsibility for their actions and who feel in control over the outcomes of their decisions are more likely to have an ecocentric worldview. Furthermore, this study demonstrates that, for Belgian adolescents, egocentrism and ecocentrism are opposite conceptions. All correlations were, however, small and showed no deterministic pattern in the relationship between adolescents’ environmental worldview and personality, indicating that worldviews are not stable or innate characteristics within individuals, but can be influenced by interactions between the individual and its context. Personality traits explained only a very small part of the variation in adolescents’ environmental worldview (.7%), suggesting that they are unlikely to blur the impact of EEIs in worldview-based assessment. This is an important finding as it indicates that the results of studies showing differences in the environmental worldview of different groups of respondents or changes in their environmental worldview as a result of taking part in an EEI are not artefacts of non-control for personality and that they may, therefore, reflect genuine differences, changes or impacts.     

Evaluation of carbon dioxide storage potential for the Bohai Basin,north-east China

The storage potential of selected sites within the Bohai Basin was assessed for the COACH project. The Gangdong oilfield is considered to have a small potential storage capacity (23 Mt) and to be possibly suitable for an enhanced oil recovery or small-scale storage pilot rather than large-scale storage. The Shengli oilfield province is considered to have a great potential storage capacity (472 Mt in eight selected fields), however, these fields, like those of the Gangdong oilfield province, are compartmentalised by faulting and stratigraphy and likely to be quite challenging for injection. Unmineable coal seams in the Kailuan mining area were also considered for storage, the estimated capacity is 504 Gt adsorbed onto the coal and 38,100 Mt void storage capacity. However, the coals have low porosity and permeability, so they would be expected to have poor injectivity. This is also an active mining area and so any storage site would have to be chosen carefully to avoid affecting future energy resources. The Huimin sub-basin within the Jiyang Depression was identified for consideration as an aquifer storage site; the Guantao Formation has good porosity and permeability in this region, and the regional-level storage capacity of these areas was estimated to be 0.7 Gt. The aquifers in the Huimin sub-basin appear promising for storage, however, less data are available than for the oilfields and the sealing formations are not directly proven to trap buoyant fluids, though in adjacent oilfield in the Shengli oilfield province, the Minghuazhen Formation forms a regional seal for the Guantao Formation.     

Co-assessment of biomass and soil organic carbon stocks in a future reservoir area located in Southeast Asia

An assessment of the organic carbon stock present in living or dead vegetation and in the soil on the 450 km² of the future Nam Theun 2 hydroelectric reservoir in Lao People??s Democratic Republic was made. Nine land cover types were defined on the studied area: dense, medium, light, degraded, and riparian forests; agricultural soil; swamps; water; and others (roads, construction sites, and so on). Their geographical distribution was assessed by remote sensing using two 2008 SPOT 5 images. The area is mainly covered by dense and light forests (59%), while agricultural soil and swamps account for 11% and 2%, respectively. For each of these cover types, except water, organic carbon density was measured in the five pools defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: aboveground biomass, litter, deadwood, belowground biomass, and soil organic carbon. The area-weighted mean carbon densities for these pools were estimated at 45.4, 2.0, 2.2, 3.4, and 62.2 tC/ha, respectively, i.e., a total of about 115 ± 15 tC/ha for a soil thickness of 30 cm, corresponding to a total flooded organic carbon stock of 5.1 ± 0.7 MtC. This value is much lower than the carbon density for some South American reservoirs for example where total organic carbon stocks range from 251 to 326 tC/ha. It can be mainly explained by (1) the higher biomass density of South American tropical primary rainforest than of forests in this study and (2) the high proportion of areas with low carbon density, such as agricultural or slash-and-burn zones, in the studied area.     

Identifying Reference Conditions and Quantifying Biological Variability Within Benthic Macroinvertebrate Communities in Perennial and Non-perennial Northern California Streams

Identification of minimally disturbed reference sites is a critical step in developing precise and informative ecological indicators. We tested procedures to select reference sites, and quantified natural variation (inter-site and -annual variability) among reference conditions using a macroinvertebrate data set collected from 429 mediterranean-climate stream reaches in the San Francisco Bay Area, California (USA). We determined that a landscape GIS-based stressor screen followed by a local field-based stressor screen effectively identified least-disturbed reference sites that, based on NMS ordination results, supported different biological communities than sites identified with only landscape (GIS) or local (field) stressors. An examination of least-disturbed reference sites indicated that inter-site variability was strongly associated with stream hydrology (i.e., perennial vs. non-perennial flow) and annual precipitation, which highlights the need to control for such variation when developing biological indicators through natural gradient modeling or using unique biological indicators for both non-perennial and perennial streams. Metrics were more variable among non-perennial streams, indicating that additional modeling may be needed to develop precise biological indicators for non-perennial streams. Among 192 sites sampled two to six times over the 8-year study period, the biological community showed moderate inter-annual variability, with the 100 point index of biotic integrity scores varying from 0 to 51 points (mean = 11.5). Variance components analysis indicated that inter-annual variability explained only a fraction (5–18 %) of the total variation when compared against site-level variation; thus efforts to understand causes of natural variation between sites will produce more precise and accurate biological indicators.     

Risk of Myxobolus cerebralis infection to rainbow trout in the Madison River, Montana, USA.

Myxobolus cerebralis, the parasite that causes salmonid whirling disease, has had detrimental effects on several salmonid populations in the Intermountain West, including the rainbow trout in the Madison River, Montana, USA. The goal of this study was to examine relationships among characteristics of the environment, Tubifex tubifex (the alternate host) populations, and rainbow trout whirling disease risk in the Madison River. Environmental characteristics were measured in side channels of the Madison River, and differences were described with a principal components analysis. The density of T. tubifex, the prevalence of infection in T. tubifex, and the density of infected T. tubifex were determined for the side channels using benthic core samples and examination of live tubificids for infection. The site-specific contribution to whirling disease risk in the side channels was determined using in situ exposures of sentinel rainbow trout. Regression analyses were used to determine correlations among these characteristics. Side channels differed in site-specific contribution to rainbow trout whirling disease risk, which was positively correlated to the density of infected T. tubifex. Side channels with fine sediments and lower water temperatures made greater site-specific contribution to whirling disease risk and had higher densities of infected T. tubifex than side channels with coarser sediments and higher temperatures. The ability to characterize areas of high whirling disease risk is essential for improving our understanding of the dynamics of M. cerebralis such that appropriate management strategies can be implemented. In addition, this study provides a model of how the disease ecology of complex aquatic parasites can be examined when the influential processes operate on different spatial scales.     

Social and behavioral research on risk: Uses in risk management decisionmaking

The overall objective of this paper is to describe the principle uses of social and behavioral research in risk management decisionmaking. Five such uses are identified and discussed, including uses in (1) identifying the nature and extent of public concern; (2) structuring public debate and resolving conflicts; (3) anticipating public responses to new technologies; (4) conducting and informing the public; and (5) designing and implementing risk management policies and systems.     

Mammalian hairs in Early Cretaceous amber

Two mammalian hairs have been found in association with an empty puparium in a ∼100-million-year-old amber (Early Cretaceous) from France. Although hair is known to be an ancestral, ubiquitous feature in the crown Mammalia, the structure of Mesozoic hair has never been described. In contrast to fur and hair of some Jurassic and Cretaceous mammals preserved as carbonized filaments, the exceptional preservation of the fossils described here allows for the study of the cuticular structure. Results show the oldest direct evidence of hair with a modern scale pattern. This discovery implies that the morphology of hair cuticula may have remained unchanged throughout most of mammalian evolution. The association of these hairs with a possible fly puparium provides paleoecological information and indicates peculiar taphonomic conditions.     

Engaging an ecovillage and measuring its ecological footprint

As ecovillages present themselves as models of low-carbon living measuring the Ecological Footprint (EF) of an ecovillage serves both to validate that claim and to examine the component features of how the EF is achieved. This article examines the first measurement of the EF of Ireland’s only ecovillage, situated in the village of Cloughjordan in county Tipperary. The objectives here were to measure the EF of the ecovillage at the household scale and then to use the EF to provide meaningful feedback and reflective learning on human carbon intensity to the ecovillage residents. Various methods were applied in this action research to achieve high levels of engagement and potent communication of what could be learnt from the EF. This article places a particular focus on the necessary adaptation of an original EF method, on how it was implemented in the ecovillage, on the results obtained and on how these were communicated to the residents. The bottom-up component EF method samples consumption data at source and in so doing appoints consumption reflection and responsibility in ways the more remote compound method can not. The strategic combination of this specific quality with co-creation method aims to meaningfully engage and motivate a settlement to reduce its carbon intensity. According to the methodology, the ecovillage residents overshoot the fair earth share by 10% needing 1.1 planets to sustain their lifestyles. It is planned that subsequent to this intervention future measurements will show whether the overshoot has reduced.