Using integrated food‐web and population‐based models for environmental monitoring,remediation decisions,and long‐term planning

While ecologists have used food‐web models to understand how ecosystems function, the potential role of integrated food‐web and population‐based models in environmental monitoring and decision making has been ignored. Sound ecological principles should be integrated with state‐of‐the‐art monitoring and management practices. This article presents the ways in which population‐based models can answer basic ecological questions necessary for decision making about remediation and restoration, and for monitoring to ensure long‐term stewardship. Discussed are the uses of food‐web and population‐based models for understanding the movement of chemicals through different trophic levels. Three examples, including global warming, tributyltin, and monomethylmercury scenarios, are presented to illustrate how such models are useful. The responses of the component parts varies, depending on parameters such as birth, death, and respiration, as well as feeding rates, predator‐prey rates, and uptake and elimination rates. There are several different models available for decision making, with different levels of complexity, based on the specific hypothesis or question being asked and the amount of current information available. Therefore, it is recommended to use deterministic‐based, population‐based food‐web models for ecological risk assessment. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

联合国环境规划署金融机构举措

本文考察了劳埃德(Lloyds),即金融机构举措的早期签字者之一,如何开展其与该联合国环境规划署声明一致的环境管理实践,和金融机构如何受益于成为该举措的成员.自从该声明推出以来,这些机构中多数已经在其商务实践中产生了显著变化.金融机构举措给它们提供了独一无二的相关信息与咨询来源.     

Significant Relationships Concerning Exponential Transmission or Penetration

This paper reviews the statistical evidence linking human mortality with air pollution due to sulfur oxides and particulates. Three types of analyses are discussed: episodic increases in mortality coincident with high pollution, perturbations in mortality in a given city as a time-series in relation to perturbations in air quality, and comparisons of geographic differentials in both pollution and mortality rates. The paper concludes that there are no reliable statistical associations between SO _x and mortality, but that particulates are in some cases associated with excess mortality. Establishing whether the association is in fact causal would require elimination of potential confounding effects such as occupational exposures.     

Statistical Errors in Beta Absorption Measurements of Particulate Mass Concentration

There are a number of new instruments which use the attenuation of beta radiation to determine the mass of particulate matter collected in various fashions, and thus to determine its mass concentration.^1–3 It has been shown that the mass concentration, c, can be obtained from the relationship     

REHABILITATION OF WATERSHEDS WITH INCISING CHANNELS1

ABSTRACT: Channel incision is a pervasive problem that threatens infrastructure, destroys arable land, and degrades environmental resources. A program initiated in 1983 is developing technology for rehabilitation of watersheds with erosion and sedimentation problems caused by incision. Demonstration projects are located in 15 watersheds in the hills of northwest Mississippi. Watershed sizes range from 0.89 to 1,590 km², and measured suspended sediment yields average about 1,100 t km^-2-yr^-1. Water quality is generally adequate to support aquatic organisms, but physical habitat conditions are poor. Rehabilitation measures, which are selected and laid out using a subjective integration of hydraulic and geotechnical stability analyses, include grade controls, bank protection, and small reservoirs. Aquatic habitat studies indicate that stone-protected stilling basins below grade-control weirs and habitats associated with drop pipes and stone spur dikes are assets to erosion-damaged streams. Additional recovery of habitat resources using modified stone stabilization designs, woody vegetation plantings, and reservoir outlets designed to provide non-zero minimum flows is under investigation.     

Waste: Striving for a more sustainable future

Governments everywhere are recognising environmental sustainability as a major driver of technological and economic development—with innovative direction being found at the interface of our efforts to become more socially and environmentally sustainable. Rural communities, faced with the pressures of unprecedented change, have an opportunity to embrace the principles of sustainable development, to create a new future at the leading edge of global change—but they need help. They need both knowledge and skills to enable them to self-evaluate and strategically plan, and they need a highly motivated, creative, and coherent community to carry it through. Small Towns: Big Picture is a community development process designed to foster creative, energetic, and collaborative action by five small rural communities in central Victoria—focusing on the development of social, environmental, and economic sustainability indicators. The project bought together artists, researchers and local communities to produce a coherent and shared understanding of the sustainability issues and opportunities. This paper presents Small Towns: Big Picture, focusing specifically on the social dimension and the development of a Community Cohesion indicator through an arts-led community engagement process.