How Should Death Be Taken into Account in Welfare Assessments?

That death is not a welfare issue appears to be a widespread view among animal welfare researchers. This paper demonstrates that this view is based on a mistaken assumption about harm, which is coupled to ‘welfare’ being conceived as ‘welfare at a time’. Assessments of welfare at a time ignore issues of longevity. In order to assess the welfare issue of death, it is necessary to structure welfare assessment as comparisons of possible lives of the animals. The paper also demonstrates that excluding the welfare issues of being deprived of life from the ethical assessment of killing distorts the ethical considerations.     

Fate of the 14C-labeled herbicide prosulfocarb in a soil and in a sediment-water system

The fate of ¹⁴C-labeled herbicide prosulfocarb was studied in an agricultural soil and in a sediment-water system, the sediment part of which was derived from Yangtze Three Gorges Reservoir, China. Time-course studies were performed for 28 d and 49 d, respectively. Main transformation routes of ¹⁴C-prosulfocarb were mineralization to ¹⁴CO₂ and formation of nonextractable residues amounting to 12.13% and 10.43%, respectively, after 28 days (soil), and 9.40% and 11.98%, respectively, after 49 d (sediment-water system). Traces of prosulfocarbsulfoxide were detected by means of TLC, HPLC, and LC-MS; other transformation products were not found. Initial extraction of soil assays using 0.01 M CaCl₂ solution showed that the bioavailability of the herbicide was considerably low; immediately after application (0.1 d of incubation), only 4.78% of applied radioactivity were detected in this aqueous fraction. DT₅₀ values of ¹⁴C-prosulfocarb estimated from radio-TLC and -HPLC analyses were above 28 d in soil and ranged between 29 d and 49 d in the sediment-water system. Partitioning of ¹⁴C from water to sediment phase occurred with DT₅₀ slightly above 2 d. With regard to the sediment-water system, adsorption occurred with log K_oc = 1.38 (calculated from 2 day assays) and 2.35 (49 d assays). As similarly estimated from portions of ¹⁴C found in CaCl₂ extracts of the 0.1 d assays, ¹⁴C-prosulfocarb's log K_oc in soil was 2.96. With both experiments, similar portions of nonextractable radioactivity were associated with all soil organic matter fractions, i.e. nonhumics, fulvic acids, humic acids, and humin/minerals. Throughout all sample preparation, the experiments were severely impaired by losses of radioactivity especially with concentration of samples containing water in vacuo. All findings pointed to volatility of parent prosulfocarb in presence of water rather than volatility of transformation products. According to literature data, this behavior of prosulfocarb was not expected, though volatility was demonstrated under field conditions.     

Monitoring and assessing of landscape heterogeneity at different scales

In numerous studies, spatial and spectral aggregations of pixel information using average values from imaging spectrometer data are suggested to derive spectral indices and the subsequent vegetation parameters that are derived from these. Currently, there are very few empirical studies that use hyperspectral data, to support the hypothesis for deriving land surface variables from different spectral and spatial scales. In the study at hand, for the first time ever, investigations were carried out on fundamental scaling issues using specific experimental test flights with a hyperspectral sensor to investigate how vegetation patterns change as an effect of (1) different spatial resolutions, (2) different spectral resolutions, (3) different spatial and spectral resolutions as well as (4) different spatial and spectral resolutions of originally recorded hyperspectral image data compared to spatial and spectral up- and downscaled image data. For these experiments, the hyperspectral sensor AISA-EAGLE/HAWK (DUAL) was mounted on an aircraft to collect spectral signatures over a very short time sequence of a particular day. In the first experiment, reflectance measurements were collected at three different spatial resolutions ranging from 1 to 3 m over a 2-h period in 1 day. In the second experiment, different spectral image data and different additional spatial data were collected over a 1-h period on a particular day from the same test area. The differently recorded hyperspectral data were then spatially and spectrally rescaled to synthesize different up- and down-rescaled images. The normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) was determined from all image data. The NDVI heterogeneity of all images was compared based on methods of variography. The results showed that (a) the spatial NDVI patterns of up- and downscaled data do not correspond with the un-scaled image data, (b) only small differences were found between NDVI patterns determined from data recorded and resampled at different spectral resolutions and (c) the overall conclusion from the tests carried out is that the spatial resolution is more important in determining heterogeneity by means of NDVI than the depth of the spectral data. The implications behind these findings are that we need to exercise caution when interpreting and combining spatial structures and spectral indices derived from satellite images with differently recorded geometric resolutions.     

Clonal architecture in an intertidal bed of the dwarf eelgrass <Emphasis Type="Italic">Zostera noltii</Emphasis> in the Northern Wadden Sea: persistence through extreme physical perturbation and the importance of a seed bank

Genotypic structure and temporal dynamics of the dwarf seagrass, Zostera noltii, were studied in an intertidal meadow that has persisted since prior to 1936 near the Wadden Sea island of Sylt. Samples were collected from two 10 × 10 m plots separated by 250 m from May 2002 to June 2005 and from four 1 × 1 m plots from June 2003 to September 2004. All the samples were genotyped with nine microsatellite loci. No genotypes were shared between the plots separated by 250 m. Genetic diversity was higher in the Wadden Sea than in the other regions of its geographic range. The average clone size (genets) (SD) in the two plots was 1.38 (0.26) and 1.46 (0.4) m2, respectively, with a range up to 9 m2 and <20% persisted for >4 years. A high genetic and genotypic diversity was maintained by annual recruitment of seedlings despite a dramatic decrease in ramet density that coincided with the severe heat stress event of 2003. Fine-scale (1 m2) analysis suggested that extensive loss of seagrass cover precluded space competition among the genets, while a persistent seed bank prevented local extinction. Long-term persistence of Z. noltii meadows in the intertidal Wadden Sea was achieved by high genet turnover and frequent seedling recruitment from a seed bank, in contrast to the low diversity observed in large and long-living clones of Z. noltii and other seagrasses in subtidal habitats.     

Behavior of nine selected emerging trace organic contaminants in an artificial recharge system supplemented with a reactive barrier

Artificial recharge improves several water quality parameters, but has only minor effects on recalcitrant pollutants. To improve the removal of these pollutants, we added a reactive barrier at the bottom of an infiltration basin. This barrier contained aquifer sand, vegetable compost, and clay and was covered with iron oxide dust. The goal of the compost was to sorb neutral compounds and release dissolved organic carbon. The release of dissolved organic carbon should generate a broad range of redox conditions to promote the transformation of emerging trace organic contaminants (EOCs). Iron oxides and clay increase the range of sorption site types. In the present study, we examined the effectiveness of this barrier by analyzing the fate of nine EOCs. Water quality was monitored before and after constructing the reactive barrier. Installation of the reactive barrier led to nitrate-, iron-, and manganese-reducing conditions in the unsaturated zone below the basin and within the first few meters of the saturated zone. Thus, the behavior of most EOCs changed after installing the reactive barrier. The reactive barrier enhanced the removal of some EOCs, either markedly (sulfamethoxazole, caffeine, benzoylecgonine) or slightly (trimethoprim) and decreased the removal rates of compounds that are easily degradable under aerobic conditions (ibuprofen, paracetamol). The barrier had no remarkable effect on 1H-benzotriazole and tolyltriazole.     

Derivation of no-effect and reference-level sediment quality values for application at Saskatchewan uranium operations

To date, the majority of empirical approaches used to derive sediment quality values (SQVs) have focused on metal concentrations in sediment associated with adverse effects on benthic invertebrate communities. Here, we propose the no-effect (NE) approach. This SQV derivation methodology uses metal concentrations in sediment associated with unaffected benthic communities (i.e., from reference sites and lightly contaminated no-effect sites) and accounts for local benthic invertebrate tolerance and potential chemical interactions at no-effect exposure sites. This NE approach was used to propose alternative regional SQVs for uranium operations in northern Saskatchewan. Three different sets of NE values were derived using different combinations of benthic invertebrate community effects criteria (abundance, richness, evenness, Bray–Curtis index). Additionally, reference values were derived based solely on sediment metal concentrations from reference sites. In general, NE values derived using abundance, richness, and evenness (NE1 and NE2 values) were found to be higher than the NE values derived using all four metrics (NE3 values). Derived NE values for Cr, Cu, Pb, and V did not change with the incorporation of additional effects criteria due to a lack of influence from the uranium operations on the concentrations of these metals in sediment. However, a gradient of exposure concentrations was apparent for As, Mo, Ni, Se, and U in sediment which allowed for tolerable exposure levels of these metals in sediment to be defined. The findings from this assessment have suggested a range of new, alternate metal SQVs for use at uranium operations in northern Saskatchewan.     

Corporate Responsibility: The Stakeholder Paradox Reconsidered

Is it legitimate for a business to concentrate on profits under respect for the law and ethical custom? On the one hand, there seems to be good reasons for claiming that a corporation has a duty to act for the benefit of all its stakeholders. On the other hand, this seems to dissolve the notion of a private business; but then again, a private business would appear to be exempted from ethical responsibility. This is what Kenneth Goodpaster has called the stakeholder paradox: either we have ethics without business or we have business without ethics. Through a different route, I reach the same solution to this paradox as Goodpaster, namely that a corporation is the instrument of the shareholders only, but that shareholders still have an obligation to act ethically responsibly. To this, I add discussion of Friedman’s claim that this responsibility consists in increasing profits. I show that most of his arguments fail. Only pragmatic considerations allow to a certain extent that some of the ethical responsibility is left over to democratic regulation.