Environment and energy resources — A UK experience

Summary Exploitation of energy resources need not imply irreperable damage to our physical environment. Unfortunately lack of involvement at the policy planning stage hinders significant improvements despite the enthusiastic but fragmented endeavours of interested parties.Evaluation of alternative strategies must keep pace with prospecting and engineering to achieve real influence upon the ultimate location, scale and form of development.Fruitful examination of policy alternatives is hindered by the competition between energy industries in the UK perpetuated by the apparent lack of a national energy strategy.The fast increasing bulk of environmental guidelines and proposed European legislation will not of itself prevent the significant environmental impact of energy exploitation.There is as yet no legislation in the United Kingdom requiring a developer to submit an environmental impact assessment with a planning application. However, many recent project proposals have been accompanied by such, either voluntarily or at the request of the local planning authority. The quality of such submissions ranges from the superficial to substantial, but few demonstrate evidence of environmental influence on policy formulation, alternative site selection or development characteristics.Recent experience in the UK has achieved significant success in the early introduction of physical planning and environmental criteria during the exploration of Western Europe's largest recoverable deep coal reserves.Environmental influence was achieved through close collaboration between client and consultants. Early discussion with local authorities and other agencies established during coal field exploration provided the basis for ongoing consultation during the four-year study period. Publication of consultants' findings and submission of planning proposals culminated in a public inquiry providing opportunity for public involvement over 84 days of project examination.David Price is an Architect and Town Planner in private practice with extensive experience in urban and regional planning and environmental evaluation in the UK and abroad. He is also a member of Land Planning Group, a multi-disciplined design and planning consultancy.     

Applied landscape economics: a personal journey of discovery

Putting cash values on the environment facilitates commoditization and political capture of evaluation. However, individual citizens may also wish to know the appropriate trade‐off of values, in order to use political power properly. Willingness‐to‐pay offers insight into consumers’ valuation of landscape, but routine application of economic methods to land use decisions meets major problems, especially the data needs of cost — benefit analysis in face of the urgency of decisions, and the insensitivity of conventional methods to subtle landscape changes. These problems require the citizen‐as‐consumer to make personal judgements of value, but to link those values to a cash scale for the purpose of making trade‐offs. Such judgements can be entered into an orderly framework, in which the judgements can be exposed for comment, which itself exposes the assumptions of commentators. The decision about routing electricity transmission lines in Scotland provides an example. Recent interest in environmental economics gives the opportunity to broaden the scope of the method.     

Increasing coping resources at work: A field experiment to increase social support,improve work team functioning,and enhance employee mental health

Correlational studies have identified worksite coping resources such as social support and perceived control, and have suggested a positive role for such resources in employee stress processes. However, little experimental evidence has demonstrated the causal role of worksite coping resources in improving mental health, nor how worksite coping resources can be enhanced. This paper reports the results of a field experiment intended to provide such evidence. Human service workers participated in a theory-driven training program designed to increase individual and group psychosocial coping resources and individuals' abilities to use those resources when coping with job demands. The inclusion of selection variables in models used to estimate the impact of the intervention controlled for selection biases and also allowed for the assessment of the impact of the training on those workers identified as most prone to turnover and on those most likely to participate in such an intervention. Results indicated that the program enhanced the work team climate and reduced depresssive symptoms and somatization in those most at risk for leaving their jobs. The program was also effective in increasing the amount of supervisor support received on the job and strengthening perceptions of coping abilities in those workers most likely to participate in the program.     

THE TENDENCY OF A NEW WATER DISINFECTANT TO PRODUCE TOXIC TRIHALOMETHANES1

A new organic N-chloramine disinfectant (3-chloro-4, 4-dimethyl-2-oxazolidinone, agent I) has been compared with calcium hypochlorite as to its tendency to react with organic matter in water to produce toxic trihalomethanes. Agent I reacts much less readily with organic demand than does calcium hypochlorite. This study shows that agent I should be safe to use as a disinfectant for water containing appreciable organic load in either sunlight or darkness. On the other hand, calcium hypochlorite may not be a satisfactory disinfectant from the toxicity standpoint for water which contains organic load which must be stored for extended time periods in either sunlight or darkness.     

What is Type A? A cognitive social learning model

In the past ten years or so, attempts have been made to understand better the essential nature of Type A. Yet, important questions remain as to exactly what the behaviour pattern is, how we can measure it reliably, and how we can help persons change their Type A behaviour as a means, it is hoped, of reducing their risk of CHD. Lack of a theoretically-based conceptual model of Type A is cited as one of the important reasons why serious conceptual; assessment, and treatment problems persist in this field. A recently developed model of Type A based on cognitive social learning theory is presented. The model focuses on the interplay among cognitive, behavioural, physiological, and environmental factors in the acquisition and maintenance of Type A behaviour. Personal beliefs and the fears they spawn are seen as forming the core of the behaviour pattern. Several of these beliefs are discussed. For instance, believing that one's personal worth is tied to one's tangible accomplishments is shown to explain the presence of many behaviours traditionally considered to constitute Type A. Environmental factors associated with the workplace are also discussed in terms of how they contribute to the persistence of Type A behaviour throughout adult life.     

Growth rate of the bathypelagic crustacean Gnathophausia ingens (Mysidacea: Lophogastridae). I. Dimensional growth and population structure

Gnathophausia ingens has 13 instars, each with a distinct range of sizes which does not overlap the sizes of adjacent instars. The intermolt interval, measured in the laboratory at 5.5°, 6.5° and 7.5°C, increases with increasing size and decreases with increasing temperature. At 5.5°C it varies from 166 days for the smallest individuals to 253 days for the oldest. The period of larval development in the marsupium of a female is estimated to be 530 days. The life span of females is estimated to be 2,950 days with the onset of reproduction at 2,400 days. It is sugquested that this species is semelparous. The population structure data suggest that there is low mortality through the first 7 instars, progressively higher mortality from Instar 8 through Instar 11, and slightly lower mortality in the remaining 2 instars. These life-history characteristics appear to be directed toward maximizing absolute fecundity (as opposed to time-specific fecundity) in a stable environment. These characteristics may have been selected for by low available food energy and made possible by the stability of the deep sea.     

Reporting progress on internationally designated sites: The periodic review of biosphere reserves

For sites designated within international networks, reporting processes have been established to ensure that these sites continue to exhibit their special characteristics and contribute to the goals of their respective network. One such network is the World Network of Biosphere Reserves (WNBR), composed of sites designated under UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere programme. This paper summarises the evolution of the concept and the realities of biosphere reserves since 1976; describes the introduction of the Statutory Framework for the WNBR, which formalised the concept and introduced a periodic review process to provide oversight of its implementation; evaluates the extent to which, since 1996, this process has been successful in achieving its aims; discusses changes which have been proposed and implemented; and provides suggestions for future action.     

Bridging the generation gap in plants: pollination, parental fecundity, and offspring demography

Despite extensive study of pollination and plant reproduction on the one hand, and of plant demography on the other, we know remarkably little about links between seed production in successive generations, and hence about long-term population consequences of variation in pollination success. We bridged this "generation gap" in Ipomopsis aggregata, a long-lived semelparous wildflower that is pollinator limited, by adding varying densities of seeds to natural populations and following resulting plants through their entire life histories. To determine whether pollen limitation of seed production constrains rate of population growth in this species, we sowed seeds into replicated plots at a density that mimics typical pollination success and spacing of flowering plants in nature, and at twice that density to mimic full pollination. Per capita offspring survival, flower production, and contribution to population increase (lambda) did not decline with sowing density in this experiment, suggesting that typical I. aggregata populations freed from pollen limitation will grow over the short term. In a second experiment we addressed whether density dependence would eventually erase the growth benefits of full pollination, by sowing a 10-fold range of seed densities that falls within extremes estimated for the natural "seed rain" that reaches the soil surface. Per capita survival to flowering and age at flowering were again unaffected by sowing density, but offspring size, per capita flower production, and lambda declined with density. Such density dependence complicates efforts to predict population dynamics over the longer term, because it changes components of the life history (in this case fecundity) as a population grows. A complete understanding of how constraints on seed production affect long-term population growth will hinge on following offspring fates at least through flowering of the first offspring generation, and doing so for a realistic range of population densities.