Land use change around protected areas: management to balance human needs and ecological function.

Protected areas throughout the world are key for conserving biodiversity, and land use is key for providing food, fiber, and other ecosystem services essential for human sustenance. As land use change isolates protected areas from their surrounding landscapes, the challenge is to identify management opportunities that maintain ecological function while minimizing restrictions on human land use. Building on the case studies in this Invited Feature and on ecological principles, we identify opportunities for regional land management that maintain both ecological function in protected areas and human land use options, including preserving crucial habitats and migration corridors, and reducing dependence of local human populations on protected area resources. Identification of appropriate and effective management opportunities depends on clear definitions of: (1) the biodiversity attributes of concern; (2) landscape connections to delineate particular locations with strong ecological interactions between the protected area and its surrounding landscape; and (3) socioeconomic dynamics that determine current and future use of land resources in and around the protected area.     

High degree of polyandry in Apis dorsata queens detected by DNA microsatellite variability

Workers of six colonies of the giant honeybee Apis dorsata from Sabah, Malaysia (five colonies) and Java (one colony) were genotyped using single locus DNA fingerprinting. The colonies from Sabah nested in colony aggregations of 5 and 28 nests respectively on two trees. Three DNA microsatellite loci (A14, A76, A88) with a total of 27 alleles provided sufficient genetic variability to classify the workers into distinct sub-families revealing the degree of polyandry of the queens. Queens mated on average with 30.17 ± 5.98 drones with a range from 19 to 53. The average effective number of matings per queen was 25.56 ± 11.63. In the total sample of 192 workers, 22 individuals were found that were not offspring of the colony's queen. Three of these were potentially drifted offspring workers from genotyped queens of colonies nesting on the same tree.     

Modelling Dissolved Organic Carbon Turnover in Humic Lake Örträsket, Sweden

The organic carbon balance of a lake with high input of allochthonous organic carbon is modelled integrating physical, chemical and biological processes. The physical model captures the behaviour of real thermal stratification in the lake for different flow situations during the period 1993–1997. The dissolved organic carbon model is based on simulated trajectories of water parcels. By tracking parcels, account is kept of environmental factors such as temperature and radiation as well as DOC quality for each parcel. The DOC concentration shows seasonal variations primarily dependent on inflow. The organic matter degradation (bacterial- and photodegradation) in the lake amounts to 1.5–2.5 mg C l^–1 yr^–1, where photooxidation is responsible for approximately 10%. The estimated DIC production in the lake is large compared to sediment mineralisation and primary production. The main conclusion is that the model with the selected parameterisations of the degradation processes reasonably well describes the DOC dynamics in a forest lake.     

Heterogeneity of experts’ opinion regarding opportunities and challenges of tackling deforestation in the tropics: a Q methodology application

Making the concept of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) ready to be a mechanism to combat tropical deforestation and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by compensating developing countries for income foregone in reducing their rates of deforestation, requires solutions for outstanding controversies. Existing opinions on REDD+ vary greatly. By using the Q-method as part of an action research approach, this paper investigates experts’ attitudes towards REDD+. Based on their responses to 41 statements, four attitudinal groups were identified, characterized as pragmatists, sceptics, conventionalists and optimists. Opinions between groups differed as to the level of application, credibility, eligibility, economic effectiveness, and public acceptability of REDD+ policy instruments. Three of the four groups were supportive of international REDD+ type policy interventions, but there was disagreement on the more concrete design issues of REDD+ projects, such as the allocation of responsibilities, the distribution of burdens and benefits, and whether or not co-benefits could be expected, or should be required. As the potential of REDD+ is shaped not only by international climate policy but also by national and regional policies and stakeholder perceptions, this paper suggests that participatory forms of decision-making may help to develop tailor-made solutions that are supported by the many different actors that are necessarily involved in REDD+ projects.     

Bird‐community responses to habitat creation in a long‐term,large‐scale natural experiment

Ecosystem function and resilience are compromised when habitats become fragmented due to land‐use change. This has led to national and international conservation strategies aimed at restoring habitat extent and improving functional connectivity (i.e., maintaining dispersal processes). However, biodiversity responses to landscape‐scale habitat creation and the relative importance of spatial and temporal scales are poorly understood, and there is disagreement over which conservation strategies should be prioritized. We used 160 years of historic post‐agricultural woodland creation as a natural experiment to evaluate biodiversity responses to habitat creation in a landscape context. Birds were surveyed in 101 secondary, broadleaf woodlands aged 10–160 years with ≥80% canopy cover and in landscapes with 0‐17% broadleaf woodland cover within 3000 m. We used piecewise structural equation modeling to examine the direct and indirect relationships between bird abundance and diversity, ecological continuity, patch characteristics, and landscape structure and quantified the relative conservation value of local and landscape scales for bird communities. Ecological continuity indirectly affected overall bird abundance and species richness through its effects on stand structure, but had a weaker influence (effect size near 0) on the abundance and diversity of species most closely associated with woodland habitats. This was probably because woodlands were rapidly colonized by woodland generalists in ≤10 years (minimum patch age) but were on average too young (median 50 years) to be colonized by woodland specialists. Local patch characteristics were relatively more important than landscape characteristics for bird communities. Based on our results, biodiversity responses to habitat creation depended on local‐ and landscape‐scale factors that interacted across time and space. We suggest that there is a need for further studies that focus on habitat creation in a landscape context and that knowledge gained from studies of habitat fragmentation and loss should be used to inform habitat creation with caution because the outcomes are not necessarily reciprocal.     

The Impact of Local versus National Framing on Willingness to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions: A case study from central Pennsylvania

This paper explores the impact of the frame in which people interpret global warming. In 1999, 637 respondents completed a mail survey in five counties in central Pennsylvania. Half of the sample received questionnaires that framed global warming in terms of the local impacts of mitigation policies, whereas the other half received questionnaires that framed global warming in terms of the national impacts of mitigation policies. The results show a statistically significant but small difference between the local and national frames in the respondents' willingness to support government policies, as well as to take voluntary actions to mitigate climate change.     

HPLC-MS/MS in der Rückstandsanalytik von Pflanzenschutzmitteln

Goal and Scope

Increasing demands from the regulatory authorities of plant protection products for residue analytical methods on the one hand and the need for cost reduction by shorter development times on the other hand have led to a significant displacement of conventional methods (e.g. HPLC-UV or GC-MS) by HPLC-MS/MS with atmospheric pressure ionization (API) in residue analysis since the mid of the 1990s. This development started in the pharmaceutical industries where HPLC-MS/MS had already been used for the quantitation of drugs and their metabolites in plasma since the late 1980s.

Methods

The reason for the high acceptability of HPLC-MS/MS with electrospray ionisation (ESI) or chemical ionization at atmosheric pressure (APCI) compared with alternative methods are shown with respect to analytical quality parameters, compliance with international registration guidelines and economic reasons.

Results and Conclusion

HPLC-MS/MS is being applied for solving ca. 75% of all analytical problems occuring in modern residue analytical laboratories. This technique offers convincing advantages for the determination of plant protection products and their metabolites in various matrices. These are a reduced number of or no clean-up steps after extraction of the samples, high throughput besides high ruggedness, low limits of detection and a large linear measuring range. In addition, several analytes of various chemical classes can be determined within one chromatographic run. Due to the high selectivity there is only little need for additional confirmatory methods. For enforcement purposes HPLC-MS/MS is accepted by the European authorities since 2002. However, due to high costs for instrumentation and specially skilled personnel only few enforcement laboratories have invested into this technology, so far.

Recommendation and Perspective

The importance of HPLC-MS/MS in residue analysis will further increase, as new ionization techniques will enable the analysis of more analytes and as the investment costs will decrease in the future. However, proven conventional methods will still survive in some cases. New concepts, such as parallel HPLC-MS/MS or on-line purification of extracts by column switching which are already widely used in the pharmaceutical industry could help to further increase the throughput. However, for a sound evaluation with respect to their applicability in residue analysis there is so far too little experience.     

A national critical loads framework for atmospheric deposition effects assessment: II. Defining assessment end points,indicators, and functional subregions

The United States Environmental Protection Agency, with support from the US Department of Energy and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, has been evaluating the feasibility of an effects-based (critical loads) approach to atmospheric pollutant regulation and abatement. The rationale used to develop three of the six steps in a flexible assessment framework (Strickland and others, 1992) is presented along with a discussion of a variety of implementation approaches and their ramifications. The rationale proposes that it is necessary to provide an explicit statement of the condition of the resource that is considered valuable (assessment end point) because: (1) individual ecosystem components may be more or less sensitive to deposition, (2) it is necessary to select indicators of ecosystem condition that can be objectively measured and that reflect changes in the quality of the assessment end point, and (3) acceptable status (i.e., value of indicator and quality of assessment end point at critical load) must be defined. The rationale also stresses the importance of defining the assessment regions and subregions to improve the analysis and understanding of the indicator response to deposition. Subregional definition can be based on a variety of criteria, including informed judgment or quantitative procedures. It also depends on the geographic scale at which exposure and effects models are accurate and on data availability, resolution, and quality. The research described in this article has been funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency. This document has been prepared at the EPA Environmental Research Laboratory in Corvallis, Oregon, through contract #68-C8-0006 with ManTech Environmental Technology, Inc., and Interagency Agreement #1824-B014-A7 with the US Department of Energy and at Oak Ridge National Laboratory managed by Martin Marietta Energy Systems, Inc., under Contract DE-AC05-84OR21400 with the US Department of Energy. Environmental Sciences Division Publication No. 3903. It has been subjected to the agency’s peer and administrative review and approved for publication. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute endorsement or recommendation for use.     

From wasteland to wetland: creating a community ecological resource from waste water in regional New South Wales

In areas where rivers have been altered and regulated through dams, the effect on wetland ecosystems can lead to 'wastage' of the land as natural systems are destroyed. In response to the effects of streamflow regulation on a wetland near the city of Albury, on the Murray River, the development of the Wonga Wetlands and associated site rehabilitation addresses two key issues: wasteland and waste water. A Community Advisory Committee has been actively and directly involved in the project, initiated and implemented by the Albury City Council, to restore an area of original wetland into a community ecological resource that utilises 100% of the domestic, commercial and industrial urban 'waste' water from the city's water treatment plant. This project represents a significant direction in the way communities and local governments approach resource recovery. This paper analyses the Wonga Wetlands project from the perspective of sustainable management of waste in terms of water resources and presents it as a model for community-based environmental application and long-term resource sustainability.