Comparing methods to estimate the proportion of turbine-induced bird and bat mortality in the search area under a road and pad search protocol

Environmental and Ecological Statistics - Estimating bird and bat mortality at wind facilities typically involves searching for carcasses on the ground near turbines. Some fraction of carcasses...     

Arsenic distribution and pathway scenarios for sediments and water in a peri-urban Mongolian small-scale coal mining area (Nalaikh District,Ulaanbaatar)

The distribution of arsenic (As) in environmental compartments is investigated in the Nalaikh Depression of N-Mongolia. In Nalaikh, lignite coal is mined by artisanal small-scale mining (ASM) approaches. Because As is often associated with sulfuric minerals in coal, it was hypothesized that enrichment of As is related to coal ASM. A second hypothesis considered coal combustion in power plants, and stoves are a key source of As in the local environment. Three mobilization and distribution scenarios were developed for potential As pathways in this semiarid environment. About 43 soil and 14 water sites were analyzed for As concentrations and meaningful parameters in soil and water. About 28 topsoil samples were analyzed in surface-subsurface pairs in order to identify potential eolian surface enrichment. Additionally, fluvial-alluvial sediments and geogenic and anthropogenic deposits were sampled. Water was sampled as surface water, groundwater, precipitation, and industrial water. Results show that As does not pose a ubiquitous risk in the Nalaikh Depression. However, locally and specifically in water, As concentrations may exceed the WHO guideline value for drinking water by up to a factor of 10. A carefully selected sampling strategy allows the evaluation of the distribution scenarios, which reveals a combination of (a) geogenic As in groundwater and distribution via surface water with (b) anthropogenic As redistribution via eolian pathways. An immediate linkage between As redistribution and coal mining is not evident. However, As distribution in fly ash from coal combustion in the local power plant and yurt settlements is the most likely As pathway. Hence, the results indicate the potential influence of diffuse, low-altitude sources on As emission to the environment. As such, this study provides a good example for As distribution under semiarid climate conditions influenced by geogenic and anthropogenic factors.

     

Invasion costs,impacts, and human agency: response to Sagoff 2020

Article impact statement: In an era of profound biodiversity crisis, invasion costs, invader impacts, and human agency should not be dismissed.     

Audience perceptions of high-status ties and network advantage: The market for coaching jobs in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (2000–2011)

Social ties with high-status others can be a potent signal of an individual's underlying quality and future promise. Individuals in competitive markets, therefore, have an incentive to publicly claim connections to high-status others. However, cognitive limitations and biases can make social network connections difficult for observers to reliably discern, and claims to high-status ties can go unrecognized by the audience. Our core contention is that claims to high-status affiliation are advantageous only when the audience recognizes the claim—unrecognized claims, like unreliable signals, do not deliver advantage and can backfire. Further, we draw on the literature on imprinting and develop arguments for why some people are more likely to make claims to high-status ties and why some claims to high-status ties are more likely than others to be recognized by the audience. We test our arguments with data from the market for head coaching jobs in NCAA basketball (2000–2011). Our study contributes to the sparse literature on how social network ties that exist in the minds of third-party observers influence individual attainment in market settings; and it offers new insights into how imprinting processes shape the perception and use of high-status network ties.     

Land Suitability Assessment in the Catchment Area of Four Southwestern Atlantic Coastal Lagoons: Multicriteria and Optimization Modeling

In the present study, a land suitability assessment was conducted in the basin of four Uruguayan coastal lagoons (Southwestern Atlantic) to analyze the productive development while minimizing eutrophication, biodiversity loss and conflicts among different land uses. Suitable land for agriculture, forest, livestock ranching, tourism and conservation sectors were initially established based on a multi-attribute model developed using a geographic information system. Experts were consulted to determine the requirements for each land use sector and the incompatibilities among land use types. The current and potential conflicts among incompatible land use sectors were analyzed by overlapping land suitability maps. We subsequently applied a multi-objective model where land (pixels) with similar suitability was clustered into "land suitability groups", using a two-phase cluster analysis and the Akaike Information Criterion. Finally, a linear programming optimization procedure was applied to allocate land use sectors into land suitable groups, maximizing total suitability and minimizing interference among sectors. Results indicated that current land use overlapped by 4.7?% with suitable land of other incompatible sectors. However, the suitable land of incompatible sectors overlapped in 20.3?% of the study area, indicating a high potential for the occurrence of future conflict. The highest competition was between agriculture and conservation, followed by forest and agriculture. We explored scenarios where livestock ranching and tourism intensified, and found that interference with conservation and agriculture notably increased. This methodology allowed us to analyze current and potential land use conflicts and to contribute to the strategic planning of the study area.     

The Adaptation for Conservation Targets (ACT) Framework: A Tool for Incorporating Climate Change into Natural Resource Management

As natural resource management agencies and conservation organizations seek guidance on responding to climate change, myriad potential actions and strategies have been proposed for increasing the long-term viability of some attributes of natural systems. Managers need practical tools for selecting among these actions and strategies to develop a tailored management approach for specific targets at a given location. We developed and present one such tool, the participatory Adaptation for Conservation Targets (ACT) framework, which considers the effects of climate change in the development of management actions for particular species, ecosystems and ecological functions. Our framework is based on the premise that effective adaptation of management to climate change can rely on local knowledge of an ecosystem and does not necessarily require detailed projections of climate change or its effects. We illustrate the ACT framework by applying it to an ecological function in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, USA)-water flows in the upper Yellowstone River. We suggest that the ACT framework is a practical tool for initiating adaptation planning, and for generating and communicating specific management interventions given an increasingly altered, yet uncertain, climate.     

Occupational embeddedness and job performance

While researchers have recently focused their attention on organizational embeddedness, occupational embeddedness has received little theoretical and empirical attention. Using multisource data on 162 employees in multiple jobs and organizations, we found that occupational embeddedness is positively related to both task performance and creativity and is negatively related to counterproductive work behavior, even after controlling for the effects of organizational embeddedness. In addition, we found that trait affect moderated the relationships of occupational embeddedness to job performance. Occupational embeddedness was more strongly related to counterproductive work behavior when trait negative affect was high, while occupational embeddedness was more strongly related to both citizenship behavior and creativity when trait positive affect was high. Results also indicated that the various components of occupational embeddedness had different effects on job outcomes. Fit had a strong positive effect on core task performance, links had a positive effect on creativity, and sacrifice had a small positive effect on citizenship behavior. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for future research and management practice. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Moving Beyond Strawmen and Artificial Dichotomies: Adaptive Management When an Endangered Species Uses an Invasive One

Evans et al. (Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2008) have attempted to enmesh me in their dispute with the Florida Bureau of Invasive Plant Management about a specific system, Kings Bay/Crystal River. In so doing, they repeatedly mischaracterize my positions in order to depict, incorrectly, invasion biology as monolithic and me as a representative of one extreme of a false dichotomy about management of introduced species. In addition, they introduce an issue irrelevant in this case (extinctions) and cite incorrect data. Proposing to manage people, manatees, introduced plants, and cyanobacteria in Kings Bay by participative adaptive management, they ignore the fact that living organisms can both disperse autonomously and hitchhike. Finally, they present few details on any aspect of their management proposal and do not address the myriad problems that have beset previous attempts at scientific adaptive management, especially at large scales. Until such a management approach is fleshed out and implemented, it is impossible to assess its validity for Kings Bay, and it is very premature to suggest it as a general model for dealing with invasive species disputes.     

Chemical and Physical Controls on the Oxygen Regime of Ice‐Covered Arctic Lakes and Reservoirs1

Abstract: We examined the chemical, morphological, and anthropogenic controls on winter‐oxygen biogeochemistry in ice‐covered lakes and reservoirs on the North Slope of Alaska. We measured dissolved oxygen (DO), solute concentrations, water depth, and ice thickness at three natural thaw lakes and four reservoirs (flooded gravel mines) for two winters. In all seven study sites, DO concentration and pH decreased with depth, and temporally through the winter (November to April). DO concentration was four to six times greater in the deeper reservoirs (8‐13 mg/l) compared with shallow natural lakes (ca. 2 mg/l). Lakes and reservoirs with high dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentration were susceptible to large decreases in oxygen over the winter. DO concentration differed markedly between years, but was not attributed to changes in water‐use or winter water‐chemistry. Alternatively, we suggest that dissolved oxygen concentration was lower during freeze‐up, possibly associated with higher lake‐productivity during the summer. Our results suggest that current water‐use practices on the North Slope of Alaska caused little to no change in DO concentration over the winter. In particular, considering the high pumping activity and shallow depth, lakes with low DOC concentration (≤6 mg/l) showed strong resilience to change in chemistry over the winter. We suggest that both lake and reservoir depth, and DOC concentration are key factors influencing oxygen consumption in ice‐covered arctic lakes and reservoirs.     

The release of lindane from contaminated building materials

The release of the organochlorine pesticide lindane (γ-hexachlorocyclohexane) from several types of contaminated building materials was studied to assess inhalation hazard and decontamination requirements in response to accidental and/or intentional spills. The materials included glass, polypropylene carpet, latex-painted drywall, ceramic tiles, vinyl floor tiles, and gypsum ceiling tiles. For each surface concentration, an equilibrium concentration was determined in the vapour phase of the surrounding air. Vapor concentrations depended upon initial surface concentration, temperature, and type of building material. A time-weighted average (TWA) concentration in the air was used to quantify the health risk associated with the inhalation of lindane vapors. Transformation products of lindane, namely α-hexachlorocyclohexane and pentachlorocyclohexene, were detected in the vapour phase at both temperatures and for all of the test materials. Their formation was greater on glass and ceramic tiles, compared to other building materials. An empiric Sips isotherm model was employed to approximate experimental results and to estimate the release of lindane and its transformation products. This helped determine the extent of decontamination required to reduce the surface concentrations of lindane to the levels corresponding to vapor concentrations below TWA.