The Integrated Pest Management Educator Pilot Project in Boston Public Housing: Results and Recommendations

Abstract

The German cockroach is the most common pest of urban, low-income housing in the United States and is associated with high pesticide use by residents. Cockroach allergen is implicated in asthma exacerbation and initiation and in the growing social and medical aspects of the disease. A safe and secure home environment is an environmental justice issue, and environmentally sound and effective models of cockroach control are needed in public and low-income multifamily housing. One model that offers potential is the integrated pest management (IPM) peer educator model (IPM Educator) in public housing as a component of IPM. A pre–post-analysis of an IPM Educator pilot programme in Boston public housing was undertaken. Thirty-four moderate- to high-infested units received baseline assessment and three applications of gel baits and IPM treatment by a pest control operator. Before the first pest control application, residents received written notice to prepare their units for treatment, a standard procedure. Before the second and third pest control treatments, an IPM Educator instructed residents in basic pest biology and habits, preparation for treatment, and the role of sanitation in pest control. Results showed a significant improvement in rate of preparation for pest control treatment after the IPM Educator intervention when compared with the preparation rate before the education intervention, and a significant reduction in cockroach populations by the third visit in units that were prepared and had improved sanitation, when compared with unprepared units and unclean units. The IPM peer educator is a promising, low-cost model of educating and engaging residents of urban, low-income, multifamily housing in environmentally sound pest control, thereby giving them some power and control over their living environment. It is also a potential source of professional training and jobs for public housing and other low-income housing residents.     

利益相关者的观点:推动组织

清洁生产原则的积极推广,有赖于政府、工业界和“推动组织“(例如金融和教育机构、非政府组织、技术指导人员和咨询人员、工业协会)间有效合作伙伴关系的推动与发展.本文引证了推动组织参与的一些成功行动.迫切希望不同的利益相关者在推动社会向可持续性发展转化中,发挥更积极的作用.     

Unexpected control of soil carbon turnover by soil carbon concentration

Soils are a key component of the terrestrial carbon cycle as they contain the majority of terrestrial carbon. Soil microorganisms mainly control the accumulation and loss of this carbon. However, traditional concepts of soil carbon stabilisation failed so far to account for environmental and energetic constraints of microorganisms. Here, we demonstrate for the first time that these biological limitations might have the overall control on soil carbon stability. In a long-term experiment, we incubated ¹³C-labelled compost with natural soils at various soil carbon concentrations. Unexpectedly, we found that soil carbon turnover decreased with lower carbon concentration. We developed a conceptual model that explained these observations. In this model, two types of particles were submitted to random walk movement in the soil profile: soil organic matter substrate and microbial decomposers. Soil carbon turnover depended only on the likelihood of a decomposer particle to meet a substrate particle; in consequence, carbon turnover decreased with lower carbon concentration, like observed in the experiment. This conceptual model was able to simulate realistic depth profiles of soil carbon and soil carbon age. Our results, which are simply based on the application of a two-step kinetic, unmystify the stability of soil carbon and suggest that observations like high carbon ages in subsoil, stability of carbon in fallows and priming of soil carbon might be simply explained by the probability to be decomposed.     

Improving species status assessments under the U.S. Endangered Species Act and implications for multispecies conservation challenges worldwide

Despite its successes, the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) has proven challenging to implement due to funding limitations, workload backlog, and other problems. As threats to species survival intensify and as more species come under threat, the need for the ESA and similar conservation laws and policies in other countries to function efficiently has grown. Attempts by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to streamline ESA decisions include multispecies recovery plans and habitat conservation plans. We address species status assessment (SSA), a USFWS process to inform ESA decisions from listing to recovery, within the context of multispecies and ecosystem planning. Although existing SSAs have a single-species focus, ecosystem-based research can efficiently inform multiple SSAs within a region and provide a foundation for transition to multispecies SSAs in the future. We considered at-risk grassland species and ecosystems within the southeastern United States, where a disproportionate number of rare and endemic species are associated with grasslands. To initiate our ecosystem-based approach, we used a combined literature-based and structured World Café workshop format to identify science needs for SSAs. Discussions concentrated on 5 categories of threats to grassland species and ecosystems, consistent with recommendations to make shared threats a focus of planning under the ESA: (1) habitat loss, fragmentation, and disruption of functional connectivity; (2) climate change; (3) altered disturbance regimes; (4) invasive species; and (5) localized impacts. For each threat, workshop participants identified science and information needs, including database availability, research priorities, and modeling and mapping needs. Grouping species by habitat and shared threats can make the SSA process and other planning processes for conservation of at-risk species worldwide more efficient and useful. We found a combination of literature review and structured discussion effective for identifying the scientific information and analysis needed to support the development of multiple SSAs. Article impact statement: Species status assessments can be improved by an ecosystem-based approach that groups imperiled species by shared habitats and threats.     

The changing sociocultural context of wildlife conservation

We introduced a multilevel model of value shift to describe the changing social context of wildlife conservation. Our model depicts how cultural-level processes driven by modernization (e.g., increased wealth, education, and urbanization) affect changes in individual-level cognition that prompt a shift from domination to mutualism wildlife values. Domination values promote beliefs that wildlife should be used primarily to benefit humans, whereas mutualism values adopt a view that wildlife are part of one's social network and worthy of care and compassion. Such shifts create emergent effects (e.g., new interest groups) and challenges to wildlife management organizations (e.g., increased conflict) and dramatically alter the sociopolitical context of conservation decisions. Although this model is likely applicable to many modernized countries, we tested it with data from a 2017–2018 nationwide survey (mail and email panel) of 43,949 residents in the United States. We conducted hierarchical linear modeling and correlational analysis to examine relationships. Modernization variables had strong state-level effects on domination and mutualism. Higher levels of education, income, and urbanization were associated with higher percentages of mutualists and lower percentages of traditionalists, who have strong domination values. Values affected attitudes toward wildlife management challenges; for example, states with higher proportions of mutualists were less supportive of lethal control of wolves (Canis lupus) and had lower percentages of active hunters, who represent the traditional clientele of state wildlife agencies in the United States. We contend that agencies will need to embrace new strategies to engage and represent a growing segment of the public with mutualism values. Our model merits testing for application in other countries.     

Chlorinated Solvent Treatment Wetland

A first‐of‐its‐kind wetland restoration project was completed in October 2000 to treat trichloroethene‐(TCE‐)impacted groundwater from a former manufacturing facility prior to discharge into a highly valued recreational surface water body in the upper Midwest. This article summarizes the design, construction, operation, and effectiveness of the restored wetland. The groundwater‐surface water discharge zone at the site was restored as a wetland to improve the natural degradation of TCE and subsequent degradation by‐products. For the past 11 years, the treatment wetland performance was evaluated by monitoring the wetland vegetation, wetland hydraulics, and water chemistry. Water quality data have been used to assess the wetland geochemistry, TCE and TCE‐degradation by‐product concentrations within the wetland, and the surface water quality immediately downgradient of the wetland. The treatment wetland has been performing according to design, with TCE and TCE‐degradation by‐products not exceeding surface water criteria. The monitoring results show that TCE and TCE‐degradation by‐products are entering the treatment wetland via natural hydraulic gradients and that the geochemistry of the wetland supports both reductive dechlorination (anaerobic degradation) and cometabolic degradation (aerobic degradation) of TCE and TCE‐degradation by‐products: cis‐ and trans‐1,2‐dichloroethene and vinyl chloride. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Runoff and leaching of atrazine and alachlor on a sandy soil as affected by application in sprinkler irrigation

Abstract

Rainfall simulation was used with small packed boxes of soil to compare runoff of herbicides applied by conventional spray and injection into sprinkler‐irrigation (chemigation), under severe rainfall conditions. It was hypothesized that the larger water volumes used in chemigation would leach some of the chemicals out of the soil surface rainfall interaction zone, and thus reduce the amounts of herbicides available for runoff. A 47‐mm rain falling in a 2‐hour event 24 hours after application of alachlor (2‐chloro‐N‐(2,6‐diethylphenyl)‐N‐(methoxymethyl)‐acetamide) and atrazine (6‐chloro‐N‐ethyl‐N‐(1‐methylethyl)‐1,3,5‐triazine‐2,4‐diamine) was simulated. The design of the boxes allowed a measurement of pesticide concentrations in splash water throughout the rainfall event. Initial atrazine concentrations exceeding its’ solubility were observed. When the herbicides were applied in 64000 L/ha of water (simulating chemigation in 6.4 mm irrigation water) to the surface of a Tifton loamy sand, subsequent herbicide losses in runoff water were decreased by 90% for atrazine and 91% for alachlor, as compared to losses from applications in typical carrier water volumes of 187 L/ha. However, this difference was not due to an herbicide leaching effect but to a 96% decrease in the amount of runoff from the chemigated plots. Only 0.3 mm of runoff occurred from the chemigated boxes while 7.4 mm runoff occurred from the conventionally‐treated boxes, even though antecedent moisture was higher in the former. Two possible explanations for this unexpected result are (a) increased aggregate stability in the more moist condition, leading to less surface sealing during subsequent rainfall, or (b) a hydrophobic effect in the drier boxes. In the majority of these pans herbicide loss was much less in runoff than in leachate water. Thus, in this soil, application of these herbicides by chemigation would decrease their potential for pollution only in situations where runoff is a greater potential threat than leaching.     

Local and distant residence times of contaminants in multi-compartment models. Part I: a review of the theoretical basis

In this, Part I of a two-part series, a review is presented of some generally appreciated residence time properties of multimedia models. The novel concept of “distant residence time” (DRT) is developed to provide additional insights into the characterization of environmental transport. DRT is the proportionality constant between the rate of emission of a contaminant into one compartment or region and the mass that results at steady-state in a distant compartment. The concept, which can be viewed as an expression of environmental mobility, is illustrated for various configurations of compartments and is shown to be consistent with the concepts of global fractionation and cold condensation. The dynamic responses of chemical quantities at distant locations to changing emission rates are also discussed. It is shown that approximate solutions for DRTs and their time dependence are useful for characterizing the long-range transport of chemicals and for interpreting monitoring data.     

Local and distant residence times of contaminants in multi-compartment models. Part II: application to assessing environmental mobility and long-range atmospheric transport

In Part I, the concepts of inherent, local and distant residence times (DRTs) were reviewed as metrics of the extent to which chemical discharges or emissions in one region or box are transported to distant regions. In this second part, the concepts are applied to geographically relevant systems to illustrate their applicability to the assessment of chemicals for long-range transport potential (LRTP). It is shown that the relative ranking of chemicals as characterized by the DRT method is similar to that of the characteristic travel distance concept. A DRT source-receptor matrix is developed that can express the chemical-specific potential of source regions to contaminate a specific receptor region of concern such as the Arctic. The matrix can be modified to identify for a specific source region the likely destinations of emissions as well as to assess the relative vulnerability of regions in the global environment to contaminants of concern.