Assessing the local economic impacts of land protection

Land protection, whether public or private, is often controversial at the local level because residents worry about lost economic activity. We used panel data and a quasi-experimental impact-evaluation approach to determine how key economic indicators were related to the percentage of land protected. Specifically, we estimated the impacts of public and private land protection based on local area employment and housing permits data from 5 periods spanning 1990–2015 for all major towns and cities in New England. To generate rigorous impact estimates, we modeled economic outcomes as a function of the percentage of land protected in the prior period, conditional on town fixed effects, metro-region trends, and controls for period and neighboring protection. Contrary to narratives that conservation depresses economic growth, land protection was associated with a modest increase in the number of people employed and in the labor force and did not affect new housing permits, population, or median income. Public and private protection led to different patterns of positive employment impacts at distances close to and far from cities, indicating the importance of investing in both types of land protection to increase local opportunities. The greatest magnitude of employment impacts was due to protection in more rural areas, where opportunities for both visitation and amenity-related economic growth may be greatest. Overall, we provide novel evidence that land protection can be compatible with local economic growth and illustrate a method that can be broadly applied to assess the net economic impacts of protection.     

Linking ecosystem services and human‐values theory

Understanding why people make the decisions they do remains a fundamental challenge facing conservation science. Ecosystem service (ES) (a benefit people derive from an ecosystem) approaches to conservation reflect efforts to anticipate people's preferences and influence their environmental behavior. Yet, the design of ES approaches seldom includes psychological theories of human behavior. We sought to alleviate this omission by applying a psychological theory of human values to a cross‐cultural ES assessment. We used interviews and focus groups with fish workers from 28 coral reef fishing communities in 4 countries to qualitatively identify the motivations (i.e., human values) underlying preferences for ES; quantitatively evaluate resource user ES priorities; and identify common patterns among ES motivations and ES priorities (i.e., trade‐offs and synergies). Three key findings are evident that align with human values theory. First, motivations underlying preferences for individual ESs reflected multiple human values within the same value domain (e.g., self‐enhancement). Second, when averaged at community or country scales, the order of ES priorities was consistent. However, the order belied significant variation that existed among individuals. Third, in line with human values theory, ESs related to one another in a consistent pattern; certain service pairs reflected trade‐off relationships (e.g., supporting and provisioning), whereas other service pairs reflected synergistic relationships (e.g., supporting and regulating). Together, these findings help improve understanding of when and why convergence and trade‐offs in people's preferences for ESs occur, and this knowledge can inform the development of suitable conservation actions.     

Retracted: Comparative appraisals of legal and institutional framework governing gas flaring in Nigeria's upstream petroleum sector: How satisfactory?

Retraction: Olujobi, O.J., & Olusola-Olujobi, T. (2020). Comparative appraisals of legal and institutional framework governing gas flaring in Nigeria's upstream petroleum sector: How satisfactory?. Environmental Quality Management, https://doi.org/10.1002/tqem.21680 The above article from Environmental Quality Management published online on 3 July 2020 in Wiley Online Library ( wileyonlinelibrary.com ) in Early View has been retracted by agreement between the journal Editor in Chief, Jega Jegatheesan and Wiley Periodicals, LLC. The retraction has been agreed due to unattributed overlap with a previously published article from the same group of authors.     

Effects of a sulfonylurea herbicide on the soil bacterial community

Sulfonylurea herbicides are widely used on a wide range of crops to control weeds. Chevalier® OnePass herbicide is a sulfonylurea herbicide intensively used on cereal crops in Algeria. No information is yet available about the biodegradation of this herbicide or about its effect on the bacterial community of the soil. In this study, we collected an untreated soil sample, and another sample was collected 1 month after treatment with the herbicide. Using a high-resolution melting DNA technique, we have shown that treatment with Chevalier® OnePass herbicide only slightly changed the composition of the whole bacterial community. Two hundred fifty-nine macroscopically different clones were isolated from the untreated and treated soil under both aerobic and microaerobic conditions. The strains were identified by sequencing a conserved fragment of the 16S rRNA gene. The phylogenetic trees constructed using the sequencing results confirmed that the bacterial populations were similar in the two soil samples. Species belonging to the Lysinibacillus, Bacillus, Pseudomonas, and Paenibacillus genera were the most abundant species found. Surprisingly, we found that among ten strains isolated from the treated soil, only six were resistant to the herbicide. Furthermore, bacterial overlay experiments showed that only one resistant strain (related to Stenotrophomonas maltophilia) allowed all the sensitive strains tested to grow in the presence of the herbicide. The other resistant strains allowed only certain sensitive strains to grow. On the basis of these results, we propose that there must be several biodegradation pathways for this sulfonylurea herbicide.     

Untangling outcomes of de jure and de facto community‐based management of natural resources

We systematically reviewed the literature on the tragedy of the commons and common‐property resources. We segregated studies by legal management regimes (de jure regimes) and management that develops in practice (de facto regimes) to understand how the structure of regime formation affects the outcome of community management on sustainability of resource use. De facto regimes, developed within the community, are more likely to have positive impacts on the resource. However, de facto regimes are fragile and not resilient in the face of increased population pressure and unregulated markets, and de facto management regimes are less successful where physical exclusion of external agents from resources is more difficult. Yet, formalization or imposition of de jure management regimes can have complicated impacts on sustainability. The imposition of de jure regimes usually has a negative outcome when existing de facto regimes operate at larger scales than the imposed de jure regime. In contrast, de jure regimes have largely positive impacts when the de facto regimes operate at scales smaller than the overlying de jure regimes. Formalization may also be counterproductive because of elite capture and the resulting de facto privatization (that allows elites to effectively exclude others) or de facto open access (where the disenfranchised may resort to theft and elites cannot effectively exclude them). This underscores that although the global movement to formalize community‐management regimes may address some forms of inequity and may produce better outcomes, it does not ensure resource sustainability and may lead to greater marginalization of users. Comparison of governance systems that differentiate between initiatives that legitimize existing de facto regimes and systems that create new de facto regimes, investigations of new top‐down de jure regimes, and studies that further examine different approaches to changing de jure regimes to de facto regimes are avenues for further inquiry.     

Climate change impacts on freshwater recreational fishing in the United States

We estimated the biological and economic impacts of climate change on freshwater fisheries in the United States (U.S.). Changes in stream temperatures, flows, and the spatial extent of suitable thermal habitats for fish guilds were modeled for the coterminous U.S. using a range of projected changes in temperature and precipitation caused by increased greenhouse gases (GHGs). Based on modeled shifts in available thermal habitat for fish guilds, we estimated potential economic impacts associated with changes in freshwater recreational fishing using a national-scale economic model of recreational fishing behavior. In general, the spatial distribution of coldwater fisheries is projected to contract, being replaced by warm/cool water and high-thermally tolerant, lower recreational priority (i.e., “rough”) fisheries. Changes in thermal habitat suitability become more pronounced under higher emissions scenarios and at later time periods. Under the highest GHG emissions scenario, by year 2100 habitat for coldwater fisheries is projected to decline by roughly 50 % and be largely confined to mountainous areas in the western U.S. and very limited areas of New England and the Appalachians. The economic model projects a decline in coldwater fishing days ranging from 1.25 million in 2030 to 6.42 million by 2100 and that the total present value of national economic losses to freshwater recreational fishing from 2009 to 2100 could range from $81 million to $6.4 billion, depending on the emissions scenario and the choice of discount rate.     

Total organic halogen (TOX) in human urine: A halogen-specific method for human exposure studies

Disinfection by-products(DBPs) are a complex mixture of compounds unintentionally formed as a result of disinfection processes used to treat drinking water. Effects of long-term exposure to DBPs are mostly unknown and were the subject of recent epidemiological studies. However,most bioanalytical methods focus on a select few DBPs. In this study, a new comprehensive bioanalytical method has been developed that can quantify mixtures of organic halogenated compounds, including DBPs, in human urine as total organic chlorine(TOCl), total organic bromine(TOBr), and total organic iodine(TOI). The optimized method consists of urine dilution, adsorption to activated carbon, pyrolysis of activated carbon, absorption of gases in an aqueous solution, and halide analysis with ion chromatography and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry. Spike recoveries for TOCl, TOBr, and TOI measurements ranged between 78% and 99%. Average TOCl, TOBr, and TOI concentrations in five urine samples from volunteers who consumed tap water were 1850, 82, and 21.0 μg/L as X~-, respectively.Volunteers who consumed spring water(control) had TOCl, TOBr, and TOI average concentrations in urine of 1090, 88, and 10.3 μg/L as X~-, respectively. TOCl and TOI in the urine samples from tap water consumers were higher than the control. However, TOBr was slightly lower in tap water urine samples compared to mineral water urine samples, indicating other sources of environmental exposure other than drinking water. A larger sample population that consumes tap water from different cities and mineral water is needed to determine TOCl, TOBr, and TOI exposure from drinking water.     

Are men better negotiators everywhere? A meta‐analysis of how gender differences in negotiation performance vary across cultures

Prior research has found that each culture and gender influences negotiation strategies and outcomes, but less is known about their interplay. We integrate these two research streams by providing a meta‐analytic review of the interactive impact of gender and culture on negotiation performance. We reviewed 185 studies that reported gender differences in intracultural negotiation performance across 30 societies that varied across seven cultural dimensions. Results showed that Hofstede's individualism–collectivism, GLOBE's in‐group collectivism and assertiveness practices, and Schwartz's harmony moderated the gender effect on negotiation performance. We found that in cultures lower in individualism, higher in in‐group collectivism practices, lower in assertiveness practices, and higher in harmony, women more likely outperformed men in negotiations. Implications for the role of gender and culture in negotiations and organizations more broadly are discussed.