家居室内设计及新进展的思考

在对传统室内设计基本观点阐述与理解的基础上分析其整体性、可持续发展,并着重探讨在物质文明和精神文明高度发展的今天,现代室内设计在个性化、自然性、现代性、艺术性等方面发展的新趋势.通过对现代室内设计特点和发展趋势的分析,创造出一个适合人们现代生活的理想空间.     

河北省钢铁工业主要大气污染物减排潜力分析

通过对河北省钢铁工业存在问题的分析,得出我省钢铁行业主要大气污染物为二氧化硫和粉尘.结合我省钢铁企业的实际情况,从工程技术、政策管理等方面提出相应治理措施,并对"十一五"期间我省钢铁行业二氧化硫和粉尘减排效益进行预测.预测结果显示:采用所建议的减排措施后,我省钢铁工业二氧化硫减排量对全省"十一五"减排计划的贡献率为81.4%;粉尘可减排60%.     

Volunteer Macroinvertebrate Monitoring: Tensions Among Group Goals,Data Quality,and Outcomes

Volunteer monitoring of natural resources is promoted for its ability to increase public awareness, to provide valuable knowledge, and to encourage policy change that promotes ecosystem health. We used the case of volunteer macroinvertebrate monitoring (VMM) in streams to investigate whether the quality of data collected is correlated with data use and organizers' perception of whether they have achieved these outcomes. We examined the relation between site and group characteristics, data quality, data use, and perceived outcomes (education, social capital, and policy change). We found that group size and the degree to which citizen groups perform tasks on their own (rather than aided by professionals) positively correlated with the quality of data collected. Group size and number of years monitoring positively influenced whether a group used their data. While one might expect that groups committed to collecting good-quality data would be more likely to use it, there was no relation between data quality and data use, and no relation between data quality and perceived outcomes. More data use was, however, correlated with a group's feeling of connection to a network of engaged citizens and professionals. While VMM may hold promise for bringing citizens and scientists together to work on joint conservation agendas, our data illustrate that data quality does not correlate with a volunteer group's desire to use their data to promote regulatory change. Therefore, we encourage scientists and citizens alike to recognize this potential disconnect and strive to be explicit about the role of data in conservation efforts.     

An Evaluation of the Effects of Soil Characteristics on Mitigation and Restoration Involving Blue Elderberry, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Sambucus mexicana</Emphasis>

We conducted field surveys and laboratory analyses to test the effects of soil characteristics in habitat mitigation sites and natural sites on the growth and condition of blue elderberry (Sambucus mexicana), which is the sole host plant for the federally threatened Valley elderberry longhorn beetle (Desmocerus californicus dimorphus). Thirty mitigation and 16 natural sites were selected throughout the range of the beetle. We found that although plant relative growth rates were comparable between mitigation sites and a natural site, mitigation sites contained substantially less soil nutrients than mitigation sites. Within mitigation sites, elderberry health and growth were positively correlated with the amount of total nitrogen in soils and less strongly with other soil nutrients and soil moisture. Analyses demonstrated reductions in the relative growth rate of elderberry as mitigation sites aged, and that soil nutrients and soil moisture became depleted over time. For mitigation sites, it took approximately seven years to develop basal stem diameters that have been linked to successful beetle colonization. Mitigation sites have smaller shrubs than natural sites and growth slows as mitigation sites age, thus delaying convergence of conditions between natural and mitigation sites. Analyses of soil particle size and whether sites were within the 100-year floodplain (as an indicator of riparian conditions) were inconclusive. We recommend investigating fertilizing and optimum planting densities for elderberry at restoration and mitigation sites, as well as increasing the duration of irrigation and monitoring.     

Determinants of Farmers’ Adoption of Improved Soil Conservation Technology in a Middle Mountain Watershed of Central Nepal

This study explores different socio-economic and institutional factors influencing the adoption of improved soil conservation technology (ISCT) on Bari land (Rainfed outward sloping terraces) in the Middle Mountain region of Central Nepal. Structured questionnaire survey and focus group discussion methods were applied to collect the necessary information from farm households. The logistic regression model predicted seven factors influencing the adoption of improved soil conservation technology in the study area including years of schooling of the household head, caste of the respondent, land holding size of the Bari land, cash crop vegetable farming, family member occupation in off farm sector, membership of the Conservation and Development Groups, and use of credit. The study showed that technology dissemination through multi-sectoral type community based local groups is a good option to enhance the adoption of improved soil conservation technology in the Middle Mountain farming systems in Nepal. Planners and policy makers should formulate appropriate policies and programs considering the farmers' interest, capacity, and limitation in promoting improved soil conservation technology for greater acceptance and adoption by the farmers.     

River-Stream Connectivity Affects Fish Bioassessment Performance

Stream fish bioassessment methods assume that fish assemblages observed in sample sites reflect responses to local stressors, but fish assemblages are influenced by local factors as well as regional dispersal to and from connected streams. We hypothesized that fish movement to and from refugia and source populations in connected rivers (i.e., riverine dispersal) would weaken or decouple relations between fish community metrics and local environmental conditions. We compared fish-environment relations between streams that flow into large rivers (mainstem tributaries) and streams that lack riverine confluences (headwater tributaries) at multiple spatial grains using data from the USEPA's Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program in the mid-Atlantic highlands, USA (n = 157 sites). Headwater and mainstem tributaries were not different in local environmental conditions, but showed important differences in fish metric responses to environmental quality gradients. Stream sites flowing into mainstem channels within 10 fluvial km showed consistently weaker relations to local environmental conditions than stream sites that lacked such mainstem connections. Moreover, these patterns diminished at longer distances from riverine confluences, consistent with the hypothesis of riverine dispersal. Our results suggest that (1) the precision of fish bioassessment metrics may be improved by calibrating scoring criteria based on the spatial position of sites within stream networks and (2) the spatial grain of fish bioassessment studies may be manipulated to suit objectives by including or excluding fishes exhibiting riverine dispersal.     

Detecting Temporal Change in Watershed Nutrient Yields

Meta-analyses reveal that nutrient yields tend to be higher for watersheds dominated by anthropogenic uses (e.g., urban, agriculture) and lower for watersheds dominated by natural vegetation. One implication of this pattern is that loss of natural vegetation will produce increases in watershed nutrient yields. Yet, the same meta-analyses also reveal that, absent land-cover change, watershed nutrient yields vary from one year to the next due to many exogenous factors. The interacting effects of land cover and exogenous factors suggest nutrient yields should be treated as distributions, and the effect of land-cover change should be examined by looking for significant changes in the distributions. We compiled nutrient yield distributions from published data. The published data included watersheds with homogeneous land cover that typically reported two or more years of annual nutrient yields for the same watershed. These data were used to construct statistical models, and the models were used to estimate changes in the nutrient yield distributions as a result of land-cover change. Land-cover changes were derived from the National Land Cover Database (NLCD). Total nitrogen (TN) yield distributions increased significantly for 35 of 1550 watersheds and decreased significantly for 51. Total phosphorus (TP) yield distributions increased significantly for 142 watersheds and decreased significantly for 17. The amount of land-cover change required to produce significant shifts in nutrient yield distributions was not constant. Small land-cover changes led to significant shifts in nutrient yield distributions when watersheds were dominated by natural vegetation, whereas much larger land-cover changes were needed to produce significant shifts when watersheds were dominated by urban or agriculture. We discuss our results in the context of the Clean Water Act.     

Influences on Wood Load in Mountain Streams of the Bighorn National Forest,Wyoming, USA

We documented valley and channel characteristics and wood loads in 19 reaches of forested headwater mountain streams in the Bighorn National Forest of northern Wyoming. Ten of these reaches were in the Upper Tongue River watershed, which has a history of management including timber harvest, tie floating, and road construction. Nine reaches were in the North Rock Creek watershed, which has little history of management activities. We used these data to test hypotheses that (i) valley geometry correlates with wood load, (ii) stream gradient correlates with wood load, and (iii) wood loads are significantly lower in managed watersheds than in otherwise similar unmanaged watersheds. Statistical analyses of the data support the first and third hypotheses. Stream reaches with steeper valley side slopes tend to have higher wood loads, and reaches in managed watersheds tend to have lower wood loads than reaches in unmanaged watersheds. Results do not support the second hypothesis. Shear stress correlated more strongly with wood load than did stream gradient, but statistical models with valley-scale variables had greater explanatory power than statistical models with channel-scale variables. Wood loads in stream reaches within managed watersheds in the Bighorn National Forest tend to be two to three times lower than wood loads in unmanaged watersheds.