Conflict on the Coast: Using Geographic Information Systems to Map Potential Environmental Disputes in Matagorda Bay,Texas

The sustainable management of coastal natural resources inevitably involves identifying stakeholder conflicts and developing planning processes that prevent these conflicts from becoming intractable disputes. This study links environmental conflict to specific areas within a large ecological system. Specifically, we use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to map potentially competing stakeholder values associated with establishing protected areas in Matagorda Bay, Texas. By overlaying multiple values associated with a range of stakeholders across space, we are able to identify hotspots of potential conflict as well as areas of opportunity for maximizing joint gains. Mapping stakeholder conflict is an approach to proactively locate potential controversy in response to a specific environmental management proposal and guide decision makers in crafting planning processes that mitigate the possibility of intractable disputes and facilitate the implementation of sustainable coastal policies. Results indicate that under different management scenarios, protected area proposals will generate more conflict in specific areas. Most notably, regulated uses would produce the greatest degree of conflict on or near shore, particularly at the mouth of the Colorado River. Additionally, of all the management scenarios evaluated, the prohibition of coastal structural development would generate the overall highest level of conflict within the Bay. Based on the results, we discuss the policy implications for environmental managers and provide guidance for future research on location-based conflict management within the coastal margin.     

USE AND EFFECTIVENESS OF MUNICIPAL WATER RESTRICTIONS DURING DROUGHT IN COLORADO1

ABSTRACT: Drought conditions in the summer of 2002 prompted several cities along Colorado's Front Range to enact restrictions on outdoor water use, focusing primarily on limiting the frequency of lawn watering. The different approaches utilized by eight water providers were tracked to determine the level of water savings achieved, measured as a comparison of 2002 usage to 2000 to 2001 average usage, and also based on a statistical estimate of 2002 “expected use” that accounts for the impact of drought conditions on demand. Mandatory restrictions were shown to be an effective tool for drought coping. During periods of mandatory restrictions, savings measured in expected use per capita ranged from 18 to 56 percent, compared to just 4 to 12 percent savings during periods of voluntary restrictions. As anticipated, providers with the most stringent restrictions achieved the greatest savings.     

Participatory development for regional sustainability in Western Australia: an enabling state?

Regionally specific sustainability processes that account for diverse environments and populations and that integrate social, economic, political and ecological spheres are being developed in Western Australia. A coordinated commitment to sustainability principles and a participatory philosophy by the state and local governments is necessary. This requires a transformation of the public service, from a director of passive programmes and laws to a facilitator of community projects and outcomes, towards an enabling state. An international participatory paradigm provides an array of concepts and methods for local and regional communities in partnership with government and industry to achieve this. Participatory methodologies are utilised successfully around the globe to create an institutional framework that facilitates a process of dialogue, partnership, networking, learning and managing change. This paper examines the potential contribution of a participatory approach to improve the participatory capacity of regional communities and both local and state governments towards the facilitation of regional sustainability processes.     

The role of population projections in environmental management

California and other regions in the United States are becoming more populated and ethnically diverse, and thus, ecological impacts on the wildland–urban interface are a significant policy concern. In a socioeconomic assessment focused on the geographic regions surrounding four national forests in southern California, population projections are being formulated to assist in the update of forest plans. In southern California, the projected trend of explosive population growth combined with increased ethnic and racial diversity indicates four challenges for environmental management. First, patterns of recreation use on wildlands are likely to change, and management of these areas will have to address new needs. Second, as land-management agencies face changing constituencies, new methods of soliciting public involvement from ethnic and racial groups will be necessary. Third, growth in the region is likely to encroach upon wildland areas, affecting water, air, open space, and endangered species. Fourth, in order to address all these concerns in a climate of declining budgets, resource management agencies need to strengthen collaborative relationships with other agencies in the region. How environmental managers approach these changes has widespread implications for the ecological sustainability of forests in southern California.     

TRANSITIONS IN MIDWESTERN GROUND WATER LAW1

ABSTRACT: The evolution of ground-water law in eight states in the Midwest (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin) is examined, and a review of transitions in ground-water doctrines is presented. Two underlying themes in changing ground-water management are communicated. First, ground-water law is evolving from private property rules of capture based on the absolute ownership doctrines to rules requiring conservation and sharing of ground water as a public resource. Second, in both courts and state legislatures, a proactive role of ground-water management is emerging, again, with an emphasis on sharing. Both of these trends are apparent in the Midwest. In the last decade midwestern states have (1) seen significant shifts in court decisions on ground-water use with greater recognition of the reciprocal or mutually dependent nature of ground-water rights, and (2) seen increased legislative development of comprehensive ground-water management statutes that emphasize the reciprocal liabilities of ground-water use. These trends are examined and ground-water management programs discussed for eight states in the Midwest.     

A forage-based vision of Ontario agriculture

The necessity of incorporating societal and environmental concerns into publicly funded agricultural initiatives in research, extension, and practice is increasingly evident. Agriculturalists are urged to acknowledge and respond to societal concerns before an insensitive and largely ill-informed urban majority assumes a dominant posture in agricultural policy. In recent history, the availability of unrealistically cheap energy encouraged the evolution of a form of commercial agriculture unfettered by sound ecological principles. At present, external, resource-intensive intervention of increasing magnitude is needed to compensate for the apparent ecological instability generated by practices such as intensive cereal management or conservation tillage practices. Polarization of the enterprises of plant and animal agriculture to enable centralized, concentrate-intensive, confinement feeding has disrupted the natural cycling of nutrients and carbon in the soil, encouraged the withdrawal of perennial forages from crop rotations, and invoked a widely ramifying network of agricultural and societal problems. Solutions to these problems must evolve from a holistic and far-reaching appraisal of causes, rather than from a piecemeal approach to individual symptoms.     

Watershed Management and Organizational Dynamics: Nationwide Findings and Regional Variation

Recent attention has focused on resource management initiatives at the watershed scale with emphasis on collaborative, locally driven, and decentralized institutional arrangements. Existing literature on limited selections of well-established watershed-based organizations has provided valuable insights. The current research extends this focus by including a broad survey of watershed organizations from across the United States as a means to estimate a national portrait. Organizational characteristics include year of formation, membership size and composition, budget, guiding principles, and mechanisms of decision-making. These characteristics and the issue concerns of organizations are expected to vary with respect to location. Because this research focuses on organizations that are place based and stakeholder driven, the forces driving them are expected to differ across regions of the country. On this basis of location, we suggest basic elements for a regional assessment of watershed organizations to channel future research and to better approximate the organizational dynamics, issue concerns, and information needs unique to organizations across the country. At the broadest level, the identification of regional patterns or organizational similarities may facilitate the linkage among organizations to coordinate their actions at the much broader river basin or ecosystem scale.     

Nitrous oxide and methane in a changing Arctic Ocean

Human activities are changing the Arctic environment at an unprecedented rate resulting in rapid warming, freshening, sea ice retreat and ocean acidification of the Arctic Ocean. Trace gases such as nitrous oxide (N₂O) and methane (CH₄) play important roles in both the atmospheric reactivity and radiative budget of the Arctic and thus have a high potential to influence the region’s climate. However, little is known about how these rapid physical and chemical changes will impact the emissions of major climate-relevant trace gases from the Arctic Ocean. The combined consequences of these stressors present a complex combination of environmental changes which might impact on trace gas production and their subsequent release to the Arctic atmosphere. Here we present our current understanding of nitrous oxide and methane cycling in the Arctic Ocean and its relevance for regional and global atmosphere and climate and offer our thoughts on how this might change over coming decades.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13280-021-01633-8.     

Field methods and example applications for the Min-Trap® mineral sampler

Important reactive minerals are commonly created during in situ groundwater remediation activities; for example, iron sulfides formed during enhanced reduction approaches can abiotically degrade many chlorinated solvents. However, cost-effective tools to evaluate these treatment processes in field applications are limited and the collection of samples to evaluate in situ mineral formation is costly due to drilling requirements. The new passive Min-Trap sampler is a simple and cost-effective tool that can directly measure the formation of reactive minerals in situ without the need for additional drilling or soil core collection. The methods presented here describe how Min-Traps deployed in conventional monitoring wells can measure reactive minerals and how these minerals can be identified through commercially available analytical methods. Several examples are presented that show how Min-Traps can be used to characterize the rate and spatial variability of reactive mineral precipitation and these data may support operation and optimization decisions.     

Injury Severity Score alone predicts mortality when compared to EMS scene time and transport time for motor vehicle trauma patients who arrive alive to hospital

ABSTRACT

Objective: This study aims to identify the association, if any, between prehospital scene time, prehospital transport time, and Injury Severity Score (ISS) with in-hospital mortality.

Methods: A retrospective analysis was performed on patients at least 18 years of age who arrived to the hospital alive via emergency medical services (EMS) after a motor vehicle collision (MVC) between 1992 and 2016. These patients were divided into groups based on minutes spent at the scene and in transport. The ISS of the in-hospital mortalities, as well as the entire patient sample for each time frame, was collected. Patients without documented scene time, transport time, or ISS were excluded.

Results: Four thousand one hundred ninety-four patients were captured when analyzing scene time, though only 3,980 met inclusion criteria. In addition, 4,177 patients were captured when analyzing transport time, though only 3,979 met inclusion criteria. Scene time and transport time were not statistically significant predictors of in-hospital mortality (P = .31 and P = .458, respectively). ISS was found to be a statistically significant predictor of in-hospital mortality (P < .001).

Conclusions: ISS predicts mortality independent of scene time or transport time for patients who arrive to the hospital alive following an MVC at Guthrie Robert Packer Hospital. Limitations of our study include inability to capture prehospital deaths and inability to correlate ISS with prehospital injury severity scores.