Responses of benthic insect communities to effluent from the abandoned Ferris-Haggarty copper mine in southeast Wyoming, USA

This study provided information about the benthic insect communities that are present in the impacted reaches of Haggarty Creek.     

锡林郭勒盟不同草原类型植物群落多样性初步研究

应用双指示种分析法TWINSPAN（Two-Way Indicators Species Analysis,TWINSPAN）和无偏对应分析DCA（Detrended Correspondence Analysis,DCA）对2005年7月中旬在锡林郭勒盟不同草原类型下采集的32个样方进行分类和排序处理。研究结果表明：1）研究区依据水分的差异包括3个不同草原类型（荒漠草原、典型草原、草甸草原）,再依据热量和人为干扰的差异包括8个植物群落类型;2）草原植物群落多样性随荒漠草原-典型草原-草甸草原的变化而增加;在中度干扰下,草原植物群落比原生群落具有更高的多样性;不同草原类型过渡带的草原植物群落结构多样性比物种多样性明显。     

山东近海黄海段营养盐结构对初级生产力的影响研究

于2006年8月(夏季)、2006年12月(冬季)、2007年4月(春季)、2007年10月(秋季)对山东近海黄海段的初级生产力和营养盐结构进行了调查.结果显示:(1)调查海域初级生产力的年平均值为438 mg/(m(2)·d),并呈现出"春季>夏季>秋季>冬季"的变化趋势;调查海区的营养盐结构表现出明显的季节分化:春...     

Transformation of rural communities: lessons from a local self-initiative for building resilience in the Solomon Islands

Solomon Islands is vulnerable to negative impacts from climate change, where people’s livelihoods and their well-being are threatened, especially the viability of isolated communities. Realising the increasing risks from climate change on communities, government, in partnership with aid-donor partners, has invested millions of dollars in climate change projects, through mitigation and adaptation strategies. As a form of adaptation, the government invests in programmes aimed at increasing the adaptive capacity of the vulnerable communities through landscape and seascape projects across the rural communities. Focusing on the “transformation concept” as a long-term adaptation strategy and enlargement of climate engineering and ecological resilience concepts, the paper discusses why building resilience from transformation of rural communities, as well as from landscape and seascape projects, would benefit communities and relevant authorities. This paper describes the findings of a study on two rural villages, Keigold and Mondo, from Ranogha Islands, Western Province, in Solomon Islands, where 80% of households decided to relocate from their old village “Mondo” to their new home “Keigold” after an earthquake in 2007, as part of a self-initiative. The reallocation process can be seen as a case of pro-active community transformation that provides valuable lessons to other rural communities that may be forced to move due to impacts from natural catastrophes, including those explained by climate change risks. Lessons from this experience suggest that policy-makers and non-government organisations should consider and empower local transformation initiatives as a way to building long-term adaptation to climate change.     

Community sustainability: a holistic approach to measuring the sustainability of rural communities in Scotland

ABSTRACT

Although sustainable development was defined in the Brundtland Report almost 30 years ago, the current usage of the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development remain highly equivocal. In the context of rural communities, multiple interpretations and weak definitions lead to confusion in understanding what comprises a sustainable rural community. Building on existing definitions (e.g. Baker’s, 2006, ‘Ladder of Sustainable Development’), models (principally, The Egan Review’s, 2004, ‘Components of Sustainable Communities’) and findings of this study, a sustainable community is defined and a holistic model of a sustainable place-based rural community is presented. This model, the sustainable community design (SCD) is used as the basis for analysing community sustainability, which is measured using mixed methods and scorecard assessment. Sensitivity of the method is demonstrated with inter- and intra-community variations in sustainability across three diverse Scottish rural communities. Intra-community variations illustrate heterogeneity in community sustainability, explain ambiguity in characterisations of an individual community’s sustainability, and highlight the importance of an interdisciplinary and holistic approach to community development. The SCD framework is presented as a useful tool for meso-level sustainability assessment and to facilitate the sustainable development of rural communities.     

Ecological literacy and psychographics: lifestyle contributors to ecological knowledge and understanding

Knowledge and understanding about how the ecological systems of the Earth support life form the foundation for ecological literacy, which, in turn, is of critical importance for sustainability. There is widespread concern that levels of ecological literacy within many contemporary human societies are too low to enable effective decision-making about how to live sustainably. This paper presents and discusses the findings of an ecological literacy assessment of South Australian adults. The assessment tested for knowledge and understanding of ecological systems and interconnections with human society. Analyses revealed significant relationships between assessment scores and a range of value-based and behavioural characteristics. Such characteristics included the value placed on nature, time spent outdoors and in nature, involvement in nature-based activities, and perceived sources of ecological knowledge and understanding. Higher average scores were correlated with higher values accorded to involvement in outdoor activities, importance of the outdoors to enjoyment of life, importance of nature in the household, volunteer environmental activity and growing food. Higher scores were also correlated with higher education, research activities, outdoor lifestyles, place-based experiences, volunteer activities, mentors and colleagues, and books and magazines. Lower scores were achieved by those who considered media, natural disasters and environmental marketing to be major contributors to their ecological knowledge. These findings contribute to a broader study of the relationships between ecological literacy and a range of both socio-demographic and psychographic characteristics. They invite serious consideration from any society that values the participation of an informed population with the capacity to make sustainable environmental decisions.     

Non-linear ecological processes, fires, environmental heterogeneity and shrub invasion in northwestern Patagonia

The emergent behaviors of nature are not only the sum of interactions among ecosystem parts but also depend on the organization of these interactions. Fire, climate and vegetation patterns produce non-linear fire propagation across the landscape. Environmental heterogeneity, like outcrop presence and hare density, increases landscape patchiness and makes possible the occupation of fire refuges by plants, like Fabiana imbricata shrubs. We monitored shrub recruitment and cover during nine postfire years in northwestern Patagonia grasslands and we studied the long-term population dynamics under different environmental conditions through a matrix model, exploring different fire frequencies and spring precipitation regimes. Both, the field monitoring and the model seem to confirm the relationships between shrub invasion and fire. The climate change forecast predicts an increase in the frequency of El Niño Southern Oscillation phenomena that could causes more coupled fires—rainy springs in northwestern Patagonia, and consequently, more recruitment windows for shrubs, like F. imbricata. The matrix model also indicates that this scenario would be the most favourable for shrub invasion. Our results contribute to the knowledge of the ecosystem properties and processes, providing useful information to improve the grasslands sustainable use.     

Determining the community structure of the coral Seriatopora hystrix from hydrodynamic and genetic networks

The exchange of genetic information between coral reefs through the transport of larvae can be described in terms of networks that capture the linkages between distant populations. A key question arising from these networks is the determination of the highly connected modules (communities). Communities can be defined using genetic similarity or distance statistics between multiple samples but due to limited specimen sampling capacity the boundaries of the communities for the known coral reefs in the seascape remain unresolved. In this study we use the microsatellite composition of individual corals to compare sample populations using a genetic dissimilarity measure (F_ST) which is then used to create a complex network. This network involved sampling 1025 colonies from 22 collection sites and examining 10 microsatellites loci. The links between each sampling site were given a strength that was created from the pair wise F_ST values. The result is an undirected weighted network describing the genetic dissimilarity between each sampled population. From this network we then determined the community structure using a leading eigenvector algorithm within graph theory. However, given the relatively limited sampling conducted, the representation of the regional genetic structure was incomplete. To assist with defining the boundaries of the genetically based communities we also integrated the communities derived from a hydrodynamic and distance based networks. The hydrodynamic network, though more comprehensive, was of smaller spatial extent than our genetic sampling. A Bayesian Belief network was developed to integrate the overlapping communities. The results indicate the genetic population structure of the Great Barrier Reef and provide guidance on where future genetic sampling should take place to complete the genetic diversity mapping.     

巨枝人工林灌木层优势种的种间联结性分析

种间联结的研究对于人工林群落的生物多样性保育和可持续经营与管理具有重要的意义,目前对巨桉人工林灌木层物种之间的作用关系知之甚少。根据野外60个样方的调查数据,运用x^2检验、Jaccard指数和Spearman秩相关系数研究了巨桉（Eucalyptusgrandis）人工林灌木层18个优势种的种间关联和相关关系。结果表明,灌木层优势种具有总体上的正联结性,但在153个种对中,具有显著正联结性的种对数约占总种对数的10％,绝大数种对表现为弱联结性或无联结性,种间关系较为松散,表明巨桉林下灌木种群具有相对独立分布的特性。研究种间关系时,种间关联结合种间相关得出的结果较好。根据分析结果将18个优势种划分为4个生态种组,生态种组内的种其资源利用方式和生态要求相似,而组间表现出明显的差异。生态种组的划分能为巨桉人工林林下灌木层的管理提供理论依据。     

Assessing non‐metro recovery across two continents: issues and limitations

Rural and remote areas of countries such as Australia and the United States are less well‐resourced and often poorer than their city counterparts. When a disaster strikes, therefore, their long‐term recovery can be impeded by being situated ‘over the horizon'. Nonetheless, they are likely to enjoy higher social capital, with ‘locals’ banding together to help restore economic and social life in the wake of a calamitous incident. At the same time, a repeat of extreme events, springing in part from alteration to the landscape through intense human occupation, threatens to derail sustainable recovery processes everywhere, suggesting that renewed emphasis needs to be placed on preparedness. Improved metrics are also required, spanning both pre‐ and post‐disaster phases, to determine effectiveness. Moreover, a focus on the ‘hardening’ of towns offers a better return in limiting damage and potentially hastens the speed of recovery should these places later fall victim to extreme events.