Environmental Management and the New Politics of Western Water: The Animas-La Plata Project and Implementation of the Endangered Species Act

/ This paper explores the new politics of western water policy through an examination of the Animas-La Plata water project and implementation of the Endangered Species Act. It is suggested that the focus of western water programming has shifted from the source of distributed funds, the United States Congress, to the agencies originally created to deliver federal benefits because funding for new project construction has not been forthcoming. Under this new system, members of Congress continue to excite their constituents with promises of money for new project starts, while the administrative agencies perform the myriad duties needed to keep these projects alive. The result is that political objectives have replaced operational/management objectives in administrative processes. In this case, the author demonstrates how resource managers in the Bureau of Reclamation manipulated hydrological analysis to control administrative process, why their manipulation was unfair, and perhaps illegal, and why biologists from the US Fish and Wildlife Service accepted the analysis. While ostensibly protecting all interests, the result is that none of the objectives of federal water programming are achieved. KEY WORDS: Environmental management; Administrative politics; Water policy; Endangered Species Act; Animas-La Plata, Bureau of Reclamation     

Human impact on beach and foredune vegetation of North Padre Island,Texas

Vehicular and pedestrian traffic decreased top and root production, percent cover, and diversity of vegetation, and modified species composition on beach and foredune areas of Padre Island National Seashore and Nueces County Park. Degradation of vegetal cover was directly related to the type and intensity of traffic; species in heavily trafficked areas represented earlier successional stages than those in comparable undisturbed areas.     

Managing bog environments for recreational experiences

Bogs are of interest to outdoor recreationists, but little information exists concerning how recreation resource managers might manage these areas to enhance visitor benefits. This study evaluates bog visitor characteristics and experiences, visual preferences, and reasons for visiting. Implications for recreational resource management of bogs include the location and design of boardwalk trails and management of understory vegetation to meet the visual preferences and motives of bog visitors.     

Decision‐Making Triggers in Adaptive Management

We analyzed whether decision‐making triggers increase accountability of adaptive‐management plans. Triggers are prenegotiated commitments in an adaptive‐management plan that specify what actions are to be taken and when on the basis of information obtained from monitoring. Triggers improve certainty that particular actions will be taken by agencies in the future. We conducted an in‐depth, qualitative review of the political and legal contexts of adaptive management and its application by U.S. federal agencies. Agencies must satisfy the judiciary that adaptive‐management plans meet substantive legal standards and comply with the U.S. National Environmental Policy Act. We examined 3 cases in which triggers were used in adaptive‐management plans: salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) in the Columbia River, oil and gas development by the Bureau of Land Management, and a habitat conservation plan under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. In all the cases, key aspects of adaptive management, including controls and preidentified feedback loops, were not incorporated in the plans. Monitoring and triggered mitigation actions were limited in their enforceability, which was contingent on several factors, including which laws applied in each case and the degree of specificity in how triggers were written into plans. Other controversial aspects of these plans revolved around who designed, conducted, interpreted, and funded monitoring programs. Additional contentious issues were the level of precaution associated with trigger mechanisms and the definition of ecological baselines used as points of comparison. Despite these challenges, triggers can be used to increase accountability, by predefining points at which an adaptive management plan will be revisited and reevaluated, and thus improve the application of adaptive management in its complicated political and legal context. Detonadores de la Toma de Decisiones en el Manejo Adaptativo     

Intraspecific Chromosome Number Variation: a Neglected Threat to the Conservation of Rare Plants

Abstract: The effectiveness of rare plant conservation will increase when life history, demographic, and genetic data are considered simultaneously. Inbreeding depression is a widely recognized genetic concern in rare plant conservation, and the mixing of genetically diverse populations in restoration efforts is a common remedy. Nevertheless, if populations with unrecognized intraspecific chromosome variation are crossed, progeny fitness losses will range from partial to complete sterility, and reintroductions and population augmentation of rare plants may fail. To assess the current state of cytological knowledge of threatened and endangered plants in the continental United States, we searched available resources for chromosome counts. We also reviewed recovery plans to discern whether recovery criteria potentially place listed species at risk by requiring reintroductions or population augmentation in the absence of cytological information. Over half the plants lacked a chromosome count, and when a taxon did have a count it generally originated from a sampling intensity too limited to detect intraspecific chromosome variation. Despite limited past cytological sampling, we found 11 plants with documented intraspecific cytological variation, while 8 others were ambiguous for intraspecific chromosome variation. Nevertheless, only one recovery plan addressed the chromosome differences. Inadequate within‐species cytological characterization, incomplete sampling among listed taxa, and the prevalence of interspecific and intraspecific chromosome variation in listed genera, suggests that other rare plants are likely to have intraspecific chromosome variation. Nearly 90% of all recovery plans called for reintroductions or population augmentation as part of recovery criteria despite the dearth of cytological knowledge. We recommend screening rare plants for intraspecific chromosome variation before reintroductions or population augmentation projects are undertaken to safeguard against inadvertent mixtures of incompatible cytotypes.     

Integrating economic landscape valuation into Mediterranean territorial planning

Recent and rapid landscape changes have occurred over large areas in Mediterranean Basin. Wildfires and human activities are the most important disturbances at landscape-level due to their ecological and socio-economic impacts. The increasing demand which society places on the forest landscapes has led us to develop a tool to identify the economic landscape value around natural protected areas. Our research focused on the integration of social, ecological and economic components of landscape management based on stated social preferences and contingent valuation method (CVM). Landscape value research has been motivated by the need to assist land use planning and environmental management.Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have provided new opportunities to spatially distributed modeling of landscape quality. Correlations were found between the representativeness of the landscape and its sense of belonging, and the contingent rating. Landscape with intensive agricultural practices and mining areas were the least preferred landscapes. There was a notable variation in the economic landscape value attributed to the study area based on the considered CVM scenario, ranging from 1,253,075.1 Euros to 3,650,827.8 Euros. We added the geospatial allocation of willingness to pay according to five landscape quality categories. Our approach could be used to identify priority areas for conservation based on maximizing landscape value, and would be useful in detecting interesting or conflict areas associated with new management and planning alternatives. In this sense, this approach offers managers to seek territorial management strategies to increase economic efficiency in the allocation of resources.     

Quantitative analysis of riparian herbaceous community in Liaohe River Conservation Area and its tributaries北大核心CSCD

Research on community characteristics of riparian herbs is an important scientific basis of riparian vegetation rehabilitation. This study aimed to investigate the species diversity and quantitative characteristics of riparian herbs in Liaohe River Conservation Area and its tributaries. Herbaceous communities were investigated by sample line method. Group average clustering analysis and detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) were used to find the major environmental factors affecting the distribution pattern of riparian herbaceous communities. The result showed altogether 154 herbaceous species, belonging to 40 families and 96 genera. The riparian herbaceous species diversity was found to be correlated to river slope, sinuosity and stream order, being lower in rivers of mountain area than in rivers of plain area, and higher in tributaries than in Liaohe River Conservation Area. Clustering analysis classified the herbaceous communities into 23 types, being dominated by hygrophytes including communities of Echinochloa crusgalli, Oenanthe javanica, Polygonum hydropiper, Murdannia keisak, Artemisia selengensis, Scirpus triqueter, Heleocharis soloniensis, Pycreus sanguinolentus, Cyperus fuscus, Phragmites australis, Polygonum amphibium, Carex diandra + Artemisia selengensis and Carex diandra + Rorippa islandica. Correlation analysis between DCA ordination axes and environmental factors showed that the altitude, river slope, sinuosity and stream level were the major environmental factors affecting the distribution pattern of herbaceous communities in the riparian zone of Liaohe River Conservation Area and its tributaries. The results of CCA showed that the contribution ratio of stream level was the highest, followed by altitude and slope, with sinuosity the last. The results suggested that riparian herbaceous characteristics are affected by the comprehensive force of altitude, river slope, sinuosity and stream order, and that Calamagrostis epigeios, Triarrhena sacchariflora and Phragmites australis are suitable species for riparian vegetation rehabilitation.     

Predicted no-effect concentrations for mercury species and ecological risk assessment for mercury pollution in aquatic environment

Mercury(Hg) exists in different chemical forms presenting varied toxic potentials. It is necessary to explore an ecological risk assessment method for different mercury species in aquatic environment. The predicted no-effect concentrations(PNECs) for Hg(Ⅱ) and methyl mercury(Me Hg) in the aqueous phase, calculated using the species sensitivity distribution method and the assessment factor method, were 0.39 and 6.5 × 10-3μg/L, respectively. The partition theory of Hg between sediment and aqueous phases was considered, along with PNECs for the aqueous phase to conduct an ecological risk assessment for Hg in the sediment phase. Two case studies, one in China and one in the Western Black Sea, were conducted using these PNECs. The toxicity of mercury is heavily dependent on their forms,and their potential ecological risk should be respectively evaluated on the basis of mercury species.     

Models-as-usual for unusual risks? On the value of catastrophic climate change

We study the role of intertemporal preference representations in a model of economic growth, stock pollutant and endogenous risk of catastrophic collapse. We contrast two polar instances of risk-sensitive preferences: the traditional “discounted utility” model, which imposes a positive rate of pure time preference and risk neutrality with respect to intertemporal utility, and multiplicatively separable preferences, which display risk aversion in that dimension but no pure time preferences. We show that both representations of preferences can rationalize the same economy when there is no collapse risk associated with pollution. Once we introduce a collapse risk whose hazard rate depends on the pollution stock, multiplicatively separable preferences are associated with a much higher value of catastrophic risk reduction, and a more stringent policy response. A relatively high discount rate may thus be compatible with large emissions abatement in the face of a low probability large impact event, reflecting preferences for catastrophic risk reduction.