Combining Logistic Models with Multivariate Methods for the Rapid Biological Assessment of Rivers Using Macroinvertebrates

This work represents an attempt to define a simple method to classify the relative degree of disturbance of sites in lotic systems on the basis of comparison of their faunistic composition with reference sites. Two ecotypes were selected in northern Portugal where benthic invertebrates were sampled in reaches with different levels of contamination. As a first stage, previous Geographic Information System information was used to define reference sites in each ecotype. Afterwards, multivariate techniques and non linear estimation models were combined to assess biological quality. This method allowed us to quantify sites according to increasing levels of contamination, after the probabilities of occurrence of taxa along a gradient of contamination taking into account the reference condition. The results suggest that this method is sensitive to organic pollution, easy to interpret, namely the species tolerance, and could be a good framework to establish regional rankings depending on the ecological impact of river sites.     

Structural equation model analysis for the evaluation of overall driving performance: A driving simulator study focusing on driver distraction

Objective: The present research relies on 2 main objectives. The first is to investigate whether latent model analysis through a structural equation model can be implemented on driving simulator data in order to define an unobserved driving performance variable. Subsequently, the second objective is to investigate and quantify the effect of several risk factors including distraction sources, driver characteristics, and road and traffic environment on the overall driving performance and not in independent driving performance measures.

Methods: For the scope of the present research, 95 participants from all age groups were asked to drive under different types of distraction (conversation with passenger, cell phone use) in urban and rural road environments with low and high traffic volume in a driving simulator experiment. Then, in the framework of the statistical analysis, a correlation table is presented investigating any of a broad class of statistical relationships between driving simulator measures and a structural equation model is developed in which overall driving performance is estimated as a latent variable based on several individual driving simulator measures.

Results: Results confirm the suitability of the structural equation model and indicate that the selection of the specific performance measures that define overall performance should be guided by a rule of representativeness between the selected variables. Moreover, results indicate that conversation with the passenger was not found to have a statistically significant effect, indicating that drivers do not change their performance while conversing with a passenger compared to undistracted driving. On the other hand, results support the hypothesis that cell phone use has a negative effect on driving performance. Furthermore, regarding driver characteristics, age, gender, and experience all have a significant effect on driving performance, indicating that driver-related characteristics play the most crucial role in overall driving performance.

Conclusions: The findings of this study allow a new approach to the investigation of driving behavior in driving simulator experiments and in general. By the successful implementation of the structural equation model, driving behavior can be assessed in terms of overall performance and not through individual performance measures, which allows an important scientific step forward from piecemeal analyses to a sound combined analysis of the interrelationship between several risk factors and overall driving performance.     

Does intensity of change matter? Factors affecting adoption of agri-environmental schemes in Spain

Agri-environmental schemes (AES) are the main policy instrument currently available in the EU to promote environmentally-friendly farming practices. However, the rate of adoption of these measures is still relatively low in southern Europe, and understanding how these rates can be increased is still an open issue. The goal of this paper is to increase that understanding by testing whether the factors which determine AES sign-up decisions are influenced by the intensity of change in farming practices that are brought about by adopting the scheme. A micro-economic model reflecting farmer AES sign-up decisions is proposed and applied to two schemes in Spain respectively requiring major or minor intensity of change in practices by surveying farmers eligible for both schemes. The results show that farm structural factors play a role when major practice change is required by the scheme, yet when dealing with minor change, individual farmer characteristics play a more determining role. Social capital and farmer attitude are important factors in both the AES surveyed. Therefore, it may be concluded that improving agronomic design would be an important tool to improve farmer participation in AES where major change is involved, whereas improved targeting and extension would help uptake for AES involving a lesser degree of change.     

New Development in Study of the Faustmann Optimal Forest Harvesting

Chinese forest resources have become very scarce in the face of rapid economic growth demand, while the reform of collective forest right system is in full swing across the country. It will directly affect the regeneration level of forest resources and the diverse ecological value functions. In this article, the mainstream model paradigm of forest economics, that is, the basic framework of the Faustmann model and its evolution process are made in a more detailed explanation, especially the extended model in...     

A biology-based dynamic approach for the reconciliation of acute and chronic toxicity tests: application to Daphnia magna

There is the need to integrate existing toxicity data in a coherent framework for extending their domain of applicability as well as their extrapolation potential. This integration would also reduce time and cost-consuming aspects of these tests and reduce animal usage. In this work, based on data extracted from literature, we have assessed the advantages that a dynamic biology-toxicant fate coupled model for Daphnia magna could provide when assessing toxicity data, in particular, the possibility to obtain from short-term (acute) toxicity test long-term (chronic) toxicity values taking into account the inherent variability of D. magna populations and the multiple sources of data. The results show that this approach overcomes some of the limitations of existing toxicity tests and that the prediction errors are considerably reduced when compared with the factor from 2 to 5 obtained using acute-to-chronic ratios.     

Carry-over of dietary organochlorine pesticides, PCDD/Fs, PCBs, and brominated flame retardants to Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.) fillets

Information on carry-over of contaminants from feed to animal food products is essential for appropriate human risk assessment of feed contaminants. The carry-over of potentially hazardous persistent organic pollutants (POPs) from feed to fillet was assessed in consumption sized Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar). Relative carry-over (defined as the fraction of a certain dietary POP retained in the fillet) was assessed in a controlled feeding trial, which provided fillet retention of dietary organochlorine pesticides (OCPs), dioxins (PCDD/Fs), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and brominated flame retardants (BFRs). Highest retention was found for OCPs, BFRs and PCBs (31-58%), and the lowest retentions were observed for PCDD/Fs congeners (10-34%). National monitoring data on commercial fish feed and farmed Atlantic salmon on the Norwegian market were used to provide commercially relevant feed-to-fillet transfer factors (calculated as fillet POP level divided by feed POP level), which ranged from 0.4 to 0.5, which is a factor 5-10 times higher than reported for terrestrial meat products. For the OCP with one of the highest relative carry-over, toxaphene, uptake and elimination kinetics were established. Model simulations that are based on the uptake and elimination kinetics gave predicted levels that were in agreement with the measured values. Application of the model to the current EU upper limit for toxaphene in feed (50 μg kg⁻¹) gave maximum fillet levels of 22 μg kg⁻¹, which exceeds the estimated permissible level (21 μg kg⁻¹) for toxaphene in fish food samples in Norway.     

Virtues of simple hydro-economic optimization: Baja California, Mexico

This paper uses simple hydro-economic optimization to investigate a wide range of regional water system management options for northern Baja California, Mexico. Hydro-economic optimization models, even with parsimonious model formulations, enable investigation of promising water management portfolios for supplying water to agricultural, environmental and urban users. CALVIN, a generalized hydro-economic model, is used in a case study of Baja California. This drought-prone region faces significant challenges to supply water to agriculture and its fast growing border cities. Water management portfolios include water markets, wastewater reuse, seawater desalination and infrastructure expansions. Water markets provide the flexibility to meet future urban demands; however conveyance capacity limits their use. Wastewater reuse and conveyance expansions are economically promising. At current costs desalination is currently uneconomical for Baja California compared to other alternatives. Even simple hydro-economic models suggest ways to increase efficiency of water management in water scarce areas, and provide an economic basis for evaluating long-term water management solutions.     

Comparison of Function of Created Wetlands of Two Age Classes in Central Pennsylvania

Hydrogeomorphic (HGM) functional assessment models were used to assess whether function in created wetlands of two ages (1 year old and >12 years old) was equivalent to that of natural (reference) mainstem floodplain wetlands. Reference wetlands scored higher than both created age classes for providing energy dissipation and short-term surface water storage. Reference wetlands scored higher in maintaining native plant community and structure than 1-year-old sites, and 12-year-old wetlands scored higher than reference sites for providing vertebrate habitat structure. Analysis of individual model variables showed that reference wetlands had greater vegetative biomass and higher soil organic matter content than both created wetland age classes. Created wetlands were farther from natural wetlands and had smaller mean forest patch sizes within a 1-km-radius circle around the site than did the reference sites, indicating less hydrologic connectivity. Created wetlands also had less microtopographic variation than reference wetlands. The 1-year-old created sites were placed in landscape settings with greater land use diversity and road density than reference sites. The 12-year-old sites had a higher gradient and a higher percentage of their surrounding area in urban land use. These results show that the created wetlands were significantly structurally different (if not functionally so) from reference wetlands even after 12 years. The most profound differences were in hydrology and the characteristics of the surrounding landscape. More attention needs to be focused on placing created wetlands in appropriate settings to encourage proper hydrodynamics, eliminate habitat fragmentation, and minimize the effects of stressors to the site.     

Evaluating the role of environmental quality in the sustainable rural economic development of England

The issue of the sustainable development of rural economies in England has recently received considerable attention. This is because many of the poorest areas in the country are rural, often of high environmental quality, but suffering from high unemployment and a lack of services and facilities. The rapid decline in agricultural incomes and in-migration of affluent urban workers since 1990 has exacerbated economic inequality in such areas. A number of factors have the potential to drive rural development and this paper applies, and considers, the feasibility of a method from the USA for combining economic and environmental variables in a regional growth model to examine the hypothesis that environmental quality is an important determinant of sustainable rural development in England. The model output suggests that, although environmental quality does play a role in sustainable rural development in England there are other, more important, factors driving development. These include business and communications infra-structure, the degree and opportunities for commuting and underlying employment prospects. The robustness and limitations of the method for combining economic and environmental variables is discussed in relation to the spatial interrelatedness of Local Authority Districts in England, and conclusions are drawn about areas for refinement and improvement of the method.

A Multilevel Model of the Impact of Farm‐Level Best Management Practices on Phosphorus Runoff1

Abstract: Multilevel or hierarchical models have been applied for a number of years in the social sciences but only relatively recently in the environmental sciences. These models can be developed in either a frequentist or Bayesian context and have similarities to other methods such as empirical Bayes analysis and random coefficients regression. In essence, multilevel models take advantage of the hierarchical structure that exists in many multivariate datasets; for example, water quality measurements may be taken from individual lakes, lakes are located in various climatic zones, lakes may be natural or man‐made, and so on. The groups, or levels, may effectively yield different responses or behaviors (e.g., nutrient load response in lakes) that often make retaining group membership more effective when developing a predictive model than when working with either all of the data together or working separately with the individuals. Here, we develop a multilevel model of the impact of farm level best management practices (BMPs) on phosphorus runoff. The result of this research is a model with parameters which vary with key practice categories and thus may be used to evaluate the effectiveness of these practices on phosphorus runoff. For example, it was found that the effect of fertilizer application rate on farm‐scale phosphorus loss is a function of the application method, the hydrologic soil group, and the land use (crop type). Further, results indicate that the most effective method for controlling fertilizer loss is through soil injection. In summary, the resultant multilevel model can be used to estimate phosphorus loss from farms and hence serve as a useful tool for BMP selection.