Impacts of Off-Road Vehicles (ORVs) on Macrobenthic Assemblages on Sandy Beaches

Sandy beaches are the prime sites for human recreation and underpin many coastal economies and developments. In many coastal areas worldwide, beach recreation relies on the use of off-road vehicles (ORVs) driven on the shore. Yet, the use of ORVs is not universally embraced due to social conflicts with other beach user groups and putative environmental consequences of vehicle traffic on sandy shores. Such ecological impacts of ORVs are, however, poorly understood for endobenthic invertebrates of the intertidal zone seawards of the dunes. Consequently, this study quantified the degree to which assemblages of intertidal beach invertebrates are affected by traffic. The study design comprised a series of temporally replicated spatial contrasts between two reference sites (no ORVs) and two beaches with heavy ORV traffic (in excess of 250,000 vehicles per year) located in South-East Queensland, Australia. Macrobenthic assemblages on ORV-impacted beaches had significantly fewer species at substantially reduced densities, resulting in marked shifts in community composition and structure. These shifts were particularly strong on the middle and upper shore where vehicle traffic was concentrated. Strong effects of ORVs were detectable in all seasons, but increased towards the summer months as a result of heavier traffic volumes. This study provides clear evidence that ORVs can have substantial impacts on sandy beach invertebrates that are manifested throughout the whole community. Demonstrating such an ecological impact caused by a single type of human use poses a formidable challenge to management, which needs to develop multi-faceted approaches to balance environmental, social, cultural, and economic arguments in the use of sandy shores, including management of “beach traffic.”     

Land Claims and Comanagement of Protected Areas in South Africa: Exploring the Challenges

Comanagement has recently become the most popular approach for reconciling land claims and biodiversity conservation in South Africa and beyond. Following the resolution of land claims on protected areas in South Africa, comanagement arrangements have been created between the relevant conservation authorities and the land claimant communities who are legally awarded tenure rights to the land. However, it is doubtful that these partnerships constitute success for the former land claimants. Using the case of a “resolved” land claim in Mkambati Nature Reserve, Eastern Cape Province, as well as insights from comanagement literature, this paper identifies and discusses three key possible reasons for the unimpressive performance of comanagement in reconciling land restitution and conservation. The first one is the origins of the comanagement idea in the conservation of high value natural resources (e.g., fisheries, forestry), rather than in or including concerns for resource rights. The second reason is the neglect of key conditions for successful comanagement, as discussed in the comanagement literature. The final reason is the ambiguity in settlement agreements, including the use of terminology and concepts that reinforce unequal power relationships, with the state emerging as the powerful partner. This paper concludes that, unless there is a serious reassessment of the comanagement idea as a way of reconciling land reform and conservation, and a possible review of settlement agreements that have relied on comanagement, both the integrity of the “successful land claimant’s rights” and that of conservation remain under threat.     

Field Validation of a Conservation Network on the Eastern Shore of Maryland,USA, Using Breeding Birds as Bio-Indicators

Maryland’s Green Infrastructure (GI) is a network of large, intact natural areas (hubs), interconnected by linear swaths of riparian or upland vegetation (corridors). The GI serves significant ecological functions and provides the bulk of the state’s natural support system. This study examined whether the GI as mapped does, in fact, identify Maryland’s most ecologically valuable forested lands, using forest interior dwelling birds (hereafter called “forest birds”) as bio-indicators. We conducted bird point counts within forest both inside and outside of hubs on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. We also collected a wide variety of habitat data. We found that both the condition of a forest and its surrounding landscape influenced the bird communities. On average, forest bird richness was significantly higher within hubs; furthermore, almost all sites with at least five forest bird species present were in hubs. Forest bird richness and abundance were highest in undisturbed, mature broadleaf forest with wetlands and streams nearby. We detected a significant relationship between forest bird richness and the ecological score of a finer-scale landscape assessment, focused on “cells” of about 0.1 ha in size. This field study also validated the Rapid Field Assessment (RFA) protocol developed in 2001 to assess, on the ground, the relative condition of individual sites or properties within the GI. Forest bird richness and abundance were positively correlated with the RFA community scores. Our results underscore the importance of maintaining regional biological diversity by retaining large blocks of forest, especially mature forest containing streams and wetlands.     

Gender and Urban Perceptions of Nature and Protected Areas in Bañados del Este Biosphere Reserve

Participation in conservation projects is key to the success and fair outcome of these initiatives, and perceptions of nature can affect the outcome of the participatory process. It has been argued that women hold different attitudes toward nature. Therefore an understanding of their perceptions and attitudes is vital. A survey was conducted in Castillos, Uruguay in order to assess urban perceptions of nature and surrounding protected areas. Results show that attitudes toward wildlife and reserves vary by gender. Uruguay is in the process of planning its future system of nature reserves. Considering these different perceptions is vital for the successful planning and management of reserves in Uruguay.     

The importance of seed dispersal in the Alexandria Coastal Dunefield, South Africa

The endozoochorous dispersal of seeds by mammals and birds between distinct vegetation communities was assessed to determine the importance of these processes in coastal dune field management. Isolated pockets of thicket vegetation (bush-pockets) within a large coastal dune field provided the opportunity to study vertebrate seed dispersal and its contribution to their origin and maintenance. Mammalian and avian faeces were collected for the quantification of seeds dispersed via endozoochory. Birds and mammals showed considerable overlap, dispersing intact seeds of 17 and 29 plant species, respectively, but mammals dispersed a greater diversity and size range than birds. Extrapolation of mammalian faecal data indicates an annual input of 23 million intact seeds to the dune field. Significantly more seeds are deposited by mammals and birds in the bush-pockets than on open sand, and birds deposited greater numbers of seeds nearer the seed source. Zoochory appears to be critical for the maintenance of the bush-pocket habitats through the dispersal of climax woody plant species into the dune field. Directional dispersal by birds and mammals to the bush-pockets is considered to be responsible for the maintenance and possible origin of these bush-pockets. The high number of exotic plant propagules dispersed by both avian and mammalian zoochory highlights the importance of management of the Alexandria Coastal Dunefield (ACD) beyond the reserve boundaries. In a dynamic system such as the ACD which is within a declared nature reserve, the continued existence of the bush-pockets may depend on the maintenance, beyond the reserve boundaries, of a reservoir of not only plant material but vertebrate dispersers as well.     

History and Development of the NRCS Lag Time Equation1

Abstract: Many of the hydrologic methods that are used in engineering practice today resulted from the Spring Flood of 1936, which blanketed the Northeastern portion of the United States. Because of the flood damage that was caused by this rainfall‐snowmelt event, many federal agencies including the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers and the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) implemented the hydrologic theories that were available in the literature at this time and developed hydrologic procedures for design flow estimation. Sherman had recently published his unit hydrograph theory in 1932, and later in 1938 Snyder, who had been charged by the Water Resource Council to develop a synthetic unit hydrograph, published his famous paper. The SCS unit hydrograph theory was developed by Victor Mockus in the late 1950s. Most if not all of the theories at that time reported the rainfall‐runoff process for floods as a surface phenomenon, and as such those theories all required some type of a timing parameter to estimate watershed response time. This article documents the development of the SCS lag equation.     

Maintaining Volunteer Commitment to Local Watershed Initiatives

Australia's Landcare program is advanced as a successful international example of local watershed groups and governments working together to improve natural resource management. One of the aspects considered critical in the success of watershed groups is engaging widespread participation. This paper draws on two regional surveys that explored burnout, or loss of engagement, among Landcare participants in the state of Victoria using the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Survey findings indicated that a large proportion of respondents were experiencing high burnout in terms of low personal accomplishment and suggested that there was potential for burnout to increase. The authors suggest that the expectations of watershed groups must be based around a realistic assessment of the capacity for volunteer groups to deliver improved environmental and social outcomes.     

Land-use dynamics in a southern Illinois (USA) watershed

The Cache River of southernmost Illinois is used as a case study for developing and demonstrating an approach to quantitatively link (1) national agricultural policy and global agricultural markets, (2) landowner's decisions on land use, (3) spatial patterns of land use at a watershed scale, and (4) hydrologic impacts, thus providing a basis to predict, under a certain set of circumstances, the environmental consequences of economic and political decisions made at larger spatial scales. The heart of the analysis is an estimation, using logistic regression, of the affect of crop prices and Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) rental rates on farmland owner's decisions whether to reenroll in the CRP or return to crop production. This analysis shows that reasonable ranges for crop prices (80%–150% of 1985–1995 values) and CRP rental rates (0–125% of 1985–1995 rates) result in a range of 3%–92% of CRP lands being returned to crop production, with crop prices having a slightly greater effect than CRP rental rates. Four crop price/CRP rental rate scenarios are used to display resulting land-use patterns, and their effect on sediment loads, a critical environmental quality parameter in this case, using the agricultural non point source (AGNPS) model. These scenarios demonstrate the importance of spatial pattern of land uses on hydrological and ecological processes within watersheds. The approach developed can be adapted for use by local governments and watershed associations whose goals are to improve watershed resources and environmental quality.     

Turning Scientific Approaches into Practical Conservation Actions: The Case of Comunidad Indigena de Nuevo San Juan Parangaricutiro, Mexico

Optimum natural resource management and biodiversity conservation are desirable goals. These, however, often exclude each other, since maximum economic benefits have promoted drastic reductions in biodiversity throughout the world. This dilemma confronts local stakeholders, who usually go for maximizing economic inputs, whereas other social (e.g., academic) sectors are favor conservation practices. In this paper we describe the way two scientific approaches—landscape and participatory research—were used to develop sound and durable land use scenarios. These two approaches included expert knowledge of both social and environmental conditions in indigenous communities. Our major emphasis was given to detect spatially explicit land use scenarios and capacity building in order to construct a decision support system operated by stakeholders of the Comunidad Indigena de Nuevo San Juan Parangaricutiro in Mexico. The system for decision-making was fed with data from inventories of both abiotic and biotic biodiversity components. All research, implementation, and monitoring activities were conducted in close collaboration with members of the indigenous community. As a major result we obtained a number of forest alternative uses that favor emerging markets and make this indigenous community less dependent on a single market. Furthermore, skilled members of the community are now running the automated system for decision-making. In conclusion, our results were better expressed as products with direct benefits in local livelihoods rather than pure academic outputs.     

Home Range Size and Choice of Management Strategy for Lynx in Scandinavia

Annual and seasonal home ranges were calculated for 47 Eurasian lynx in four Scandinavian study sites (two in Sweden and two in Norway). The observed home ranges were the largest reported for the species, with study site averages ranging from 600 to 1400 km² for resident males and from 300 to 800 km² for resident females. When home range sizes were compared to the size of protected areas (national parks and nature reserves) in Scandinavia, it was concluded that very few protected areas contained sufficient forest to provide space for more than a few individuals. As a direct consequence of this, most lynx need to be conserved in the multiuse seminatural forest habitats that cover large areas in Scandinavia. This conservation strategy leads to a number of conflicts with some land uses (sheep and semidomestic reindeer herding, and roe deer hunters), but not all (forestry and moose harvest). Accordingly research must be aimed at understanding the ecology of these conflicts, and finding solutions.