Forest clearing and sex ratio in forest-dwelling wood ant <Emphasis Type="Italic">Formica aquilonia</Emphasis>

Sex ratios of ants have been shown to vary with food resource levels in several studies, but it is not known whether forest clear-cutting has any effect on sex ratio of aphid-tending forest-dwelling ants. We investigated whether the offspring sex ratio of the forest dwelling ant Formica aquilonia varied as a response to clear-cutting. We found that the proportion of males was smaller in clear-cuts than in adjacent forests. Our results are among the first showing that anthropogenic changes in forest structures may have a potential to modify sex ratios of social insects and other forest-dwelling animals.     

Merging Duke Energy and Progress Energy: Online Public Discourse,Post-Fukushima Reactions,and the Absence of Environmental Communication

This article examines online discourse in 2011 surrounding the proposed Duke Energy and Progress Energy merger in the Carolinas. It explores how issues pertaining to the merger, including constructing new nuclear plants, are discussed in media coverage and by citizens using social media. Overall, we find that the merger discourse focuses on economic concerns rather than the environmental concerns we had anticipated. However, post-Fukushima discourse appears to have become more inclusive of environmental concerns. We conclude that environmental discussions and efforts are likely to be globally informed andlocally situated, discussing the implications for environmental communication research exploring online discourses, specifically through social media. Future research must address how to locate and delineate constellations of locally situated discourse to provide a clearer picture of environmentally focused social media communication.     

Bridging the gaps for global sustainable development: A quantitative analysis

Global human progress occurs in a complex web of interactions between society, technology and the environment as driven by governance and infrastructure management capacity among nations. In our globalizing world, this complex web of interactions over the last 200 years has resulted in the chronic widening of economic and political gaps between the haves and the have-nots with consequential global cultural and ecosystem challenges. At the bottom of these challenges is the issue of resource limitations on our finite planet with increasing population. The problem is further compounded by pleasure-driven and poverty-driven ecological depletion and pollution by the haves and the have-nots respectively. These challenges are explored in this paper as global sustainable development (SD) quantitatively; in order to assess the gaps that need to be bridged.Although there has been significant rhetoric on SD with very many qualitative definitions offered, very few quantitative definitions of SD exist. The few that do exist tend to measure SD in terms of social, energy, economic and environmental dimensions. In our research, we used several human survival, development, and progress variables to create an aggregate SD parameter that describes the capacity of nations in three dimensions: social sustainability, environmental sustainability and technological sustainability. Using our proposed quantitative definition of SD and data from relatively reputable secondary sources, 132 nations were ranked and compared.Our comparisons indicate a global hierarchy of needs among nations similar to Maslow's at the individual level. As in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, nations that are struggling to survive are less concerned with environmental sustainability than advanced and stable nations. Nations such as the United States, Canada, Finland, Norway and others have higher SD capacity, and thus, are higher on their hierarchy of needs than nations such as Nigeria, Vietnam, Mexico and other developing nations. To bridge such gaps, we suggest that global public policy for local to global governance and infrastructure management may be necessary. Such global public policy requires holistic development strategies in contrast to the very simplistic north–south, developed–developing nations dichotomies.     

Neighborhood Conditions and Helping Behavior in Late Life

The purpose of this study is to develop and test a latent variable model that explores the ways in which social structural factors influence the amount of social support that older adults provide to their social network members. Neighborhood conditions play a key role in this conceptual scheme. The findings provide support for the following conceptual linkages: (1) low parental education is associated with low respondent education; (2) older people with less education encounter more economic difficulty; (3) greater financial problems are associated with living in a rundown neighborhood; (4) older individuals who live in dilapidated neighborhoods are more hostile; and (5) older adults who are hostile are less likely to provide social support to their social network members. Research indicates that helping others is a key to successful aging. Ways must be found to help economically disadvantaged elders provide support to their social network members.     

The effects of social desirability on self-reported environmental attitudes and ecological behaviour

There are several claims in the literature that social desirability concerns affect people’s response to self-reported measures of environmental attitudes and ecological behaviour. However, only a few empirical studies have indirectly evaluated the impact of social desirability on environmental issues measures, and those who did have found only a low impact. This article describes two studies that explicitly address whether socially desirable responding has direct and moderating effects on self-reported environmental attitudes and ecological behaviour. Results from correlational and moderated multiple regression analyses from both studies showed that social desirability had only a weak direct effect on environmental attitudes (but not ecological behaviour), and had no moderating effect on the environmental attitudes–ecological behaviour relationship. Implications of these findings for research on environmental issues are discussed.

The environmentalist who cried drought: Reactions to repeated warnings about depleting resources under conditions of uncertainty

Three studies examined the impact of warnings about depleting resources. In Study 1, participants played 16 trials of a 5-person resource dilemma game with complete resource uncertainty. After trial 12, participants were told they were close to depleting the resource, and thereafter received no additional warnings. Size of harvests dropped after the warning, but rebounded within 3 trials to pre-warning levels, a pattern stronger under low harvesting variability. In Study 2, participants received warnings after trials 12 and 16 of a 22-trial game. Again, harvesting dropped after the first warning, but rebounded to pre-warning levels within 3 trials, a pattern stronger under a short-term vs. a long-term warning. Harvesting was unaffected by the second warning. In Study 3, when participants received no feedback about others' harvests, harvesting dropped after both warnings, and was lower among those led to believe the resource would last a short number of trials.     

International equity in climate change policy

Equity discussions in climate change policy focus on mitigation. Climate change impacts, adaptation and decision making are also important. General equity principles can be related to specific proposals for equitable sharing of mitigation but no objective preference for any principle exists. Most promising are mixed approaches, that combine various equity principles in a process oriented setting. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

环境空气自动监测站社会化运维量化评估体系研究

分析了现阶段环境空气自动监测站运维现状,探讨从准入条件、运维经费、质量监管、绩效评估等方面,建立社会化运维机构的量化管理与评价模式。提出基于站点运行维护、质控考核、仪器运转率、自动监测数据有效率等要素,建立量化评估机制,采取以运维绩效为主、准入和运维服务为辅的权重分配原则,根据评估指数的分级评价标准,对社会化运维机构及其运维活动进行量化评估。     

Does the presence of wind turbines have negative externalities for people in their surroundings? Evidence from well-being data

Throughout the world, governments foster the deployment of wind power to mitigate negative externalities of conventional electricity generation, notably CO₂ emissions. Wind turbines, however, are not free of externalities themselves, particularly interference with landscape aesthetics. We quantify these negative externalities using the life satisfaction approach. To this end, we combine household data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) with a novel panel dataset on over 20,000 installations. Based on geographical coordinates and construction dates, we establish causality in a difference-in-differences design. Matching techniques drawing on exogenous weather data and geographical locations of residence ensure common trend behaviour. We show that the construction of wind turbines close to households exerts significant negative external effects on residential well-being, although they seem both spatially and temporally limited, being restricted to about 4000 m around households and decaying after five years at the latest. Robustness checks, including view shed analyses based on digital terrain models and placebo regressions, confirm our results.     

长江流域不同区域间环境公平研究

以区域经济发展水平差距悬殊、环境污染差异明显的长江干流穿过的11个省份为研究对象,并将其分成东部、中部和西部3组,采用统计分析方法探讨经济发展、环境污染排放的区域差异特征。构建了环境公平指数,并分别对2000、2004和2008年3组地区的环境公平程度进行测度,通过聚类分析方法和GIS空间分析工具评价了环境公平指数的空间分布和地域差异。结果表明：长江流域东、中、西部的环境公平指数呈现明显的区域差异现象,并且随着时间的推移和经济的发展,环境公平指数的差异增大,这可能与区域产业转移有关。环境公平指数级别为东部最高,中部和西部较低。但随着西部大开发战略和中部崛起战略的实施,中西部的环境公平指数变化明显。初步认为此现象与国家西部大开发战略和中部崛起战略的实施有关。