污染场地土壤通用评估基准建立的理论和常用模型

污染场地土壤通用评估基准的建立与每个国家的经济水准及社会发展紧密相关.从国际相关领域的发展趋势来看,场地基准的建立基于风险基础之上.我国正在颁布污染场地风险评估技术导则(C-RAG),表明我国已选择风险基础上的污染场地管理模式.文章回顾了污染场地土壤通用评估基准建立的理论、方法及通用模型,并推荐污染场地评估的模型框架,...     

煤燃烧固氟剂及固氟效果研究

通过热力学分析煤燃烧过程中钙基固氟剂固氟反应机理和高温高效钙基固氟剂开发原则;通过流化床和链条炉燃烧试验考察石灰石和钙基固氟剂燃烧固氟效果.试验表明:流化床燃烧时石灰石燃烧固氟效果明显,在Ca/F=60～70时,脱氟率可达到66.7%～70.0%;链条炉燃烧试验表明:利用工业废料开发的钙基固氟剂固氟效果显著,在Ca/F=65～80时,脱氟率为57.32%～75.19%.在燃煤过程添加石灰石和钙基固氟剂具有固氟固硫的双重作用.     

Community Based Ecological Monitoring in Nova Scotia: Challenges and Opportunities

This article examines community-based ecological monitoring in Nova Scotia, with an emphasis on watershed stewardship groups. It discusses successes to date and future challenges, drawing on examples from the Atlantic Coastal Action Program (ACAP) and other community groups. The barriers to the generation of robust monitoring datasets and effective participation in watershed management are examined. The article concludes with a discussion of issues to be addressed to ensure that community groups can both gather scientifically valid ecological data and have meaningful input into the management of their local natural resources.     

配电设备的风险评估与状态检修决策方法

针对当前配电设备采用的定期检修方式未将可靠性与经济性综合考虑的问题,提出1种基于风险评估结果确定配电设备状态检修决策的方法。首先,根据配电设备健康状态评估结果计算配电设备实时健康指数,利用指数模型对配电设备的实时故障率进行计算;然后,采用最小路法计算配网中所有设备的平均实时故障率,并结合停电时用户损失严重度、配电设备损失严重度和环境损失严重度确定配电设备故障后果严重度;最后,利用风险偏好型效用函数量化计算配电设备的经济运行风险水平,计算各配电设备的相对风险值,并以相对风险值为指标确定各配电设备的状态检修策略。结合算例对所提的方法进行验证,结果表明该方法合理有效。     

An Ecological and Economic Assessment Methodology for Coastal Ecosystem Management

An adaptation of the Drivers-Pressure-State-Impact-Response methodology is presented in this work. The differential DPSIR (ΔDPSIR) was developed to evaluate impacts on the coastal environment and as a tool for integrated ecosystem management. The aim of the ΔDPSIR is to provide scientifically-based information required by managers and decision-makers to evaluate previously adopted policies, as well as future response scenarios. The innovation of the present approach is to provide an explicit link between ecological and economic information related to the use and management of a coastal ecosystem within a specific timeframe. The application of ΔDPSIR is illustrated through an analysis of developments in a Southwest European coastal lagoon between 1985 and 1995. The value of economic activities dependent on the lagoon suffered a significant reduction (ca. −60%) over that period, mainly due to a decrease in bivalve production. During that decade the pressures from the catchment area were managed (ca. 176 million Euros), mainly through the building of waste water treatment plants. Notwithstanding this, the ecosystem state worsened with respect to abnormal clam mortalities due to a parasite infection and to benthic eutrophication symptoms in specific problematic areas. The negative economic impacts during the decade were estimated between −565 and −315 million Euros, of which 9–49% represent the cost of environmental externalities. Evaluation of these past events indicates that future management actions should focus on reducing the limitation on local clam seeds, which should result in positive impacts to both the local socio-economy and biodiversity.     

Avoiding Re‐Inventing the Wheel in a People‐Centered Approach to REDD+

One important debate regarding Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) in developing countries concerns the manner in which its implementation might affect local and indigenous communities. New ways to implement this mechanism without harming the interests of local communities are emerging. To inform this debate, we conducted a qualitative research synthesis to identify best practices (BPs) from people‐centered approaches to conservation and rural development, developed indicators of BPs, and invited development practitioners and researchers in the field to assess how the identified BPs are being adopted by community‐level REDD+ projects in Latin America. BPs included: local participation in all phases of the project; project supported by a decentralized forest governance framework; project objectives matching community livelihood priorities; project addressing community development needs and expectations; project enhancing stakeholder collaboration and consensus building; project applying an adaptive management approach; and project developing national and local capacities. Most of the BPs were part of the evaluated projects. However, limitations of some of the projects related to decentralized forest governance, matching project objectives with community livelihood priorities, and addressing community development needs. Adaptive management and free and prior informed consent have been largely overlooked. These limitations could be addressed by integrating conservation outcomes and alternative livelihoods into longer‐term community development goals, testing nested forest governance approaches in which national policies support local institutions for forest management, gaining a better understanding of the factors that will make REDD+ more acceptable to local communities, and applying an adaptive management approach that allows for social learning and capacity building of relevant stakeholders. Our study provides a framework of BPs and indicators that could be used by stakeholders to improve REDD+ project design, monitoring, and evaluation, which may help reconcile national initiatives and local interests without reinventing the wheel. Evitar la Reinvención de la Rueda en un Acercamiento a REDD+ Centrado en Personas     

Post‐acquisition integration processes in publicly owned professional service companies: Senior professional behaviour and company performance

The client relationships and tacit knowledge of professionals are professional service firms' (PSFs') major value creating resources producing challenges in generating post‐merger and acquisition value and risks of reducing the productivity or losing key professionals and their clients. The recent emergence of publicly owned PSFs and rapid growth through consolidating smaller privately owned firms potentially increases this risk by integrating small firms and their professionals into large public companies that may be governed very differently. This study explores post‐acquisition integration processes: professional behaviours and associated performance implications in two highly acquisitive publicly owned accounting companies. In one company, the integration process was rapid and heavily directed by senior management, while in the second company, integration was more gradual, initially undirected but then facilitated by senior management. The findings suggest that integration processes can impact the behaviour of professionals and acquiring firm performance. This research contributes to the understanding of post‐acquisition integration processes in PSFs and decision‐making and professional behaviour in recently emerged publicly owned PSFs. The study contributes to knowledge‐based theory by identifying factors that can affect the decision authority of executives and how organisational behaviour can constrain the implementation of executive integration decisions. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effect of scientific evidence on conservation practitioners’ management decisions

A major justification of environmental management research is that it helps practitioners, yet previous studies show it is rarely used to inform their decisions. We tested whether conservation practitioners focusing on bird management were willing to use a synopsis of relevant scientific literature to inform their management decisions. This allowed us to examine whether the limited use of scientific information in management is due to a lack of access to the scientific literature or whether it is because practitioners are either not interested or unable to incorporate the research into their decisions. In on‐line surveys, we asked 92 conservation managers, predominantly from Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, to provide opinions on 28 management techniques that could be applied to reduce predation on birds. We asked their opinions before and after giving them a summary of the literature about the interventions’ effectiveness. We scored the overall effectiveness and certainty of evidence for each intervention through an expert elicitation process—the Delphi method. We used the effectiveness scores to assess the practitioners’ level of understanding and awareness of the literature. On average, each survey participant changed their likelihood of using 45.7% of the interventions after reading the synopsis of the evidence. They were more likely to implement effective interventions and avoid ineffective actions, suggesting that their intended future management strategies may be more successful than current practice. More experienced practitioners were less likely to change their management practices than those with less experience, even though they were not more aware of the existing scientific information than less experienced practitioners. The practitioners’ willingness to change their management choices when provided with summarized scientific evidence suggests that improved accessibility to scientific information would benefit conservation management outcomes. El Efecto de la Evidencia Científica sobre las Decisiones de Manejo de Quienes Practican la Conservación     

Spatiotemporal trends of illegal activities from ranger‐collected data in a Ugandan national park

Within protected areas, biodiversity loss is often a consequence of illegal resource use. Understanding the patterns and extent of illegal activities is therefore essential for effective law enforcement and prevention of biodiversity declines. We used extensive data, commonly collected by ranger patrols in many protected areas, and Bayesian hierarchical models to identify drivers, trends, and distribution of multiple illegal activities within the Queen Elizabeth Conservation Area (QECA), Uganda. Encroachment (e.g., by pastoralists with cattle) and poaching of noncommercial animals (e.g., snaring bushmeat) were the most prevalent illegal activities within the QECA. Illegal activities occurred in different areas of the QECA. Poaching of noncommercial animals was most widely distributed within the national park. Overall, ecological covariates, although significant, were not useful predictors for occurrence of illegal activities. Instead, the location of illegal activities in previous years was more important. There were significant increases in encroachment and noncommercial plant harvesting (nontimber products) during the study period (1999–2012). We also found significant spatiotemporal variation in the occurrence of all activities. Our results show the need to explicitly model ranger patrol effort to reduce biases from existing uncorrected or capture per unit effort analyses. Prioritization of ranger patrol strategies is needed to target illegal activities; these strategies are determined by protected area managers, and therefore changes at a site‐level can be implemented quickly. These strategies should also be informed by the location of past occurrences of illegal activity: the most useful predictor of future events. However, because spatial and temporal changes in illegal activities occurred, regular patrols throughout the protected area, even in areas of low occurrence, are also required.     

Improving credibility and transparency of conservation impact evaluations through the partial identification approach

The fundamental challenge of evaluating the impact of conservation interventions is that researchers must estimate the difference between the outcome after an intervention occurred and what the outcome would have been without it (counterfactual). Because the counterfactual is unobservable, researchers must make an untestable assumption that some units (e.g., organisms or sites) that were not exposed to the intervention can be used as a surrogate for the counterfactual (control). The conventional approach is to make a point estimate (i.e., single number along with a confidence interval) of impact, using, for example, regression. Point estimates provide powerful conclusions, but in nonexperimental contexts they depend on strong assumptions about the counterfactual that often lack transparency and credibility. An alternative approach, called partial identification (PI), is to first estimate what the counterfactual bounds would be if the weakest possible assumptions were made. Then, one narrows the bounds by using stronger but credible assumptions based on an understanding of why units were selected for the intervention and how they might respond to it. We applied this approach and compared it with conventional approaches by estimating the impact of a conservation program that removed invasive trees in part of the Cape Floristic Region. Even when we used our largest PI impact estimate, the program's control costs were 1.4 times higher than previously estimated. PI holds promise for applications in conservation science because it encourages researchers to better understand and account for treatment selection biases; can offer insights into the plausibility of conventional point‐estimate approaches; could reduce the problem of advocacy in science; might be easier for stakeholders to agree on a bounded estimate than a point estimate where impacts are contentious; and requires only basic arithmetic skills.