Historical spatial reconstruction of a spawning‐aggregation fishery

Aggregations of individual animals that form for breeding purposes are a critical ecological process for many species, yet these aggregations are inherently vulnerable to exploitation. Studies of the decline of exploited populations that form breeding aggregations tend to focus on catch rate and thus often overlook reductions in geographic range. We tested the hypothesis that catch rate and site occupancy of exploited fish‐spawning aggregations (FSAs) decline in synchrony over time. We used the Spanish mackerel (Scomberomorus commerson) spawning‐aggregation fishery in the Great Barrier Reef as a case study. Data were compiled from historical newspaper archives, fisher knowledge, and contemporary fishery logbooks to reconstruct catch rates and exploitation trends from the inception of the fishery. Our fine‐scale analysis of catch and effort data spanned 103 years (1911–2013) and revealed a spatial expansion of fishing effort. Effort shifted offshore at a rate of 9.4 nm/decade, and 2.9 newly targeted FSAs were reported/decade. Spatial expansion of effort masked the sequential exploitation, commercial extinction, and loss of 70% of exploited FSAs. After standardizing for improvements in technological innovations, average catch rates declined by 90.5% from 1934 to 2011 (from 119.4 to 11.41 fish/vessel/trip). Mean catch rate of Spanish mackerel and occupancy of exploited mackerel FSAs were not significantly related. Our study revealed a special kind of shifting spatial baseline in which a contraction in exploited FSAs occurred undetected. Knowledge of temporally and spatially explicit information on FSAs can be relevant for the conservation and management of FSA species.     

A spatially explicit estimate of the prewhaling abundance of the endangered North Atlantic right whale

The North Atlantic right whale (NARW) (Eubalaena glacialis) is one of the world's most threatened whales. It came close to extinction after nearly a millennium of exploitation and currently persists as a population of only approximately 500 individuals. Setting appropriate conservation targets for this species requires an understanding of its historical population size, as a baseline for measuring levels of depletion and progress toward recovery. This is made difficult by the scarcity of records over this species’ long whaling history. We sought to estimate the preexploitation population size of the North Atlantic right whale and understand how this species was distributed across its range. We used a spatially explicit data set on historical catches of North Pacific right whales (NPRWs) (Eubalaena japonica) to model the relationship between right whale relative density and the environment during the summer feeding season. Assuming the 2 right whale species select similar environments, we projected this model to the North Atlantic to predict how the relative abundance of NARWs varied across their range. We calibrated these relative abundances with estimates of the NPRW total prewhaling population size to obtain high and low estimates for the overall NARW population size prior to exploitation. The model predicted 9,075–21,328 right whales in the North Atlantic. The current NARW population is thus <6% of the historical North Atlantic carrying capacity and has enormous potential for recovery. According to the model, in June–September NARWs concentrated in 2 main feeding areas: east of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and in the Norwegian Sea. These 2 areas may become important in the future as feeding grounds and may already be used more regularly by this endangered species than is thought.     

Scientific evidence,expert entrepreneurship,and ecosystem narratives in the UK Natural Environment White Paper

The Natural Environment White Paper represents the most important conservation policy shift in the United Kingdom (UK) in twenty years. It formalises the ecosystem approach within national policy objectives and emphasises the economic value of ecosystem services. By analysing the use of various evidence sources, the involvement of science entrepreneurs, and the development of policy narratives, our goal was to understand factors that influenced adoption of an ecosystem service framework in the UK. We interviewed 48 policy actors and found that centrally-sponsored synthesis reports with entrepreneurial authors provided the most influential expert-based knowledge in the development of the White Paper. More recently published reports had greater influence, yet the window of opportunity for scientific evidence having policy impact was greater in the problem-setting stages of policy development. The interaction between teams preparing syntheses and expert entrepreneurs helped influence the construction of strategic policy narratives. Those narratives increased the impact of scientific evidence by communicating and framing key policy-salient messages, and brokering between broad ecosystem-based and environmental economics narratives. The combination of ecological and economics evidence was particularly salient in the UK case due to the context of continued biodiversity loss and the acceptability of valuation narratives within central government. Our findings suggest that evidence impact varies at different stages of the policy process, and that this is driven by the interplay of contextual factors like policy timing, personal influence, and the competition between different sets of actors and narratives.     

‘Ecomálaga’: an ecosystem analysis of the Mediterranean coast around Málaga, Spain

In October 1992, the Oceanographic Centre of Málaga of the Spanish Oceanographical Institute (IEO) started a monitoring project,Ecomálaga, which collects physical, chemical, biological and sedimentological data from the Alborán Sea shelf. The project is coordinated with similar projects in the Atlantic and Mediterranean Centres of IEO. The ultimate objective is to, understand the long-term changes of the essential marine-environmental parameters. So far, nine quarterly surveys have been carried out—from October 1992 to December 1994. The following variables were registered:abiotic: location weather, water temperature, salinity, pH, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll a, nitrate, nitrite, phosphate, silicate,biotic: zooplankton biomass and species composition, and ichthyoplankton. The granulometric composition and organic matter content of sediments are also included. Data are stored in a computerized data base named Ecomálaga Data Base, with contributions from geology, physics, plankton biology and marine chemistry. The data base not only contains separate files for each research topic, but also allows for interchange between these files, resulting in a synoptic data output. It offers the users an output in the form of synthetic records of each station sampled. The analysis of the data indicates seasonal influences and ainshore-offshore gradient, as well as an Atlantic influence on the stations located in the transect closest to the Strait of Gibraltar.     

建立优质种苗示范基地，加快发展海南椰子产业

通过对海南椰子生产现状的分析，本文指出了建立优质良种椰子种苗生产示范基地的必要性和重要性，并针对一些需要解决的问题，提出了加快海南椰子产业发展的建议。     

Understanding behaviour to inform water supply management in developed nations – A review of literature, conceptual model and research agenda

Water is a scarce resource in many parts of the developed world. Two solutions are possible to address water scarcity: conservation of existing resources, or the further production of water from new sources e.g. through recycling of wastewater or desalination of seawater. However, the main hurdle to implementation of many of these solutions is often viewed as a lack of public willingness to adopt these alternative water behaviours. Research in this area is therefore crucial. Yet, and possibly due to the interdisciplinary nature of such research, there is currently no comprehensive overview of what has been done before. This study fills this gap by (1) choosing a general consumer behaviour perspective as a starting point, (2) developing a conceptual model of research required in the area of water-related public acceptance studies, (3) identifying eight key water-related behaviours which require future research attention, and (4) reviewing which areas of the conceptual model have been investigated in the past by conducting an extensive literature review of water-related social science research.The review established that the majority of work which has been conducted is located at the cross-roads of personal characteristics and behavioural intentions. Significant gaps exist in relation to researching the adoption of a wide range of demand-side water behaviours. This indicates a dominance of supply-side solutions in social-research exploration. The review identifies a number of research needs including: the exploration of actual adoption of water-related behaviours (rather than behavioural intentions); and to widen the scope of water behaviour enquiry to include more demand-side solutions. Given the increasing scarcity of water in many areas of the world, addressing these identified gaps will be of significant importance. Thus our model informs the social-research agenda for water policy.     

Knowledge co-production in practice: Enabling environmental management systems for ports through participatory research in the Dutch Wadden Sea

Coastal zone management is inconceivable without the mobilization and integration of different types of knowledge – that is, without knowledge co-production practices. This article applies the concept of knowledge co-production to analyze the process of emergence, standardization, and enculturation of environmental management systems (EMSs) within port communities in the Dutch Wadden Sea. Moreover, it is a report from the field in which we reflect on the participatory practices conducted to facilitate the knowledge arrangements required to develop EMSs for a group of ports. The article concludes that this type of knowledge arrangement and co-production practices (involving different types of actors and knowledge) might become mandatory in the near future to stabilize the EMS phenomenon in the practices of ports.     

Knowledge users’ perspectives and advice on how to improve knowledge exchange and mobilization in the case of a co-managed fishery

Environmental scientists have long been frustrated by the difficulties involved in transferring their research findings into policy-making, management, and public spheres. Despite increases in scientific knowledge about social-ecological systems, research has consistently shown that regulators and stakeholders draw on tacit, informal, and experiential knowledge far more than scientific knowledge in their decision-making. Social science research in the fields of knowledge exchange (KE) and knowledge mobilization (KMb) suggest that one of the major barriers to moving knowledge into practice is that scientists fail to align their communication strategies with the information-seeking behaviours and preferences of potential knowledge users. This article presents findings from in-depth qualitative research with government employees and stakeholders involved in co-managing Pacific salmon fisheries in Canada’s Fraser River. We investigate how members of these groups access, view, and use scientific information, finding both similarities and differences. Members of both groups express a strong interest in academic science, and self-report using scientific information regularly in their work and advocacy. However, the two groups engage in different information-seeking behaviours, and provide notably different advice to academic scientists about how to make research and communication more relevant to potential users. For example, government employees focus on the immediate applications of research to known problems, while stakeholders express greater concern for the political context and implications of scientific findings. We argue that scientists need to “go where the users are” in the behavioural and intellectual sense, and tailor their communications and engagement activities to match the habits, preferences, and expectations of multiple potential user groups. We conclude with recommendations on how this may be done.     

知识经济条件下传统资源学面临的选择

传统的资源学目前正面临着知识经济的挑战。为适应知识经济的要求，传统的资源学应在研究内容、研究方法及学科观念上进行创新     

Developing a process equipment failure knowledge base using ontology approach for process equipment related incident investigations

Process equipment failures (PEFs) are one of the most important causes of process incidents occurrences. To investigate and prevent the PEFs, in addition to having the previous data, it is necessary to have some resources of the PEFs domain knowledge. Nowadays, PEFs data are usually retrieved from existent databases. Customary databases present only previously stored data of equipment failures but, for carrying out a comprehensive PEFs management it is necessary to have access to the PEFs desired knowledge and not only stored data. This paper aims to offer a knowledge base for the PEFs through adopting an ontological approach and then to use the proposed knowledge base for further applications particularly, process incident investigation activities. Through adding semantic search capability, the proposed knowledge base could upgrade the data presenting feature of the common databases into a knowledge presenting feature. Using this approach, the user would be able to extract the desired knowledge of the PEFs along the virtual stored data of occurred cases. The knowledge extraction process and the data mining of occurred incidents are both necessary for the PEFs investigation.