Quantifying current and potential contributions of Australian indigenous peoples to threatened species management

Formal engagement of indigenous peoples in conservation is increasing globally and leads to multiple benefits to communities while contributing to national and international biodiversity goals and obligations. This and ongoing declines in biodiversity have led to calls to increase opportunities for indigenous people to engage in managing their estates. However, there is no overarching understanding of indigenous peoples’ involvement in conservation, which limits the identification of new opportunities. We amalgamated information across governments and large nongovernmental organizations in the megadiverse country of Australia to quantify the involvement of indigenous people in management of threatened species. We identified 153 Australian‐based projects undertaken by different indigenous groups around the nation in 2015 and 2016 that included explicit funds for management of threatened species or threatened ecosystems. Most were in remote parts of western and northern Australia. Almost one‐quarter of all threatened animals and 2% of threatened plants were the subject of some formal conservation action by indigenous people. Occurrence records for 1574 threatened species showed that 823 (89.2%) of 923 species recorded on indigenous peoples’ lands were not listed in management projects. This gap may represent new opportunities for conservation initiatives. Because at least 59.5% of Australia's threatened species occur on indigenous peoples’ lands, efforts to build appropriate and effective indigenous conservation alliances are vital. However, it is also important to recognize that threatened species are part of complex social, ecological, economic and cultural systems, and to achieve successful outcomes requires consideration of indigenous peoples’ priorities, rights, and obligations and relationships with their traditionally owned land and sea.     

Participatory development of incentives to coexist with jaguars and pumas

Reducing costs and increasing benefits for rural communities coexisting with large carnivores is necessary for conservation of jaguar (Panthera onca) and puma (Puma concolor). To design acceptable incentives, stakeholders must be involved in the process. We conducted an innovative, structured, group communication process based on a Delphi technique as a template for identifying potential incentives. Community workshops with 133 members of 7 communities and surveys with 25 multidisciplinary experts from government, nongovernmental organizations, and academia provided iterative data to design a plan of incentives through 4 rounds of discussion. The final product integrated 862 ideas into 6 types of incentives: organization of communities, mechanisms for improved dialogue, citizen technical assistance, green labeling for community products, payment for the ecosystem service of biodiversity, and an assessment of financial alternatives. We used quantitative and qualitative techniques to indicate support for decisions about the design of incentives, which reduced researcher subjectivity. The diverse incentives developed and the cooperation from multiple stakeholders resulted in an incentive plan that integrated issues of governance, equity, and social norms.     

A test of the substitution–habitat hypothesis in amphibians

Most examples that support the substitution‐habitat hypothesis (human‐made habitats act as substitutes of original habitat) deal with birds and mammals. We tested this hypothesis in 14 amphibians by using percentage occupancy as a proxy of habitat quality (i.e., higher occupancy percentages indicate higher quality). We classified water body types as original habitat (no or little human influence) depending on anatomical, behavioral, or physiological adaptations of each amphibian species. Ten species had relatively high probabilities (0.16–0.28) of occurrence in original habitat, moderate probability of occurrence in substitution habitats (0.11–0.14), and low probability of occurrence in refuge habitats (0.05–0.08). Thus, the substitution–habitat hypothesis only partially applies to amphibians because the low occupancy of refuges could be due to the negligible human persecution of this group (indicating good conservation status). However, low occupancy of refuges could also be due to low tolerance of refuge conditions, which could have led to selective extinction or colonization problems due to poor dispersal capabilities. That original habitats had the highest probabilities of occupancy suggests amphibians have a good conservation status in the region. They also appeared highly adaptable to anthropogenic substitution habitats.     

Using machine learning to disentangle homonyms in large text corpora

Systematic reviews are an increasingly popular decision‐making tool that provides an unbiased summary of evidence to support conservation action. These reviews bridge the gap between researchers and managers by presenting a comprehensive overview of all studies relating to a particular topic and identify specifically where and under which conditions an effect is present. However, several technical challenges can severely hinder the feasibility and applicability of systematic reviews, for example, homonyms (terms that share spelling but differ in meaning). Homonyms add noise to search results and cannot be easily identified or removed. We developed a semiautomated approach that can aid in the classification of homonyms among narratives. We used a combination of automated content analysis and artificial neural networks to quickly and accurately sift through large corpora of academic texts and classify them to distinct topics. As an example, we explored the use of the word reintroduction in academic texts. Reintroduction is used within the conservation context to indicate the release of organisms to their former native habitat; however, a Web of Science search for this word returned thousands of publications in which the term has other meanings and contexts. Using our method, we automatically classified a sample of 3000 of these publications with over 99% accuracy, relative to a manual classification. Our approach can be used easily with other homonyms and can greatly facilitate systematic reviews or similar work in which homonyms hinder the harnessing of large text corpora. Beyond homonyms we see great promise in combining automated content analysis and machine‐learning methods to handle and screen big data for relevant information in conservation science.     

Cost shifting and other perverse incentives in biodiversity offsetting in India

Biodiversity offsetting aims to compensate for development‐induced biodiversity loss through commensurate conservation gains and is gaining traction among governments and businesses. However, cost shifting (i.e., diversion of offset funds to other conservation programs) and other perverse incentives can undermine the effectiveness of biodiversity offsetting. Additionality—the requirement that biodiversity offsets result in conservation outcomes that would not have been achieved otherwise—is fundamental to biodiversity offsetting. Cost shifting and violation of additionality can go hand in hand. India's national offsetting program is a case in point. Recent legislation allows the diversion of offset funds to meet the country's preexisting commitments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). With such diversions, no additional conservation takes place and development impacts remain uncompensated. Temporary additionality cannot be conceded in light of paucity of funds for preexisting commitments unless there is open acknowledgement that fulfillment of such commitments is contingent on offset funds. Two other examples of perverse incentives related to offsetting in India are the touting of inherently neutral offsetting outcomes as conservation gains, a tactic that breeds false complacency and results in reduced incentive for additional conservation efforts, and the clearing of native vegetation for commercial plantations in the name of compensatory afforestation, a practice that leads to biodiversity decline. The risks accompanying cost shifting and other perverse incentives, if not preempted and addressed, will result in net loss of forest cover in India. We recommend accurate baselines, transparent accounting, and open reporting of offset outcomes to ensure biodiversity offsetting achieves adequate and additional compensation for impacts of development.     

A habitat‐based approach to predict impacts of marine protected areas on fishers

Although marine protected areas can simultaneously contribute to biodiversity conservation and fisheries management, the global network is biased toward particular ecosystem types because they have been established primarily in an ad hoc fashion. The optimization of trade‐offs between biodiversity benefits and socioeconomic values increases success of protected areas and minimizes enforcement costs in the long run, but it is often neglected in marine spatial planning (MSP). Although the acquisition of spatially explicit socioeconomic data is perceived as a costly or secondary step in MSP, it is critical to account for lost opportunities by people whose activities will be restricted, especially fishers. We developed an easily reproduced habitat‐based approach to estimate the spatial distribution of opportunity cost to fishers in data‐poor regions. We assumed the most accessible areas have higher economic and conservation values than less accessible areas and their designation as no‐take zones represents a loss of fishing opportunities. We estimated potential distribution of fishing resources from bathymetric ranges and benthic habitat distribution and the relative importance of the different resources for each port of total catches, revenues, and stakeholder perception. In our model, we combined different cost layers to produce a comprehensive cost layer so that we could evaluate of trade‐offs. Our approach directly supports conservation planning, can be applied generally, and is expected to facilitate stakeholder input and community acceptance of conservation.     

关于大气中PM2.5浓度的综合预测

鉴于PM2.5对人体的危害，为了提前预测PM2.5浓度值并及时通过降雨方法降低其浓度，开展了PM2.5浓度综合预测研究。通过对西安市一个空气质量监测点收集到观测数据分析与PM2.5浓度强相关的因素，随后综合考虑天气、温度、风力风向对PM2.5浓度观测值的影响，通过添加虚拟变量及因子分析提取因子的方法，将强相关因素、提取的天气、温度、风力风向因子与PM2.5浓度观测值进行回归预测，最终得到较好预测效果。     

The perpetual state of emergency that sacrifices protected areas in a changing climate

A modern challenge for conservation biology is to assess the consequences of policies that adhere to assumptions of stationarity (e.g., historic norms) in an era of global environmental change. Such policies may result in unexpected and surprising levels of mitigation given future climate‐change trajectories, especially as agriculture looks to protected areas to buffer against production losses during periods of environmental extremes. We assessed the potential impact of climate‐change scenarios on the rates at which grasslands enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) are authorized for emergency harvesting (i.e., biomass removal) for agricultural use, which can occur when precipitation for the previous 4 months is below 40% of the normal or historical mean precipitation for that 4‐month period. We developed and analyzed scenarios under the condition that policy will continue to operate under assumptions of stationarity, thereby authorizing emergency biomass harvesting solely as a function of precipitation departure from historic norms. Model projections showed the historical likelihood of authorizing emergency biomass harvesting in any given year in the northern Great Plains was 33.28% based on long‐term weather records. Emergency biomass harvesting became the norm (>50% of years) in the scenario that reflected continued increases in emissions and a decrease in growing‐season precipitation, and areas in the Great Plains with higher historical mean annual rainfall were disproportionately affected and were subject to a greater increase in emergency biomass removal. Emergency biomass harvesting decreased only in the scenario with rapid reductions in emissions. Our scenario‐impact analysis indicated that biomass from lands enrolled in the CRP would be used primarily as a buffer for agriculture in an era of climatic change unless policy guidelines are adapted or climate‐change projections significantly depart from the current consensus.     

Promotional effect of Si-doped V2O5/TiO2 for selective catalytic reduction of NOx by NH3

TiO2 supports doped with different amounts of Si were prepared by a sol-gel method, and 1 wt% vanadia (V2O5) loaded on Si-doped TiO2 was obtained by an impregnation method. The mole ratio of Si/Ti was 0.2, NOx conversion exceeds 94% at 300℃ and GHSV of 41,324 hr-1 , which is about 20% higher than pure V2O5/TiO2 . The catalysts were characterized by XRD, BET, TEM, FT-IR, NH3-TPD, XPS, H2-TPR, Raman and in situ DRIFTS. The results of FT-IR and XPS indicated that Si was doped into the TiO2 lattice successfully and a solid solution was obtained. V2O5 active component could be dispersed well on the support with the increasing of surface area of the catalyst, which was confirmed by Raman and XRD results. Above all, the numbers of acid sites (especially the Br nsted-acid) and oxidation properties were enhanced for Si-doped V2O5/TiO2 catalysts, which improved the deNOx catalytic activity.     

壬基酚和辛基酚暴露的生物标志物——尿液5-HT

为了探讨壬基酚和辛基酚对大鼠体内(5-HT)代谢的影响,为壬基酚和辛基酚暴露标志物的鉴定提供依据.选取健康雄性Sprague Dawley大鼠35只,随机分为对照组,壬基酚、辛基酚及其联合染毒低剂量组(50 mg·kg-1·d-1),壬基酚、辛基酚及其联合染毒高剂量组(150 mg·kg-1·d-1),每组5只,连续7d灌胃染毒,建立染毒动物模型.灌胃次日,利用高效液相色谱法(HPLC)检测各组大鼠尿液中5-羟色胺(5-HT)含量.结果表明,染毒组大鼠尿液中5-HT浓度均显著高于正常对照组(p＜0.01);高剂量染毒组大鼠尿液中5-HT浓度均显著高于其低剂量染毒组(p＜0.01);染毒第7天大鼠尿液中5-HT浓度均显著高于其染毒第3天(p＜0 01)尿液中5-HT浓度随染毒剂量和染毒时间的增加而升高,有剂量-毒性效应和时间-毒性效应关系;尿液5-HT可作为评估壬基酚和辛基酚暴露的潜在生物标志物,应用于大规模人群暴露风险的监测.