Using Force Analysis to Target Collection and Analysis of Environmental Information

Knowledge of the forces driving and modifying ecosystems can be employed in concert with signal analysis to target the data most likely to yield sensitivity and resilience information. One can optimize return of information per investment of resources by targeting segments of signals that are dominated by the force of interest, coupled with scientific understanding of the system of interest. This force analysis approach is an effective means both to design efficient new monitoring programs and to target relevant information in large data files. We present five example applications of force analysis. Three examples illustrate this approach for an evaluation of whether Canadian rivers might be sensitive to changes in climate. It was concluded that Canadian rivers appear to be sensitive to changing climate. A fourth example illustrates how automated snow pillow data may be evaluated to ascertain the sensitivity of snow accumulation to change in climate. It was concluded that snow accumulation at the site evaluated did appear to be sensitive to changing climate. The fifth example illustrates the assessment of whether a river recovers with the elimination of inputs of iron from an abandoned mine. It was concluded that resilience remained unproven since the river had not as yet restabilized. The force analysis approach focuses data collection or data evaluation on those data required to answer specific resource management questions, greatly reducing collection or consideration of data that are not relevant to that question. This approach is potentially very cost-efficient and therefore is likely to be of interest to hydrologists, climatologists, and environmental data managers.     

Small island developing states: natural disaster vulnerability and global change

Abstract

This paper sets out an examination of natural disaster amongst small island developing states (SIDS), and presents a framework for assessing the interaction of global pressures and local dynamics in the production of human vulnerability. Change at the global level is found to be a source of new opportunities as well as constraints on building local resilience to natural disaster. Much depends on the orientation of the state in global economic and political systems. The United Nations is a key global actor with relevance to shaping vulnerabilityin island states, and the impact of the UN Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction is reviewed. It is concluded that this is a critical time for SIDS which must contend with ongoing developmental pressures in addition to growing pressures from risks associated with global environmental change and economic liberalisation that threaten their physical and economic security.     

Overcoming the blame game to learn from major accidents: A systemic analysis of an Anhydrous Ammonia leakage accident

This article aims to demonstrate the need for changing the methods with which accidents are analyzed, if we truly wish to use what we uncover from them to learn and enrich our knowledge base of organizational management. The goal is to relinquish the broadly adopted and rather simplistic paradigm that accepts the search for human error and unsafe acts performed by workers, and produces “guilt diagnostics”. Instead, we use a systemic accident analysis methodology, based on the sociotechnical principle of understanding the real operating conditions in which accidents take place. In order to demonstrate the benefits of the theoretical framework, we compare the analyses of an Anhydrous Ammonia gas leakage accident in a fish processing plant using the traditional accident analysis model based on unsafe acts and the proposed systemic approach. The results favor the latter since it tends to be more reliable and offering useful recommendations to safety management processes, thus helping to prevent accidents, especially in complex systems.     

Scientist and stakeholder perspectives of transdisciplinary research: Early attitudes,expectations, and tensions

Transdisciplinary approaches are becoming increasingly adopted as a way to research complex socio-environmental problems. Conceptually, transdisciplinarity aims to foster meaningful knowledge co-production through integrative and participatory processes that bring together diverse actors, disciplines, and knowledge bases. In practice, transdisciplinarity is more ambiguous. While there is a growing body of literature on such approaches, there remains no widely-accepted definition, concrete framework, or empirical strategy for how to carry out a transdisciplinary project. We propose that this lack of explicit structure and entrenched meaning leaves space for transdisciplinary approaches to be shaped by the evolving network of participating scientists and stakeholders, according to their perspectives of the approach and what it embodies. Here, we examine the perspectives of a diverse group of actors (n = 42) embarking on a 10-year transdisciplinary research project focused on building resilience to natural hazards and disasters in New Zealand. We present the findings of qualitative surveys and group interviews that investigate stakeholders’ and scientists’ early perspectives of transdisciplinary, or co-created, research. The study represents the first stage of longitudinal research that will continue over the course of the project. Results show that early actors in the project share an overall consistent understanding of co-created research. Participants described a process that integrated diverse people and knowledge; created benefits on both a social and personal level; fostered clear, two-way dialogue; and overcame pragmatic and intrinsic challenges. Collectively, participants agreed with adopting transdisciplinary approaches to natural hazard, risk, and resilience research, with stakeholders showing a stronger degree of agreement than scientists. While attitudes towards transdisciplinarity were overall positive, a number of underlying conflicts emerged in regards to carrying out new modes of knowledge production within traditional social and institutional structures. These conflicts result in a tension that is felt by actors involved in transdisciplinary projects early on, and in some cases, influences perception of their ability to fully participate in such an approach. Evaluating actor perspectives and expectations early in the transdisciplinary process can give insight into how attitudes, expectations, and conflicts might shape transdisciplinary efforts, and can provide relevant parameters for assessing change over time.     

Optimal renewable resource management in the presence of endogenous risk of invasion

In this paper we examine the optimal management of a renewable resource that is at risk from alien species invasion. The objective of this paper is to derive implications for optimal management of a resource when options exist for both preventing the arrival of an invasive species and mitigating the impact of that arrival. Uncertainty about the timing and nature of an invasion can have important implications for the choice of management strategy, and a key feature of this analysis is an explicit treatment of that uncertainty.     

The successes and challenges of implementing high reliability principles: A case study of a UK oil refinery

Research conducted on organisations that are able to sustain excellent safety records over long time periods suggests that there are a number of practices that organisations can adopt to achieve high levels of reliability and safety. These practices are often discussed in the context of major incidents to highlight the safety standards that high hazard organisations should try to emulate. However, previous research has predominantly focused on non-profit organisations, and comparatively little research has examined whether high reliability practices may be meaningfully applied to commercial contexts. This paper addresses this gap by using a qualitative approach to explore the types of reliability-enhancing practices implemented in a UK-based oil refinery in its attempt to achieve its ethos of ‘safe and reliable operations’. The findings illustrate the successful application of reliability-enhancing practices in several domains, including: hazard identification and control; emergency preparedness and collection; and analysis of incidents and near misses. Management commitment to safety emerged as an important factor underpinning the successful implementation of reliability-enhancing practices, highlighting its potential significance in the context of commercial organisations. However, promoting an open reporting culture and maintaining high levels of management visibility may be some of the challenges encountered by organisations striving to implement reliability-enhancing practices.     

Evaluating the efficacy of adaptive management approaches: Is there a formula for success?

Within the field of natural-resources management, the application of adaptive management is appropriate for complex problems high in uncertainty. Adaptive management is becoming an increasingly popular management-decision tool within the scientific community and has developed into two primary schools of thought: the Resilience-Experimentalist School (with high emphasis on stakeholder involvement, resilience, and highly complex models) and the Decision-Theoretic School (which results in relatively simple models through emphasizing stakeholder involvement for identifying management objectives). Because of these differences, adaptive management plans implemented under each of these schools may yield varying levels of success. We evaluated peer-reviewed literature focused on incorporation of adaptive management to identify components of successful adaptive management plans. Our evaluation included adaptive management elements such as stakeholder involvement, definitions of management objectives and actions, use and complexity of predictive models, and the sequence in which these elements were applied. We also defined a scale of degrees of success to make comparisons between the two adaptive management schools of thought. Our results include the relationship between the adaptive management process documented in the reviewed literature and our defined continuum of successful outcomes. Our data suggest an increase in the number of published articles with substantive discussion of adaptive management from 2000 to 2009 at a mean rate of annual change of 0.92 (r2 = 0.56). Additionally, our examination of data for temporal patterns related to each school resulted in an increase in acknowledgement of the Decision-Theoretic School of thought at a mean annual rate of change of 0.02 (r2 = 0.6679) and a stable acknowledgement for the Resilience-Experimentalist School of thought (r2 = 0.0042; slope = 0.0013). Identifying the elements of successful adaptive management will be advantageous to natural-resources managers considering adaptive management as a decision tool.     

Modelling phytoclimatic versatility as a large scale indicator of adaptive capacity to climate change in forest ecosystems

CLIMPAIR is a new phytoclimatic model, correlative and niche-based, which simultaneously assesses non-linear, non-statistical and dual measurements of proximity/potentiality of a site with respect to a number of climatic ranges of species, defined by convex hulls, within a suitability space. This set of phytoclimatic distances makes it possible to evaluate the degree to which each species is suitable for that site. Considering not only the number of species compatible (expected species richness), but also all those compatible covers presenting a high level of suitability evenness and finally applying an indicator derived from Shannon's classic entropy index to the set of standardized phytoclimatic coordinates in the suitability hyperspace, we can evaluate the phytoclimatic entropy which may be considered as a means of estimating the phytoclimatic versatility of the site. A site with high phytoclimatic entropy would promise versatile future behaviour, characterized by a wide range of possibilities of adaptation to climate change, and hence versatility can be used as an index of resilience and ability of a forest ecosystem to adapt to climate change. The model has been applied to peninsular Spain for 18 forest tree species and 12 climatic variables between the current mean climate (period 1951-1999) and a future climatic scenario (period 2040-2069). The results generally point to a significant decrease in the versatility of forest tree formations in the area studied, which is not homogeneous owing to a dual altitudinal/latitudinal decoupling. The decrease in versatility is greater in Mediterranean biogeographical areas than in Euro-Siberian ones, where in some cases it actually increases. In altitudinal terms, areas at elevations of less than 1500 m tend to become less versatile than areas situated at higher elevations, where versatility increases partly as a result of enrichment of alpine conifer forests with broadleaf species.     

Adapting the adaptive cycle: Hypotheses on the development of ecosystem properties and services

Ecosystems are dynamic complexes. These dynamics can be described by different ecophysiological parameters and systems theoretical concepts like succession, thermodynamics, information/network theory, resilience, adaptability and the orientor concept. In this paper, different indicators and concepts are linked to Holling's adaptive cycle metaphor in order to derive hypotheses on potential system trajectories. The hypotheses focus on an exemplary temperate forest ecosystem experiencing the adaptive cycle's four phases of exploitation, conservation, collapse and reorganization after an initializing fire event. The different properties are correlated to the number of total system connections and show varying trajectories. Additionally, the provision of selected forest ecosystem services during the different phases is hypothesized and compared to three other land use types.