Progress and challenges in consolidating the management of Amazonian protected areas and indigenous territories

Effective management refers to the ability of a protected area or indigenous territory to meet its objectives, particularly as they relate to the protection of biodiversity and forest cover. Effective management is achieved through a process of consolidation, which among other things requires legally protecting sites, integrating sites into land‐use planning, developing and implementing management and resource‐use plans, and securing long‐term funding to pay for recurrent costs. Effectively managing all protected areas and indigenous territories in the Amazon may be needed to avoid a deforestation tipping point beyond which regional climatic feedbacks and global climate change interact to catalyze irreversible drying and savannization of large areas. At present, protected areas and indigenous territories cover 45.5% (3.55 million km²) of the Amazon, most of the 60–70% forest cover required to maintain hydrologic and climatic function. Three independent evaluations of a long‐term large‐scale philanthropic initiative in the Amazon yielded insights into the challenges and advances toward achieving effective management of protected areas and indigenous territories. Over the life of the initiative, management of sites has improved considerably, particularly with respect to management planning and capacity building, but few sites are effectively managed and many lack sufficient long‐term financing, adequate governance, support of nongovernmental organizations, and the means to withstand economic pressures. The time and money required to complete consolidation is still poorly understood, but it is clear that philanthropic funding is critical so long as essential funding needs are not met by governments and other sources, which could be on the order of decades. Despite challenges, it is encouraging that legal protection has expanded greatly and management of sites is improving steadily. Management of protected areas in other developing countries could be informed by improvements that have occurred in Amazonian countries.     

Understanding implications of consumer behavior for wildlife farming and sustainable wildlife trade

Unsustainable wildlife trade affects biodiversity and the livelihoods of communities dependent upon those resources. Wildlife farming has been proposed to promote sustainable trade, but characterizing markets and understanding consumer behavior remain neglected but essential steps in the design and evaluation of such operations. We used sea turtle trade in the Cayman Islands, where turtles have been farm raised for human consumption for almost 50 years, as a case study to explore consumer preferences toward wild‐sourced (illegal) and farmed (legal) products and potential conservation implications. Combining methods innovatively (including indirect questioning and choice experiments), we conducted a nationwide trade assessment through in‐person interviews from September to December 2014. Households were randomly selected using disproportionate stratified sampling, and responses were weighted based on district population size. We approached 597 individuals, of which 37 (6.2%) refused to participate. Although 30% of households had consumed turtle in the previous 12 months, the purchase and consumption of wild products was rare (e.g., 64–742 resident households consumed wild turtle meat [i.e., 0.3–3.5% of households] but represented a large threat to wild turtles in the area due to their reduced populations). Differences among groups of consumers were marked, as identified through choice experiments, and price and source of product played important roles in their decisions. Despite the long‐term practice of farming turtles, 13.5% of consumers showed a strong preference for wild products, which demonstrates the limitations of wildlife farming as a single tool for sustainable wildlife trade. By using a combination of indirect questioning, choice experiments, and sales data to investigate demand for wildlife products, we obtained insights about consumer behavior that can be used to develop conservation‐demand‐focused initiatives. Lack of data from long‐term social–ecological assessments hinders the evaluation of and learning from wildlife farming. This information is key to understanding under which conditions different interventions (e.g., bans, wildlife farming, social marketing) are likely to succeed.     

Fishing‐gear restrictions and biomass gains for coral reef fishes in marine protected areas

Considerable empirical evidence supports recovery of reef fish populations with fishery closures. In countries where full exclusion of people from fishing may be perceived as inequitable, fishing‐gear restrictions on nonselective and destructive gears may offer socially relevant management alternatives to build recovery of fish biomass. Even so, few researchers have statistically compared the responses of tropical reef fisheries to alternative management strategies. We tested for the effects of fishery closures and fishing gear restrictions on tropical reef fish biomass at the community and family level. We conducted 1,396 underwater surveys at 617 unique sites across a spatial hierarchy within 22 global marine ecoregions that represented 5 realms. We compared total biomass across local fish assemblages and among 20 families of reef fishes inside marine protected areas (MPAs) with different fishing restrictions: no‐take, hook‐and‐line fishing only, several fishing gears allowed, and sites open to all fishing gears. We included a further category representing remote sites, where fishing pressure is low. As expected, full fishery closures, (i.e., no‐take zones) most benefited community‐ and family‐level fish biomass in comparison with restrictions on fishing gears and openly fished sites. Although biomass responses to fishery closures were highly variable across families, some fishery targets (e.g., Carcharhinidae and Lutjanidae) responded positively to multiple restrictions on fishing gears (i.e., where gears other than hook and line were not permitted). Remoteness also positively affected the response of community‐level fish biomass and many fish families. Our findings provide strong support for the role of fishing restrictions in building recovery of fish biomass and indicate important interactions among fishing‐gear types that affect biomass of a diverse set of reef fish families.     

Modeling of a sequencing batch reactor treating municipal wastewater using multi-layer perceptron and radial basis function artificial neural networks

A sequencing batch reactor was modeled using multi-layer perceptron and radial basis function artificial neural networks (MLPANN and RBFANN). Then, the effects of influent concentration (IC), filling time (FT), reaction time (RT), aeration intensity (AI), SRT and MLVSS concentration were examined on the effluent concentrations of TSS, TP, COD and NH₄⁺-N. The results showed that the optimal removal efficiencies would be obtained at FT of 1 h, RT of 6 h, aeration intensity of 0.88 m³/min and SRT of 30 days. In addition, COD and TSS removal efficiencies decreased and TP and NH₄⁺-N removal efficiencies did not change significantly with increases of influent concentration. The TSS, TP, COD and NH₄⁺-N removal efficiencies were 86%, 79%, 94% and 93%, respectively. The training procedures of all contaminants were highly collaborated for both RBFANN and MLPANN models. The results of training and testing data sets showed an almost perfect match between the experimental and the simulated effluent of TSS, TP, COD and NH₄⁺-N. The results indicated that with low experimental values of input data to train ANNs the MLPANN models compared to RBFANN models are more precise due to their higher coefficient of determination (R²) and lower root mean squared errors (RMSE) values.     

基于复杂系统建模的水管理政策研究进展

基于Agent的建模方法（ABSS）通过自下而上的方式，考察系统中主体的不同状态和行为特征、主体与环境的作用、主体之间的作用，来表征系统的宏观特征，是进行复杂社会环境系统分析和政策研究的重要手段，在水资源、水环境管理系统中得到了有效的应用。本文在大量文献调研的基础上，讨论了ABSS建模方法的基本原理、主要特征、系统构成、分类方法和开发工具等特征，总结了其供水系统发展、水资源分配和流域水资源管理、农业土地和水资源利用、居民用水行为、农业污染控制及人类活动的水环境影响等方面的应用，分析了其在研究内容、研究方法、研究结果等方面的发展趋势，讨论了利用该方法研究我国水资源管理和水污染控制政策的必要性和重要性。     

利用3S技术动态监测天山草地农业产量及其成因分析

在新疆阜康县大量“天地”资料观测基础上，利用3S(RS、GIS和GPS)技术和生态系统分析方法，对新疆天山草地农业资源进行了系统的动态监测和大面积估产研究。结果表明，该县草地和森林面积1998年比1988年分别下降了17．5％和51．o％，而农业用地面积和沙漠危害面积却分别增加了57．8％和21．2％，实现了利用3s技术系统准确监测新疆阜康县草地农业资源动态变化，其大面积草地遥感估产精度达到75．8％以上。最后，建立了新型PPR估产模型，其估产精度达到81．76％以上，并给出了理论生态成因解释与定量分析结果等。     

垃圾焚烧烟气中HCl与消石灰的反应机理研究

测试了两种消石灰与垃圾焚烧烟气中HCl的反应率,得出了消石灰的反应率与反应时间的反应曲线,分析了消石灰与HCl的反应机理及影响消石灰最终反应率的因素。试验结果表明,消石灰与HCl反应初期按灰层扩散控制进行,两种消石灰的最终反应率分别为16％和36％。     

EFFECTS OF ADJACENT AGRICULTURAL ACTIVITIES AND WATERSHED CHARACTERISTICS ON STREAM MACROINVERTEBRATE COMMUNITIES1

Benthic macroinvertebrate communities in streams adjacent to cornfields, streams where cows had unrestricted access, and reference locations without agriculture were compared to examine the effects of local land use and land use/land cover in the watershed. At each local site, macroinvertebrates and a variety of habitat parameters were measured upstream, adjacent, downstream, and farther downstream of the local land use. A geographic information system (GIS) was used to calculate drainage basin area, land use/land cover percentages in each basin, and the distance from sample sites to the stream source. Three‐way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) tests with date, site type, and sampling location as main effects were used to explore differences in macroinvertebrate metrics using median substrate size, percent hay/pasture area, and stream depth as covariates. The covariates significantly improved model fit and showed that multiple contributing factors influence community composition. Local impacts were greatest at sites where cows had access, probably because of sedimentation and embeddedness in the substrate. Differences between the upstream and the adjacent and downstream locations were not as great as expected, perhaps because upstream recolonization was reduced by agricultural impacts or because of differences in the intensity or proximity of agriculture to riparian areas in the watershed. The results underscore the importance of both local and watershed factors in controlling stream community composition.     

Male-biassed response of garden chafer, Phyllopertha horticola L., to leaf alcohol and attraction of both sexes to floral plant volatiles

Summary. Field tests were performed to evaluate the response of the garden chafer, Phyllopertha horticola (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae) to known scarab attractants and to investigate the influence of trap colour and height on the number of captured beetles. Both sexes were attracted by a lure mixture composed of geraniol, eugenol, and 2-phenylethyl propionate (PEP) (ratio 3:7:3). When testing floral volatiles individually, only geraniol, eugenol and methyl anthranilate but not PEP was attractive. Response of garden chafer to (Z)- 3-hexen-1-ol was strongly male-biassed. Both the response to floral volatiles and (Z)-3-hexen-1-ol was increased by using funnel traps with yellow instead of grey vanes. Traps positioned at 50 and 125 cm above ground captured significantly more garden chafers than those at 200 cm. The strongly male-biassed response to (Z)-3-hexen-1-ol suggests that in P. horticola (subfamily Rutelinae) orientation towards plant volatiles emitted upon mechanical damage of plants is part of the male mate finding strategy as recently demonstrated for cockchafers of the genus Melolontha (subfamily Melolonthinae). Possible application of plant volatiles for control of P. horticola is discussed.