iIRSL dating of K-feldspar and its application to Fajiagouwan, Salawusu site in Central China

Dating Protocols Improvements: abstract no. P19published_or_final_versio

Craft, Community and the Material Culture of Place and Politics, 19th–20th Century

Book Review: Craft, Community and the Material Culture of Place and Politics, 19th-20th century Edited by Janice Helland, Beverley Lemire and Alena Buis Ashgate, February 2014; 245pp. 46 b&w illustrations; hardback £60.00 ISBN: 978-1-4094-6207-

Thermoluminescence of zircon: a kinetic model

The mineral zircon, ZrSiO4, belongs to a class of promising materials for geochronometry by means of thermoluminescence (TL) dating. The development of a reliable and reproducible method for TL dating with zircon requires detailed knowledge of the processes taking place during exposure to ionizing radiation, long-term storage, annealing at moderate temperatures and heating at a constant rate (TL measurements). To understand these processes one needs a kinetic model of TL. This paper is devoted to the construction of such amodel. The goal is to study the qualitative behaviour of the system and to determine the parameters and processes controlling TL phenomena of zircon. The model considers the following processes: (i) Filling of electron and hole traps at the excitation stage as a function of the dose rate and the dose for both (low dose rate) natural and (high dose rate) laboratory irradiation. (ii) Time dependence of TL fading in samples irradiated under laboratory conditions. (iii) Short time annealing at a given temperature. (iv) Heating of the irradiated sample to simulate TL experiments both after laboratory and natural irradiation. The input parameters of the model, such as the types and concentrations of the TL centres and the energy distributions of the hole and electron traps, were obtained by analysing the experimental data on fading of the TL-emission spectra of samples from different geological locations. Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) data were used to establish the nature of the TL centres. Glow curves and 3D TL emission spectra are simulated and compared with the experimental data on time-dependent TL fading. The saturation and annealing behaviour of filled trap concentrations has been considered in the framework of the proposed kinetic model and comparedwith the EPR data associated with the rare-earth ions Tb3+ and Dy3+, which play a crucial role as hole traps and recombination centres. Inaddition, the behaviour of some of the SiOmn− centres has been compared with simulation results.

A 2017 Horizon Scan of Emerging Issues for Global Conservation and Biological Diversity

We present the results of our eighth annual horizon scan of emerging issues likely to affect global biological diversity, the environment, and conservation efforts in the future. The potential effects of these novel issues might not yet be fully recognized or understood by the global conservation community, and the issues can be regarded as both opportunities and risks. A diverse international team with collective expertise in horizon scanning, science communication, and conservation research, practice, and policy reviewed 100 potential issues and identified 15 that qualified as emerging, with potential substantial global effects. These issues include new developments in energy storage and fuel production, sand extraction, potential solutions to combat coral bleaching and invasive marine species, and blockchain technology.Cambridge Conservation Initiative, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Arcadia, Natural Environment Research Council (Grant ID: NE/N014472/1

The value of performance weights and discussion in aggregated expert judgements

In risky situations characterized by imminent decisions, scarce resources, and insufficient data, policymakers rely on experts to estimate model parameters and their associated uncertainties. Different elicitation and aggregation methods can vary substantially in their efficacy and robustness. While it is generally agreed that biases in expert judgments can be mitigated using structured elicitations involving groups rather than individuals, there is still some disagreement about how to best elicit and aggregate judgments. This mostly concerns the merits of using performance‐based weighting schemes to combine judgments of different individuals (rather than assigning equal weights to individual experts), and the way that interaction between experts should be handled. This article aims to contribute to, and complement, the ongoing discussion on these topics

Incorporating detectability of threatened species into environmental impact assessment

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is a key mechanism for protecting threatened plant and animal species. Many species are not perfectly detectable and, even when present, may remain undetected during EIA surveys, increasing the risk of site-level loss or extinction of species. Numerous methods now exist for estimating detectability of plants and animals. Despite this, regulations concerning survey protocol and effort during EIAs fail to adequately address issues of detectability. Probability of detection is intrinsically linked to survey effort; thus, minimum survey effort requirements are a useful way to address the risks of false absences. We utilized 2 methods for determining appropriate survey effort requirements during EIA surveys. One method determined the survey effort required to achieve a probability of detection of 0.95 when the species is present. The second method estimated the survey effort required to either detect the species or reduce the probability of presence to 0.05. We applied these methods to Pimelea spinscens subsp. spinescens, a critically endangered grassland plant species in Melbourne, Australia. We detected P. spinescens in only half of the surveys undertaken at sites where it was known to exist. Estimates of the survey effort required to detect the species or demonstrate its absence with any confidence were much higher than the effort traditionally invested in EIA surveys for this species. We argue that minimum survey requirements be established for all species listed under threatened species legislation and hope that our findings will provide an impetus for collecting, compiling, and synthesizing quantitative detectability estimates for a broad range of plant and animal species

Beyond advocacy: making space for conservation scientists in public debate

The topic of advocacy by scientists has been debated for decades, yet there is little agreement about whether scientists can or should be advocates. The fear of crossing a line into advocacy continues to hold many scientists back from contributing to public discourse, impoverishing public debate about important issues. We believe that progress in this debate is limited by a misconception about the relationship between scientific integrity and objectivity. We begin by unpacking this relationship and debunking three common misconceptions about advocacy by scientists: namely, that advocacy is harmful to scientific credibility, beyond the scope of science, and incompatible with science, which is value-free. We propose new ways of thinking about responsible advocacy by conservation scientists, drawing on practices from the health sciences, where researchers and professional bodies are empowered to act as health advocates.In so doing, we hope to open further space for conservation scientists to actively and legitimately engage in public debate about conservation issues

Transparent planning for biodiversity and development in the urban fringe

In Australia, over 50% of threatened species occur within the urban fringe and accelerating urbanization is now a key threat. Biodiversity near and within urban areas brings much social benefit but its maintenance involves complex trade-offs between competing land uses. Urban design typically views biodiversity as a development constraint, not a value to be enhanced into the future. We argue that decisions could be more transparent and systematic and we demonstrate that efficient development solutions can be found that avoid areas important for biodiversity. We present a case study in the context of land use change across the city of Wyndham, a local Government west of Melbourne, Australia. We use reserve design tools in a novel way to identify priority development sites, based on a synthesis of ecological, social and economic data. Trade-offs between biodiversity conservation and other key development objectives and constraints (transport planning, flood risk and food production) are quantified. The analysis can be conducted dynamically with visually compelling output, facilitating more transparent, efficient and democratically derived urban planning solutions. We suggest that government agencies could adopt similar approaches to identify efficient planning solutions for both biodiversity and development in urban environments

The use of dynamic landscape metapopulation models for forest management: a case study of the red-backed salamander

Spatial models of population dynamics have been proposed as a useful method for predicting the impacts of environmental change on biodiversity. Here, we demonstrate advances in dynamic landscape metapopulation modelling and its use as a decision support tool for evaluating the impacts of forest management scenarios. This novel modelling framework incorporates both landscape and metapopulation model stochasticity and allows their relative contributions to model output variance to be characterized. It includes a detailed sensitivity analysis, allowing defensible uncertainty bounds and the prioritization of future data gathering to reduce model uncertainties. We demonstrate this framework by modelling the landscape-level impacts of eight forest management scenarios on the red-backed salamander (Plethodon cinereus (Green, 1818)) in the boreal forest of Ontario, Canada, using the RAMAS Landscape package. The 100 year forest management scenarios ranged in intensity of timber harvesting and fire suppression. All scenarios including harvesting predicted decreases in salamander population size and the current style of forest management is predicted to produce a 9%-17% decrease in expected minimum population size compared with scenarios without harvesting. This method is amenable to incorporating many forms of environmental change and allows a meaningful treatment of uncertainty

10 years of decision‐making for biodiversity conservation actions: A systematic literature review

Decision science emphasizes necessary elements required for robust decision-making. By incorporating decision science principles, frameworks, and tools, it has been demonstrated that decision-makers can increase the chances of achieving conservation aims. Setting measurable objectives, clearly documenting assumptions about the impact of available actions on a specific threat or problem, explicitly considering constraints, exploring and characterizing uncertainty, and structured deliberation on trade-offs have been identified as key elements of successful decision-making. We quantify the extent to which these five elements were utilized in published examples of decision making in conservation in both academic and conservation practice between 2009 and 2018. We found that less than 50% of identified examples included all five elements, with differences in the degree of decision science applied across five commonly used decision support approaches: adaptive management (AM), systematic conservation planning (SCP), structured decision making (SDM), multi-criteria decision analysis, and cost-effectiveness analysis. Example applications that utilized the SDM framework were limited in numbers but used on average more than 50% of the five key elements we considered. Although SCP and AM constituted the majority of examples, they were more prevalent in academic studies rather than management applications. SCP and AM examples were widespread in protected area planning, threat abatement, and restoration. Strong geographic bias exists in documented conservation activities that deploy all five decision science elements