Drawing lines at the sand: evidence for functional vs. visual reef boundaries in temperate Marine Protected Areas.

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) can either protect all seabed habitats within them or discrete features. If discrete features within the MPA are to be protected humans have to know where the boundaries are. In Lyme Bay, SW England a MPA excluded towed demersal fishing gear from 206 km(2) to protect rocky reef habitats and the associated species. The site comprised a mosaic of sedimentary and reef habitats and so 'non reef' habitat also benefited from the MPA. Following 3 years protection, video data showed that sessile Reef Associated Species (RAS) had colonised sedimentary habitat indicating that 'reef' was present. This suggested that the functional extent of the reef was potentially greater than its visual boundary. Feature based MPA management may not adequately protect targeted features, whereas site based management allows for shifting baselines and will be more effective at delivering ecosystem goods and services

Making the Portland way of planning: the structural power of language : stories from community planning, 1969-2001

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2003Portland, Oregon has attracted continuing attention for its achievements in planning, urban design, and growth management, and for its participatory approach to this work. They have stopped freeways, rebuilt their downtown, resurrected neighborhoods, built public transit, designed urban villages, and drawn urban growth boundaries. More than that, over the course of more than three decades they have built an extensive and powerful structure of planning for neighborhoods, downtown, the city, and the metropolitan region. This dissertation examines in detail two episodes in this process---the Northwest District Plan (1969--1977) and the Southwest Community Plan (1994--2001)---as a means of demonstrating how this structure is actually the cultural product of the concerted mobilization of meaning through the use of language in planning, organizing, democratizing and institutionalizing these practice. To suggest that language has structural power is to recast the arguments about the character and status of ostensible structural determinants of action

Actor-Networks, Farmer Decisions, and Identity

Climate change and industrial agricultural practices pose threats to the future of Kansas agriculture. To inform the debate about sustainable agriculture that must soon occur, we seek to illuminate the factors involved in the decision making of farmers in Kansas. Drawing from Actor–Network Theory, we consider how farmers’ participation in the industrial agricultural network shapes their decisions, defines the types of knowledge and skills that are valued by farmers and others in the network, transforms what it means to be a Kansas grain farmer, and entrenches unsustainable production practices