Predicting impact to assess the efficacy of community-based marine reserve design

During the planning phase the efficacy of different strategies to manage marine resources should ultimately be assessed by their potential impact, or ability to make a difference to ecological and social outcomes. While community-based and systematic approaches to establishing marine protected areas have their strengths and weaknesses, comparisons of their effectiveness often fail to explicitly address potential impact. Here, we predict conservation impact to compare recently implemented community-based marine reserves in Tonga to a systematic configuration specifically aimed at maximizing impact. Boosted regression tree outputs indicated that fishing pressure accounted for ∼24% of variation in target species biomass. We estimate that the community-based approach provides 84% of the recovery potential of the configuration with the greatest potential impact. This high potential impact results from community-based reserves being located close to villages, where fishing pressure is greatest. These results provide strong support for community-based marine management, with short-term benefits likely to accrue even where there is little scope for systematic reserve design

The Air Pollution Human Health Burden in Different Future Scenarios That Involve the Mitigation of Near‐Term Climate Forcers, Climate and Land‐Use

Elevated surface concentrations of ozone and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) can lead to poor air quality and detrimental impacts on human health. These pollutants are also termed Near-Term Climate Forcers (NTCFs) as they can also influence the Earth's radiative balance on timescales shorter than long-lived greenhouse gases. Here we use the Earth system model, UKESM1, to simulate the change in surface ozone and PM2.5 concentrations from different NTCF mitigation scenarios, conducted as part of the Aerosol and Chemistry Model Intercomparison Project (AerChemMIP). These are then combined with relative risk estimates and projected changes in population demographics, to estimate the mortality burden attributable to long-term exposure to ambient air pollution. Scenarios that involve the strong mitigation of air pollutant emissions yield large future benefits to human health (25%), particularly across Asia for black carbon (7%), when compared to the future reference pathway. However, if anthropogenic emissions follow the reference pathway, then impacts to human health worsen over South Asia in the short term (11%) and across Africa (20%) in the longer term. Future climate change impacts on air pollutants can offset some of the health benefits achieved by emission mitigation measures over Europe for PM2.5 and East Asia for ozone. In addition, differences in the future chemical environment over regions are important considerations for mitigation measures to achieve the largest benefit to human health. Future policy measures to mitigate climate warming need to also consider the impact on air quality and human health across different regions to achieve the maximum co-benefits

The Air Pollution Human Health Burden in Different Future Scenarios That Involve the Mitigation of Near-Term Climate Forcers, Climate and Land-Use

Elevated surface concentrations of ozone and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) can lead to poor air quality and detrimental impacts on human health. These pollutants are also termed Near-Term Climate Forcers (NTCFs) as they can also influence the Earth's radiative balance on timescales shorter than long-lived greenhouse gases. Here we use the Earth system model, UKESM1, to simulate the change in surface ozone and PM2.5 concentrations from different NTCF mitigation scenarios, conducted as part of the Aerosol and Chemistry Model Intercomparison Project (AerChemMIP). These are then combined with relative risk estimates and projected changes in population demographics, to estimate the mortality burden attributable to long-term exposure to ambient air pollution. Scenarios that involve the strong mitigation of air pollutant emissions yield large future benefits to human health (25%), particularly across Asia for black carbon (7%), when compared to the future reference pathway. However, if anthropogenic emissions follow the reference pathway, then impacts to human health worsen over South Asia in the short term (11%) and across Africa (20%) in the longer term. Future climate change impacts on air pollutants can offset some of the health benefits achieved by emission mitigation measures over Europe for PM2.5 and East Asia for ozone. In addition, differences in the future chemical environment over regions are important considerations for mitigation measures to achieve the largest benefit to human health. Future policy measures to mitigate climate warming need to also consider the impact on air quality and human health across different regions to achieve the maximum co-benefits

Incentivizing co-management for impact: mechanisms driving the successful national expansion of Tonga's Special Management Area program

The expansion of coastal marine protected areas can suffer from two key drawbacks: (a) the difficulty of incentivizing local communities to manage areas for conservation when their livelihoods also depend on resource use; and (b) that many protected areas get situated residually, or in locations with limited value for either biodiversity conservation or livelihoods. Here, we discuss and analyze key characteristics of Tonga's Special Management Area (SMA) program, including both the mechanisms that have motivated its successful national expansion and its ability to configure no-take reserves in areas that are considered to have high value to resource users. Granting communities exclusive access zones in exchange for implementing no-take reserves has encouraged conservation actions while fostering long-term relationships with resources. Ensuring no-take reserves occurred within the boundaries of exclusive access zones enabled communities to protect areas of greater extractive values than they would have otherwise. We conclude that the success of this program offers a way forward for achieving targets in the global expansion marine protected areas

Snow petrel stomach-oil deposits as a new biological archive of Antarctic sea ice

Where snow petrels forage is predominantly a function of sea ice. They spit stomach oil in defence, and accumulated deposits at nesting sites are providing new opportunities to reconstruct their diet, and, in turn, the sea-ice environment over past millennia

Biological anthropology in the Indo-Pacific Region: New approaches to age-old questions

Biological anthropological research, the study of both modern and past humans, is a burgeoning field in the Indo-Pacific region. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the unique environments of the Indo-Pacific have resulted in an archaeological record that does not necessarily align with those in the northern hemisphere. New, regionally-specific archaeological models are being developed, and biological anthropological research has an important role to play in establishing past human experience within these models. In the Indo-Pacific, research using ancient and modern human tissues is adding insight into global processes of prehistoric settlement and migrations, subsistence change and human biosocial adaptation. This review synthesises current themes in biological anthropology in this region. It highlights the diverse methods and approaches used by biological anthropologists to address globally-relevant archaeological questions. In recent decades a collaborative approach between archaeologists, biological anthropologists and local communities has become the norm in the region. The many positive outcomes of this multi-disciplinary approach are highlighted here through the use of regionally-specific case studies. This review ultimately aims to stimulate further collaborations between archaeologists, biological anthropologists and the communities in the region, and demonstrate how the evidence from Indo-Pacific research may be relevant to global archaeological models

When Is a Principal Charged With an Agent’s Knowledge?

Question: Detecting species presence in vegetation and making visual assessment of abundances involve a certain amount of skill, and therefore subjectivity. We evaluated the magnitude of the error in data, and its consequences for evaluating temporal trends. Location: Swedish forest vegetation. Methods: Vegetation data were collected independently by two observers in 342 permanent 100-m2 plots in mature boreal forests. Each plot was visited by one observer from a group of 36 and one of two quality assessment observers. The cover class of 29 taxa was recorded, and presence/absence for an additional 50. Results: Overall, one third of each occurrence was missed by one of the two observers, but with large differences among species. There were more missed occurrences at low abundances. Species occurring at low abundance when present tended to be frequently overlooked. Variance component analyses indicated that cover data on 5 of 17 species had a significant observer bias. Observer-explained variance was < 10% in 15 of 17 species. Conclusion: The substantial number of missed occurrences suggests poor power in detecting changes based on presence/absence data. The magnitude of observer bias in cover estimates was relatively small, compared with random error, and therefore potentially analytically tractable. Data in this monitoring system could be improved by a more structured working model during field work.Original publication: Milberg, P., Bergstedt, J., Fridman, J., Odell, G & Westerberg, L., Systematic and random variation in vegetation monitoring data, 2008, Journal of Vegetation Science, (19), 633-644. http://dx.doi.org/10.3170/2008-8-18423. Copyright: Opulus Press, http://www.opuluspress.se/index.ph

How to extract reliable core-volume fractions from core-shell polycrystalline microstructures using cross sectional TEM micrographs

A reliable method of extracting core-volume fraction from TEM micrographs of core-shell polycrystalline microstructures is presented. Three commonly used averaging methods based on a simple spherical model are shown to consistently underestimate the core-volume fraction due to the interpretation of a 3D structure from a 2D slice. The same trend is also revealed using Voronoi tessellated structures to mimic polycrystalline ceramics. In some cases the underestimate is less than half the true core-volume fraction. We show that using a new maximum core-volume fraction methodology can improve the extracted value to a consistent error of less than 5%. This approach uses a value taken from the largest core-volume fraction measured from 10 grains that exhibit a core-shell microstructure. This provides increasing accuracy and improvements in the confidence of the measurement when extracting core-volume fractions of polycrystalline ceramics from 2D TEM micrographs

Emotion in the Common Model of Cognition

Emotions play an important role in human cognition and therefore need to be present in the Common Model of Cognition. In this paper, the emotion working group focuses on functional aspects of emotions and describes what we believe are the points of interactions with the Common Model of Cognition. The present paper should not be viewed as a consensus of the group but rather as a first attempt to extract common and divergent aspects of different models of emotions and how they relate to the Common Model of Cognition