The Economic Value of Basin Protection to Improve the Quality and Reliability of Potable Water Supply: Some Evidence from Ecuador

This study estimates the willingness to pay (WTP) of Loja’s households to protect two micro-basins that supply over 40 percent of potable water to the city. Results indicate that households have an average WTP of $5.80 per month, which corresponds to a 25 percent increase in the self-reported monthly water bill, to preserve the basins.Basin protection, contingent valuation, Loja, Ecuador, Environmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use,

Guide to the Common Fishes of South Dakota

South Dakota is home to more than 100 fish species. This guide is a reference to the most common 50 species. Included are tips for identification, distribution maps and brief life histories. Also included is a comprehensive listing of the known fish species in South Dakota

Going with the floe

Julia Wilkinson and a Zooniverse citizen-science team examine Arctic auroral data, using observations from the ill-fated 19th-century Arctic exploration ship USS Jeannette

Establishing and Evaluating Climate Change Heuristics of Multi-Actor Professional Leadership in the New York Metropolitan Region

This article sets out to evaluate the existing range of heuristics and preferences for the concepts of adaptation, resilience, mitigation and coping of a variety of actors in the metropolitan region of New York City who are undertaking professional leadership positions in developing policies and practices which address a multitude of risks associated with climate change. Prior interviews and observations have suggested that the inconsistent usage of these concepts—including, the rhetorical application of resilience as a leading framework—are thwarting the development of planning instruments and decision tools. This article positions a normative set of meanings for each of the aforementioned concepts based on a review of existing literature. Then, utilizing a survey, these normative meanings are evaluated by and between the: (i) concepts and meanings; (ii) concepts and applications; and, (iii) applications and preferences, as applied to various risk based scenarios ranging from sea level rise to heat waves. This survey tests the hypotheses that the respondents: (a) are unable to consistently match the concept of resiliency with the normative meanings or applications: and, (b) will not consistently show a preference for resilience applications or outcomes ahead of other concepts. The results of the survey confirm both hypotheses, which is demonstrative of the inadequacy of the current framework dominated by resilience in its rhetorical form. It is anticipated that the results of this article will advance an argument for the necessity to develop consistent meanings for concepts which bridge the scientific, policy and popular domains

The Great Space Weather Event during February 1872 Recorded in East Asia

The study of historical great geomagnetic storms is crucial for assessing the possible risks to the technological infrastructure of a modern society, caused by extreme space-weather events. The normal benchmark has been the great geomagnetic storm of September 1859, the so-called "Carrington Event". However, there are numerous records of another great geomagnetic storm in February 1872. This storm, about 12 years after the Carrington Event, resulted in comparable magnetic disturbances and auroral displays over large areas of the Earth. We have revisited this great geomagnetic storm in terms of the auroral and sunspot records in the historical documents from East Asia. In particular, we have surveyed the auroral records from East Asia and estimated the equatorward boundary of the auroral oval to be near 24.3 deg invariant latitude (ILAT), on the basis that the aurora was seen near the zenith at Shanghai (20 deg magnetic latitude, MLAT). These results confirm that this geomagnetic storm of February 1872 was as extreme as the Carrington Event, at least in terms of the equatorward motion of the auroral oval. Indeed, our results support the interpretation of the simultaneous auroral observations made at Bombay (10 deg MLAT). The East Asian auroral records have indicated extreme brightness, suggesting unusual precipitation of high-intensity, low-energy electrons during this geomagnetic storm. We have compared the duration of the East Asian auroral displays with magnetic observations in Bombay and found that the auroral displays occurred in the initial phase, main phase, and early recovery phase of the magnetic storm.Comment: 28 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal on 31 May 201

Implications of ocean acidification for marine microorganisms from the free-living to the host-associated

Anthropogenic CO2 emissions are causing oceans to become more acidic, with consequences for all marine life including microorganisms. Studies reveal that from the microbes that occupy the open ocean to those intimately associated with their invertebrate hosts changing ocean chemistry will alter the critical functions of these important organisms. Our current understanding indicates that bacterial communities associated with their host will shift as pH drops by another 0.2–0.4 units over the next 100 years. It is unclear what impacts this will have for host health, however, increased vulnerability to disease seems likely for those associated with reef corals. Natural CO2 seeps have provided a unique setting for the study of microbial communities under OA in situ, where shifts in the bacterial communities associated with corals at the seep are correlated with a decline in abundance of the associated coral species. Changes to global biogeochemical cycles also appear likely as photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation by pelagic microbes becomes enhanced under low pH conditions. However, recent long-term studies have shown that pelagic microbes are also capable of evolutionary adaptation, with some physiological responses to a decline in pH restored after hundreds of generations at high pCO2 levels. The impacts of ocean acidification (OA) also will not work in isolation, thus synergistic interactions with other potential stressors, such as rising seawater temperatures, will likely exacerbate the microbial response to OA. This review discusses our existing understanding of the impacts of OA on both pelagic and host-associated marine microbial communities, whilst highlighting the importance of controlled laboratory studies and in situ experiments, to fill the current gaps in our knowledge

Co-creating corporate knowledge with a Wiki

Wikis have a growing reputation on the open Internet for producing evolving stores of shared knowledge. However, such democratic systems are often treated with suspicion within corporations for management, legal, social, and other reasons. This article describes a field study of a corporate Wiki that has been developed to capture, and make available, organisational knowledge in a large manufacturing company as an initiative of their Knowledge Management (KM) program. As this approach to KM is a controversial and rapidly changing phenomenon, a Q Methodology research approach was selected to uncover employees- subjective attitudes to the Wiki. Activity Theory was used to provide a deeper interpretation of the findings of the Q-study. The results are enabling the firm to more fully exploit the potential of the Wiki as a ubiquitous tool for successful tacit and explicit knowledge management as more employees are encouraged to participate in a process of cocreating the store of corporate knowledge. The article also demonstrates how meaningful and rigorous research on this new democratic direction of corporate KM should continue