Local Food Systems in Central Illinois: An Economic Impact Analysis

Local food movements nationwide have gained traction in their popularity and relevance as an alternative to the more dominant industrial, specialized system. The primary focus of this paper is the analysis of food systems in a five county region of Central Illinois. Statistical analysis as well as theoretical perspective is used to present the current status of the industry and develop a framework for assessing the economic impact of an increase in local food production for local consumption. We use the IMPLAN Modeling System to measure the financial and employment impacts of an increase in vegetable and fruit production in the five-county region as well as the impact of nine farmers’ markets within this region. We find a positive net impact for both scenarios

Assets and Needs Assessment of Senior Residents in the West Bloomington Neighborhood

The experience and process of aging has become a prominent topic of discussion nationwide and Central Illinois is no exception, due to the rapid growth within the senior population in the area. The 60 and over population of Illinois is projected to grow by 87% during the next 30 years (The Maturing of Illinois). An initiative has been developed to evaluate how prepared local communities are for older adults by conducting needs assessments, which can also serve as vital tools for those who plan and provide human services in communities. Often community leaders will form policies and allocate limited resources based on assumptions about the needs of the senior population and outdated information (Parsons and Higley 1995). This report is part of a larger needs assessment that will serve as a resource for community leaders to use in future policies and projects that will involve senior West Bloomington residents. This report examines needs of the senior population of West Bloomington as well as how organizations provide for those needs as evaluated by the senior population themselves. Based on our findings and recognizing the limitations of the study, we make recommendations for action and future research

The PREDICTS database: a global database of how local terrestrial biodiversity responds to human impacts

Biodiversity continues to decline in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures such as habitat destruction, exploitation, pollution and introduction of alien species. Existing global databases of species’ threat status or population time series are dominated by charismatic species. The collation of datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeographic extents, and that support computation of a range of biodiversity indicators, is necessary to enable better understanding of historical declines and to project – and avert – future declines. We describe and assess a new database of more than 1.6 million samples from 78 countries representing over 28,000 species, collated from existing spatial comparisons of local-scale biodiversity exposed to different intensities and types of anthropogenic pressures, from terrestrial sites around the world. The database contains measurements taken in 208 (of 814) ecoregions, 13 (of 14) biomes, 25 (of 35) biodiversity hotspots and 16 (of 17) megadiverse countries. The database contains more than 1% of the total number of all species described, and more than 1% of the described species within many taxonomic groups – including flowering plants, gymnosperms, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, beetles, lepidopterans and hymenopterans. The dataset, which is still being added to, is therefore already considerably larger and more representative than those used by previous quantitative models of biodiversity trends and responses. The database is being assembled as part of the PREDICTS project (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems – www.predicts.org.uk). We make site-level summary data available alongside this article. The full database will be publicly available in 2015

The database of the PREDICTS (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems) project

The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used this evidence base to develop global and regional statistical models of how local biodiversity responds to these measures. We describe and make freely available this 2016 release of the database, containing more than 3.2 million records sampled at over 26,000 locations and representing over 47,000 species. We outline how the database can help in answering a range of questions in ecology and conservation biology. To our knowledge, this is the largest and most geographically and taxonomically representative database of spatial comparisons of biodiversity that has been collated to date; it will be useful to researchers and international efforts wishing to model and understand the global status of biodiversity