Critical success factors for embedding carbon management in organizations: lessons from the UK higher education sector

Organizations are under increasing pressure from governments and stakeholders to reduce carbon emissions from their business operations for climate change mitigation. Universities are not exempt from this challenge and are operating in a complex external environment, not least responding to the UK government's Climate Change Act 2008 (80% carbon reductions by 2050 as per 1990 baseline). In 2012–2013, the UK Higher Education (HE) sector consumed 7.9 billion kWh of energy and produced 2.3 million tonnes of carbon emissions. This indicates the scale of the challenge and carbon management is central to reduce carbon emissions. However, effective processes for implementing and embedding carbon management in organizations in general, and universities in particular, have yet to be realized. This paper explores the critical success factors (CSFs) for embedding carbon management in universities and, more widely, in organizations. This exploratory study adopted a mixed-methods approach including the content analysis of universities' carbon management plans alongside semi-structured interviews in the UK HE sector. The paper identifies six key factors for successfully embedding carbon management that are pertinent not just for the HE sector, but to organizations broadly: senior management leadership; funding and resources; stakeholder engagement; planning; governance and management; and evaluation and reporting

Long-term trends in aquatic ecosystem bioassessment metrics are not influenced by sampling method: empirical evidence from the Niobrara River

Choosing an aquatic invertebrate sampling method for biomonitoring depends upon study goals, resources, and ecosystem conditions. In this study, we compared two methods that are widely used in stream ecology, but have not been directly compared: Hester–Dendy (HD) and Hess sampling. Hester–Dendy sampling uses artificial substrate that invertebrates colonize over a specific period of time. In contrast, Hess samplers surround a fixed area of natural substrate with a net. To compare approaches, we combined 5 years of simultaneous HD and Hess data collection (2010–2014) from the Niobrara River with a 14-year (1996–2009) historical HD data set for the same study sites. We used this full 19-year data set to assess how ecosystem health has changed in the Niobrara River over time, while also testing the influence of HD versus Hess data (2010–2014) on historical trends (1996–2009). Our results showed that HD samples are more taxonomically variable and bias bioassessment metrics because they collect more sensitive taxa versus Hess sampling. However, when combined with the 1996–2009 HD data set, both recent HD and Hess data sets recovered the same trend of declining ecosystem health in the Niobrara River. These results provide empirical evidence that even when historical HD data are combined with recent Hess data, long-term bioassessment trends remain unchanged despite more accurate perspectives of invertebrate assemblages being collected