Hydrogeology of a groundwater sustained montane peatland: Grass Lake, California

Persistently wet conditions are essential to prevent the decomposition of organic material that forms peatlands. Wetlands in areas with a snow-melt dominated precipitation regime and little or no summer precipitation often rely on groundwater to meet late-season water requirements. Past and predicted changes in climate for the Sierra Nevada show a trend towards more winter precipitation falling as rain rather than snow. This is expected to result in reduced late-season water availability and the subsequent degradation of peatlands. Measurements of groundwater levels, stream flow, specific conductance, and peat water retention characteristics are used to quantify aspects of the hydrologic system that supports Grass Lake, south of Lake Tahoe California, the largest peatland in the Sierra Nevada. Water budget calculations using periodic measurements collected throughout the growing season show that groundwater discharge is a significant component of the water balance in the late-summer and fall. Late-season evapotranspiration needs were approximately balanced by groundwater inflow for 2010 (average water year). Groundwater discharge to the peatland dominated the late-season water budget in 2011 (above average water year) and persisted into October. Water retention experiments and field data suggest desaturation of the peatland accounts for approximately 0.5 mm day−1, or roughly 10 % of the estimated evapotranspiration rate

Determinants of the attitudes of Portuguese accounting students and professionals towards earnings management

We revisit religiosity, gender, age, ethics education and experience as drivers of ethicality, while expanding prior research from Anglo-Saxon and Asiatic/Euro-Asiatic countries to a Latin European country, Portugal. We apply the Merchant (1989) instrument of attitudes towards earnings management, in a sample of Portuguese accounting students and alumni. We find no significant evidence of a positive association between religiosity and accountants’ judgments on earnings management. However, gender, age, education (and accounting ethics education) and experience are significant predictors of accountants’ judgments. The results are unchanged when we control for the intent (selfish benefit) of earnings management. Females, older individuals and alumni judge accounting earnings management more harshly than males, younger individuals, and students (who have not yet completed an accounting ethics course). A higher level of accounting work experience induces accountants to judge accounting earnings management as a less ethically questionable practice. This finding is theoretically relevant because it underscores the necessity of taking people’s constraints in the workplace into consideration when studying ethical behavior in business contexts. The results are also practically relevant, as they highlight the importance of a systematic ethics education throughout the accountant’s life.Funding -This paper is financed by National Funds of the FCT –Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology within the project UID/ECO/03182/201