‘I’d like to report a suspicious looking tree’: public concern, public attention and the nature of reporting about ash dieback in the UK

‘Public concern’, a ubiquitous notion used in descriptive and explanatory modes by policymakers, academics, and the media, is often presented as axiomatic. However, the variability with which it is deployed in different contexts, e.g. as justification for policy attention or having equivalence with what is considered ‘newsworthy’, belies this status. This paper presents an empirical analysis of emails and phone calls from the UK public, to UK government agencies, reporting suspected cases of ash dieback disease; a tree health issue which attracted intense media and policy attention in the UK in 2012. We challenge the view that public attentiveness is necessarily indicative of public concern, or that media attention can be taken as its proxy. Examination of concern at macro and micro levels reveals heterogeneous processes with multiple dimensions. Understanding the nature of public concern is crucial in enabling more effective policy development and operational responses to risk related issues

Potential improvements in the characterization of forest canopy gaps caused by windthrow using fine spatial resolution multispectral data: comparing hard and soft classification techniques

Gaps often form in forest canopies due to windthrow and have important management and ecological implications. Remote sensing has considerable potential for the provision of information on gap properties but this has not been fully realized. This is largely due to the use of conventional (hard, one-pixel one-class) image analysis techniques and imagery with a relatively coarse spatial resolution. This article investigates the potential to extract information on gap properties from fine spatial resolution airborne thematic mapper imagery using soft classification techniques that allow image pixels to have multiple and partial class membership. It is shown that a standard hard maximum likelihood classification may be used to derive an accurate map of the land cover of a forested site (95.1%) from which gaps in a canopy of Sitka spruce were accurately identified (94.5%). The maximum likelihood classification was also softened by outputting probabilities of class membership for each pixel. Softening the classification increased the information on gap properties that could be extracted from the data. In particular, the accuracy with which key gap properties, such as gap area, perimeter length and shape, were estimated was higher in the outputs of the softened than hard classification. Thus, while strong correlations between the remotely sensed and ground data estimates of gap area (r 0.96) and perimeter (r 0.87), based on a sample of 36 gaps, were derived from all classifications, the accuracy with which gap properties were estimated was generally highest when a soft classification was used. For example, the use of a soft rather than hard classification resulted in the root mean square error in estimating gap area declining from 144.90 to 132.87 m2. Furthermore, the soft classification allowed the sharpness of the gap boundary to be estimated, enabling further gap properties to be inferred. In particular, the soft classification output enabled the direction of the wind event causing the initial damage to be estimated, and it may aid the definition of sites with a future risk of windthrow

Real without being concrete: the ontology of public concern and its significance for the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF)

Public concern is a pivotal notion in the risk perception, communication and management literature. It is, for example, a central concept with regard to the social amplification of risk, and as a justification for policy attention. Despite its ubiquity, the notion of public concern remains a ‘black box’ presenting a poorly understood state of affairs as a reified matter-of-fact. Paying attention to the deployment and metrics of public concern, and the work it is required to do, will enhance the power of approaches to understanding risk, and policymaking. Thus, the broad purpose of this paper is to unpack the notion of public concern by adopting an ontological yet critical perspective, drawing on a range of literature that considers ontology. We reflect on how publics and public concern have been conceptualised with regard to the dichotomies of individual/social and private/public, given that they imply different levels and dimensions of concern. We draw on empirical work that illuminates the assessment and measurement of public concern and how the public have responded to risk events. Considering public concern through an ontological lens affords a means of drawing renewed critical attention to objects that might otherwise appear finished or ready-made.</p

The effects of revised windiness scores on the calculation and distribution of windthrow hazard classes

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