Human Rights in the Context of Environmental Conservation on the US-Mexico Border

At Cabeza Priesta National Wildlife Refuge, a wilderness area on the US-Mexico border in Arizona, conflicting policies permit the provision of supplementary water for wildlife but not for undocumented immigrants passing through the area. Federal refuge environmental policy prioritizes active management of endangered and threatened species. Vast systems of water resources have been developed to support wildlife conservation in this extremely hot and dry environment. At the same time, humanitarian groups are not allowed to supply water to undocumented border crossers in the park. Human border-crossers must utilize non-potable wildlife water guzzlers for survival and face risk of illness or death by dehydration. This article analyzes human rights via an ethnographic lens. From this perspective, water policy at the wildlife refuge brings into question the value of human life in a border conservation context, especially for those entering the site illegally

TRY plant trait database – enhanced coverage and open access

Plant traits - the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants - determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait‐based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits - almost complete coverage for ‘plant growth form’. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait–environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives

Phonetic simplification processes in the English of the Barrio: A cross-generational sociolinguistic study of the Chicanos of Los Angeles

I investigate the phonetic realization of syllable structure in Chicano English (=ChE) to characterize its status as a language contact dialect, its relation to the target language, and the changes it undergoes. I study two simplification processes, one consonantal and one vocalic, in the vernacular of a balanced sample of forty-five adult Chicanos (=Mexican-Americans), non-native and native speakers, across five generations using methods of empirical linguistics. A well-studied sociolinguistic variable, /-t,d/ deletion, serves to linguistically situate ChE in the absence of a description of the matrix dialect. When compared to a cross-dialectal characterization of the variable, I find differences in ChE. I discover no cross-generational changes, or convergence in the constraints of /-t,d/ deletion (including non-native speaking immigrants); although one morphological change is attributed to differences in language use of two age-groups. Increased deletion is correlated both with: greater sonority in the preceding segment; and lower sonority in the following segment. I attribute the latter findings to specific aspects of English syllable structure. The less-studied variable, in sociolinguistic terms, is unstressed vowel reduction. Spanish, the substrate, has no vowel reduction while English does, so I investigate how ChE develops vowel reduction. Formant frequency measurements are made of stressed and unstressed vowels for four speakers. I find that Euro-American vowel reduction is not \u27acquired\u27 by ChE native speakers. Neither generation, language use at home, bilingualism versus monolingualism, or any linguistic factor plays a developmental role. Rather, a distinctive ChE pattern is found: mid vowels reduce while mid vowels do not reduce. When a fifth speaker is considered, a regular progression is tentatively suggested: vowel reduction develops in proportion to the amount of exposure to matrix dialect speakers. I did not consistently find native speaker resolution of interference-type confusions in speech of the non-native speaker. The dialect\u27s distinctive constraints on the simplification processes are shared by non-native and monolingual native speakers alike; generation is not significant. In a sense, the contact dialect establishes its characteristics before it has native speakers. Accommodation to the matrix dialect is an independent social process that involves the nature of contact between dialects

Phonetic simplification processes in the English of the Barrio: A cross-generational sociolinguistic study of the Chicanos of Los Angeles

I investigate the phonetic realization of syllable structure in Chicano English (=ChE) to characterize its status as a language contact dialect, its relation to the target language, and the changes it undergoes. I study two simplification processes, one consonantal and one vocalic, in the vernacular of a balanced sample of forty-five adult Chicanos (=Mexican-Americans), non-native and native speakers, across five generations using methods of empirical linguistics. A well-studied sociolinguistic variable, /-t,d/ deletion, serves to linguistically situate ChE in the absence of a description of the matrix dialect. When compared to a cross-dialectal characterization of the variable, I find differences in ChE. I discover no cross-generational changes, or convergence in the constraints of /-t,d/ deletion (including non-native speaking immigrants); although one morphological change is attributed to differences in language use of two age-groups. Increased deletion is correlated both with: greater sonority in the preceding segment; and lower sonority in the following segment. I attribute the latter findings to specific aspects of English syllable structure. The less-studied variable, in sociolinguistic terms, is unstressed vowel reduction. Spanish, the substrate, has no vowel reduction while English does, so I investigate how ChE develops vowel reduction. Formant frequency measurements are made of stressed and unstressed vowels for four speakers. I find that Euro-American vowel reduction is not \u27acquired\u27 by ChE native speakers. Neither generation, language use at home, bilingualism versus monolingualism, or any linguistic factor plays a developmental role. Rather, a distinctive ChE pattern is found: mid vowels reduce while mid vowels do not reduce. When a fifth speaker is considered, a regular progression is tentatively suggested: vowel reduction develops in proportion to the amount of exposure to matrix dialect speakers. I did not consistently find native speaker resolution of interference-type confusions in speech of the non-native speaker. The dialect\u27s distinctive constraints on the simplification processes are shared by non-native and monolingual native speakers alike; generation is not significant. In a sense, the contact dialect establishes its characteristics before it has native speakers. Accommodation to the matrix dialect is an independent social process that involves the nature of contact between dialects

Toward a More Adequate Characterization of the Chicano Language Setting

Although several typologies of the linguistic varieties of language varieties heard in the speech of Chicanos have been proposed, many disagreements about the assumptions underlying such typologies remain, in particular, concerning the nature of Chicano English. These disagreements have a direct, detrimental effect on the assessment and education of Chicano children, and by extension, all language minority children. Critical commentary on certain of these disagreements is presented in this paper. A unitary model of the language varieties used by Chicanos which goes beyond recent typologies is proposed, made on the basis of explicit assumptions about the sociolinguistic nature of language setting of Chicanos. Four examples of this Chicano language setting model are presented, utilizing recent nationwide and three statewide demographic figures. On the basis of these assumptions, Chicano English is characterized as the autonomous vernacular dialect of native English speaking Chicanos