Federal Aid to Schools: Its Limited Future

A brief history of the development of the limited-purpose Federal education programs is used as background to make a case for the diminishing likelihood of a major Federal initiative Beyond the presently enacted categorical grant programs. It is noted that present limited Federal programs, centering on education for the disadvantaged have been significant, are being improved and will likely remain the model for future Federal interventions

Puget sound habitat status and trends monitoring program: nearshore and large river delta geospatial data and habitat status and trends monitoring metrics

The Puget Sound Habitat Status and Trends Monitoring (PSHSTM) program was developed to provide consistent salmon habitat status and trends data to support status reviews of Endangered Species Act (ESA) listed salmon populations across Puget Sound’s major population groups. Our approach primarily relies on readily available and regularly updated aerial imagery to consistently map key habitat features at a regional scale. We have developed a census-based approach to map key habitat features throughout the nearshore, large river delta, large river, and floodplain environments across Puget Sound. This presentation will focus on our mapping efforts in Puget Sound’s nearshore and large river delta environments, and the habitat status and trends metrics that will be derived from these efforts to support ESA listing reviews. In the nearshore environment, we are mapping overwater structures (e.g., docks, piers, bridges, buoys/floats, booms, aquaculture, and boat ramps), forested shoreline, and small embayment habitat features (e.g., lagoons, pocket estuaries, and blind tidal channels) for all ≈4,000 km of Puget Sound’s shoreline. In the large river delta environment, we are mapping tidal wetland areas, geomorphic delta boundaries, and channel features (e.g., distributaries and tidal channels) for all 17 large river deltas that drain into the Puget Sound, Hood Canal, and the Strait of Juan de Fuca. This census-based approach will provide a unique opportunity to develop consistent habitat status and trends metrics for habitat quantity and quality at a regional scale that can be used to inform ESA status reviews of listed salmon populations. We anticipate that the consistent regional-scale geospatial data sets developed from these efforts can be used to support a variety of other research and management needs

Conserving plants within and beyond protected areas - still problematic and future uncertain

Against a background of continuing loss of biodiversity, it is argued that for the successful conservation of threatened plant species we need to ensure the more effective integration of the various conservation actions employed, clarify the wording of the CBD targets and provide clearer operational guidance as to how they are to be implemented and their implementation monitored. The role and effectiveness of protected areas in conserving biodiversity and in particular plant species are discussed as are recent proposals for a massive increase of their extent. The need for much greater effort and investment in the conservation or protection of threatened species outside protected areas where most plant diversity occurs is highlighted. The difficulties involved in implementing effective conservation of plant diversity both at an area- and species/population-based level are discussed. The widespread neglect of species recovery for plants is noted and the desirability of making a clearer distinction between species recovery and reintroduction is emphasized. Key messages from a global overview of species recovery are outlined and recommendations made, including the desirability of each country preparing a national species recovery strategy. The projected impacts of global change on protected areas and on species conservation and recovery, and ways of addressing them are discussed

Global challenges for seagrass conservation

Seagrasses, flowering marine plants that form underwater meadows, play a significant global role in supporting food security, mitigating climate change and supporting biodiversity. Although progress is being made to conserve seagrass meadows in select areas, most meadows remain under significant pressure resulting in a decline in meadow condition and loss of function. Effective management strategies need to be implemented to reverse seagrass loss and enhance their fundamental role in coastal ocean habitats. Here we propose that seagrass meadows globally face a series of significant common challenges that must be addressed from a multifaceted and interdisciplinary perspective in order to achieve global conservation of seagrass meadows. The six main global challenges to seagrass conservation are (1) a lack of awareness of what seagrasses are and a limited societal recognition of the importance of seagrasses in coastal systems; (2) the status of many seagrass meadows are unknown, and up-to-date information on status and condition is essential; (3) understanding threatening activities at local scales is required to target management actions accordingly; (4) expanding our understanding of interactions between the socio-economic and ecological elements of seagrass systems is essential to balance the needs of people and the planet; (5) seagrass research should be expanded to generate scientific inquiries that support conservation actions; (6) increased understanding of the linkages between seagrass and climate change is required to adapt conservation accordingly. We also explicitly outline a series of proposed policy actions that will enable the scientific and conservation community to rise to these challenges. We urge the seagrass conservation community to engage stakeholders from local resource users to international policy-makers to address the challenges outlined here, in order to secure the future of the world’s seagrass ecosystems and maintain the vital services which they supply

Examining sources of ecological resilience to climate change for restoration planning

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2014Restoration ecology is a burgeoning field and ecological restoration efforts are becoming more wide-spread. However studies reveal that many restoration efforts fail to accomplish their objectives because they do not address the root cause of degradation or because there is a mismatch between the scale of the problem and scale of the restoration action. Currently, practitioners are faced with the dual challenge to restore system functioning while preparing for unknown impacts from anthropogenic climate change. Climate change could serve as the needed catalyst to shift approaches that allow for natural variability and shifting dynamics to accommodate for unknown climate change impacts. Restoring natural sources of resilience is believed to be an effective way to build adaptive capacity to climate change. There are however many questions surrounding the pragmatic application of resilience theories. One such barrier is identifying what factors within a system influences response to disturbance. Consequently, a critical first step is to identify the dynamic processes and associated attributes that influence resilience in natural systems. In this study, I examined published literature to identify a suite of ecological attributes that influence resilience, either through resisting change or recovering from disturbance. I then developed a Decision Support Tool (DST) to navigate the resilience attributes and to help integrate resilience planning and monitoring into restoration projects

Decision Support Table (DST).

<p>Decision Support Table (DST).</p

A systematic review of ecological attributes that confer resilience to climate change in environmental restoration

<div><p>Ecological restoration is widely practiced as a means of rehabilitating ecosystems and habitats that have been degraded or impaired through human use or other causes. Restoration practices now are confronted by climate change, which has the potential to influence long-term restoration outcomes. Concepts and attributes from the resilience literature can help improve restoration and monitoring efforts under changing climate conditions. We systematically examined the published literature on ecological resilience to identify biological, chemical, and physical attributes that confer resilience to climate change. We identified 45 attributes explicitly related to climate change and classified them as individual- (9), population- (6), community- (7), ecosystem- (7), or process-level attributes (16). Individual studies defined resilience as resistance to change or recovery from disturbance, and only a few studies explicitly included both concepts in their definition of resilience. We found that individual and population attributes generally are suited to species- or habitat-specific restoration actions and applicable at the population scale. Community attributes are better suited to habitat-specific restoration at the site scale, or system-wide restoration at the ecosystem scale. Ecosystem and process attributes vary considerably in their type and applicability. We summarize these relationships in a decision support table and provide three example applications to illustrate how these classifications can be used to prioritize climate change resilience attributes for specific restoration actions. We suggest that (1) including resilience as an explicit planning objective could increase the success of restoration projects, (2) considering the ecological context and focal scale of a restoration action is essential in choosing appropriate resilience attributes, and (3) certain ecological attributes, such as diversity and connectivity, are more commonly considered to confer resilience because they apply to a wide variety of species and ecosystems. We propose that identifying sources of ecological resilience is a critical step in restoring ecosystems in a changing climate.</p></div