Are Coyotes “Natural”? Differences in Perceptions of Coyotes Among Urban and Suburban Park Users

By 2050 more than 65% of humans are expected to live in urban and suburban areas. This shift has gained the attention of conservation scientists and managers with more focus directed on conflict and coexistence between wildlife and urbanized populations. One species that is increasingly prominent in urban and suburban environments is the coyote (Canis latrans). Coyotes have established themselves as a keystone predator with a regulating effect on prey populations, thus playing an important role in the functioning of the urban ecosystem. However, research has shown that negative perceptions of coyotes are common and contribute to support for eradication-focused management strategies, such as broad-scale trapping or culling, which are expensive and largely ineffective. To better understand coyote acceptance and non-acceptance we conducted a comparative study of park users residing in two counties in the New York metropolitan area: a suburban county, where coyotes are already established, and an urban county, where coyotes have only recently begun to arrive. Our findings suggest that urban respondents have lower levels of coyote acceptance and higher preference for coyote removal than suburban respondents. We tested multiple predictor variables to determine which was the strongest driver of desire for removal: perception of threat to humans and pets, perception of coyote “naturalness” in the environment, and appropriateness of expressed reaction to a hypothetical coyote encounter. We found that perception of coyote “naturalness” was the strongest predictor of whether people felt that coyotes belonged in the region and thus should not be removed. Our results suggest that wildlife coexistence strategies could benefit from messages that instill in residents a sense that their local area is a place where coyotes and other wild animals belong

Blue Spaces as Social Spaces: Measuring the Uses and Values of Urban Waterfronts

Due to a combination of climate change-driven threats and economic opportunities, cities across the world are investing billions of dollars in waterfront infrastructure and coastal restoration. Urban planners and park managers are often tasked with designing and programming blue spaces to maximize ecosystem services (ES) for local users. However, it is not always clear which ES are most valued, and by whom. Thus, the design of urban waterfronts presents challenges in identifying how communities engage with these spaces and how new planning might alter such uses if not accounted for. This paper describes a Rapid Social Assessment (RSA) methodology that has been piloted in the NYC metropolitan area to successfully ground community engagement and planning in an understanding of how urban blue spaces are currently used. This methodology can be coupled with other types of data collection for a better characterization of the coupled human-natural dynamics of these spaces, and can be adapted to coastal, lake, and riparian waterfronts globally

The Cascadia Initiative : a sea change In seismological studies of subduction zones

Author Posting. © The Oceanography Society, 2014. This article is posted here by permission of The Oceanography Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Oceanography 27, no. 2 (2014): 138-150, doi:10.5670/oceanog.2014.49.Increasing public awareness that the Cascadia subduction zone in the Pacific Northwest is capable of great earthquakes (magnitude 9 and greater) motivates the Cascadia Initiative, an ambitious onshore/offshore seismic and geodetic experiment that takes advantage of an amphibious array to study questions ranging from megathrust earthquakes, to volcanic arc structure, to the formation, deformation and hydration of the Juan De Fuca and Gorda Plates. Here, we provide an overview of the Cascadia Initiative, including its primary science objectives, its experimental design and implementation, and a preview of how the resulting data are being used by a diverse and growing scientific community. The Cascadia Initiative also exemplifies how new technology and community-based experiments are opening up frontiers for marine science. The new technology—shielded ocean bottom seismometers—is allowing more routine investigation of the source zone of megathrust earthquakes, which almost exclusively lies offshore and in shallow water. The Cascadia Initiative offers opportunities and accompanying challenges to a rapidly expanding community of those who use ocean bottom seismic data.The Cascadia Initiative is supported by the National Science Foundation; the CIET is supported under grants OCE- 1139701, OCE-1238023, OCE‐1342503, OCE-1407821, and OCE-1427663 to the University of Oregon

Reducing Binge Drinking? The Effect of a Ban on Late-Night Off-Premise Alcohol Sales on Alcohol-Related Hospital Stays in Germany

Excessive alcohol consumption among young people is a major public health concern. On March 1, 2010, the German state of Baden-Württemberg banned the sale of alcoholic beverages between 10pm and 5am at off-premise outlets (e.g., gas stations, kiosks, supermarkets). We use rich monthly administrative data from a 70 percent random sample of all hospitalizations during the years 2007-2011 in Germany in order to evaluate the short-term impact of this policy on alcohol-related hospitalizations. Applying difference-in-differences methods, we find that the policy change reduces alcohol-related hospitalizations among adolescents and young adults by about seven percent. There is also evidence of a decrease in the number of hospitalizations due to violent assault as a result of the ban

The Cascadia Initiative: A Sea Change In Seismological Studies of Subduction Zones

Increasing public awareness that the Cascadia subduction zone in the Pacific Northwest is capable of great earthquakes (magnitude 9 and greater) motivates the Cascadia Initiative, an ambitious onshore/offshore seismic and geodetic experiment that takes advantage of an amphibious array to study questions ranging from megathrust earthquakes, to volcanic arc structure, to the formation, deformation and hydration of the Juan De Fuca and Gorda Plates. Here, we provide an overview of the Cascadia Initiative, including its primary science objectives, its experimental design and implementation, and a preview of how the resulting data are being used by a diverse and growing scientific community. The Cascadia Initiative also exemplifies how new technology and community-based experiments are opening up frontiers for marine science. The new technology—shielded ocean bottom seismometers—is allowing more routine investigation of the source zone of megathrust earthquakes, which almost exclusively lies offshore and in shallow water. The Cascadia Initiative offers opportunities and accompanying challenges to a rapidly expanding community of those who use ocean bottom seismic data.This is the publisher’s final pdf. The published article is copyrighted by the Oceanography Society and can be found at: http://www.tos.org/oceanography/index.html

Alignment among environmental programs in higher education: What Food-Energy-Water Nexus concepts are covered in introductory courses?

Interdisciplinary environmental and sustainability (IES) programs are different from other fields because they focus on a complex integration of humanities, social, and natural sciences concepts centered on the interactions of coupled human and natural systems. The interdisciplinary nature of IES programs does not lend itself to traditional discipline-specific concept inventory frameworks for critically evaluating preconceptions and learning. We discuss the results of the first phase of a research project to develop a next generation concept inventory for evaluating interdisciplinary concepts important for introductory IES courses. Using the Food-Energy-Water (FEW) Nexus (the intersections/interdependencies of food, energy, and water sectors) as our focus, we conducted a content analysis of eight representative college-level introductory environmental course syllabi and course materials (e.g., textbooks, journal articles, print media) to identify common interdisciplinary FEW Nexus concepts taught in introductory IES courses. Results demonstrate that all IES introductory course materials reference the FEW Nexus. Food, energy, and/or water resources as individual elements of the FEW Nexus are frequently described, but connections between these resource systems are included less often. Biology, energy systems, waste and pollution in the natural environment, agriculture, earth sciences and geology, climate change, behavioral social sciences, and economics concepts are most associated with FEW concepts, hinting at commonalities across IES topics that anchor systems thinking. Despite differences in IES programs, there appears to be some alignment between core concepts being taught at the FEW Nexus in introductory courses.</p