Committing to Place: museum outreach as NRM extension.

The Committing to Place research project was funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant involving the Tasmanian Institute of Agricultural Research (TIAR) at the University of Tasmania, the Murray-Darling Basin Commission and the National Museum of Australia. The overarching aim of the research was to investigate means of activating and maintaining community participation in natural and cultural resource initiatives in the Murray-Darling Basin. The main research activity of the project was to evaluate and reflect on a series of outreach, extension and education projects. The project considered three research questions: (1) In what ways did these outreach and education activities engage diverse communities? (2) Did these outreach and educational activities influence engagement in NRM issues? (3) What methods are useful for organisations to use in developing and implementing outreach and educational activities that are meaningful for communities? The full final report of the project can be downloaded from the project website: http://www.utas.edu.au/ruralcommunities/committing-to-place.htm. Three key learnings: (1) There are considerable advantages in using indirect ways to promote natural resource management. (2) There are considerable advantages in developing outreach programs that integrate the principles of community engagement into the development and delivery of collaborative and participatory projects. (3) There should be a continued focus on local places in outreach and extension projects, however, in order to appeal to broader audiences, there needs to be an embedding of these local stories in wider contexts

Metrics to evaluate research performance in academic institutions: A critique of ERA 2010 as applied in forestry and the indirect H2 index as a possible alternative

Excellence for Research in Australia (ERA) is an attempt by the Australian Research Council to rate Australian universities on a 5-point scale within 180 Fields of Research using metrics and peer evaluation by an evaluation committee. Some of the bibliometric data contributing to this ranking suffer statistical issues associated with skewed distributions. Other data are standardised year-by-year, placing undue emphasis on the most recent publications which may not yet have reliable citation patterns. The bibliometric data offered to the evaluation committees is extensive, but lacks effective syntheses such as the h-index and its variants. The indirect H2 index is objective, can be computed automatically and efficiently, is resistant to manipulation, and a good indicator of impact to assist the ERA evaluation committees and to similar evaluations internationally.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figures, 7 tables, appendice

Bias in the journal impact factor

The ISI journal impact factor (JIF) is based on a sample that may represent half the whole-of-life citations to some journals, but a small fraction (<10%) of the citations accruing to other journals. This disproportionate sampling means that the JIF provides a misleading indication of the true impact of journals, biased in favour of journals that have a rapid rather than a prolonged impact. Many journals exhibit a consistent pattern of citation accrual from year to year, so it may be possible to adjust the JIF to provide a more reliable indication of a journal's impact.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures; one reference correcte

MEASUREMENT OF SMALLHOLDER TREE FARMS ON LEYTE ISLAND

This paper describes the field techniques used to measure timber volume and log quality from smallholder tree farms on Leyte Island conducted as part of ACIAR project ASEM/2003/052, Improving Financial Returns from Smallholder Tree Farms in the Philippines . Tree farms were included in the sample if they were 0.1 ha or greater in area and contained 100 or more trees. Paired circular blocks were chosen for measurement, one in the centre and one on the edge of the tree block. Where tree farms included multiple blocks of trees, two circular plots were established within each block. For each tree over 10 cm diameter at breast height (dbh) in the plot, measurements were made of dbh, diameter at the base (db), tree height, location, crown depth, crown radius, bearing and distance of each tree with reference to the plot centre. Estimates of log lengths and grade that each tree was expected to yield were also recorded, along with a sketch of each tree. In addition, data were collected on tree farm, block and plot characteristics, and were entered into an ACCESS database for subsequent analysis

Establishing a meaningful human rights due diligence process for corporations : learning from experience of human rights impact assessment

The United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Business and Human Rights, Professor John Ruggie, has constructed a new international framework, which is set to become the cornerstone for all action on human rights and business at the international level. The principle of human rights due diligence (HRDD) is the central component of the corporate duty to respect human rights within that framework. This article argues that Ruggie's HRDD principle contains the majority of the core procedural elements that a reasonable human rights impact assessment (HRIA) process should incorporate. It is likely that the majority of corporations will adopt HRIA as a mechanism for meeting their due diligence responsibilities. However, in the context of the contentious debate around corporate human rights performance, the current state of the art in HRIA gives rise to concerns about the credibility and robustness of likely practice. Additional requirements are therefore essential if HRDD is to have a significant impact on corporate human rights performance – requirements in relation to transparency; external participation and verification; and independent monitoring and review

Exploring the quality of social information disclosed in non-financial reports of Croatian companies

By enacting the provisions of Directive 2014/95/EU and the Croatian Accounting Act on disclosing non-financial and diversity information, companies of public interest registering 500 and more employees are required to disclose non-financial information. The purpose of this research is to assess the quality of disclosed social information in non- financial/sustainability reports of Croatian companies. The assessment of the social information was grounded on the framework defined by globally accepted sustainability reporting standards by assessing the quality of social subcategories of human rights, labour practice, community/society and product, measured by attributes of relevance, clarity, verifiability, comparability and clarity. With the overall quality score of 13.16 (out of possible 36), the results prove that Croatian companies do disclose certain social information, but the reliability of this information for benchmarking and competitiveness assessment is questionable, as a consensus on the minimum of information to be disclosed as a fundamental requirement for benchmarking has not yet been reached

Growth and Yield of a Tropical Rain Forest in the Brazilian Amazon 13 Years After Logging

Successive inventories of a silvicultural experiment in terra firme rain forest within the Tapajos National Forest in the Brazilian Amazon are examined to provide guidelines for operational forest management on a sustainable basis. The experiment was logged in 1979 without additional silvicultural treatment, but included protection from further logging and encroachment ("log and leave"). Thirty-six permanent plots established in 1981, were remeasured in 1987 and 1992. Logging changed the canopy structure and altered the composition of the stand, reducing the number of shade tolerant species and stimulating light demanding species. There was a nett increase in stem number and stand basal area during the 11 year observation period, and this trend also holds for most of the individual species. The stand basal area 13 years after logging was about 75% of that in a comparable unlogged forest. Logging stimulated growth, but this effect was short-lived, lasting only about 3 years, and current growth rates are similar to those in the unlogged forest. Between the first and second remeasures, average diameter increment decreased from 0.4 to 0.2 cm/yr, mortality remained relatively constant at 2.5% per year, while recruitment (at 5 cm dbh) decreased from 5% to 2%. Total volume production declined from approx. 6 to 4 cu m/ha/yr, while commercial production remained about 0.8 cu m/ha/yr. New commercial species increased the commercial volume in 1992 from 18 to 54 cu m/ha, and the increment to 1.8 cu m/ha/yr. Results from this experiment provide the first quantitative information for management planning in the Tapajos Forest, and may guide the choice of cutting cycle and annual allowable cut. Silvicultural treatment to stimulate growth rates in forest areas zoned for timber production should be considered as a viable management option. Extrapolations of these results to an anticipated 30-35 year cutting cycle must be interpreted with caution. On-going remeasurement and analysis of these and other plots over the next 30 years or more are necessary to provide a stronger basis for management inferences