Kaneohe Bay Sewage Diversion Experiment: Perspectives on Ecosystem Responses to Nutritional Perturbation

Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, received increasing amounts of sewage from the 1950s through 1977. Most sewage was diverted from the bay in 1977 and early 1978. This investigation, begun in January 1976 and continued through August 1979, described the bay over that period, with particular reference to the responses of the ecosystem to sewage diversion. The sewage was a nutritional subsidy. All of the inorganic nitrogen and most of the inorganic phosphorus introduced into the ecosystem were taken up biologically before being advected from the bay. The major uptake was by phytoplankton, and the internal water-column cycle between dissolved nutrients, phytoplankton, zooplankton, microheterotrophs, and detritus supported a rate of productivity far exceeding the rate of nutrient loading. These water-column particles were partly washed out of the ecosystem and partly sedimented and became available to the benthos. The primary benthic response to nutrient loading was a large buildup of detritivorous heterotrophic biomass. Cycling of nutrients among heterotrophs, autotrophs, detritus, and inorganic nutrients was important. With sewage diversion, the biomass of both plankton and benthos decreased rapidly. Benthic biological composition has not yet returned to presewage conditions, partly because some key organisms are long-lived and partly because the bay substratum has been perturbed by both the sewage and other human influences

Researcher self‐care and caring in the research community

This paper seeks to begin a discussion on researcher self‐care in response to the state of contemporary academia, which sees increasing issues of academic stress and anxiety, and the growing use of facile metrics. Specifically, we wish to explore the potential a critical engagement with self‐care poses for ourselves as academics and the communities of which we are a part – what kinpaisby (2008) refers to as the “communiversity.” Our central argument is that self‐care may be regarded as a radical act that can push against the interests of the neoliberal university. We illustrate how researcher self‐care can be engaged as a reflexive process that operates to create and inform change within our communities through recognising ourselves as networked actors, rather than self‐contained individuals as the neoliberal ideology would have us believe. This paper is intended as an opening towards a much larger discussion regarding academia – of the communities, work environments, and “impacts” we wish to be a part of and how to begin working towards realising these

Illegal wildlife trade and the persistence of “plant blindness”

Societal Impact Statement A wide variety of plant species are threatened by illegal wildlife trade (IWT), and yet plants receive scant attention in IWT policy and research, a matter of pressing global concern. This review examines how “plant blindness” manifests within policy and research on IWT, with serious and detrimental effects for biodiversity conservation. We suggest several key points: (a) perhaps with the exception of the illegal timber market, plants are overlooked in IWT policy and research; (b) there is insufficient attention from funding agencies to the presence and persistence of illegal trade in plants; and (c) these absences are at least in part resultant from plant blindness as codified in governmental laws defining the meaning of “wildlife.” Summary This review investigates the ways in which “plant blindness,” first described by Wandersee and Schussler (1999, p. 82) as “the misguided anthropocentric ranking of plants as inferior to animals,” intersects with the contemporary boom in research and policy on illegal wildlife trade (IWT). We argue that plants have been largely ignored within this emerging conservation arena, with serious and detrimental effects for biodiversity conservation. With the exception of the illegal trade in timber, we show that plants are absent from much emerging scholarship, and receive scant attention by US and UK funding agencies often driving global efforts to address illegal wildlife trade, despite the high levels of threat many plants face. Our article concludes by discussing current challenges posed by plant blindness in IWT policy and research, but also suggests reasons for cautious optimism in addressing this critical issue for plant conservation

Participation in biocultural diversity conservation : insights from five Amazonian examples

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-MThe past three decades have seen the emergence of myriads of initiatives focused on conserving, revitalizing, and maintaining Indigenous and Local Knowledge (ILK) as part of biocultural approaches to conservation. However, the extent to which these efforts have been participatory has been often overlooked. In this chapter, we focus on five prominent ILK conservation initiatives in the Amazon Basin to examine the participation of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) in ILK conservation. Our review illustrates several examples of ILK conservation initiatives offering substantial opportunities for meaningful IPLC participation over the long term. Overall, our case studies suggest that the development of robust and inclusive decision-making processes is essential to optimize IPLC participation in ILK conservation, thereby increasing the legitimacy of these initiatives. Our review is not an exhaustive account of the breadth and depth of all initiatives promoting participatory biocultural conservation in this region, but it illustrates that there are many strategies that can help foster IPLC engagement and lead the participatory turn in biocultural conservation

Critical Invasion Science: Weeds, Pests, and Aliens

The study of invasive plants and animals calls strongly for a critical approach due to the deeply social nature of invasion landscapes, the power relations affecting the science of invasions, and the differential impacts of weed or pest control on lives and landscapes. I first explore what a “critical” invasion science means. Then I investigate several aspects of invasion science ripe for critical analysis: the history of the science (to understand what the science is doing and why), the terminology and categories of analysis, and the highly contested social, political, and ethical context within which invasion management takes place. I conclude with four proposals for further work in critical invasion science and examples of the types of questions it might ask

Losses of Sacramento River Chinook salmon and delta smelt to entrainment in water diversions in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta

Pumping at the water export facilities in the southern Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta kills fish at and near the associated fish-salvage facilities. Correlative analysis of salvage counts with population indices have failed to provide quantitative estimates of the magnitude of this mortality. I estimated the proportional losses of Sacramento River Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) and delta smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus) to place these losses in a population context. The estimate for salmon was based on recoveries of tagged smolts released in the upper Sacramento River basin. And recovered at the fish-salvage facilities in the south delta and in a trawling program in the western delta. The proportion of fish salvaged increased with export flow. With a mean value around 10% at the highest export flow recorded. Mortality was around 10% if pre-salvage losses were about 80% but this value is nearly unconcentrated. Losses of adult delta smelt in winter and young delta smelt in spring were estimated from salvage data (adults) corrected for estimated pre-salvage survival or from trawl data in the southern delta (young). These losses were divided by population size and accumulated over the respective seasons. Losses of adult delta smelt were 1-50% (median 15%) although the highest value may have been biased upward. Daily losses of larvae and juveniles were 0–8%, and seasonal losses accumulated were 0–25% (median 13%). The effect of these losses on population abundance was obscured by subsequent 50-fold variability in survival from summer to fall