Opposition and Barriers to Conservation Easements: Insights from Montana Landowners

A conservation easement (CE) is a voluntary agreement that perpetually limits development on private land in order to protect open space, agricultural land, and scenic amenities, as well as ecological or historic resources. Due to the fact that CEs are voluntary, an understanding of the landowner’s decision about whether or not to participate in conservation easement programs is imperative if CE use is to continue and expand. Moreover, understanding how non-participating landowners view CEs, how they regard the incentives, and how CEs fit or do not fit with their ideas regarding private property and conservation is of critical importance for conservationists in this field. This study investigated the barriers to placing conservation easements on one’s property from the perspective of landowners in western Montana. This research was conducted in an effort to better understand how these landowners view conservation easements, where opposition to easements arises from, and how these perspectives might inform efforts to conserve private lands. An additional goal of this project was to investigate how landowner views and interests relative to easements differ between different types of landowners and among different geographic areas. Finally, the hope was that knowledge gained from this study would help illuminate mechanisms for addressing these barriers. Findings indicate that there are three distinct factors that discourage western Montana landowners from CEs. The first barrier was the perpetual nature of CEs. Landowners expressed a discomfort with perpetuity and did not think that a restriction on their property could remain workable forever. The second prevalent concern was the loss of control that landowners associated with CEs. Many landowners were concerned about the excessive micro-management they believed would accompany a CE. The third barrier was a lack of trust in the organizations and agencies that work with CEs. Landowners were concerned about how conservation organizations will manage the enforcement of CE agreements and also expressed concerns regarding non-local factors and government influence. These findings indicate that there is a wide range of interrelated reasons for why landowners decide not pursue CEs. These results highlight potential avenues for addressing landowner concerns as well as areas of continued challenge to expanded CE programs

Green Building: Sustainable Water Consultancy

The aim of this report is to present the results of water and wastewater modelling undertaken as part of a sustainable water consultancy for the ACF/Surrowee Green Building Project. The Institute for Sustainable Futures was engaged to develop a series of options, and to undertake modelling of the hydraulic, technical, economic and other aspects of these options and their implementation, in cooperation with the Design Team and other stakeholders. For a building of this type to achieve the goal of worldâs best practice environmental performance in a commercially viable office building, it is imperative that scheme water demand be reduced as much as possible. The practical limits of demand reduction were tested by detailed end-use modelling of various sustainable water management âoptionsâ incorporating water efficiency, reuse and dry sanitation technologies. The results of modelling and the cost benefit analysis indicate that many of the options would provide net financial gains if the potential benefits from running tours and also from sale of produce from the roofgarden were included

Orbit targeting specialist function: Level C formulation requirements

A definition of the level C requirements for onboard maneuver targeting software is provided. Included are revisions of the level C software requirements delineated in JSC IN 78-FM-27, Proximity Operations Software; Level C Requirements, dated May 1978. The software supports the terminal phase midcourse (TPM) maneuver, braking and close-in operations as well as supporting computation of the rendezvous corrective combination maneuver (NCC), and the terminal phase initiation (TPI). Specific formulation is contained here for the orbit targeting specialist function including the processing logic, linkage, and data base definitions for all modules. The crew interface with the software is through the keyboard and the ORBIT-TGT display

Momentum and scalar transport within a vegetation canopy following atmospheric stability and seasonal canopy changes: the CHATS experiment

Momentum and scalar (heat and water vapor) transfer between a walnut canopy and the overlying atmosphere are investigated for two seasonal periods (before and after leaf-out), and for five thermal stability regimes (free and forced convection, near-neutral condition, transition to stable, and stable). Quadrant and octant analyses of momentum and scalar fluxes followed by space-time autocorrelations of observations from the Canopy Horizontal Array Turbulence Study's (CHATS) thirty meter tower help characterize the motions exchanging momentum, heat, and moisture between the canopy layers and aloft. <br><br> During sufficiently windy conditions, i.e. in forced convection, near-neutral and transition to stable regimes, momentum and scalars are generally transported by sweep and ejection motions associated with the well-known canopy-top "shear-driven" coherent eddy structures. During extreme stability conditions (both unstable and stable), the role of these "shear-driven" structures in transporting scalars decreases, inducing notable dissimilarity between momentum and scalar transport. <br><br> In unstable conditions, "shear-driven" coherent structures are progressively replaced by "buo-yantly-driven" structures, known as thermal plumes; which appear very efficient at transporting scalars, especially upward thermal plumes above the canopy. Within the canopy, downward thermal plumes become more efficient at transporting scalars than upward thermal plumes if scalar sources are located in the upper canopy. We explain these features by suggesting that: (i) downward plumes within the canopy correspond to large downward plumes coming from above, and (ii) upward plumes within the canopy are local small plumes induced by canopy heat sources where passive scalars are first injected if there sources are at the same location as heat sources. Above the canopy, these small upward thermal plumes aggregate to form larger scale upward thermal plumes. Furthermore, scalar quantities carried by downward plumes are not modified when penetrating the canopy and crossing upper scalar sources. Consequently, scalars appear to be preferentially injected into upward thermal plumes as opposed to in downward thermal plumes. <br><br> In stable conditions, intermittent downward and upward motions probably related to elevated shear layers are responsible for canopy-top heat and water vapor transport through the initiation of turbulent instabilities, but this transport remains small. During the foliated period, lower-canopy heat and water vapor transport occurs through thermal plumes associated with a subcanopy unstable layer

Non-singular arbitrary cloaks dressing three-dimensional anisotropic obstacles

We design three dimensional electromagnetic cloaks, starting from a small region of complex shape instead of a point. We derive the expression of a transformation matrix describing an objet with a surface of revolution and its associated non-singular cloak. We note that while none of the eigenvalues vanish inside the cloak, they suffer a discontinuity on its inner surface. Moreover, all three eigenvalues are independent upon the radius in the concealed object. The validity of our analytical results is confirmed by finite edge-elements computations showing scattering is much reduced when the object is dressed with the cloak. We note that neither the object nor the cloak are invisible on their own.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure