Shaw Lacy

School for Field Studies · Center for Climate Studies (SFS-Chile)

Abstract Chile was one of many countries that initiated environmental impact assessments in the 1990s, and has relied on their use for species conservation and territorial planning without the use of larger-scale environmental and ecological planning. The capacity of Chile's environmental impact assessment system (SEIA) to evaluate resident freshwa...

Many multi-regional studies investigating how available habitat area, energy availability, and historical refugia drive freshwater fish diversity have emphasized Northern Hemisphere and tropical areas. Furthermore, while many such studies have examined diversity drivers on basin-scale species richness (i.e., gamma diversity), they typically have no...

*Unofficial abstract* This chapter describes freshwater ecosystems within the framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #14: Life on Land. Although a large focus of SDG14 focuses on terrestrial systems, this SDG specifically includes freshwater systems in multiple objectives. Here, I examine freshwater ecosystems from a landscape...

Aim: We still lack a consensus on the main variables driving changes in migratory strategies. Different hypotheses have been proposed: productivity, energy, environmental heterogeneity, and genetic predisposition. This work takes an integrative view and analyses migrations from a macroecological perspective estimating the extent to which different...

La especie introducida Fallopia japonica (Houtt.) Ronse Decr. es registrada por primera vez en las ciudades de Puerto Natales y Punta Arenas en la Patagonia chilena. En este trabajo se entregan evaluaciones de los envolventes climáticas en Patagonia y explora a las implicancias de la gestión ambiental en el control de esta especie invasora. -------...

Turbulent fluxes are key components of surface energy balance. Micrometeorological techniques, such as eddy covariance (EC), are commonly used to estimate sensible (H) and latent (LE) heat fluxes, because they provide direct measurements and do not interfere with the normal crop canopy development. However, EC has technical difficulties, strict siz...

Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica) and the other invasive knotweeds, collectively known as knotweed s.l., are significant invasives worldwide, especially of riparian areas. While R. japonica and other knotweed s.l. can reproduce sexually, their dispersal to and spread within new regions is often accomplished through vegetative reproduction fro...

Despite its theoretical relationship, the effect of body size on the performance of species distribution models (SDM) has only been assessed in a few studies, and to date, the evidence shows unclear results. In this context, Chilean fishes provide an ideal case to evaluate this relationship due to their short size (fishes between 5 cm and 40 cm) an...

Fisher local ecological knowledge in England has developed through interaction with research, as well as adding to scientific knowledge. Despite this, fishers and scientists continue to have different epistemic frameworks, and the typical form of communication from science to fisheries remains the ‘catapult’ approach, where knowledge exchange is a...

The categorisation of natural landscape features places a socialised and ordered lens on the landscape. In the case of natural waterways, it creates a regional hydrological vocabulary, based on physical processes and cultural history. This study uses the unique combination of hydrological and cultural characteristics found in Chile to determine the...

Land use carries implications for freshwater fish conservation. Plantation forestry practices have been shown to have negative impacts on resident fish fauna, but little work has been conducted to assess these impacts on invasive vs. native fish populations. Ten headwater catchments in the Mediterranean climate zone of Chile were used to assess the...

A three-day seminar on “Smallholders’ Response to New Climate Scenarios regarding Sustainable Water Use as a Contribution to Food Security” was held in Santiago, Chile, on 29-30 November and 1 December 2017. The seminar was successfully implemented, with the participation of 13 speakers and more than 80 participants from 10 APEC economies. Within...

Chile tiene 42 especies de peces nativos, caracterizados por su alto nivel de endemismo, pequeño tamaño, y alto nivel de amenaza de extinción. Las especies de peces exóticas, los impactos del cambio del uso de suelo e impactos de los embalses afectan los peces nativos negativamente. Los embalses pueden funcionar como barreras de acceso en redes hid...

Dead trees in rivers can significantly affect their morphological and ecological properties by increasing flow resistance, affecting sediment transport, and storing organic matter. Logs are usually recruited from banks or along the entire upstream basin. Although it is generally acknowledged that forested headwater streams feature higher volumes of...

In 2008, the State of Michigan enacted a new water-conservation law as part of its responsibility as a signatory of the Great Lakes Compact. Public Act 185 of 2008 established a unique science-based water-withdrawal assessment-tool (WWAT) and water-withdrawal assessment-process (WWAP). This dissertation investigates the changes to Michigan???s lega...

In the state of Michigan, a water quantity management law was passed in 2007 as a precursor to the federal Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact. Somewhat uniquely, the Michigan law required that any large-scale proposed groundwater pumping could not harm "characteristic fish populations" of inland lakes and streams of the st...

In this paper, we present a model-based assessment system to support water resource-related decision making in Michigan. At the core of this assessment system are several biophysical models that are coupled to characterize environmental system responses to natural and man-made stresses. The models integrated in the assessment system include: 1) the...

To combat rising levels of water pollution in the Ganges River, the Indian government initiated the Ganga Action Plan (GAP) in 1984. After twenty years, it is a common perception that the GAP has failed to achieve the goals of a cleaner river. Using available government data on pollution levels and hydrology, I undertook an of the GAP efficacy for...