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Environmental benchmarks vs. ecological benchmarks for assessment and monitoring in Canada: Is there a difference?
Abstract
Environmental benchmarks are widely used in Canadian environmental assessment as a standard against which to monitor air or water quality in response to human activities in the environment. Recent work in Canada has developed the concept of ecological benchmarks as a complement to environmental benchmarks. However, implementation of ecological benchmarks may be challenging. This paper presents an analogy between ecological benchmarks and the more commonly used environmental benchmarks, as an attempt to increase understanding and use of ecological benchmarks in resource management, assessment, and monitoring. Ecological benchmarks, and their corresponding indicators, will be challenging to identify and use. However, through the use of the principles of adaptive management, effective ecological indicators and benchmarks can be established. Although it is essential that ecological benchmarks are site-specific, the analogy and general principles outlined here are applicable to assessment and monitoring in any part of the world.
... The selection of indicators for visitor monitoring depends on their ability to inform clearly defined objectives (Buckley 2003;Wiersma 2005) and there are a number of key issues that need to be taken into consideration when selecting indicators. ...
... Monitoring programs should be rigorously designed and implemented (Wiersma 2005) to ensure that potential indicators meet an array of pre-selected criteria (Dale & Beyeler 2001;Buckley 2003;Miller & Twining-Ward 2005;Wiersma 2005) (Table 4). Table 4: Summary of criteria for selecting ecological indicators from recreation ecology literature and the frequency of reporting in the literature. ...
... Monitoring programs should be rigorously designed and implemented (Wiersma 2005) to ensure that potential indicators meet an array of pre-selected criteria (Dale & Beyeler 2001;Buckley 2003;Miller & Twining-Ward 2005;Wiersma 2005) (Table 4). Table 4: Summary of criteria for selecting ecological indicators from recreation ecology literature and the frequency of reporting in the literature. ...
Sustainable tourism is considered an appropriate use of many Australian protected areas. However, such use needs to be managed , and the effectiveness of management needs to be assessed as over-use can adversely affect the natural environment. Monitoring and management of visitor impacts requires integration into evaluation frameworks to enable more efficient reporting but within Australia this appears to be poorly developed. We have developed a framework that integrates visitor impact monitoring and evaluation within adaptive management cycles to improve management responses. The framework uses existing management processes, where possible, for focusing monitoring efforts and selecting appropriate ecological indicators. This focus is achieved through a process of prioritisation of natural assets used by visitors, or those likely to be impacted by visitor use. The framework follows a sequential, adaptive cycle of identifying natural asset values, their vulnerability, and use by visitors to derive appropriate indicators for monitoring. The indicators selected using the framework are linked to existing evaluation frameworks to provide baseline information for core protected area evaluation across a variety of spatial scales. We outline the functionality of the framework using a six step process and expand on the ability of the framework to be applied in other protected area management situations. Yes Yes
... Accurate, timely and cost effective evaluation of ecological integrity depends on using appropriate monitoring programs with suitable indicators (Noss 1990; Niemi & McDonald 2004). The selection of indicators for visitor monitoring depends on their ability to inform clearly defined objectives (, Wiersma 2005) and there are a number of key issues that need to be taken into consideration when selecting indicators (Table 8). 1. It is difficult to select appropriate ecological indicators for diffuse, and difficult to detect impacts of visitors (), particularly across multiple spatiotemporal scales (). 2. Impacts should be prioritised prior to selecting indicators (Jennings 2005) as failure to do so may result in unrealistic goals being set that cannot be achieved. ...
... As a result indicator values may not be static and should also be subject to revision and modification based on the best available information. 4. Selection of appropriate indicators is often hampered by poor objective setting (Dale & Beyeler 2001) as well as the failure to recognise the complexity of ecological systems (Yoccoz et al. 2001). 5. Ecosystems are complex and as a result monitoring programs should be rigorously designed and implemented (Wiersma 2005). Of concern is the scale at which indicators are selected. ...
... Furthermore, current trends in aquatic ecosystem assessment call for an increased focus on the application of functional or ecosystem process indicators, rather than structural (community composition) indicators. 6. Ensuring that potential indicators meet an array of selection criteria is a critical step in the development framework (Monz et al. 2003) and extensive lists of such criteria have been compiled previously (Belnap 1998, Dale & Beyeler 2001, Miller & Twining-Ward 2005, Wiersma 2005) (Table 9). This process is captured in our integrated framework (Chapter 5). ...
Sustainable tourism is considered an appropriate use of many Australian protected areas. However, such use needs to be managed and the effectiveness of management needs to be assessed as overuse can adversely affect the natural environment. Monitoring and management of visitor impacts requires integration into evaluation frameworks to enable more efficient reporting but within Australia this appears to be poorly developed. To assist with the future management of visitors in protected areas we have developed a framework which integrates visitor impact monitoring and evaluation within adaptive management cycles to improve management responses. The framework uses, as far as possible, existing management process for focusing monitoring efforts and selecting appropriate ecological indicators. This focus is achieved through a process of prioritisation of natural assets used by visitors, or those likely to be impacted by visitor use. Here we review the value of the natural asset, its vulnerability as well as the type and severity of visitor use. The indicators selected using this framework are linked to existing evaluation frameworks (e.g. WCPA) to provide a baseline information for core protected area evaluation subjects (e.g. change in condition estimates) across a variety of spatial scales. We outline the functionality of the framework using a six step process and expand on the ability of the framework to be applied in other protected area management situations. No Yes
... These different types of protected areas are associated with different priorities and mandates. In addition to their role in maintaining biodiversity, protected areas serve as ecological benchmarks, support recreation, preserve wilderness, and provide laboratories for research into natural processes (Wiersma 2005). ...
... As undisturbed sites evolve under warming temperatures, so too will NRV. The larger sites in our existing system of protected areas are obvious choices as benchmarks; indeed, this is already one of their central roles (Wiersma 2005). However, significant gaps in representation exist in many regions. ...
The aim of this book is to build a bridge between conservation theory and practice. The narrative is focused specifically on Canada. This permits an integrated treatment, where conservation theory is presented in the context of the social and institutional framework responsible for its implementation. Special attention is given to topics that are the subject of debate or controversy, as they provide valuable insight into the practical aspects of conservation. The result is a comprehensive synthesis of applied biodiversity conservation, tailored to the needs of conservation students and practitioners in Canada.
... For example, benchmarks can be set for levels of sediment production that have significant impacts on respiratory health, degradation of viewsheds, or around the cost to replace or maintain structures and equipment compromised by the erosive forces of blowing dust. All of the approaches to establish benchmarks vary in their potential for bias (and our ability to quantify that bias), ease of communication, applicability to management questions and policy mandates, and availability in the geographic region of interest (Wiersma, 2005). The most suitable approach may depend on the particular policy or management objective(s) a benchmark is trying to address. ...
... However, management objectives may aspire to smaller wind erosion and dust emission rates than are occurring today. Accepting a baseline that represents, or is shifting towards, an alternative state or degraded condition, or including too many degraded sites in the reference, can reduce benchmarks, potentially under-protect assessed sites and perpetuate soil degradation (Wiersma, 2005;Soga and Gaston, 2018). It is also conceivable that some 'least disturbed' sites may have larger erosion rates than disturbed locations (e.g., with invasive grasses that provide surface sheltering), and this should be considered against other management objectives. ...
Wind erosion and blowing dust threaten food security, human health and ecosystem services across global drylands. Monitoring wind erosion is needed to inform management, with explicit monitoring objectives being critical for interpreting and translating monitoring information into management actions. Monitoring objectives should establish quantitative guidelines for determining the relationship of wind erosion indicators to management benchmarks that reflect tolerable erosion and dust production levels considering impacts to, for example, ecosystem processes, species, agricultural production systems and human well-being. Here we: 1) critically review indicators of wind erosion and blowing dust that are currently available to practitioners; and 2) describe approaches for establishing benchmarks to support wind erosion assessments and management. We find that while numerous indicators are available for monitoring wind erosion, only a subset have been used routinely and most monitoring efforts have focused on air quality impacts of dust. Indicators need to be related to the causal soil and vegetation controls in eroding areas to directly inform management. There is great potential to use regional standardized soil and vegetation monitoring datasets, remote sensing and models to provide new information on wind erosion across landscapes. We identify best practices for establishing benchmarks for these indicators based on experimental studies, mechanistic and empirical models, and distributions of indicator values obtained from monitoring data at historic or existing reference sites. The approaches to establishing benchmarks described here have enduring utility as monitoring technologies change and enable managers to evaluate co-benefits and potential trade-offs among ecosystem services as affected by wind erosion management.
... Without information about acceptable levels, an indicator cannot be used to make management decisions. Only by systematically separating acceptable measured values of indicators from unacceptable values can managers identify those ecosystem components that require management attention (Kelly and Harwell 1990;Niemi and McDonald 2004;Wiersma 2005). ...
... In part, this occurs because the long-term goals and objectives of many management programs are not clearly specified (Dale and Beyeler 2001;Niemi and McDonald 2004). Although a number of studies have pointed out the need for comparing indicator values to established benchmarks (Jackson and others 2000; Niemi and McDonald 2004;OECD 1993;Schaeffer and others 1988;The Heinz Center 2002;US GAO 2003;Wiersma 2005), few programs have actually achieved this goal. The overwhelming majority of indicators programs simply present trends in indicator values over time (US GAO 2004). ...
Ecological indicators can facilitate an adaptive management approach, but only if acceptable levels for those indicators have been defined so that the data collected can be interpreted. Because acceptable levels are an expression of the desired state of the ecosystem, the process of establishing acceptable levels should incorporate not just ecological understanding but also societal values. The goal of this research was to explore an approach for defining acceptable levels of ecological indicators that explicitly considers social perspectives and values. We used a set of eight indicators that were related to issues of concern in the Lake Champlain Basin. Our approach was based on normative theory. Using a stakeholder survey, we measured respondent normative evaluations of varying levels of our indicators. Aggregated social norm curves were used to determine the level at which indicator values shifted from acceptable to unacceptable conditions. For seven of the eight indicators, clear preferences were interpretable from these norm curves. For example, closures of public beaches because of bacterial contamination and days of intense algae bloom went from acceptable to unacceptable at 7-10 days in a summer season. Survey respondents also indicated that the number of fish caught from Lake Champlain that could be safely consumed each month was unacceptably low and the number of streams draining into the lake that were impaired by storm water was unacceptably high. If indicators that translate ecological conditions into social consequences are carefully selected, we believe the normative approach has considerable merit for defining acceptable levels of valued ecological system components.
... EPA acknowledged the NRC in their Twenty Needs Report by listing ecologically based standards as one of the twenty needs (USEPA 2002). However, developing ecologically based standards will require time to study and understand land use affects upon water quality (Wiersma 2005). This paper suggests a sentinel watershed-systems approach to build the database needed to construct ecologically-based standards. ...
... Though others (Karr and Yoder 2004;Wiersma 2005) have presented integrative systems ideas for the USA, and Canada respectively, they have not addressed the hydrologic concerns of increased runoff, and the loss of perennial vegetation. This manuscript provides more specific discussion about the need for physical water quality attributes, e.g., stream geomorphology. ...
Section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act requires States and Tribes to list waters not meeting water quality standards. A total maximum daily load must be prepared for waters identified as impaired with respect to water quality standards. Historically, the management of pollution in Minnesota has been focused on point-source regulation. Regulatory effort in Minnesota has improved water quality over the last three decades. Non-point source pollution has become the largest driver of conventional 303(d) listings in the 21st century. Conventional pollutants, i.e., organic, sediment and nutrient imbalances can be identified with poor land use management practices. However, the cause and effect relationship can be elusive because of natural watershed-system influences that vary with scale. Elucidation is complex because the current water quality standards in Minnesota were designed to work best with water quality permits to control point sources of pollution. This paper presents a sentinel watershed-systems approach (SWSA) to the monitoring and assessment of Minnesota waterbodies. SWSA integrates physical, chemical, and biological data over space and time using advanced technologies at selected small watersheds across Minnesota to potentially improve understanding of natural and anthropogenic watershed processes and the management of point and non-point sources of pollution. Long-term, state-of-the-art monitoring and assessment is needed to advance and improve water quality standards. Advanced water quality or ecologically-based standards that integrate physical, chemical, and biological numeric criteria offer the potential to better understand, manage, protect, and restore Minnesota's waterbodies.
... d) The two-step linkage from management action to assessment expresses the contribution of management to learning, through interventions that are useful in investigating the resource system. Holling, 1996;Nudds, 1996;Wiersma, 2005). In this cyclical AM approach, resource managers test their decision-making policies with management actions, reducing key uncertainties about the ecological/human system using the Western science method. ...
... In the context of climate change, disturbance frequency (e.g., wildfire, insect infestation) is expected to increase 24,25 . PPAs serve as important benchmarks against which broader-scale changes (particularly anthropogenically caused changes) can be evaluated 26 . Consequently, baseline data characterizing historic rates of disturbances in PPAs relative to their greater park ecosystems (GPEs), as well as relative to their broader ecological context (e.g., ecozone), would be useful for future monitoring efforts. ...
We assess the protective function of Canada’s parks and protected areas (PPAs) by analyzing three decades of stand-replacing disturbance derived from Landsat time series data (1985–2015). Specifically, we compared rates of wildfire and harvest within 1,415 PPAs against rates of disturbance in surrounding greater park ecosystems (GPEs). We found that disturbance rates in GPEs were significantly higher (p < 0.05) than in corresponding PPAs in southern managed forests (six of Canada’s 12 forested ecozones). Higher disturbance rates in GPEs were attributed to harvesting activities, as the area impacted by wildfire was not significantly different between GPEs and PPAs in any ecozone. The area burned within PPAs and corresponding GPEs was highly correlated (r = 0.90), whereas the area harvested was weakly correlated (r = 0.19). The average area burned in PPAs/GPEs below 55° N was low (0.05% yr−1) largely due to fire suppression aimed at protecting communities, timber, and recreational values, while the average burn rate was higher in northern PPAs/GPEs where fire suppression is uncommon (0.40% yr−1 in PPAs/GPEs above 55° N). Assessing regional variability in disturbance patterns and the pressures faced by PPAs can better inform policy and protection goals across Canada and the globe.
... The hypothetico-deductive method proceeds by formulating a hypothesis in a form that could be falsified by empirical evidence. As a result, many researchers suggest that crowdsourcing (being a typical data collection endevour that involves people) should be targeted and hypothesis-driven (Francis, Blancher, & Phoenix, 2009;Goodman & Paolacci, 2017;Nichols & Williams, 2006;Wiersma, 2005). ...
The emergence of crowdsourcing as an important mode of information production has attracted increasing research attention. In this article, the authors review crowdsourcing research in the data management field. Most research in this domain can be termed tasked-based, focusing on micro-tasks that exploit scale and redundancy in crowds. The authors' review points to another important type of crowdsourcing-which they term observational-that can expand the scope of extant crowdsourcing data management research. Observational crowdsourcing consists of projects that harness human sensory ability to support long-term data acquisition. The authors consider the challenges in this domain, review approaches to data management for crowdsourcing, and suggest directions for future research that bridges the gaps between the two research streams.
... Sustainable management can derive economic benefit at minimum ecological cost, while protected areas can maintain sensitive ecosystem components and provide insurance against uncertain impacts of sustainable management strategies. Further, both approaches can contribute to adaptive management, whereby the behaviour of managed ecosystems is compared to that of naturally functioning ecosystems (i.e., protected areas) to develop a deeper understanding of the ecosystem dynamics essential for sustainable forest management (Wiersma 2005). ...
Protection and sustainable forest management are related but unique, with protection focusing on minimising risk to ecosystems and sustainable management emphasising economic development. Given these distinct roles, a defining characteristic of the relationship between the two approaches is their relative abundance and distribution. The relationship is currently imbalanced, with only 12% of Canada allocated to protection, indicating that ecological values have historically been traded off in favour of resource production. The intactness of Canada's boreal forest provides an opportunity for a more holistic approach that conserves its globally significant environmental attributes while also supporting resource production. The Boreal Forest Conservation Framework proposes a balanced relationship that allocates land approximately equally between protection and sustainable management. It is a framework that has been endorsed by industry, Aboriginal, and conservation organisations, and is supported by conservation science. Recent commitments to comprehensive land-use planning at regional scales are consistent with the collaborative approach promoted by the Boreal Forest Conservation Framework, and suggest that conservation objectives are likely to receive increased attention in Canada's boreal region relative to recent history. Ensuring that land-use planning is proactive and balanced will be essential to forging a cooperative relationship between sustainable management and protection in the region.
... Others have concurred that monitoring should be hypothesis driven and that monitoring should be viewed as a systematic program that is set Avian Conservation and Ecology 5(2): 13 http://www.ace-eco.org/vol5/iss2/art13/ up to assist in the evaluation of the effects of a given human activity or set of activities on the environment or on a particular ecosystem (Wiersma 2005;Nichols and Williams 2006;Francis et al. 2009). Monitoring should not be viewed as an activity in isolation or as simply inventory work, but rather as a key part of an adaptive management process (Nudds 1999;Wiersma and Campbell 2002;Nichols and Williams 2006;Francis et al. 2009;Nudds and Villard 2009). ...
The amateur birding community has a long and proud tradition of contributing to bird surveys and bird atlases. Coordinated activities such as Breeding Bird Atlases and the Christmas Bird Count are examples "of citizen" science projects. With the advent of technology, Web 2.0 sites such as eBird have been developed to facilitate online sharing of data and thus increase the potential for real-time monitoring. However, as recently articulated in an editorial in this journal and elsewhere, monitoring is best served when based on a priori hypotheses. Harnessing citizen scientists to collect data following a hypotheticodeductive approach carries challenges. Moreover, the use of citizen science in scientific and monitoring studies has raised issues of data accuracy and quality. These issues are compounded when data collection moves into the Web 2.0 world. An examination of the literature from social geography on the concept of "citizen" sensors and volunteered geographic information (VGI) yields thoughtful reflections on the challenges of data quality/data accuracy when applying information from citizen sensors to research and management questions. VGI has been harnessed in a number of contexts, including for environmental and ecological monitoring activities. Here, I argue that conceptualizing a monitoring project as an experiment following the scientific method can further contribute to the use of VGI. I show how principles of experimental design can be applied to monitoring projects to better control for data quality of VGI. This includes suggestions for how citizen sensors can be harnessed to address issues of experimental controls and how to design monitoring projects to increase randomization and replication of sampled data, hence increasing scientific reliability and statistical power.
... However, the extent to which the current landscape configuration differs from the estimated natural range of variation is perhaps surprising, and the accuracy of natural range of variation remains uncertain. The difficulty of estimating the natural range of variation in managed landscapes emphasizes the importance of studying areas that are relatively unaffected by human activities to increase understanding of natural conditions (Wiersma 2005). ...
Successful implementation of the natural disturbance model for timber harvest is hindered by the lack of strategies to approximate landscape fire pattern. In the forests of Alberta, Canada, the fire regime is dominated by large fires that create large regions of same-aged forest. Current forestry practices disperse harvest blocks across the landscape, causing increased fragmentation as compared with fire. Aggregating harvest blocks is one potential strategy to improve approximation of natural landscape pattern. We used a simulation approach to compare landscape pattern created by aggregated harvest strategies, the current dispersed harvest approach, and the natural disturbance regime for a 270a000aha forest landscape in northeastern Alberta. Compared with dispersed harvest, aggregated strategies increased compatibility with natural landscape pattern by reducing fragmentation. Capacity to aggregate harvest declined when the constraint of maintaining a constant proportion of deciduous to coniferous harvest was included. We conclude that aggregated harvest can improve implementation of the natural disturbance model by bringing several landscape metrics closer to the conditions that fall within the natural range of variability. Aggregated harvest alone, however, performed poorly at maintaining interior old forest, emphasizing that an explicit old-forest strategy is also required.
... Protected areas also have fewer signs of conspicuous human presence or access (Cardille and Lambois, 2010;Lee and Cheng, 2011;Leu et al., 2008), and often correspond to large remnants of intact habitat (Goetz et al., 2009;Heilman et al., 2002; Alberta case study in Lee et al., 2006). Although there are important exceptions (Soverel et al., 2010;Timoney, 1996), in the aggregate, protected areas are relatively unimpaired and can function as valuable benchmarks (Arcese and Sinclair, 1997;Sinclair, 1998;Wiersma, 2005) against which to evaluate landscape structure. ...
Ecological regionalizations, such as ecoregions or environmental clusters, are often used as coarse filters for conservation. To be effective biodiversity surrogates, regionalizations should contain distinct species assemblages. This condition is not frequently evaluated and regionalizations are rarely assessed comparatively. We used a national dataset of Canadian butterfly collections to evaluate four regionalizations (ecoregions, land cover and productivity regime classifications, and a spatial grid) at two thematic resolutions using analysis of similarity (ANOSIM) and species indicator values. Overall, the spatially constrained schemes (ecoregions and grids) best captured patterns of butterfly community composition and species affinities, indicating that butterfly communities are strongly structured by space at the continent scale. In contrast, when comparing regions only within spatial or environmental neighbourhoods (i.e., comparing between regions that are adjacent along geographic or environmental gradients), all regionalizations performed similarly. Adjacency in environmental space is thus as important as physical adjacency at determining community dissimilarity. Productivity regimes and land cover will be useful biodiversity surrogates when considered in conjunction with space or within a spatially constrained area. This finding was confirmed with two ecoregional case studies (of the Algonquin-Lake Nipissing and Thompson–Okanagan Plateau ecoregions), which also revealed that the relative performance of regionalizations depends upon the context of the study area. We conclude that including species data can improve the efficiency of environmental surrogates for systematic conservation planning.
The harmful effects of suspended sediment (SS) exposures on aquatic ecosystems have been well documented. Integrating this knowledge into the management plans of in-stream construction projects that cause SS releases remains challenging. Commonly, these projects have fixed scopes that require decisions about trade-offs between elevated SS concentrations (SSC, mg∙L⁻¹) and duration of exposure (DoE, h). Constraining SSC to levels below a regulatory guideline may lead to an increase in project duration, while extended SS exposure times have uncertain environmental impacts and reduce project efficiency.
This paper evaluates an alternative limit of SS dose (SSD, mg∙h∙L⁻¹), which is defined herein as the product of SSC and DoE, as a more useful regulatory guideline compared to maximum SSC for fixed scope projects. Managing SSD may lead to improved outcomes for project efficiency without jeopardizing environmental health. A dose-response model for salmonids is developed to contrast this approach with more common regulatory limits applied to fixed scope projects that focus on managing SS releases using maximum SSC values within a given time interval. Results demonstrate that the latter constrain the management operating space to a subset of the acceptable range of exposures, which may reduce project efficiency and increase environmental risk. Based on simulated predictions for mean salmonid probabilities of major physiological and lethal effects, an SSD limit of 600 mg∙h∙L⁻¹ may offer a conservative upper range of SSC and DoE values when managing salmonid populations, according to a common regulatory guideline for short-term exposures to not exceed 25 mg∙L⁻¹ over 24 h. This SSD limit would increase the available operating space to enhance project efficiency by not overly constraining SSC. The methods developed in this study may be used to evaluate other SS management limits by undertaking Monte Carlo simulations using dose-response models fit to available datasets to assess acceptable operating ranges.
Large natural disturbances such as insect outbreaks and fire are important processes for biodiversity in forest landscapes. However, few methods exist for incorporating natural disturbances into conservation planning. Intact forest landscapes, such as in the North American boreal forest, can produce large natural disturbance footprints. They also have the potential to support large reserves but size estimates based on natural disturbance are needed to guide reserve design. Historical fire data have been used to estimate minimum dynamic reserves, reserve size estimates based on maintaining natural disturbance dynamics and ensuring resilience to large natural disturbance events. While this has been a significant step towards incorporating natural disturbance into reserve design, managers currently lack guidance on how to apply these concepts in areas where fire is not the dominant natural disturbance. We generalize the minimum dynamic reserve framework to accommodate insect outbreaks and demonstrate the framework in a case study for eastern spruce budworm ( Choristoneura fumiferana ) in the Canadian boreal forest. Our methods use geospatial analysis to identify minimum dynamic reserves based on a set of spatially explicit initial conditions, and simulation models to test for the maintenance of a set of dynamic conditions over time. We found considerable variability in minimum dynamic reserve size depending on the size of historic budworm disturbance events and the spatial patterns of disturbance-prone vegetation types. The minimum dynamic reserve framework provides an approach for incorporating wide-ranging natural disturbances into biodiversity conservation plans for both pro-active planning in intact landscapes, and reactive planning in more developed regions.
The emergence of crowdsourcing as an important mode of information production has attracted increasing research attention. In this article, the authors review crowdsourcing research in the data management field. Most research in this domain can be termed tasked-based, focusing on micro-tasks that exploit scale and redundancy in crowds. The authors' review points to another important type of crowdsourcing – which they term observational – that can expand the scope of extant crowdsourcing data management research. Observational crowdsourcing consists of projects that harness human sensory ability to support long-term data acquisition. The authors consider the challenges in this domain, review approaches to data management for crowdsourcing, and suggest directions for future research that bridges the gaps between the two research streams.
The emergence of crowdsourcing as an important mode of information production has attracted increasing research attention. In this article, the authors review crowdsourcing research in the data management field. Most research in this domain can be termed tasked-based, focusing on micro-tasks that exploit scale and redundancy in crowds. The authors' review points to another important type of crowdsourcing – which they term observational – that can expand the scope of extant crowdsourcing data management research. Observational crowdsourcing consists of projects that harness human sensory ability to support long-term data acquisition. The authors consider the challenges in this domain, review approaches to data management for crowdsourcing, and suggest directions for future research that bridges the gaps between the two research streams.
Based on concentrations of 16 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) measured in the surface sediment samples collected from 24 locations along the Guangzhou reach of the Pearl River, Monte Carlo simulation method modified with the Logistic chaotic iterative sequence was used to analyze the ecological risk probabilities of PAHs in the sediments. Results showed that the risks of seven PAH species were in the order of phenanthrene > pyrene > fluoranthene > chrysene > benzo(a)anthracene > benzo(a)pyrene > dibenzo(a, h)anthracene. It should be paid more attention that phenanthrene, pyrene, and fluoranthene could pose higher ecological risks for aquatic organisms. In addition, except phenanthrene, the contributions to the total ecological risk of the exposure concentrations of the other six PAHs were all over 90%, indicating that the ecological risk of the PAHs in this region was determined by the exposure concentrations.
The debate on land degradation and desertification associated with sedentarisation of pastoral communities in the Sahelian zone remains contentious. Discussions of land degradation from the perspective of local communities shapes human perceptions where local peoples' narratives provide personal experiences of environmental change. Local community participation in assessing and monitoring land degradation around pastoralist settlements has important implications for implementation of the Global Convention on Combating Desertification (CCD) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Previously, ecologists assessed impacts on the vegetation, while herders were hardly involved. In this study, we integrated indigenous knowledge of herders and ecological methods (IKEM) to assess the impacts of sedentarisation on vegetation in a sub-humid zone in northern Kenya. Degradation of vegetation around two settlements 10 to 30 years old was inferred from herder knowledge of land-use history, perception of environmental change and joint assessments of vegetation change radiating from settlements compared to the benchmark (a forest reserve). Despite the high stocking densities near settlements and the history of continuous grazing, there was no evidence of vegetation cover loss. Rather, bush cover had increased, while palatable grass species had declined. Herders blamed official banning of fires, episodic rainfall and grazing pressure for the change. From the herders' perspective, changes in vegetation structure and composition reduced land-use suitability for livestock production; while from an ecological perspective, overall classical land degradation was not confirmed. The differences could influence utility of the land. The paper discusses the results in the wider context of global environmental conventions using the IKEM framework.
Canada is dominated by remote wilderness areas that make important conservation contributions, but are currently only protected de facto by their inaccessibility. Mechanisms for the identification and formal protection of such areas can help ensure that they continue to function naturally and provide essential ecosystem services. However, a lack of spatially explicit, publicly available sources of data on anthropogenic disturbances and natural resource extraction challenges the development of detailed wilderness inventories. We suggest that landscape structure can be used to classify areas of natural landscapes, as trained by the landscape structure of protected areas, and demonstrate this approach by mapping de facto protected areas in Canada’s boreal forest. Overall, between 50%, based on landscape structure, and 80%, based on anthropogenic infrastructure alone, of Canada’s boreal zone exists in large, intact blocks. The true extent of boreal wilderness likely falls within this range, as existing infrastructure datasets may omit disturbance and the protected area network in far northern areas proved inadequate to train effective wilderness classifications. We anticipate that such efforts may be improved by refining the identification of training areas or by classifying along additional landscape metrics. Nevertheless, the areas identified are valuable candidates for protected area expansion, and can contribute to a reserve network that meets national and regional conservation targets and is representative of the range of vegetation productivities, which was used as a biodiversity surrogate. Our general approach need not be limited to the boreal forest, as it has the potential to successfully identify relatively undisturbed (or less disturbed) areas over a range of systems and across levels of human influence.
We studied the effect of habitat fragmentation on the richness, diversity, turnover, and abundance of breeding bird communities in old, boreal mixed-wood forest by creating isolated and connected forest fragments of 1, 10, 40, and 100 ha. Connected fragments were linked by 100 m wide riparian buffer strips. Each size class within treatments and controls was replicated three times. We sampled the passerine community using point counts before, and in each of two years after, forest harvesting, accumulating 21 340 records representing 59 species. We detected no significant change in species richness as a result of the harvesting, except in the 1-ha connected fragments, where the number of species increased two years after isolation. This increase was accounted for by transient species, suggesting that the adjacent buffer strips were being used as movement corridors. Diversity (log series alpha index) was dependent on area in the isolated fragments only after cutting, having decreased in the smaller areas. Turnover rates in the isolated fragments were sig- nificantly higher than in similar connected or control areas, due to species replacement. Crowding occurred in the isolated fragments immediately after cutting, but two years after fragmentation, the responses in abundance of species varied with migratory strategy. Num- bers of Neotropical migrants declined in both connected and isolated fragments, and resident species declined in isolated fragments. Most species in these groups require older forest, many favoring interior areas. Abundance of short-distance migrants, most of which are habitat generalists, did not change. Overall, although there was no decrease in species richness from our recently fragmented areas, community structure was altered; maintaining connections between fragments helped to mitigate these effects. Nevertheless, the magnitude of the fragmentation effects we documented is small compared with those observed else- where. Birds breeding in the boreal forest, where frequent small- and large-scale natural disturbances have occurred historically, may be more resilient to human-induced habitat changes, such as those caused by forest harvesting. However, these results should be in- terpreted with caution. First, they are short-term and address only broad-scale community responses based on species richness and relative abundance. Second, the study area was embedded in a landscape where large areas of old, mixed forest are still available, potentially dampening any local-scale impacts of fragmentation.
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