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Natural resource managers need better estimates of water storage and supply in forested landscapes. These estimates would aid planning for management activities that maintain and enhance forest health and productivity and help prepare forested landscapes for a changing climate. In particular, low soil moisture in combination with high evaporative demands can induce significant stresses on forests, increasing vulnerability to attacks of insect and disease, as well as increasing wildfire risk. Although high-resolution soils data exist for much of the Pacific Northwest, regional-scale datasets that identify forested areas potentially vulnerable to soil moisture-related drought do not exist. In this study, we used readily available spatial datasets depicting available water supply, soil depth, and evapotranspiration to model the likelihood that soils experience prolonged summer drying. To calibrate the model, we examined soil profile descriptions, lab data, and soil moisture curves for 25 sites throughout the Pacific Northwest and estimated the average annual number of days that soil moisture drops to levels at or below the permanent wilting point, a theoretical lower limit of plant-available water. Using this approach, we found statistically significant relationships between the independent variables and broad classes of soil moisture levels representing the highest and lowest levels of plant-available moisture. We then used these relationships to create a landscape-level droughty soil index for the Pacific Northwest. We expect that this approach can be further developed to include additional soil moisture data outside Washington and Oregon and enhanced with other explanatory variables such as topographic position, elevation, and vegetation type. With the addition of vegetation-related data, in particular, the current modeling approach can aid in identifying vulnerable landscapes in the context of managing for increased forest resiliency in the Pacific Northwest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Western understanding of meaning as primarily representational, and therefore translatable, is a relatively recent development in the history of human societies. According to phenomenologists of religion (e.g. Eliade), archaic ontology tended instead to be performative, in the sense that reality (that which had sacred potency) was literally summoned into existence by the ritualistic repetition of archetypes. This article argues that the shift from a performative to a representational understanding of meaning in Western culture, which had implications for all aspects of society, was intimately bound up with translation mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Raptor Research is the property of Raptor Research Foundation and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Payments for Ecosystem Services schemes, or PES, offer a useful approach to account for the largely unrecognized value of ecosystem services provided by the forestry sector. However, the actual impacts of PES schemes, both in effectively protecting the environmental quality of an ecosystem, such as the water filtration capacity of a forest, and on improving local livelihoods, often remain unknown. Policy evaluation in general, and for newly established policies in particular, plays a critical role in providing essential feedback about what is actually happening on the ground. Thus, for PES to generate outcomes that are effective, efficient and equitable, policy makers must develop a functional evaluation system. As PES schemes around the world face similar problems in monitoring and evaluation, we draw on the case of Vietnam—the first country in Asia to introduce a nationwide PES scheme—and analyze the effectiveness of the monitoring and evaluation activities of the Payment for Forest Environmental Services program (PFES). We also offer practical policy recommendations for future PFES implementation. We find that monitoring and evaluation of PFES in Vietnam is still in its infancy. Although there is a strong accounting of revenues generated from ecosystem services buyers, there is a discernible lack of ability to assess the quantity and quality of ecosystem services being enhanced by the program; fulfillment of contractual obligations; the appropriateness of financial flows; or socio-economic impacts of the program. We argue that a functioning PES evaluation system must include an accessible grievance mechanism to ensure transparency and accountability in the distribution of PES revenues from central to local levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Iberica is the property of Asociacion Europea de Lenguas para Fines Especificos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Summary: Background: Patients born outside the UK have contributed to a 20% rise in the UK's tuberculosis incidence since 2000, but their effect on domestic transmission is not known. Here we use whole-genome sequencing to investigate the epidemiology of tuberculosis transmission in an unselected population over 6 years. Methods: We identified all residents with Oxfordshire postcodes with a Mycobacterium tuberculosis culture or a clinical diagnosis of tuberculosis between Jan 1, 2007, and Dec 31, 2012, using local databases and checking against the national Enhanced Tuberculosis Surveillance database. We used Illumina technology to sequence all available M tuberculosis cultures from identified cases. Sequences were clustered by genetic relatedness and compared retrospectively with contact investigations. The first patient diagnosed in each cluster was defined as the index case, with links to subsequent cases assigned first by use of any epidemiological linkage, then by genetic distance, and then by timing of diagnosis. Findings: Although we identified 384 patients with a diagnosis of tuberculosis, country of birth was known for 380 and we sequenced isolates from 247 of 269 cases with culture-confirmed disease. 39 cases were genomically linked within 13 clusters, implying 26 local transmission events. Only 11 of 26 possible transmissions had been previously identified through contact tracing. Of seven genomically confirmed household clusters, five contained additional genomic links to epidemiologically unidentified non-household members. 255 (67%) patients were born in a country with high tuberculosis incidence, conferring a local incidence of 109 cases per 100 000 population per year in Oxfordshire, compared with 3·5 cases per 100 000 per year for those born in low-incidence countries. However, patients born in the low-incidence countries, predominantly UK, were more likely to have pulmonary disease (adjusted odds ratio 1·8 [95% CI 1·2–2·9]; p=0·009), social risk factors (4·4 [2·0–9·4]; p<0·0001), and be part of a local transmission cluster (4·8 [1·6–14·8]; p=0·006). Interpretation: Although inward migration has contributed to the overall tuberculosis incidence, our findings suggest that most patients born in high-incidence countries reactivate latent infection acquired abroad and are not involved in local onward transmission. Systematic screening of new entrants could further improve tuberculosis control, but it is important that health care remains accessible to all individuals, especially high-risk groups, if tuberculosis control is not to be jeopardised. Funding: UK Clinical Research Collaboration (Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council, National Institute for Health Research [NIHR]), and NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the climate change markets and their application to ecosystem service markets. The author explores the policy approaches in analyzing the components of these markets which are based from the payments for ecosystem services (PES) program. She cites the importance of additionality along with the implementation of the PES including environmental outcome achievement, economic efficiency, and investor confidence. She examines the existing PES system models for addressing additionality which include project-specific assessment, standardized additionality, and discounting or trading ratios.