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Application of the ecosystem services (ES) concept in urban planning has potential for improving environmental and human health outcomes in cities. We aimed to narrow an identified ES implementation gap by identifying the criteria for the practical fit of the ES concept in urban planning. We found that local relevance and adaptability within current planning approaches were core criteria for practical fit. If not met immediately, these criteria may be met over time through policy entrepreneurship. Further research in different locations and planning systems would increase understanding of the enabling factors for applying ES in urban planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental practitioners hiring staff or seeking study opportunities may be curious about how meaningfully Australian environmental and sustainability programs are named. Here, an internet-based audit of the core curricula of relevant Australian offerings, an expert questionnaire, and a novel application of quantitative clustering contribute some understanding. Various types of environmental education are suggested by clustering core curricula, but those types are not consistently indicated by course names, especially in undergraduate-level studies. Although very few programs use the term 'sustainable' or 'sustainability' in their name (especially at the undergraduate level), many do explicitly aim to educate for sustainability according to web marketing. Such programs are closer to approximating an expert-derived 'ideal core curriculum' than the rest, although in aggregate they still lack relevant policy and philosophy content. Keywords: k-means clustering, core curriculum, education for sustainable development, environmental studies, university degree programs

Place-based social-ecological research is often designed to improve local environmental governance, but it can also inform decisions at larger scales or in other places. However, the focus on local perspectives in such research creates challenges for transferring insights to other locations, and for aggregating understanding to larger scales. In this paper, we discuss how ResNet, a new pan-Canadian network of researchers working on place-based social-ecological case studies via ecosystem services, will face (and hopefully overcome) these challenges while taking advantage of the unique benefits of a place-based approach. Drawing on insights from the literature and from the first 10 years of the Programme for Ecosystem Change and Society (PECS), we outline solutions to six key challenges to multi-scale knowledge integration across place-based cases, and explore how ResNet is employing some of these solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scattered trees are declining rapidly on Australian farms, a process that threatens landscape sustainability. Addressing this decline requires, in part, understanding how landholders perceive and manage scattered trees. We explored this via a quantitative survey of landholders in the Lachlan catchment of New South Wales. Although landholders are typically aware that scattered trees are declining more rapidly than other trees on the land they manage, they are less likely to actively encourage their regeneration compared to other trees. Landholders believe scattered trees have many private and public benefits, although they often believe their public benefits are lower than those provided by long strips or large patches of trees. Landholders who undertake mixed grazing and cropping are less likely than those who focus solely on grazing to actively encourage regeneration of scattered trees, and more likely to view them as impacting negatively on their agricultural enterprise. Reversing scattered tree decline requires programs to both increase landholder awareness of their public benefits and to address the specific land management constraints faced by different types of landholders when considering protecting and regenerating scattered trees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among many by-products of Web 2.0 come the wide range of potential image and text datasets within social media and content sharing platforms that speak of how people live, what they do, and what they care about. These datasets are imperfect and biased in many ways, but those flaws make them complementary to data derived from conventional social science methods and thus potentially useful for triangulation in complex decision-making contexts. Yet the online environment is highly mutable, and so the datasets are less reliable than censuses or other standard data types leveraged in social impact assessment. Over the past decade, we have innovated numerous methods for deploying Instagram datasets in investigating management or development alternatives. This article synthesizes work from three Canadian decision contexts - hydroelectric dam construction or removal; dyke realignment or wetland restoration; and integrating renewable energy into vineyard landscapes - to illustrate some of the methods we have applied to social impact assessment questions using Instagram that may be transferrable to other social media platforms and contexts: thematic (manual coding, machine vision, natural language processing/sentiment analysis, statistical analysis), spatial (hotspot mapping, cultural ecosystem modeling), and visual (word clouds, saliency mapping, collage). We conclude with a set of cautions and next steps for the domain., (© The Author(s) 2023.)

Social media has profoundly changed our modes of self-expression, communication, and participation in public discourse, generating volumes of conversations and content that cover every aspect of our social lives. Social media platforms have thus become increasingly important as data sources to identify social trends and phenomena. In recent years, academics have steadily lost ground on access to social media data as technology companies have set more restrictions on Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) or entirely closed public APIs. This circumstance halts the work of many social scientists who have used such data to study issues of public good. We considered the viability of eight approaches for image-based social media data collection: data philanthropy organizations, data repositories, data donation, third-party data companies, homegrown tools, and various web scraping tools and scripts. This paper discusses the advantages and challenges of these approaches from literature and from the authors' experience. We conclude the paper by discussing mechanisms for improving social media data collection that will enable this future frontier of social science research., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Chen, Sherren, Lee, McCay-Peet, Xue and Smit.)

Marine and coastal environments are diverse and dynamic, supporting competing human interests and demands. As society seeks to balance contested uses of space, more holistic planning processes have emerged, which consider social, economic, and ecological factors. One approach that considers social factors, and more specifically social acceptance, is "social license to operate" (SLO). Originating in the terrestrial mining industry, SLO has been adopted by various marine industries. Except for some emerging work in the conservation field, SLO is typically applied to industrial marine and coastal contexts. To understand SLO's uses in other marine and coastal planning contexts, namely conservation, adaptation, and restoration, we conducted a scoping review using the term SLO and similar concepts, including public or social acceptance, support, and buy-in. Results indicate the concept of SLO is still emerging in non-industrial marine and coastal planning, with an emphasis on gaining public acceptance rather than maintaining it. The concept of SLO was applied broadly, including as a measurement for public support and a product of effective engagement. Most publications focused on barriers and drivers of SLO. Influential factors are identified and organized by theme, then discussed based on their relationships within a social-ecological system framework. Considering the common factors and their associated systems helps to link elements necessary to obtain SLO, highlighting their interconnectedness with each other, society, and the natural environment. The findings of this review illustrate SLO's utility for academics and practitioners alike, through its application in methods, tools, values, and concepts that characterize public inclusion for marine and coastal planning., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

Coastal communities face increasingly difficult decisions about responses to climate change. Armoring and defending the coast are being revealed as ineffective in terms of outcomes and cost, particularly in rural areas. Nature-based options include approaches that make space for coastal dynamism (e.g., through managed retreat) or leverage ecosystem services such as erosion control (e.g., by restoring coastal wetlands). Resistance can be strong to these alternatives to hard infrastructure. Nova Scotia, off Canada's Atlantic coast, is a vulnerable coastal jurisdiction facing such decisions. The emerging climax thinking framework was used to design 14 experimental online focus groups. These focus groups explored how three priming treatments influenced discussions about adaptation options and urgency and quantitative pre/post-tests, compared with information-only control treatments. A future-focused priming strategy seemed most effective since it fostered discussions about duties to future generations. The altruism-focused priming strategy involved reflections of wartime mobilization and more recent collective action. It also worked but was more difficult to implement and potentially higher risk. Past-focused priming was counterproductive. Further research should test the future-focused and altruism-focused strategies among larger groups and in different jurisdictions, reducing some of the biases in our sample., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

The ongoing global biodiversity crisis not only involves biological extinctions, but also the loss of experience and the gradual fading of cultural knowledge and collective memory of species. We refer to this phenomenon as 'societal extinction of species' and apply it to both extinct and extant taxa. We describe the underlying concepts as well as the mechanisms and factors that affect this process, discuss its main implications, and identify mitigation measures. Societal extinction is cognitively intractable, but it is tied to biological extinction and thus has important consequences for conservation policy and management. It affects societal perceptions of the severity of anthropogenic impacts and of true extinction rates, erodes societal support for conservation efforts, and causes the loss of cultural heritage., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests No interests are declared., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This paper applies an innovative approach to monitoring social effects occurring before and during construction of two hydroelectric dams in Canada. The two studied dams, Site C and Keeyask, are under construction in Canada and underwent community-based impact assessment (CBIA). News coverage and the CBIA documents were analyzed to understand and compare how those two groups perceive social effects induced by the two projects. CBIAs contain concerns expressed by affected people, whereas news coverage can include quotes from both affected people and decisionmakers involved in the assessment process. By contrasting these datasets, we found that the documents are complementary: while CBIAs are comprehensive in assessing community concerns, news outlets can reveal how those concerns evolved throughout different phases of the projects' implementation. This approach fills a gap in SIA around monitoring of key social effects around local conflicts and disputes, psychosocial effects, socioeconomic effects, and cumulative effects on a daily life. Furthermore, by contrasting the views identified within the impact assessments and the media, the study demonstrates how specific concerns diverged: affected people focus on local social effects while decisionmakers' interests lie in a broader political perspective grounded in local sacrifices 'for the good of the whole province'. Our analysis emphasizes the role of political power over decision making that can inhibit CBIA and social impact assessment practice from contributing to socially sustainable projects., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

The ongoing digital revolution in the age of big data is opening new research opportunities. Culturomics and iEcology, two emerging research areas based on the analysis of online data resources, can provide novel scientific insights and inform conservation and management efforts. To date, culturomics and iEcology have been applied primarily in the terrestrial realm. Here, we advocate for expanding such applications to the aquatic realm by providing a brief overview of these new approaches and outlining key areas in which culturomics and iEcology are likely to have the highest impact, including the management of protected areas; fisheries; flagship species identification; detection and distribution of threatened, rare, and alien species; assessment of ecosystem status and anthropogenic impacts; and social impact assessment. When deployed in the right context with awareness of potential biases, culturomics and iEcology are ripe for rapid development as low-cost research approaches based on data available from digital sources, with increasingly diverse applications for aquatic ecosystems., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Air toxics are airborne pollutants known or suspected to cause cancer or other serious health effects, including certain volatile organic compounds (VOCs), prioritized by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). While several EPA-designated air toxics are monitored at a subset of Canadian National Air Pollution Surveillance (NAPS) sites, Canada has no specific "air toxics" control priorities. Although pulp and paper (P&P) mills are major industrial emitters of air pollutants, few studies quantified the spectrum of air quality exposures. Moreover, most NAPS monitoring sites are in urban centers; in contrast, rural NAPS sites are sparse with few exposure risk records. The objective of this pilot study was to investigate prioritized air toxic ambient VOC concentrations using NAPS hourly emissions data from a rural Pictou, Nova Scotia Kraft P&P town to document concentration levels, and to determine whether these concentrations correlated with wind direction at the NAPS site (located southwest of the mill). Publicly accessible Environment and Climate Change Canada data (VOC concentrations [Granton NAPS ID: 31201] and local meteorological conditions [Caribou Point]) were examined using temporal (2006-2013) and spatial analytic methods. Results revealed several VOCs (1,3-butadiene, benzene, and carbon tetrachloride) routinely exceeded EPA air toxics-associated cancer risk thresholds. 1,3-Butadiene and tetrachloroethylene were significantly higher (p < 0.05) when prevailing wind direction blew from the northeast and the mill towards the NAPS site. Conversely, when prevailing winds originated from the southwest towards the mill, higher median VOC air toxics concentrations at the NAPS site, except carbon tetrachloride, were not observed. Despite study limitations, this is one of few investigations documenting elevated concentrations of certain VOCs air toxics to be associated with P&P emissions in a community. Findings support the need for more research on the extent to which air toxics emissions exist in P&P towns and contribute to poor health in nearby communities.

The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is the region where development meets and intermingles with wildlands. The WUI has an elevated fire risk due to the proximity of development and residents to wildlands with natural wildfire regimes. Existing methods of delineating WUI are typically applied over a large region, use proxies for risk, and do not consider site-specific fire hazard drivers. While these models are appropriate for federal and provincial risk management, municipal managers require models intended for smaller regions. The model developed here uses the Burn-P3 fire behavior model to model WUI from local fire susceptibility (FS) in two study communities. Forest fuel code (FFC) maps for the study communities were modified using remote sensing data to produce detailed forest edges, including ladder fuels, update data currency, and add buildings and roads. The modified FFC maps used in Burn-P3 produced bimodal FS distributions for each community. The WUI in these communities was delineated as areas within community bounds where FS was greater than or equal to -1 SD from the mean FS value ([Formula: see text]), which fell in the trough of the bimodal distribution. The WUI so delineated conformed to the definition of WUI. This model extends WUI modeling for broader risk management initiatives for municipal management of risk, as it (a) considers site-specific drivers of fire behavior; (b) models risk, represented by WUI, specific to a community; and, (c) does not use proxies for risk.

Global food demand is growing rapidly. Livestock grazing can provide a valuable source of protein, but conventional grazing is often unsustainable. We studied an 800,000-ha section of a threatened ecoregion in southeastern Australia. Conventional management in the region involves continuous livestock grazing with few rest periods and regular fertilizer application. By using remotely sensed data on tree cover and extensive field data on livestock grazing regimes, soil chemistry, tree diameters, and tree regeneration, we show that the region is facing a tree regeneration crisis. Under conventional management, across the region, millions of hectares of land currently supporting tens of millions of trees will be treeless within decades from now. This would have severe negative ramifications for biodiversity and key ecosystem services, including water infiltration and shade provision for livestock. However, we identified an unexpected win-win solution for tree regeneration and commercial grazing. A relatively new practice in the region is fast-rotational grazing, characterized by prolonged rest periods in between short, intensive grazing events. The probability of regeneration under fast-rotational grazing was up to 4-fold higher than under conventional grazing, and it did not differ significantly from the probability of regeneration in ungrazed areas. In addition, trees were more likely to regenerate where soil nutrient levels were low. These findings suggest that the tree regeneration crisis can be reversed by applying low-input, fast-rotational grazing. New policy settings supporting these practices could signal a turning point for the region, from ecological decline to ecological recovery.

Despite increasing efforts to reach sustainability, key global biophysical indicators such as climate change and biodiversity loss continue to deteriorate rather than improve. Ongoing failure to move towards sustainability calls into question the focus of current research and policy. We recommend two strategies for progress. First, sustainability must be conceptualized as a hierarchy of considerations, with the biophysical limits of the Earth setting the ultimate boundaries within which social and economic goals must be achieved. Second, transdisciplinary research programs must confront key normative questions facing modern consumer societies. The humanities should have a key role in such programs. Assisted by these strategies, ambitious targets that realistically reflect the biophysical limits of the life-support system of the Earth must be set and relentlessly worked towards.