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Now more than ever, complex socio-ecological challenges require timely and integrated responses from scientists and policymakers. Air quality is one such challenge. Under the Clean Air Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency establishes ambient air quality standards to protect public welfare from known or anticipated adverse effects of air pollutants. As our understanding of the environment and awareness of social values grow, there is a need to improve characterization of "adversity to the public welfare." Scientific assessment can link ecological effects to public welfare using modern scientific approaches that incorporate ecological complexity and multiple value systems held by the public. We propose ideas for the future of scientific assessments meant to inform air quality and other environmental decision-making, including concrete ways we can focus on vulnerable species and ecosystems, incorporate a multiplicity of values, climate and multiple stressors, and partner to diversify the knowledge upon which protective policies are based. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific assessments, such as those by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), inform policymakers and the public about the state of scientific evidence and related uncertainties. We studied how experts from different scientific disciplines who were authors of IPCC reports, interpret the uncertainty language recommended in the Guidance Note for Lead Authors of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report on Consistent Treatment of Uncertainties. This IPCC guidance note discusses how to use confidence levels to describe the quality of evidence and scientific agreement, as well likelihood terms to describe the probability intervals associated with climate variables. We find that (1) physical science experts were more familiar with the IPCC guidance note than other experts, and they followed it more often; (2) experts' confidence levels increased more with perceptions of evidence than with agreement; (3) experts' estimated probability intervals for climate variables were wider when likelihood terms were presented with "medium confidence" rather than with "high confidence" and when seen in context of IPCC sentences rather than out of context, and were only partly in agreement with the IPCC guidance note. Our findings inform recommendations for communications about scientific evidence, assessments, and related uncertainties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relatively few studies have conducted quantitative assessments of historically important heritage trails. Their current conditions, relative to their long maintenance history, are even less well examined. This research aims to apply trail assessment techniques developed in a recreational context to the heritage trails of the Nakahechi route-which is part of the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage network-located in the vast forests of Japan's Kii Peninsula. Point sampling was used to gather data on the trails' surface characteristics, conditions, designs, and use-related variables. Trail conditions and design characteristics were summarized according to their surface characteristics, in order to identify the underlying environmental factors that potentially influenced the choice of different managerial methods. A series of exploratory multivariate regressions were then performed to examine the factors that influenced trail incisions. Regression analyses revealed that trail grades, trail widths, and use types are robust predictors for trail incisions. Managerial practices exemplified by the trails' surface characteristics were found to influence trail design variables. For example, the additions of log water-bars and step construction on trail incisions along the trails were analyzed. The findings suggested that managers must address different trail characteristics when considering their historical context. Trail assessment surveys have been widely reported in the recreational literature, yet they have rarely been applied to heritage trails in mountainous areas. Assessing heritage trails, however, can be of great importance for their sustainable management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I respond to the thoughtful criticisms of my book articulated by Gillian Brock, Thaddeus Metz, and Darrel Moellendorf. Their critical questioning offers me an opportunity to reformulate aspects of the book so that I more accurately say exactly what I had in mind when writing the book. The first section contains a reworking of my definition of poverty to eliminate any ambiguity and demonstrate what kind of comparative judgements the definition allows us to make. The second section looks anew at the multiple moral sources for our obligation to eradicate poverty. In the third section I focus on issues that could hinder attempts at eradicating poverty. One is the lack of accessible knowledge that might be too demanding to acquire. The other is the possibility that all attempts to eradicate poverty might have to be put on hold until oppressive capitalist development has prepared the circumstances for a more socialist distribution of resources. I argue that neither of these concerns should hinder the eradication of poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building trust between resource users and natural resource institutions is essential when creating conservation policies that rely on stakeholders to be effective. Trust can enable the public and agencies to engage in cooperative behaviors toward shared goals and address shared problems. Despite the increasing attention that trust has received recently in the environmental management literature, the influence that individual cognitive and behavioral factors may play in influencing levels of trust in resource management institutions, and their associated scientific assessments, remains unclear. This paper uses the case of fisheries management in the northeast to explore the relationships between an individual's knowledge of the resource, perceptions of resource health, and participatory experience on levels of trust. Using survey data collected from 244 avid recreational anglers in the Northeast U.S., we test these relationships using structural equation modeling. Results indicate that participation in fisheries management is associated with increased trust across all aspects of fisheries management. In addition, higher ratings of resource health by anglers are associated with higher levels of trust of state and regional institutions, but not federal institutions or scientific methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study focused on making invisible colleges of educational science in Finland visible through analysing networking relations between scientific research communities. The study aims at developing methods to analyse the intensity and focus of social collaboration between educational research groups in order to understand internal relations of scientific discipline and support scientific evaluation with information about participation and informal communication beyond quantity of published products. Informal and formal networking connections of the professors of education in Finland were examined by using different methods of social network analysis. The results of the study revealed that the informal information flow between professors of education concentrated within universities whereas more formal collaborative relations (e.g. citations) cross boundaries between universities. The educational research was structured as three distinct invisible colleges (learning researchers, research on teaching, and the sociology of education). Furthermore, the professors differed considerably in terms of informal collaborative relations and citations. Only a few central actors dominated educational research in receiving the majority of the citations, whereas some professors appeared to be completely isolated from other educational research network. We conclude that social network analysis opens up a new promising perspective, which can be used in analysing and assessing different branches of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]