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Meta-analytical methods face particular challenges in research fields such as social and political research, where studies often rest primarily on qualitative and case study research. In such contexts, where research findings are less standardized and amenable to structured synthesis, the case survey method has been proposed as a means of data generation and analysis. The method offers a meta-analytical tool to synthesize larger numbers of qualitative case studies, yielding data amenable to large-N analysis. However, resulting data is prone to specific threats to validity, including biases due to publication type, rater behaviour, and variable characteristics, which researchers need to be aware of. While these biases are well known in theory, and typically explored for primary research, their prevalence in case survey meta-analyses remains relatively unexplored. We draw on a case survey of 305 published qualitative case studies of public environmental decision-making, and systematically analyze these biases in the resultant data. Our findings indicate that case surveys can deliver high-quality and reliable results. However, we also find that these biases do indeed occur, albeit to a small degree or under specific conditions of complexity. We identify a number of design choices to mitigate biases that may threaten validity in case survey meta-analysis. Our findings are of importance to those using the case survey method -- and to those who might apply insights derived by this method to inform policy and practice.

Water resource managers and Geographers share common interests in meeting Sustainable Development Goal Seven (universal access to affordable energy) and addressing climate change. Hydropower plays a key role but dams have environmental, social and cultural consequences. The Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Protocol (HSAP) aims to ensure that dams are built safely and potential impacts are understood. This study of a proposed pumped hydro scheme at Lake Onslow in Central Otago, New Zealand, considers the effectiveness of HSAP. Results reported here show that HSAP works well but that it can also be improved by including new groups of stakeholders and by widening the perception of risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of barriers in freshwater systems to mitigate invasions, known as isolation management, has been increasingly implemented as a protection strategy for native fish. Barriers are crucial for securing vulnerable populations, but much remains to be learnt about the drivers of success and the implications of deliberate fragmentation.In Aotearoa‐New Zealand, henceforth Aotearoa, native non‐migratory galaxiid (NMG) fishes are characterized by a disproportionate number of threatened species with introduced salmonids (trout) identified as a key driver of NMG declines.We conducted a qualitative review of barriers protecting NMG in Aotearoa, illustrating varying outcomes and current knowledge gaps with case studies. Barrier types ranged from natural bedrock waterfalls, shallow velocity chutes and drying reaches to deliberately engineered structures (known commonly as exclusion barriers). Barriers were typically located in headwater streams or spring systems. NMG species secured by fragmentation often have high conservation value and barriers are essential for their protection.Despite the critical role of these barriers, the isolated NMG populations above them are at risk of stochastic extirpation, invasion, or re‐invasion. Exclusion barriers may restrict access to habitat for native migratory fish species and can sometimes alter or remove ideal mesohabitat from protected populations.Overall, when using exclusion barriers, managers must assess extinction risk for individual populations by isolation or invasion, balancing benefits and consequences. However, these assessments are frequently based on incomplete data and hindered by lack of general understanding of the underpinning processes. Despite well‐documented benefits to NMG population survival, key knowledge gaps such as long‐term viability of isolated populations, combinations of physical barrier parameters conferring exclusion under all flow regimes and extent of habitat loss to other native species still exist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Invasive non-native species (INNS) are key drivers of global biodiversity loss. This is particularly evident in freshwater ecosystems, where the rates of both vertebrate biodiversity loss and biological invasion exceed those of marine and terrestrial systems. Aotearoa New Zealand (henceforth Aotearoa) like many other island nations, has a troubled history with NNS. However, it is also unique, as the main islands were the last major landmasses on Earth to remain uninhabited by humans. The endemic fauna had evolved in isolation from any anthropogenic influence or introduced NNS , until the mid-thirteenth century with the arrival of Māori, the first people to inhabit Aotearoa. Centuries later, following European colonisation, many non-native freshwater fish were deliberately introduced by acclimatisation societies. Currently, most of the native freshwater fish species of Aotearoa are at risk of extinction, despite almost 90% of these being found nowhere else on earth. Many of these species are highly valued by the indigenous people of Aotearoa, who have repeatedly highlighted biases towards NNS in freshwater fish management. With the rate of biological invasions increasing, it is timely to address interconnected issues concerning the history, impacts, management and current / future policy directions, including those involving biosecurity, for non-native freshwater fish in Aotearoa. We do this by applying a social-ecological systems (SES) lens, with a focus on causal-loop relationships and feedbacks to improve understanding of the dynamics of drivers, mechanisms and impacts of such invasions. We highlight the tensions that have resulted from managing some NNS as 'pests' threatening native biodiversity, while simultaneously promoting a tourism and recreational fishery resource for specific NNS. This has generated extremely polarized views on the 'status' of non-native freshwater fish species and given rise to contradictory and divergent goals for their management. We show how a disjointed and often incoherent policy landscape has contributed to legal 'anomalies' for NNS , including policy misalignments and gaps, hampering effective use of resources, while also entrenching contradictory management programmes for different stakeholders. Our study shows how these interconnected issues have been manifested in social-ecological feedback loops on core aspects of NNS policy and management, past and present. Consequently, there is a need for increased comprehension of the diverse array of potential impacts of NNS for different environments, stakeholders and Māori while developing coherent and practical management methods to reduce such impacts and improve social-ecological resilience. We conclude that adopting a SES approach will aid this endeavour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soybeans are ubiquitous in the global food system. As a major forest risk commodity, they are also at the heart of efforts to untangle the dynamics of land use change and associated impacts resulting from distant drivers. However, land system science has so far largely ignored the historically and socially embedded nature of these entanglements. This results in snapshot-like representations relying on neoclassical approaches to production and consumption. Here, we trace the evolution of the global soybean complex (GSC) since the late nineteenth century. We analyze how in the context of external developments soybeans have been channeled into different provisioning systems. This has occurred in a series of socio-ecological fixes, facilitated by socio-technological innovations and public sector interventions, motivated by different impediments to capital accumulation. Today, several emerging socio-technological practices promise to transform the GSC towards sustainability. We argue that the contemporary GSC inherits defining properties from the past, particularly the postwar strategy of using industrial animal farming to add value to surplus grains and oilseeds. The expanding GSC is therefore not merely a result of increasing demand, but rather the outcome of different provisioning systems' continued dependence on soybeans. Future transitions will depend on public interventions and the influence of vested interest in current socio-metabolic patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]