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Articles 181 - 205 of 205

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Assisting Stakeholder Decision Making Using System Dynamics Group Model-Building, Kristin Den Exter, Alison Specht Oct 2010

Assisting Stakeholder Decision Making Using System Dynamics Group Model-Building, Kristin Den Exter, Alison Specht

Dr Kristin den Exter

Stakeholder involvement in environmental management in Australia is increasingly participatory. A community-government partnership has been the central focus of the NSW program of water reforms since the inception of the Water Act 2000. Under the Act, it is the joint responsibility of the New South Wales Government and stakeholder-based Water Management Committees to develop Water Sharing Plans. Water Management Committees typically comprise government, environmental and agricultural representatives. This paper describes a System Dynamics group model-building workshop conducted with the Northern Rivers Water Management Committee. A role of the Committee was to determine the allocation of water between the water users …

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Remediation Of Coastal Acid Sulfate Soils By Tidal Inundation: Effectiveness And Geochemical Implications, Scott Johnston, Annabelle Keene, Richard Bush, Edward Burton, Leigh Sullivan Sep 2010

Remediation Of Coastal Acid Sulfate Soils By Tidal Inundation: Effectiveness And Geochemical Implications, Scott Johnston, Annabelle Keene, Richard Bush, Edward Burton, Leigh Sullivan

Associate Professor Edward D Burton

The effects of restoring marine tidal inundation to a severely degraded acid sulfate soil landscape were investigated. Five years of regular tidal inundation led to substantial improvements in a range of key parameters used to assess soil and water quality. The pH of estuarine creeks improved dramatically following reintroduction of tidal inundation. Time series water quality and climatic data indicate a substantial decrease in the magnitude of creek acidification per given quantity of antecedent rainfall. The soil pH also increased by 2–3 units and titratable actual acidity (TAA) decreased by ~40–50 μmol H+ g-1 within former sulfuric horizons. Tidal inundation …

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Preliminary Global Assessment Of Terrestrial Biodiversity Consequences Of Sea-Level Rise Mediated By Climate Change, Shaily Menon, Jorge Soberon, Xingong Li, A. Townsend Peterson Feb 2010

Preliminary Global Assessment Of Terrestrial Biodiversity Consequences Of Sea-Level Rise Mediated By Climate Change, Shaily Menon, Jorge Soberon, Xingong Li, A. Townsend Peterson

Shaily Menon

Considerable attention has focused on the climatic effects of global climate change on biodiversity, but few analyses and no broad assessments have evaluated effects of sea-level rise on biodiversity. Taking advantage of new maps of marine intrusion under scenarios of 1 and 6 m sea-level rise, we calculated areal losses for all terrestrial ecoregions globally, with areal losses for particular ecoregions ranging from nil to complete. Marine intrusion is a global phenomenon, but its effects are most prominent in Southeast Asia and nearby islands, eastern North America, northeastern South America, and western Alaska. Making assumptions regarding faunal responses to reduced …

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Mapping And Estimation Of Chemical Concentrations In Surface Soils Using Landsat Tm Satellite Imagery, Maruthi Sridhar Balaji Bhaskar Dec 2009

Mapping And Estimation Of Chemical Concentrations In Surface Soils Using Landsat Tm Satellite Imagery, Maruthi Sridhar Balaji Bhaskar

Maruthi Sridhar Balaji Bhaskar

No abstract provided.

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Cracking And Crumbling: Exploring Mechanisms Of Dike Emplacement, Teaching Structural Geology In The 21st Century, Resources For Teaching Structural Geology, Phillip Resor Dec 2007

Cracking And Crumbling: Exploring Mechanisms Of Dike Emplacement, Teaching Structural Geology In The 21st Century, Resources For Teaching Structural Geology, Phillip Resor

Phillip G Resor

No abstract provided.

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Deformation Associated With A Continental Normal Fault System, Western Grand Canyon, Arizona, Phillip G. Resor Dec 2007

Deformation Associated With A Continental Normal Fault System, Western Grand Canyon, Arizona, Phillip G. Resor

Phillip G Resor

Reverse-drag folds are often used to infer subsurface fault geometry in extended terrains, yet details of how these folds form in association with slip on normal fault systems are poorly understood. Detailed structural mapping and global positioning system (GPS) surveying of the Frog Fault and Lone Mountain Monocline in the western Grand Canyon demonstrate a systematic relationship between elements of the normal fault system and fold geometry. The Lone Mountain Monocline, which parallels the Frog Fault, is made up of two half-monoclinal flexures: a hanging-wall fold in which dips gradually increase toward the fault over ~1.5 km reaching a maximum …

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Breathless: Schools, Air Toxics, And Environmental Justice In California, Manuel Pastor, Rachel Morello-Frosch, James Sadd Jul 2006

Breathless: Schools, Air Toxics, And Environmental Justice In California, Manuel Pastor, Rachel Morello-Frosch, James Sadd

James Sadd

The exposure of children to environmental disamenities has emerged as a key policy concern in recent years, with some analysts and activists suggesting that minority children are disproportionately impacted. Utilizing a dataset that combines air toxics at the census tract level with school-based demographic and other information, this article indicates disparate exposures for students of color in California schools and suggests that there may be negative impacts on one measure of academic performance, even after controlling for other factors usually associated with test scores. Policy implications include a special focus on school remediation and strengthening overall efforts to reduce emissions …

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The Air Is Always Cleaner On The Other Side: Race, Space, And Ambient Air Toxics Exposures In California, Manuel Pastor, Rachel Morello-Frosch, James Sadd May 2005

The Air Is Always Cleaner On The Other Side: Race, Space, And Ambient Air Toxics Exposures In California, Manuel Pastor, Rachel Morello-Frosch, James Sadd

James Sadd

Environmental justice advocates have recently focused attention on cumulative exposure in minority neighborhoods due to multiple sources of pollution. This article uses U.S. EPA’s National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) for 1996 to examine environmental inequality in California, a state that has been a recent innovator in environmental justice policy. We first estimate potential lifetime cancer risks from mobile and stationary sources. We then consider the distribution of these risks using both simple comparisons and a multivariate model in which we control for income, land use, and other explanatory factors, as well as spatial correlation. We find large racial disparities in …

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Integrating High-Precision Aftershock Locations And Geodetic Observations To Model Coseismic Deformation Associated With The 1995 Kozani-Grevena Earthquake, Greece, Phillip G. Resor, David Pollard, T J. Wright, G C. Beroza Dec 2004

Integrating High-Precision Aftershock Locations And Geodetic Observations To Model Coseismic Deformation Associated With The 1995 Kozani-Grevena Earthquake, Greece, Phillip G. Resor, David Pollard, T J. Wright, G C. Beroza

Phillip G Resor

We integrate high-precision aftershock locations with geodetic inverse modeling to create a more complete kinematic model for the Kozani-Grevena earthquake sequence. Using the double-difference algorithm, we have improved relative hypocentral locations by a factor of ∼7 and thus imaged the details of the fault network associated with the seismic sequence. The interpreted fault network consists of multiple segments including (1) a master normal fault that strikes nearly due west and dips toward the north at 43°, extending from 6 to 15 km depth; (2) an upper segment that connects the top of the seismicity to the observed surface ruptures and …

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Inverting For Slip On Three-Dimensional Fault Surfaces Using Angular Dislocations, Phillip G. Resor, David Pollard, Frantz Maerten, Laurent Maerten Dec 2004

Inverting For Slip On Three-Dimensional Fault Surfaces Using Angular Dislocations, Phillip G. Resor, David Pollard, Frantz Maerten, Laurent Maerten

Phillip G Resor

The increasing quality of geodetic data (synthetic aperture radar interferometry [INSAR] dense Global Positioning System [GPS] arrays) now available to geophysicists and geologists are not fully exploited in slip-inversion procedures. Most common methods of inversion use rectangular dislocation segments to model fault ruptures and therefore oversimplify fault geometries. These geometric simplifications can lead to inconsistencies when inverting for slip on earthquake faults, and they preclude a more complete understanding of the role of fault geometry in the earthquake process. We have developed a new three-dimensional slip-inversion method based on the analytical solution for an angular dislocation in a linear-elastic, homogeneous, …

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Hartford Basin Cross Section – Southington To Portland, Ct, Phillip G. Resor, J Z. Deboer Dec 2004

Hartford Basin Cross Section – Southington To Portland, Ct, Phillip G. Resor, J Z. Deboer

Phillip G Resor

No abstract provided.

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Laramie Peak Shear System, Central Laramie Mountains, Wyoming, Usa: Regeneration Of The Archean Wyoming Province During Palaeoproterozoic Accretion, Phillip G. Resor, Arthur W. Snoke Dec 2004

Laramie Peak Shear System, Central Laramie Mountains, Wyoming, Usa: Regeneration Of The Archean Wyoming Province During Palaeoproterozoic Accretion, Phillip G. Resor, Arthur W. Snoke

Phillip G Resor

The Laramie Peak shear system (LPSS) is a 10 km-thick zone of heterogeneous general shear (non-coaxial) that records significant tectonic regeneration of middle-lower crustal rocks of the Archean Wyoming province. The shear system is related to the 1.78–1.74 Ga Medicine Bow orogeny that involved the collision of an oceanic-arc terrane (Colorado province or Green Mountain block or arc) with the rifted, southern margin of the Wyoming province. The style and character of deformation associated with the LPSS is distinctive: a strong, penetrative (mylonitic) foliation commonly containing a moderately steep, SW-plunging elongation lineation. In mylonitic quartzo-feldspathic gneisses of the Fletcher Park …

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Western End Of The Honey Hill Fault Along The Eastern Bank Of The Connecticut River, Phillip G. Resor, J Z. Deboer Dec 2004

Western End Of The Honey Hill Fault Along The Eastern Bank Of The Connecticut River, Phillip G. Resor, J Z. Deboer

Phillip G Resor

No abstract provided.

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Waiting To Inhale: The Demographics Of Toxic Air Release Facilities In 21st-Century California, Manuel Pastor, James Sadd, Rachel Morello-Frosch May 2004

Waiting To Inhale: The Demographics Of Toxic Air Release Facilities In 21st-Century California, Manuel Pastor, James Sadd, Rachel Morello-Frosch

James Sadd

We examine the spatial distribution of toxic air releases and residential demographics in California using 2000 Census data and coeval information from the Federal Toxic Release Inventory for evidence of disproportionate exposure. Methods. We use spatial analysis using GIS, and multivariate regression analysis, including ordered and multinomial logit regressions, in our study. Results. Analytical results suggest a pattern of disproportionate exposure based on race, with the disparity most severe for Latinos, which holds in a series of multivariate regressions, including attempts to test for varying levels of pollution risk and to control for spatial dependence. Conclusions. The study corroborates earlier …

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Who's Minding The Kids? Pollution, Public Schools, And Environmental Justice In Los Angeles, Manuel Pastor, James Sadd, Rachel Morello-Frosch Feb 2002

Who's Minding The Kids? Pollution, Public Schools, And Environmental Justice In Los Angeles, Manuel Pastor, James Sadd, Rachel Morello-Frosch

James Sadd

Although previous environmental justice research has focused on analysis of the disproportionate burden of environmental hazards on minority residents, few studies have examined demographic inequities in health risks among children. This article evaluates the demographic distribution of potentially hazardous facilities and health risks associated with ambient air toxics exposures among public schoolchildren in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Methods. We combine Geographic Information System analysis with multivariate statistics to compare enrollment and demographic information for students who attend district schools with the spatial pattern of land use, locations of toxic emissions and facilities, and calculated indices of estimated lifetime …

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Environmental Justice And Regional Inequality In Southern California: Implications For Future Research, Manuel Pastor, C Porras, James Sadd Dec 2001

Environmental Justice And Regional Inequality In Southern California: Implications For Future Research, Manuel Pastor, C Porras, James Sadd

James Sadd

Environmental justice offers researchers new insights into the juncture of social inequality and public health and provides a framework for policy discussions on the impact of discrimination on the environmental health of diverse communities in the United States. Yet, causally linking the presence of potentially hazardous facilities or environmental pollution with adverse health effects is difficult, particularly in situations in which diverse populations are exposed to complex chemical mixtures. A community-academic research collaborative in southern California sought to address some of these methodological challenges by conducting environmental justice research that makes use of recent advances in air emissions inventories and …

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Integrating Environmental Justice And The Precautionary Principle In Research And Policy Making: The Case Of Ambient Air Toxics Exposures And Health Risks Among Schoolchildren In Los Angeles, Rachel Morello-Frosch, Manuel Pastor, James Sadd Dec 2001

Integrating Environmental Justice And The Precautionary Principle In Research And Policy Making: The Case Of Ambient Air Toxics Exposures And Health Risks Among Schoolchildren In Los Angeles, Rachel Morello-Frosch, Manuel Pastor, James Sadd

James Sadd

Two policy frameworks, environmental justice and the precautionary principle, have begun to transform traditional approaches to environmental policy making and community organizing related to public health. Despite having several important overlapping policy goals, little effort has been made to purposefully integrate these two frameworks. This article discusses preliminary research on environmental inequality in ambient air toxics exposures and associated health risks among schoolchildren in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Results indicate that children of color, namely, Latinos and African Americans, bear the highest burden of estimated cancer and noncancer health risks associated with ambient air toxics exposures while they …

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Environmental Justice And Southern California's “Riskscape” The Distribution Of Air Toxics Exposures And Health Risks Among Diverse Communities, James Sadd Feb 2001

Environmental Justice And Southern California's “Riskscape” The Distribution Of Air Toxics Exposures And Health Risks Among Diverse Communities, James Sadd

James Sadd

Past research on “environmental justice” has often failed to systematically link hazard proximity with quantifiable health risks. The authors employ recent advances in air emissions inventories and modeling techniques to consider a broad range of outdoor air toxics in Southern California and to calculate the potential lifetime cancer risks associated with these pollutants. They find that such risks are attributable mostly to transportation and small-area sources and not the usually targeted large-facility pollution emissions. Multivariate regression suggests that race plays an explanatory role in risk distribution even after controlling for other economic, land-use, and population factors. This pattern suggests the …

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“Every Breath You Take... ”: The Demographics Of Toxic Air Releases In Southern California, James Sadd, Manuel Pastor, J. Boer, Lori Snyder Apr 1999

“Every Breath You Take... ”: The Demographics Of Toxic Air Releases In Southern California, James Sadd, Manuel Pastor, J. Boer, Lori Snyder

James Sadd

In this article, the authors investigate the relationship between ethnicity and potential environmental hazards in the metropolitan Los Angeles area. Using a variety of techniques, including geographic information systems (GIS) mapping, univariate comparisons, and logit, ordered logit, and tobit regression analysis, the authors find that, even controlling for other factors such as income and the extent of manufacturing employment and land use, minority residents tend to be disproportionately located in neighborhoods surrounding toxic air emissions. The results generally support the propositions of the proponents of “environmental justice”; in the conclusion, they consider what this might mean for urban land use …

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Cloning And Conservation Of Biological Diversity: Paradox, Panacea, Or Pandora's Box?, Shaily Menon, Kamaljit Bawa, Leah Gorman Jul 1997

Cloning And Conservation Of Biological Diversity: Paradox, Panacea, Or Pandora's Box?, Shaily Menon, Kamaljit Bawa, Leah Gorman

Shaily Menon

The success of a Scottish team in cloning a mammal from an adult tissue cell has generated considerable speculation in the popular press about potential applications to conservation biology. Possibilities that have been mentioned include cloning endangered species and creating gene banks for the germplasm of rare species. Sensational or inaccurate reports might encourage the mistaken notion that cloning technology is more advanced or reliable than it actually is. More important, such reports might foster the myth that there is no longer an urgency to conserve endangered species or their habitats as long as we have frozen germplasm and cloning …

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Effectiveness Of The Protected Area Network In Biodiversity Conservation: A Case-Study Of Meghalaya State, M. Latif Khan, Shaily Menon, Kamaljit Bawa Dec 1996

Effectiveness Of The Protected Area Network In Biodiversity Conservation: A Case-Study Of Meghalaya State, M. Latif Khan, Shaily Menon, Kamaljit Bawa

Shaily Menon

The North-Eastern region of India is significant for biodiversity conservation because of its floristic richness and high levels of endemism. Deforestation levels are high in the region due to anthropogenic pressures. We accessed various literature sources to create a database for Meghalaya state containing information on plant species, habit, altitudinal distribution, endemism, and endangered status. Information on the existing protected area network (type, extent, and altitudinal representation) was added to the database. The database was used to assess the effectiveness of the existing protected area network in conserving the floristic biodiversity of the state. Of a total of 3331 plant …

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Biodiversity Monitoring: The Missing Ingredient, Kamaljit Bawa, Shaily Menon Dec 1996

Biodiversity Monitoring: The Missing Ingredient, Kamaljit Bawa, Shaily Menon

Shaily Menon

With mounting losses in biological diversity, inventorying and monitoring of biodiversity to assess the magnitude and rate of losses are emerging as dominant themes in conservation biology. Inventorying has been defined as the surveying, sorting, cataloging, quantifying and mapping of entities ranging from genes to landscapes1 and monitoring has been defined as the surveillance of the compliance with or deviation from a predetermined standard2. Renner and Ricklefs3 argued that rushed inventories will compromise scientific rigor and have little influence on decision making. More recently, Stork et al.4 argued that losses in biological diversity are so severe that inventorying and monitoring …

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Is There Environmental Racism? The Demographics Of Hazardous Waste In Los Angeles County, J. Boer, Manuel Pastor, James Sadd, Lori Snyder Dec 1996

Is There Environmental Racism? The Demographics Of Hazardous Waste In Los Angeles County, J. Boer, Manuel Pastor, James Sadd, Lori Snyder

James Sadd

The article assesses the location of treatment, storage and disposal facilities (TSDF) in Los Angeles County, California, with focus on racism. The study shows that a simple comparison of tracts with and without TSDF reveals statistically significant differences by race and economic status along the lines suggested by the environmental justice proponents. There are also significant differences by industrial land use and manufacturing employment along the lines suggested by critics of the environmental justice concept. In this multivariate model race, along with industrial land use and employment in manufacturing, remains a factor, rising income that has a positive then a …

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Direct Dating Of Deformation; U-Pb Age Of Syndeformational Sphene Growth In The Proterozoic Laramie Peak Shear Zone, Phillip G. Resor, Kevin R. Chamberlain, Carol D. Frost, B Ronald Frost, Arthur W. Snoke Jun 1996

Direct Dating Of Deformation; U-Pb Age Of Syndeformational Sphene Growth In The Proterozoic Laramie Peak Shear Zone, Phillip G. Resor, Kevin R. Chamberlain, Carol D. Frost, B Ronald Frost, Arthur W. Snoke

Phillip G Resor

In this paper, we show that deformation can be dated by combining mesoscopic and microscopic structural observations with an understanding of metamorphic mineral reactions and U-Pb ages of newly grown sphene (titanite). This approach can be used on a variety of rock types that have been deformed at a wide range of metamorphic conditions. In an example from the Proterozoic Laramie Peak shear zone of southeastern Wyoming, a single period of syntectonic sphene growth in sheared mafic dikes is documented both by a strong spatial relationship between deformation and metamorphism and by sphene microtextures. U-Pb analyses of sphene separates give …

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Lion-Tailed Macaques (Macaca Silenus) In A Disturbed Forest Fragment: Activity Patterns And Time Budget, Shaily Menon, Frank Poirier Dec 1995

Lion-Tailed Macaques (Macaca Silenus) In A Disturbed Forest Fragment: Activity Patterns And Time Budget, Shaily Menon, Frank Poirier

Shaily Menon

We describe the activity patterns and time budget of a feral group of lion-tailed macaques that were confined to a disturbed forest fragment of 65 ha and compare the results with those obtained for groups in protected forests. The degraded nature of the study site was reflected in low tree densities, low specific diversity, gaps in the girth distribution of trees, and frequent disturbance by humans. The study group of 43 subjects was twice as large as lion-tailed macaque groups in protected habitats. They spent the most time ranging (34.0%), followed by foraging (23.7%), feeding (17.9%), resting (16.0%), and other …

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