Community volunteer assessment of recreational water quality in the Hutt River,Wellington

ABSTRACT

Water is an important component of many recreational opportunities and New Zealand invests significant resources in recreational water quality (RWQ) monitoring to assess risks to public health. However, monitoring primarily focuses on microbiological hazards and RWQ is considerably broader than this. The goal of this study was to take a comprehensive approach to evaluating RWQ while exploring the potential for greater public involvement in monitoring. A popular river swimming site was co-monitored weekly by volunteers and a council field officer. The attributes monitored–water temperature, visual clarity, benthic cyanobacteria and filamentous periphyton cover, E. coli and rubbish–were identified from a volunteer workshop. There was good concordance between volunteer and council data suggesting that volunteer measurements can be considered reliable. This highlights the potential for volunteers, with professional support, including training and quality assurance, to extend council RWQ surveillance to additional monitoring sites while improving public engagement on water management.     

Lessons from co-impacts assessment under the Mitigation Action Plans and Scenarios (MAPS) Programme

The MAPS Programme has been active in Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru in supporting the development of an evidence base to inform the processes involved in climate mitigation policy-making. The programme combines detailed quantitative analysis with an extensive stakeholder engagement process to provide policy and decision makers with the information required for long-term climate mitigation planning.

In recognition of the critical need to consider the developmental context and agenda in climate policy-making, the projects undertaken in these countries have experimented with various types of assessments of developmental impacts at both the macro and micro levels. These impacts have been collectively termed co-impacts to reflect the fact that these may be either positive or negative. In this article the value and challenges associated with co-impacts work for climate mitigation policy are considered. The value of including co-impacts analysis in the MAPS processes included increased stakeholder buy-in, making the case for mitigation action, informing INDCs and the prioritization of particular mitigation actions. Challenges include those associated with obtaining locally relevant data, the selection and operation of appropriate macro-economic models and analytical approaches and working with multidisciplinary teams.

The article concludes by making some suggestions to optimize co-impacts work, through reference to other bodies of literature. The authors highlight that this article is situated within a dominant approach to climate mitigation policy work in developing countries, which implicitly places the non-climate benefits of any action as secondary to the primary benefit of climate change mitigation and constructs an artificial separation of policy formulation and implementation. Practitioners are encouraged to reflect on the implications of these considerations in future efforts.

Policy relevance

One of the primary challenges to advancing climate mitigation policy in developing countries is that of perceived relevance: near-term development priorities are overwhelming. Identifying, understanding and engaging with the co-impacts of mitigation actions has emerged as one way of addressing this challenge. Although still at an experimental phase, experience with co-impacts analysis in the MAPS countries provides some useful lessons in how to develop this area of work.     

Redacted in Nebraska: the noises of conspiracy around nuclear power problems

This paper investigates a ‘small story’, the problems around the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant (Nebraska) in the wet summer of 2011. Relying on materials from digital media, it presents the official and an alternative version of events. Utilizing a constructionist approach, it identifies the search for moral certainty, as well as the importance of blame and conspiracy theories, from which emerges the ‘big story’. Highlighting the important role of on-line media and digital communication, we document not only the official story but also an opposing version based on a coherent worldview emphasising the problems of big government, liberal views and denial of American individual rights—all framed as a conspiracy covering-up a threatening, human-made technology failure. We suggest why this worldview occurs, stressing a widespread emphasis on American values and history, ‘failed journalism’, public uncertainty, the complexity of nuclear technology, and the specific uses of digital communication.     

Visualizing the relationship between geographic and social media network space

This research explores the relationship between geographic and social media network space. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to perform a geo-enhanced network analysis and to create an example social media network using a select location identified in the study area as important in the results of the geo-enhanced network analysis. A straightforward, non-technical example is provided to the readers on how location data and social media network data can be overlaid to visualize potential local firm to firm and firm to customer connections in geographic and social media network space. An example of how to identify these potential connections locally through social media networks using Twitter is demonstrated. By considering the geographic location in network structures, it is possible to convey the role distance plays in discerning prospective local social media marketing partners, and also track the spread of information flow through social media networks.

     

Exploring social barriers to adaptation: Insights from Western Nepal

As the challenges and opportunities posed by climate change become increasingly apparent, the need for facilitating successful adaptation and enhancing adaptive capacity within the context of sustainable development is clear. With adaptation high on the agenda, the notion of limits and barriers to adaptation has recently received much attention within both academic and policymaking spheres. While emerging literature has been quick to depict limits and barriers in terms of natural, financial, or technologic processes, there is a clear shortfall in acknowledging social barriers to adaptation. It is against such a backdrop that this paper sets out to expose and explore some of the underlying features of social barriers to adaptation, drawing on insights from two case studies in the Western Nepal. This paper exposes the significant role of cognitive, normative and institutional factors in both influencing and prescribing adaptation. It explores how restrictive social environments can limit adaptation actions and influence adaptive capacity at the local level, particularly for the marginalised and socially excluded. The findings suggest a need for greater recognition of the diversity and complexity of social barriers, strategic planning and incorporation at national and local levels, as well as an emphasis on tackling the underlying drivers of vulnerability and social exclusion.     

Introduction to Focus Section: Feminist Research and Knowledge Production in Geography

Over the past two decades, feminist geographers have contributed in critical ways to thinking on the conduct, complications, and consequences of feminist research. The robust existing body of work is testament to the foundational import of these contributions, but the articles in this Focus Section suggest that there are still important things to argue, talk about, and reflect on with regard to the epistemological aspects of doing feminist geography. These six articles bring together real-life examples of complex issues that feminist researchers in geography face today, with the overarching aim of sparking discussions about the relationship between feminist research and knowledge production. Specifically, the articles expand key concepts facilitating reflexive processes and offer new tools for feminist researchers. This Introduction reviews the existing literature pertaining to both of these goals, and summarizes and situates the articles that follow.     

La Frontera and Beyond: Geography and Demography in Mexican American History*

The recent publication of an expansive national dataset, the Integrated Public Use Microdata Sample, allows for new analyses of the historical geography and settlement of various immigrant and ethnic groups in the United States. The present research explores the growth, development, and geographic dispersion of the ethnic Mexican population, and outlines some of the demographic and social characteristics within significant clusters of this population in the United States across the first half of the twentieth century. The analysis does not attempt to overturn other geographies and ethnographies in Mexican American history, but through its ability to elucidate broad, national patterns it is able to create a more dynamic view of settlement, demonstrating the role of immigrants and of women immigrants in particular. Results indicate that place matters: the geographical context of arrival and settlement were key factors in differentiating communities and the lives of those who lived in them.     

Organic contaminant distributions in sediments, polychaetes (Nereis virens) and American lobster (Homarus americanus) from a laboratory food chain experiment.

A laboratory experiment was conducted to investigate the transfer of organic contaminants from an environmentally contaminated marine sediment through a simple marine food chain. The infaunal polychaete, Nereis virens, was exposed to contaminated sediment collected from the Passaic River, NJ, USA, for 70 days. These polychaetes were then fed to the American lobster, Homarus americanus, for up to 112 days. Polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins (PCDDs), polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs), 2,4,6,8-tetrachlorodibenzothiophene (TCDT), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and several chlorinated pesticides were accumulated by polychaetes following exposure to the contaminated sediment. Some of these contaminants were also accumulated by lobsters which were exposed to the contaminated sediment and/or fed contaminated polychaetes. Only the lesser chlorinated PCDDs and PCDFs (mostly tetra- and pentachlorinated congeners) and 2,4,6,8-TCDT were detected in the polychaetes and lobster. Significant alterations were noted in the PCB patterns found in both species, particularly the lobster. The non-ortho-substituted PCBs (such as congeners 77 and 126) became enriched in the PCB mixtures of the polychaetes and especially the lobsters relative to the sediment, probably because these congeners were not metabolized. These congeners and the 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin toxicity equivalents of the PCB mixtures were enriched by a factor of about six in the lobsters relative to the sediment. Elimination of PCB congeners containing vicinal hydrogens in the meta-para region is consistent with cytochrome P450IIB-type metabolism. Based on the concentration trends for some PCB congeners and chlorinated pesticide ratios measured in the lobsters during this experiment, it appears that this metabolic system is inducible in the American lobster.