Choosing the Right Policy Tools to Encourage Watershed Stewardship through the Study of Attitude

Recently, a number of “Payment for Watershed Services” programs have aimed to engage private landowners in watershed stewardship initiatives by offering financial incentives for adopting watershed best management practices. However, a growing field of research suggests that financial incentives alone may be of limited utility to encourage widespread and long-standing behavior change, and other policy tools may be required. This research examines how attitudes may influence enrollment in watershed stewardship programs to shed light the application of incentive, capacity building, and symbolic policy tools. We distributed a questionnaire to rural landowners in the Clackamas River watershed, OR, and received 281 valid responses (29% response rate). We found that attitudes associated with trust, ecological understanding, and technical capacity played more fundamental roles compared with financial considerations. We interpret these findings by evaluating the likely efficacy of various policy tools, and stress the importance of engaging landowners by building capacity and trust.     

Fast numerical solution of the linearized Molodensky problem

 When standard boundary element methods (BEM) are used in order to solve the linearized vector Molodensky problem we are confronted with two problems: (1) the absence of O(|x|⁻²) terms in the decay condition is not taken into account, since the single-layer ansatz, which is commonly used as representation of the disturbing potential, is of the order O(|x|⁻¹) as x→∞. This implies that the standard theory of Galerkin BEM is not applicable since the injectivity of the integral operator fails; (2) the N×N stiffness matrix is dense, with N typically of the order 10⁵. Without fast algorithms, which provide suitable approximations to the stiffness matrix by a sparse one with O(N(logN) ^s ), s≥0, non-zero elements, high-resolution global gravity field recovery is not feasible. Solutions to both problems are proposed. (1) A proper variational formulation taking the decay condition into account is based on some closed subspace of co-dimension 3 of the space of square integrable functions on the boundary surface. Instead of imposing the constraints directly on the boundary element trial space, they are incorporated into a variational formulation by penalization with a Lagrange multiplier. The conforming discretization yields an augmented linear system of equations of dimension N+3×N+3. The penalty term guarantees the well-posedness of the problem, and gives precise information about the incompatibility of the data. (2) Since the upper left submatrix of dimension N×N of the augmented system is the stiffness matrix of the standard BEM, the approach allows all techniques to be used to generate sparse approximations to the stiffness matrix, such as wavelets, fast multipole methods, panel clustering etc., without any modification. A combination of panel clustering and fast multipole method is used in order to solve the augmented linear system of equations in O(N) operations. The method is based on an approximation of the kernel function of the integral operator by a degenerate kernel in the far field, which is provided by a multipole expansion of the kernel function. Numerical experiments show that the fast algorithm is superior to the standard BEM algorithm in terms of CPU time by about three orders of magnitude for N=65 538 unknowns. Similar holds for the storage requirements. About 30 iterations are necessary in order to solve the linear system of equations using the generalized minimum residual method (GMRES). The number of iterations is almost independent of the number of unknowns, which indicates good conditioning of the system matrix. Received: 16 October 1999 / Accepted: 28 February 2001     

On counting the number of data pairs for semivariogram estimation

In planning spatial sampling studies for the purpose of estimating the semivariogram, the number of data pairs separated by a given distance is sometimes used as a comparative index of the precision which can be expected from a given sampling design. Because spatial data are correlated, this index can be unreliable. An alternative index which partially corrects for this correlation, themaximum equivalent uncorrelated pairs, is proposed for comparing spatial designs. The index is developed under the assumption that the underlying stochastic process is Gaussian and is appropriate when the (population) semivariogram is to be estimated by the sample semivariogram.     

Zur Approximation von Laufzeitfunktionen aus diskreten Messwerten mit abgebrochenen Potenzreihen

Zusammenfassung Es wird eine Approximation von Laufzeitfunktionen aus diskreten Messwerten mit abgebrochenen Potenzreihen behandelt. Zur bequemen Anwendung werden Tabellen berechnet. Der Beitrag schliesst mit einem Beispiel aus der Praxis.

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Summary An approximation to travel-time functions by restriced power series is treated. For numerical computations convenient tables are calculated and an example is given.

     

III. Bücher- und Zeitschriftenschau

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Zur Morphologie von Westgriqualand (Südafrika)

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Streiflichter Ein Holzschnitt von Hans Holbein d. J. (?) aus dem Jahre 1523, frei umgedeutet als Sinnbild des Geologenwahlspruches „Mente et Malleo“

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Internal tides and sediment movement on Horizon Guyot,Mid-Pacific Mountains

Internal tidal currents are the likely cause of erosional features such as current ripples, sand waves, and truncated bedding horizons on the sediment cap of Horizon Guyot. Current meter data obtained over a 9 month period in 1983–1984 at about 213 m above the guyot show that the tidal currents are anomalously strong for mid-oceanic depths, probably the result of topographically induced generation of internal tidal waves. An analysis of the initiation of motion of the foraminiferal sand by the internal tidal currents indicates that these currents, particularly during the months of March–May, are likely to transport the surficial sediment and generate the observed bedforms.