Adaptive management and its role in managing Great Barrier Reef water quality

Adaptive management is the pathway to effective conservation, use and management of Australia's coastal catchments and waterways. While the concepts of adaptive management are not new, applications involving both assessment and management responses are indeed limited at the national and regional scales. This paper outlines the components of a systematic framework for linking scientific knowledge, existing tools, planning approaches and participatory processes to achieve healthy regional partnerships between community, industry, government agencies and science providers to overcome institutional barriers and uncoordinated monitoring. The framework developed by the Coastal CRC (www.coastal.crc.org.au/amf/amf/_index.htm) is hierarchical in the way it displays information to allow associated frameworks to be integrated, and represents a construct in which processes, information, decision tools and outcomes are brought together in a structured and transparent way for adaptive catchment and coastal management. This paper proposes how an adaptive management approach could be used to benefit the implementation of the Reef Water Quality Protection Plan (RWQPP).     

Sources,deposition rates and decomposition of organic carbon in recent sediment of Sachem Head Harbor,Long Island Sound

The vertical distributions of excess ²¹⁰Pb and fall out ^{239, 240}Pu imply a uniform sedimentation rate of 1·4–1·6 cm year^?1 from 0 to 105–110 cm. This sediment accumulation rate is compatible with sulfate reduction rate data from this location. Below 70 cm only ‘aged’ refractory carbon is present (C_R = 1·8% C) with an age of approximately 2400 years. This phase is present in a number of locations across Long Island Sound. Planktonic carbon (C_P) is present above the 60–67 cm horizon. A value of 1·0 for A_P (¹⁴C activity) at 32–37 cm was taken, A_P = 1·285 was used for contemporary plankton. This was obtained by correcting the measured A_P of a plankton tow sample for admixed refractory carbon. These values were then used to calculate C_R, C_P and C_F (fossil carbon) at 32–37 cm and 6–12 cm. The only values compatible with the known sulfate reduction rate data are C_R equal to pre 60–67 cm levels (1·6–1·8% C), C_F being 0·3% C at both depths, and C_P decreasing with depth from 0·3 to 0·4% C at 6–12 cm to close to zero at 32–37 cm.     

Emotionally intelligent research

Key to this paper is not so much the emotions of the researcher that emanate from fieldwork, but those of the researched (and their emotional intelligence). Using a vignette of research on the impact of the 2001 foot and mouth disease outbreak on rural economies in the north of England, the paper explores emotions as clues and ways of seeing. It is broadly influenced by a social constructionist approach that views emotion as created and understood in the context of relationships with others and made meaningful through discourses, language and signifiers. It does not, though, deny the physical sensations that accompany emotion and the ways in which emotions are embodied as individuals interact with others (human and non-human).