The Beach Crowding Index: A Tool for Assessing Social Carrying Capacity of Vulnerable Beaches

The aim of this article is to introduce the Beach Crowding Index (BCI), a procedure to assess the social carrying capacity of vulnerable beaches. The study uses the people at one time (PAOT) approach and data gathered weekly throughout the bathing season regarding the number of beachgoers in 100 m² cells of the beach to assess how many beachgoers it can comfortably hold. The procedure is based on fieldwork, interviews with beachgoers, and geographic information system (GIS) analysis and has been tested on four beaches in protected areas on the Spanish Mediterranean coast. On a scale from 0 to 4, minimum scores throughout the bathing season are 0.7 and maximum 3.7, although results showed wide variation between the beaches, the section of the beach, and the time of day. This study suggests that determining the location of beachgoers and collecting a long-term series of data is fundamental to assessing social carrying capacity and that the BCI procedure can be used for a large number of applications.     

Reconciling Multiple Societal Objectives in Cross-Scale Marine Governance: Solomon Islands’ Engagement in the Coral Triangle Initiative

Environmental governance aims to reconcile an expanding set of societal objectives at ever-larger scales despite the challenges that remain in integrating conservation and development at smaller scales. We interrogate Solomon Islands’ engagement in the Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security to contribute new insight on the scalar politics of multi-level marine governance. We show how regional objectives are re-interpreted and prioritized as they translate into national policy and practice. Our data suggest that enhanced coordination of finances and activities, integration of objectives in shared protocols and priority geographies, and a subtle shift in power relations between the state, donors, and implementation partners have resulted from processes of re-scaling. We discuss important procedural adjustments in cross-level and cross-scale governance across jurisdictional, institutional, and sectoral scales. We also reflect on the changing role of national governments in shifts toward large-scale, multi-national initiatives.     

Indigenous Land Management in Peri-Urban Landscapes: An Australian Example

This article examines roles, opportunities, and challenges for Indigenous land management in rapidly developing landscapes through a case study of Bunya Bunya Country Aboriginal Corporation, a not-for-profit organization on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia. An analysis of data collected through semistructured interviews, participant observation, and analysis of secondary sources reveals that Aboriginal land managers work in a variety of roles to manage issues affecting the local environment and cultural heritage sites. These efforts are challenged by the absence of Native Title and colonial land management policies, which restrict Aboriginal involvement in land management. We conclude that there is a need for alternative pathways to engage with Aboriginal land managers who cannot, or choose not to, proceed with Native Title. Decolonized decision-making tools and sustainable enterprises are viable opportunities that partially address these challenges and could deliver tangible socio-economic and cultural benefits to local Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.     

Ecosystem Services in a Transitional Forest Landscape: Shifting Trajectories in Southeast Michigan,USA

North American forests provide multiple ecosystem services, such as carbon storage, biodiversity, and recreation. These services are often coordinated through multifunctional management, whereby various users and owners contribute to collective agendas. Forests in exurban “transition” zones are crucial components in the sustainability of broader metropolitan landscapes, but represent a particularly understudied confluence of ecosystem services and multifunctional management. In this paper, we develop a place-based approach to assess ecosystem services in transitional forests (those between rural and urban). We demonstrate how trajectories of forest composition are linked with shifting ecosystem services that both shape and are shaped by management activities. Sited in Stinchfield Woods, a forest in southeast Michigan, this study draws on a household survey, interviews, ecological data, and archival information. Given variations in priorities over time and among different users, we suggest that coordinated, adaptive management may improve provisioning of ecosystem services in ways that benefit multiple users.     

Developing Governance Principles for Public Natural Resources

Wildlife governance principles (WGPs) identify desirable governance characteristics for wildlife conservation in the United States (US). The types of institutional, ecological, and socio-cultural challenges that WGPs are designed to address also affect governance of public natural resources other than wildlife and in places other than the US. This raises the possibility that a similar set of governance principles might help natural resource professionals working in other resource contexts address the particular challenges they face. We describe the process by which we developed WGPs and offer seven practically oriented questions to help natural resource professionals ascertain whether a similar set of principles could improve governance in their context. In some contexts, minor modification of WGPs might be appropriate; in others, the process by which we developed WGPs could serve as a blueprint for formulating appropriate principles.     

Mapping the Stakeholders: Using Social Network Analysis to Increase the Legitimacy and Transparency of Participatory Scenario Planning

Participatory scenario planning (PSP) processes rely on accurate stakeholder identification to develop a key set of critical uncertainties. While many stakeholder analysis methods are able to identify stakeholders and describe their relationships, we found these efforts to have limited use in the fast-moving and in-depth approach of PSP research. We find that social network analysis (SNA) is an efficient, objective, and transparent approach to stakeholder identification in highly contested natural resource management issues. We present a case study of our research on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula to describe how SNA’s ability to contextualize the relations between actors can benefit participatory research.     

Is Larger Scale Better? Evidence from Rice Farming in Jianghan Plain

Small-scale household agricultural production has been in conflict with China’s agricultural modernization. In the context of vigorously promoting rural land circulation and moderate scale management nationwide, research on the relationship between farm size and scale efficiency has become increasingly important. In this paper, we use the “DEA-OLS” two stage method to analyze data from 368 surveys of rice farming households in the Jianghan Plain. The scale efficiency of rice farming was calculated, and the relationship between farm size and scale efficiency investigated. The results indicate that (1) the rice farm size is generally small in Jianghan Plain, with an average of 0.77 ha. The average scale efficiency is 0.88, and it is the main factor limiting an increase in comprehensive technical efficiency. Moreover, 88.32% of households are in the stage of increasing returns to scale. (2) There is a stable inverted “U” type relationship between rice farm size and scale efficiency. Considering characteristics of the householder, the household and land quality, the maximum scale efficiency corresponds to a household with 5 ha of rice farm. (3) Among householder characteristics, age has a significant negative influence on scale efficiency, and scale efficiency is lower for a household whose householder is engaged in non-farm work than for one whose householder is devoted to farming. As for land quality, there was a significant positive effect of irrigation on scale efficiency. Among family characteristics, the application of a machine during the seeding process increased scale efficiency by 3.07%. Therefore, we suggest that local government should actively promote rural land circulation, implement a staged-scale management subsidy, and other forms of support for the purchase of agricultural machinery and technical popularization. Increased investment in irrigation improvements and mechanical facilities and encouragement of farmers to enlarge their farm size could improve scale efficiency and farming profit and lead to the development of moderate scale management.     

Budgeting for climate change: obstacles and opportunities at the US state level

State governments in the United States are well placed to identify opportunities for mitigation and the needs for adaptation to climate change. However, the cost of these efforts can have important implications for budgets that already face pressures from diverse areas such as unfunded pensions and growing health care costs. In this work, the current level of spending on climate-related activities at the state level are evaluated and policy recommendations are developed to improve financial management practices as they relate to climate risk. An examination of state budgets reveals that climate mitigation and adaptation activities represent less than 1% of spending in most states. The data collection highlights the obstacles to collecting accurate spending data and the lack of budgetary and accounting procedures in place. More importantly, the difficulty in benchmarking these activities poses challenges for the analysis of state-level policies as well as planning and modelling future climate-related spending. Other policy contexts, including public pensions and infrastructure, can provide guidance on budgetary and accounting tools that may help states prepare for and more efficiently manage climate-related expenditures.

Key policy insights

• Climate change mitigation and adaptation will require substantial investments across many levels of government on a wide range of activities.

• Currently, US states are not clearly demarcating climate expenditures, hindering the identification of climate-related budgetary risks.

• In the absence of guidelines, these longer term fiscal outlays may remain chronically underfunded in favour of more near-term spending priorities.

• Establishing appropriate financial management and data collection practices is important for more sophisticated cost-effectiveness and policy analyses.

     

省级气象云资源管理平台设计与应用

基于OpenStack架构建立省级云资源管理平台,通过整合省级各类硬件资源,将计算、存储、网络等硬件资源纳入统一资源池管理,在此基础上将省级原有的多套虚拟化系统软硬件资源纳入平台统一管理。平台投入使用后资源有效利用率大幅提升,实现硬件资源动态、弹性、可回收利用,能够更好地为各业务部门提供硬件资源服务。通过接管省级VMware、OS等虚拟化系统,平台可以根据业务需求快速部署交付业务系统,大幅提高对气象业务的服务和支撑能力,提高了系统运维的水平和效率。该平台的建成和应用对省级云计算发展和应用具有示范、服务、探索等多重作用,特别是对带动省级信息化建设进入新阶段,探寻省级新的信息化建设模式具有现实意义。     

中国东中西部城市土地储备决策绩效比较研究

运用数据包络分析(DEA)模型,对2013年中国内地34个大中城市土地储备决策绩效进行总体评价和比较分析。研究结果表明:东部地区城市土地储备决策效率最高,西部次之,中部最低;土地储备决策效率受到纯技术效率和规模效率的共同作用,且规模效率作用较大;影响东中西部城市土地储备决策效率投入产出的主要因素各不相同。基于此,从深化土地及相关制度改革和提升政府管理效率两个层面提出土地储备决策绩效优化策略,从而提高土地资源利用效率、优化城市空间结构。