Working up an appetite for lionfish: A market-based approach to manage the invasion of Pterois volitans in Belize

Located on the Caribbean coast of Central America and flanked by the second longest barrier reef in the world, Belize is a nation reliant upon marine resources. Each year, the country’s predominantly small-scale fisheries generate an estimated US$22 million in revenue – 1.8%of GDP – and employ 3000 people. However, the nation’s fishing communities are facing an unprecedented challenge. Existing threats posed by declining fish stocks have been exacerbated by the introduction of the invasive alien red lionfish Pterois volitans in 2008. This Indo-Pacific predator has the potential to cause significant losses to the recruitment of native fish, in turn disrupting coral reef community dynamics in the Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Howefver, targeted lionfish fishing may offer a cost effective means to control the invasion, while also creating an alternative livelihood solution and improving food security among Belize's coastal fishing communities. This study summarises the recent history of the lionfish invasion in Belize, describes the multi-sector approach being used to address the invasion, and presents preliminary research summarising the characteristics of invasive alien lionfish in Belize. Data from Belize's nascent ‘lionfishery’ are also presented, demonstrating that demand for lionfish is outweighing supply – largely as a result of awareness-raising initiatives – and highlighting the strong potential for replication of this approach elsewhere in the Caribbean. The study concludes by discussing the barriers and potential solutions to this market-based approach to invasive species management.     

Unreported fishing, hungry people and political turmoil: the recipe for a food security crisis in Madagascar?

Madagascar, the world's fourth largest island, is one of the world's poorest developing countries, and its people depend heavily on marine resources for subsistence and income. Exports of these resources and foreign fishing access agreements are also important, at least from a large-scale economic perspective. In recent years, concerns have been voiced amongst local fishers and industry groups regarding the growth of the country's fishing effort. Despite these concerns, existing knowledge of the scale, composition and trends of Malagasy fisheries remains poor, and there is negligible information regarding unreported catches and illegal fishing in Madagascar's waters. Small-scale fisheries, which are often substantial in developing countries such as Madagascar, are often unreported or underestimated. Unfortunately, fisheries legislations, management plans and foreign fishing access agreements are often influenced by these incomplete data, leading to serious over-estimations of resource availability. This also appears to be the situation in Madagascar, where the reconstruction of total catches by all Malagasy fisheries sectors conducted here showed that total catches between 1950 and 2008 were twice the volume reported by national fisheries agencies. Most importantly, much of the subsistence sector is missing from official statistics, and signs of decline have already been observed in several stocks, suggesting that current levels of catches are likely to be exceeding sustainable yields. This has profound implications for the economic and ecological sustainability of fisheries, as well as food security in a country where people rely heavily on the ocean for their daily protein needs and livelihoods.     

Macro- and megafauna communities in three deep basins of the South-East Atlantic

During ‘Meteor’ expedition ‘DIVA 2’ in 2005 the abyssal macro- and megafauna communities were studied in the northern Cape Basin, in the northern Angola Basin and in the eastern and western Guinea Basin. Water depths varied between 5040 and 5670 m.Surface deposit feeding or predatory ophiuroids dominated the megafaunal community in the northern Cape Basin, sponges, sipunculids and fish in the northern Angola Basin, and asteroids, crustaceans and fish in the eastern Guinea Basin, while in the western Guinea Basin sipunculids dominated.In the northern Cape Basin, peracarid crustaceans were the dominant macrofaunal group, followed by polychaetes and bivalves. In the Guinea Basin, polychaetes, peracarid crustaceans and bivalves dominated, although omnivorous or predatory free-living nematodes of macrofaunal size (>0.5 mm) made up 40–60% of the total abundance, with maxima in the western basin.The chlorophyll a content of sediments was lower in the northern Cape and Angola Basins than in the Guinea Basin, which was consistent with the differences in water masses, primary production and flux rate of organic matter in the three basins of the South-East Atlantic. The differences in structure and function of the macro- and megafauna communities in the three basins correlated with the differences in the amount of food reaching the seafloor in tropical and subtropical settings.     

Biogeography and phenology of satellite-measured phytoplankton seasonality in the California current

Thirteen years (1998–2010) of satellite-measured chlorophyll a are used to establish spatial patterns in climatological phytoplankton biomass seasonality across the California Current System (CCS) and its interannual variability. Multivariate clustering based on the shape of the local climatological seasonal cycle divides the study area into four groups: two with spring-summer maxima representing the northern and southern coastal upwelling zones, one with a summer minimum offshore in mid-latitudes and a fourth with very weak seasonality in between. Multivariate clustering on the seasonal cycles from all 13 years produces the same four seasonal cycle types and provides a view of the interannual variability in seasonal biogeography. Over the study period these seasonal cycles generally appear in similar locations as the climatological clusters. However, considerable interannual variability in the geography of the seasonal cycles is evident across the CCS, the most spatially extensive of which are associated with the 1997–1999 El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) signal and the 2005 delayed spring transition off the Oregon and northern and central California coasts. We quantify linear trends over the study period in the seasonal timing of the two seasonal cycles that represent the biologically productive coastal upwelling zones using four different metrics of phenology. In the northern upwelling region, the date of the spring maximum is delaying (1.34 days yr⁻¹) and the central tendency of the summer elevated chlorophyll period is advancing (0.63 days yr⁻¹). In the southern coastal upwelling region, both the initiation and cessation of the spring maximum are delaying (1.78 days yr⁻¹ and 2.44 days yr⁻¹, respectively) and the peak is increasing in duration over the study period. Connections between observed interannual shifts in phytoplankton seasonality and physical forcing, expressed as either basin-scale climate signals or local forcing, show phytoplankton seasonality in the CCS to be influenced by changes in the seasonality of the wind mixing power offshore, coastal upwelling in the near-shore regions and basin-scale signals such as ENSO across the study area.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviewed in this article: Main Street: Northeastern Oregon: The Founding and Development of Small Towns . Barbara Ruth Bailey . Food Politics: The Regional Conflict . David N. Balaam and Michael J. Carey , eds. The International Economy and Industrial Development: Trade and Investment in the Third World . R. Ballance , J. Ansari and H. Singer . Neighborhoods in Urban America . Ronald H. Bayor , ed. The English Heartland . By Robert Beckinsale and Monica Beckinsale . Regional Dimensions of Industrial Policy . Michael E. Bell and Paul S. Lande , eds. Tension Areas of the World . D. Gordon Bennett , ed. Latin America: an Introductory Survey . B. W. Blouet and O. M. Blouet , eds. Integration and Division: Geographical Perspectives on the Northern Ireland Problem . Frederick W. Boal and J. Neville H. Douglas , eds. Energy and Land Use . Robert W. Burchell and David Listokin , eds. Slopes and Weathering . Michael Clarke and John Small . Alaska's Rural Development . Peter G. Cornwall and Gerald Mc Beath , eds. The Politics of Park Design: A History of Urban Parks in America . Galen Cranz . World Congress on Land Policy, 1980, Proceedings . Matthew Cullen and Sharon Woolery , eds. Oregon Divided: A Regional Geography . Samuel N. Dicken and Emily F. Dicken . Urban Food Marketing and Third World Rural Development . T. Scarlett Epstein . South Africa: Spatial Frameworks for Development . T. J. D. Fair . Institutions and Geographical Patterns . Robin Flowerdew , ed. Industrialization of U.S. Agriculture, An Interpretive Atlas . Howard F. Gregor . Planning Theory: Prospects for the 1980s . Patsy Healy , Glen Mc Dougall and Michael J. Thomas , eds. Neighborhood Mobilization: Redevelopment and Response . Jeffrey R. Henig . The American Urban System: A Geographical Perspective . R. J. Johnston . Climate, History and the Modern World . Hubert H. Lamb . Climate and History: Studies in Past Climates and Their Impact on Man . T. M. L. Wigley , M. J. Ingram and G. Farmer . China: Railways and Agricultural Development, 1875–1935 . Ernest P. Liang . A Desirable Energy Future—A National Perspective . Robert S. Livingston , T. D. Anderson , T. M. Besmann , M. Olszewski , A. M. Perry , and C. D. West . Topothesia: Essays Presented to T. S. Ó Máille . B. S. Mac Aodha , ed. Transportation for the Poor: Research in Rural Mobility . Hal S. Maggied . Land Uses in American Cities . Harold M. Mayer and Charles R. Haves . Industrial Organisation and Location . Philip Mc Dermott and Michael Taylor . Human Adaptability: an Introduction to Ecological Anthropology . Emilio F. Moran . Regional Analysis and the New International Division of Labor . Frank Moulaert and Patricia W. Salinas , eds. The Nuclear War Atlas. Victoriaville, Quebec, Canada : Urbanization and Environmental Quality . Isao Orishimo . The Garden of Eden: The Botanic Garden and the Re-Creation of Paradise . John Prest . Earthfire, The Eruption of Mount St. Helens . Charles Rosenfeld and Robert Cooke . Contest for the South China Sea . Marwyn S. Samuels . The Future of the Wetlands: Assessing Visual-Cultural Values . Richard C. Smardon , ed. Tucson: the Life and Times of An American City. C. L. Sonnichsen . The Geography of Multinationals . Michael Taylor and Nigel Thrift , eds. Impact of Marine Pollution on Society . Virginia Tippie and Dana Kester . Reviving the Industrial City: the Politics of Urban Renewal in Lyon and Birmingham . Jerry A. Webman . Andean Reflections: Letters from Carl O. Sauer While on a South American Trip under a Grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, 1942 . Robert C. West , ed. Cartographic Drawing with Computers . P. Yoeli .     

乌鲁木齐及附近地区剪切波分裂特征研究

利用S波分裂的方法，分析了2003年2月14日新疆石河子5．4级地震前后多台所记录的小地震的S波分裂特征，发现震源附近地区的S波分裂特征对中强震仍有一定的前兆意义．震中附近的3个地震台记录的S波偏振方向在5．4级地震前出现由原来与区域应力场一致的NE向转为NW向震后又转回NE向。5．4级地震前各台记录的慢波延迟时间总体表现出由小变大的特征．     

Rescaling the Region: The integration of Hawkes Bay food and forestry industries into East Asia

This paper explores the changing relationship of a region (Hawkes Bay, New Zealand), its industries and enterprises to Asia-Pacific industrial complexes. Land-based industries in Hawkes Bay provide examples of new connections and local adaptations of production to emerging agro-food and forestry complexes, centred upon East Asia. Integration into these complexes, which has only been possible in the context of the gradual relaxation of regulatory regimes that has occurred over the past two decades, has facilitated access to new markets. In some cases, integration is an outcome of East Asian ownership of New Zealand-based nodes along the commodity chain. In others, it is an outcome of New Zealand actors producing to meet 'site of consumption' demand. The paper concludes that new dynamics in the spheres of trade, production and investment are instituted by and feed into new geographic links and interactions, referred to in the paper as a rescaling of the region.     

Biosecurity and the multiplication of crises in the Egyptian agri-food industry

Through a case study of Egypt’s agri-food industry this paper examines biosecurity as a set of technologies, institutions, and practices that attempt to govern national agri-food industries and global agri-food trade by marrying a political economy perspective and an analysis of ‘nature–society relations’. Consistent with other agri-food industries in the global South, Egypt’s agri-food industry has undergone waves of corporate consolidation during the neoliberal period. By detailing the growth of the poultry industry and the endemic spread of HPAI H5N1 (avian flu), this paper presents an argument that the industry grew and consolidated through emergent and recurrent zoonotic and plant diseases, the management of which has been governed in part by biosecurity measures.     

Groundwater Sustainability in Arid and Semi-arid Environments: A Review2

Groundwater is an important part of the global hydrological cycle. Sustainable utilization of groundwater is related to regional ecological security and food security, especially in arid and semi-arid environments. This paper reviewed the important achievements of the research on groundwater sustainability in arid and semi-arid environments during the past 30 years, and summarized the research progress in groundwater sustainability of arid and semi-arid environments from the conception evolution of groundwater sustainability, evaluation methods, influencing factors, sustainable management, and research frontiers. Our analysis suggests that groundwater in water limited environments around the world has shown unsustainable characteristics both in terms of quantity and quality. However, the existing research focuses more on the quantitative characteristics than the quality characteristics of groundwater, and thus the seriousness of the decline in groundwater sustainability is potentially underestimated. It is pointed out that more research efforts need to be done in the future in balancing the groundwater resources for human and nature, clarifying the impacts of human disturbance and climate change on groundwater sustainability, and strengthening groundwater sustainability through transboundary watershed management. We argued that the difficulty remains how to quantify the sustainable yield of a groundwater basin, and how to assess the groundwater sustainability. Further investigations are required in improving the theoretical framework of groundwater sustainability, modeling the impacts of the various alternative groundwater development scenarios, developing more flexible and efficient indicator frameworks for sustainability evaluation of groundwater system, and deploying more sophisticated groundwater monitoring network for real-time data acquisition. Finally, awareness should also be raised towards ground water sustainability both at the legal level and in the sphere of political action.     

基于慢特征分析对连续系统的外强迫提取

外强迫随时间的变化对于非平稳系统的影响十分重要,如何从该系统中重构或提取外强迫信息则成为研究其中动力学特征的关键所在。本文基于慢特征分析方法（Slow Feature Analysis,SFA）以连续系统（改变的Lorenz系统）为参考模型,分别讨论在周期型强迫、减弱的周期型强迫、指数衰减型强迫、伴随指数衰减的周期型强迫等条件下,SFA方法对模型中不同强迫信号的提取能力。结果显示,SFA方法能够提取作用于连续系统中的外强迫信息,其提取效果与外强迫的强度、噪声以及嵌入维数m有关:对于越弱的外强迫或者存在越强的噪声干扰,提取效果越差,提取信号中将出现虚假的高频波动;嵌入维数m的增大能在一定程度上提高外强迫信号的提取效果。试验还表明,作用在单一变量上的外强迫会将其驱动信息嵌入于系统中,因此,可以通过SFA分析方法从其他变量中提取其外强迫信号。