{"title":"Evaluation-perception of site attributes and plant species selection in the public urban green space of a compact city","authors":"Caroline Law, L.C. Hui, C.Y. Jim","doi":"10.5751/es-14222-280322","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5751/es-14222-280322","url":null,"abstract":"Understanding citizens’ evaluation of public urban green space (UGS) attributes and plant species features can inform greenspace design to meet public expectations. This study evaluated the public’s responses to UGS attributes and plant species in Hong Kong using a questionnaire survey of 827 adult respondents. Principal component analysis followed by cluster analysis were applied to analyze the data. The respondents were differentiated into three groups (ecological, eclectic, and pragmatic users) based on the evaluations of UGS attributes. Additionally, three clusters (conservation supporters, all-round perfectionists, and safety defenders) were classified based on evaluating plant species features. Plant knowledge and gender were the main factors associated with respondents’ evaluation profiles. Respondents with different expectations of UGS attributes harbored different evaluations of plant species features. The respondent groups agreed unanimously that similar plant species composition was deployed across UGS sites in Hong Kong. Respondents attaching importance to the conservation value of plant species (i.e., “conservation supporters”) were more concerned about plant species selection. The conservation supporters were dissatisfied with the current plant selection strategy. A zonation strategy for large UGS could cater to a broad range of user demands and create a socially-inclusive venue for residents. Alternatively, a collection of small UGS in a given district can cover a range of functions. The findings could inform a modified approach to UGS design and plant selection to satisfy the residents’ disparate expectations and needs.","PeriodicalId":51028,"journal":{"name":"Ecology and Society","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135750808","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jonathan Farr, Matthew Pruden, Robin Glover, Maureen Murray, Scott Sugden, Howard Harshaw, Colleen Cassady St. Clair
{"title":"A ten-year community reporting database reveals rising coyote boldness and associated human concern in Edmonton, Canada","authors":"Jonathan Farr, Matthew Pruden, Robin Glover, Maureen Murray, Scott Sugden, Howard Harshaw, Colleen Cassady St. Clair","doi":"10.5751/es-14015-280219","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5751/es-14015-280219","url":null,"abstract":"In cities throughout North America, sightings of coyotes (<em>Canis latrans</em>) have become common. Reports of human-coyote conflict are also rising, as is the public demand for proactive management to prevent negative human-coyote interactions. Effective and proactive management can be informed by the direct observations of community members, who can report their interactions with coyotes and describe the location, time, and context that led to their interactions. To better understand the circumstances that can predict human-coyote conflict, we used a web-based reporting system to collect 9134 community-supplied reports of coyotes in Edmonton, Canada, between January 2012 and December 2021. We used a standardized ordinal ranking system to score each report on two indicators of human-coyote conflict: coyote boldness, based on the reported coyote behavior, and human concern about coyotes, determined from the emotions or perceptions about coyotes expressed by reporters. We assigned greater scores to behaviors where coyotes followed, approached, charged, or contacted pets or people, and to perceptions where reporters expressed fear, worry, concern, discomfort or alarm. Using ordered logistic regression and chi-square tests, we compared boldness and concern scores to spatial, temporal, and contextual predictors. Our analysis showed that coyotes were bolder in less developed open areas and during the pup-rearing season, but human concern was higher in residential areas and during the dispersal season. Reports that mentioned dogs or cats were more likely to describe bolder coyote behavior, and those that mentioned pets or children had more negative perceptions about coyotes. Coyote boldness and human concern both indicated rising human-coyote conflict in Edmonton over the 10 years of reporting.","PeriodicalId":51028,"journal":{"name":"Ecology and Society","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135180979","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Skylar Skinner, Anastasia Addai, Stephen Decker, Michael van Zyll de Jong
{"title":"The ecological success of river restoration in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada: lessons learned","authors":"Skylar Skinner, Anastasia Addai, Stephen Decker, Michael van Zyll de Jong","doi":"10.5751/es-14379-280320","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5751/es-14379-280320","url":null,"abstract":"Despite millions of dollars being spent annually to restore degraded river ecosystems, there exist relatively few assessments of the ecological effectiveness of projects. An evidence-based synthesis was conducted to describe river restoration activities in Newfoundland and Labrador. The synthesis identified 170 river restoration projects between 1949 and 2020. A practitioner’s survey was conducted on a subset of 91 projects to evaluate ecological success. When the perceived success of managers was compared to an independent assessment of ecological success, 82% of respondents believe the projects to be completely or somewhat successful whereas only 41% of projects were evaluated as ecologically successful through an independent assessment. Only 11% of practitioners’ evaluations used ecological indicators, yet managers of 66% of projects reported improvements in river ecosystems. This contradiction reveals a lack of the application of evidence to support value-based judgments by practitioners. Despite reporting that monitoring data were used in the assessment it is doubtful that any meaningful ecological assessment was conducted. If we are to improve the science of river restoration, projects must demonstrate evidence of ecological success to qualify as sound restoration. River restoration is a necessary tool to ensure the sustainability of river ecosystems. The assessment conducted in this study suggests that our approach to planning, designing, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating projects needs to improve. An integrated-systems view that gives attention to stakeholders’ values and scientific information concerning the potential consequences of alternative restoration actions on key ecosystem indicators is required.","PeriodicalId":51028,"journal":{"name":"Ecology and Society","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135599466","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mai Ka Pō Mai: applying Indigenous cosmology and worldview to empower and transform a management plan for Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument","authors":"Kalani Quiocho, Kekuewa Kikiloi, Keoni Kuoha, Alyssa Miller, Brad Kaʻaleleo Wong, Hōkū Kaʻaekuahiwi Pousima, Pelika Andrade, ʻAulani Wilhelm","doi":"10.5751/es-14280-280321","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5751/es-14280-280321","url":null,"abstract":"Environmental conservation management planning has an important role in creating conditions for social learning, adaptive governance, and improvements for co-management arrangements with Indigenous peoples. Incorporating Indigenous cosmologies, worldviews, and epistemologies within management planning processes can enable factors that support appropriate management practices for protected areas considered to be sacred natural sites by Indigenous peoples. Here, we review processes and outcomes of management planning led by Native Hawaiians with various positionalities that resulted in the Mai Ka Pō Mai Native Hawaiian Guidance Document for the Management of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. As we look back to look forward, we highlight the factors that supported knowledge co-production and expanded opportunities to develop management planning and evaluation processes informed by Hawaiian place-based knowledge and human-nature relations of care and reciprocity. These include collaborative approaches, long-term commitment to community and institution capacity-building; an enabling policy environment; and diverse and consistent involvement of Native Hawaiians.","PeriodicalId":51028,"journal":{"name":"Ecology and Society","volume":"54 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135701626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Looking at hidden connections to explore adaptive capacity of cultural landscape systems: case studies of four landcare associations in Germany","authors":"Hyunjin Park, Claudia Bieling","doi":"10.5751/ES-12470-260411","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-12470-260411","url":null,"abstract":"Adaptive capacity indicates the capacity to cope with and adapt to a disturbance in a complex social-ecological system. Cultural landscapes can be understood as such systems that are confronted with land abandonment and agricultural intensification as key disturbances. However, responses to such cultural landscape loss have not been systematically investigated so far in terms of adaptive capacity. Taking this gap as a starting point and following a context-sensitive approach, this study addresses the question: how can the adaptive capacity of cultural landscape systems for a disturbance such as land abandonment be understood? We answer this question through a comparative case study of four landcare associations in Germany. A conceptual framework that distinguishes between coping and adaptation responses and allows for the analysis of different levels of fit of responses is used. Management of abandoned agricultural land, the establishment of cultural landscape features, provision of consultation and mediation services, and machinery are implemented as coping responses by the four associations. Adaptation responses include the organization of events, public relations work, education, regional brand promotion, lobbying work, and the promotion of regional products. The interactions between the responses that have either synergetic or counterproductive effects were identified. The results of this study emphasize the fit between different responses as an important factor for understanding the adaptive capacity of cultural landscape systems in addition to investing in coping and adaptation responses in isolation. In this sense, adaptive capacity needs to be understood not only in terms of coping (short-term adaptive capacity) and adaptation responses (longer-term adaptive capacity) but also through a good fit, which reduces trade-offs between responses and thus offers a broader range of future options. We conclude by calling for a holistic analysis of different responses to a disturbance that takes account of their fit.","PeriodicalId":51028,"journal":{"name":"Ecology and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42868495","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Automated content analysis of the Hawaiʻi small boat fishery survey reveals nuanced, evolving conflicts","authors":"A. Suan, Kirsten M. Leong, K. Oleson","doi":"10.5751/ES-12708-260409","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-12708-260409","url":null,"abstract":"Manual content analysis provides a systematic and reliable method to analyze patterns within a narrative text, but for larger datasets, where human coding is not feasible, automated content analysis methods present enticing and time-efficient solutions to classifying patterns of text automatically. However, the massive dataset needed and complexity of analyzing these large datasets have hindered their use in fishery science. Fishery scientists typically deal with intermediately sized datasets that are not large enough to warrant the complexity of sophisticated automated techniques, but that are also not small enough to cost-effectively analyze by hand. For these cases, a dictionary-based automated content analysis technique can potentially simplify the automation process without losing contextual sensitivity. Here, we built and tested a fisheries-specific data dictionary to conduct an automated content analysis of open-ended responses in a survey of the Hawaiʻi small boat fishery to examine the nature of the fishery conflict. In this paper we describe the overall performance of the methodology, creating and applying the dictionary to fishery data, as well as advantages and limitations of the method. The results indicate that the dictionary approach is capable of quickly and accurately classifying unstructured fisheries data into structured data, and that it was useful in revealing deeply rooted conflicts that are often ambiguous and overlooked in fisheries management. In addition to providing a proof of concept for the approach, the dictionary can be reused on subsequent waves of the survey to continue monitoring the evolution of these conflicts. Further, this approach can be applied within the field of fishery and natural resource conservation science more broadly, offering a valuable addition to the methodological toolbox.","PeriodicalId":51028,"journal":{"name":"Ecology and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42374996","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Drawing on diverse knowledge systems to enhance local climate understanding in the southern Cape, South Africa","authors":"C. D. Ward, G. Cundill, G. Midgley, A. Jarre","doi":"10.5751/ES-12712-260410","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-12712-260410","url":null,"abstract":"By overlaying terrestrial and marine perspectives, we examine complex system change at the local scale of the southern Cape and Agulhas Bank in South Africa through placing different knowledge bases on climate variability alongside each other. This research adds insights into how social components of complex systems interact with environmental change and contributes to confirming environmental regime shifts in the research area; identifying knowledge disconnects for ecosystem services linked to terrestrial water availability; and highlights scale disconnects in fisher observations in nearand off-shore change. The benefits of examining these diverse bodies of knowledge in parallel across terrestrial and marine systems are evident in the synergies and disconnects that emerge from our integrative approach. Although impossible to eliminate uncertainty around projected climate variability and change, this multi-evidence base strengthens advice for evidence-based, strategic decision making that is locally relevant. The methodology pursued adds to the global learning on overlaying multiple bodies of knowledge in support of sustainability.","PeriodicalId":51028,"journal":{"name":"Ecology and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2021-10-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42539917","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Comparing adaptive capacity of Arctic communities responding to environmental change","authors":"M. Berman, Jennifer I. Schmidt, G. Kofinas","doi":"10.5751/ES-12304-260322","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-12304-260322","url":null,"abstract":"Adaptive capacity (AC) is a widely used concept denoting assets or resources that people or a system can draw upon to cope with environmental change. When applied to a community, careful definition and measurement of AC is essential for identifying patterns and generating findings that may be useful for policy and transferable to other places. We identified and compared measures of 22 indicators for eight communities on Alaska’s North Slope, based on consistency with theory, availability of data, and measurable community differences. Despite many cultural and institutional similarities, we found systematic differences among communities in each of the seven AC domains measured. Although every community had strengths in some domains, we could divide communities into three groups: high overall AC (one community), moderate overall AC (four communities), and low overall AC (three communities), based on average rank order across all domains. The comparative approach we developed can be helpful in identifying productive policy opportunities for strengthening community AC.","PeriodicalId":51028,"journal":{"name":"Ecology and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42230680","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
K. Zoeller, G. Gurney, Nadine Marshall, G. Cumming
{"title":"The role of socio-demographic characteristics in mediating relationships between people and nature","authors":"K. Zoeller, G. Gurney, Nadine Marshall, G. Cumming","doi":"10.5751/es-12664-260320","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5751/es-12664-260320","url":null,"abstract":"Research on ecosystem services has focused primarily on questions of availability or supply and often assumes a single human community of identical beneficiaries. However, how people perceive and experience ecosystem services can differ by sociodemographic characteristics such as material wealth, gender, education, and age. Equitable environmental management depends on understanding and accommodating different perceptions of ecosystem services and benefits. We explored how socio-demographic characteristics influence people’s perceptions of birds. We identified morphological and behavioral traits of birds that people care about and used these to group bird species into “cultural functional groups.” Cultural functional groups of birds are defined by shared characteristics that local people perceive as contributing to cultural ecosystem services or disservices (in the same way that foraging guilds for birds can be defined by dietary information). Using perception data for 491 bird species from 401 respondents along urbanrural gradients in South Africa, we found that socio-demographic characteristics were strongly associated with human preferences for different avian cultural functional groups. Our results provide a strong quantitative demonstration that the provision of cultural ecosystem services and benefits depends on the recipient of the service and not just on the ecological community that is present.","PeriodicalId":51028,"journal":{"name":"Ecology and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2021-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42381706","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Leveraging emotion-behavior pathways to support environmental behavior change","authors":"Katie Williamson, Erik Thulin","doi":"10.31234/osf.io/wtms9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/wtms9","url":null,"abstract":"Many global environmental threats are driven by human behavior and require behavioral solutions. Researchers in the environmental field have recently begun seeing the behavioral sciences as core to changing behavior for conservation; yet leveraging human emotions remains an underused tool for behavior change compared to others like social norms. Humans experience a range of emotions that each cause distinct patterns of behavior depending on unique contexts; this presents an opportunity to leverage emotions to support behavior change goals. The existing literature offers minimal guidance about which specific emotions to use in which contexts and how those emotions might lead to certain behaviors. In the environmental field specifically, there have been mixed results on using emotions, resulting from an incomplete understanding of the causal relationship between particular emotions, contexts, and environmental behaviors. We propose that adopting a functionalist approach, which describes emotions as functional states designed to produce particular outcomes in specific contexts, will help to unlock emotions as a tool for conservation. To demonstrate this approach, we identify fear, joy, hope, anger, pride, interest, and the prospect of shame as particularly relevant for environmental behavior change. Based on an understanding of each emotion’s function, we developed an emotion-behavior pathway that describes the expected outcome of using an emotion in a particular context. Applying these emotional-behavior pathways can allow both researchers and practitioners to advance the science of shifting environmental behavior through emotion.","PeriodicalId":51028,"journal":{"name":"Ecology and Society","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2021-08-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49562046","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}