http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/rss/ The twenty most current aticles published. en Mon, 21 May 2012 15:30:10 EDT http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss RA Publishing Systems 2.0.0 managing_editor@ecologyandsociety.org pmorrill@ecologyandsociety.org http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss2/art11/ The urgency of charting pathways to sustainability that keep human societies within a "safe operating space" has now been clarified. Crises in climate, food, biodiversity, and energy are already playing out across local and global scales and are set to increase as we approach critical thresholds. Drawing together recent work from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the Tellus Institute, and the STEPS Centre, this commentary article argues that ambitious Sustainable Development Goals are now required along with major transformation, not only in policies and technologies, but in modes of innovation themselves, to meet them. As examples of dryland agriculture in East Africa and rural energy in Latin America illustrate, such "transformative innovation" needs to give far greater recognition and power to grassroots innovation actors and processes, involving them within an inclusive, multi-scale innovation politics. The three dimensions of direction, diversity, and distribution along with new forms of "sustainability brokering" can help guide the kinds of analysis and decision making now needed to safeguard our planet for current and future generations. Insight Thu, 17 May 2012 13:42:57 EDTLeach, M., Rockstr?m, J., Raskin, P., Scoones, I., Stirling, A. C., Smith, A., Thompson, J., Millstone, E., Ely, A., Arond, E., Folke, C., Olsson, P. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss2/art10/ The need for environmental foresight has increased in recent decades as the pace of change has accelerated and the frequency of surprise has increased. Successfully dealing with the growing impacts of change on social-ecological systems depends on our ability to anticipate change. But traditional scientific tools are blunt instruments for studying a future that does not exist. We propose that futures research, a transdisciplinary field of inquiry that has been developing for more than 50 years, offers an underused but fruitful set of approaches to address this important challenge. A few futures research methods—notably several forms of scenario analysis—have been applied to environmental issues and problems in recent years. But futurists have developed an array of other useful methods for exploring possible, plausible, and preferable futures, important insights into the nature of change, and perspectives for thinking creatively and deeply about the future. We present an overview of futures research and its potential to enrich environmental planning and policy by offering a cross-fertilization of new ideas and approaches, providing a more complete view of emerging environmental problems, and facilitating the development of strategies to increase adaptive capacity and deal more effectively with surprises. Synthesis Thu, 17 May 2012 13:25:04 EDTBengston, D. N., Kubik, G. H., Bishop, P. C. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss2/art9/ Interdependent human and biophysical systems are highly complex and behave in unpredictable and uncontrollable ways. Social and ecological challenges that emerge from this complexity often defy straightforward solutions, and efforts to address these problems will require not only scientific and technological capabilities but also learning and adaptation. Scenarios are a useful tool for grappling with the uncertainty and complexity of social-ecological challenges because they enable participants to build adaptive capacity through the contemplation of multiple future possibilities. Furthermore, scenarios provide a platform for social learning, which is critical to acting in the face of uncertain, complex, and conflict-laden problems. We studied the Minnesota 2050 project, a collaborative project through which citizens collectively imagined future scenarios and contemplated the implications of these possibilities for the adaptability of their social and environmental communities. Survey and interview data indicate that these participatory scenario workshops built and strengthened relationships, enhanced participants? understanding of other perspectives, and triggered systemic thinking, all of which is relevant to collective efforts to respond to social-ecological challenges through sustainable development activities. Our analysis shows that participatory scenarios can stimulate social learning by enabling participants to engage and to discuss options for coping with uncertainty through collaborative actions. Such learning can be of value to participants and to the organizations and decisions in which they are engaged, and scenario processes can be effective tools for supporting collaborative sustainable development efforts. Research Thu, 17 May 2012 13:03:55 EDTJohnson, K. A., Dana, G., Jordan, N. R., Draeger, K. J., Kapuscinski, A., Schmitt Olabisi, L. K., Reich, P. B. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss2/art8/ In recent years recurring political, economic, and environmental crises require questioning and re-evaluating dominant pathways of human development. However, political and economic frameworks seem to encompass deeply rooted resistance to fundamental changes (e.g., global financial crisis, climate change negotiations). In an effort to repair the system as fast as possible, those paradigms, mechanisms, and structures that led into the crisis are perpetuated. Instead of preserving conventional patterns and focusing on continuity, crises could be used as an opportunity for learning, adapting, and entering onto more sustainable pathways. However, there are different ways not only of arguing for sustainable pathways of development but also of conceptualizing continuity and change. By focusing on institutions, we illustrate the tension between the concepts of continuity and change, how they interact, and how they build or degrade institutional resilience. The analysis draws on empirical research in South Africa and Uzbekistan, which were locked in persistent regimes over decades. Faced with the challenge to transform, Uzbekistan chose a pathway of institutional continuity, while South Africa opted for comprehensive reforms and a high level of change. Based on these case studies, we illustrate the advantages and disadvantages of institutional continuity and change. Elements of institutional continuity during times of transformation include preserving key institutions, which define how the rules are made; maintaining social memory; providing transparency of reform processes and allowing them time to take effect. Elements of institutional change required during phases of consolidation include flexible legislation; regular reviews; and adaptation of legislation during and after implementation. Research Thu, 17 May 2012 10:03:07 EDTHerrfahrdt-P?hle, E., Pahl-Wostl, C. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss2/art7/ Indigenous disadvantage and poverty have persisted and are set to continue into the future. Although a large amount of work describes the extent and nature of indigenous disadvantage and poverty, there is little evidence-based systems understanding of the mechanisms that keep many indigenous people in their current dire state. In such a vacuum, policy makers are left to make assumptions about the causal mechanisms. The persistence of inequality and poverty suffered by indigenous people is broadly consistent with the existence of dynamical traps as described in both the resilience and development literature. We reviewed and synthesized these bodies of literature on traps and found that although they give a good lead to a systemic and parsimonious way of exploring traps, the mechanisms suggested need significant rethinking for the indigenous context. Specifically, we recommend extending the concept of traps to encompass the possibility that they are highly resilient but undesirable states, in contrast to current notions of traps as low resilience states. We also highlight the need for close scrutiny of the boundaries of indigenous systems because of the historically public nature of indigenous lives as well as the possible conjoint existence and causal linkage between poverty- and rigidity-traps in the indigenous context. Synthesis Thu, 03 May 2012 11:51:39 EDTMaru, Y. T., Fletcher, C. S., Chewings, V. H. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss2/art6/ The management of small private forests in the Western World has been under threat owing to rural and agricultural transformations since the Second World War. The actions put in place to preserve those forests are hard to implement because the forests are managed essentially in an unofficial way that is not clearly understood. Through multidisciplinary approaches, our aims were to understand local forest management processes, to assess the continuities and discontinuities of usages and practices in the Coteaux de Gascogne area of France, and to propose guidelines for future forest management. Forest management is shaped by a traditional but unrecognized social system called the house-centered system, which has contributed to a high degree of domesticity and diversity in forestry practices in this area. If forest management guidelines are to be effective, any guidelines put in place should take into account the roots of the traditional management system and attempt to comply with local social organizations. This is a major challenge regarding the long-term preservation of small private forests. Research Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:35:56 EDTSourdril, A., Andrieu, E., Cabanettes, A., Elyakime, B., Ladet, S. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss2/art5/ This contribution builds upon contemporary work on principles of biological attraction as well as earlier work on biophilia while synthesizing literatures on restorative environments, community-based ecological restoration, and both community and social-ecological disaster resilience. It suggests that when humans, faced with a disaster, as individuals and as communities and populations, seek engagement with nature to further their efforts to summon and demonstrate resilience in the face of a crisis, they exemplify an urgent biophilia. This urgent biophilia represents an important set of human-nature interactions in SES characterized by hazard, disaster, or vulnerability, often appearing in the ?backloop? of the adaptive cycle. The relationships that human-nature interactions have to other components within interdependent systems at many different scales may be one critical source of resilience in disaster and related contexts. In other words, the affinity we humans have for the rest of nature, the process of remembering that attraction, and the urge to express it through creation of restorative environments, which may also restore or increase ecological function, may confer resilience across multiple scales. In making this argument, the paper also represents a novel contribution to further theorizing alternatives to anthropocentric understandings of human-nature relations, and strongly makes the case for humans as part of, not separate from, ecosystems. Synthesis Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:20:29 EDTTidball, K. G. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss2/art4/ The Oder (Szczecin) Lagoon in the southern Baltic Sea is a heavily eutrophicated and degraded coastal ecosystem. We applied a systems approach framework to critically evaluate whether existing water-management measures achieve water-quality objectives for the river and lagoon systems. Our simulations reveal that the existing water-quality objectives for the river and the coastal waters are not sufficiently complementary. We suggest new water-quality threshold concentrations, which are in agreement with the European Water Framework Directive, and we calculate acceptable maximum nutrient loads for the Oder River. These calculations suggest that external nutrient-load reductions in the river basin alone seem insufficient to achieve good water quality in the lagoon. A comprehensive eutrophication management approach should also include internal nutrient-retention and nutrient-removal measures in the lagoon. We focus on mussel farming, i.e., that of zebra mussels, Dreissena polymorpha, because they are efficient in removing nutrients and improving water transparency in the Oder Lagoon. For this purpose, the ecosystem model ERGOM is extended by a mussel module and an economic model. The economic model describes costs and benefits of mussel cultivation depending on the the farm size. We included additional potential sources of income such as water-quality tax or emission certificates. The simulations show that mussel farming in the lagoon is a suitable supportive measure and, at a load-reduction target of 50% or more, it is a cost-efficient measure for removing nutrients and for implementing the Baltic Sea Action Plan. In the Oder Lagoon, mussel farming could potentially remove nearly 1000 t of N (70 t of P)/year, or about 2% of the present N and P loads, and it would have the additional benefit of improving water transparency. Research Mon, 30 Apr 2012 13:52:59 EDTSchernewski, G., Stybel, N., Neumann, T. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss2/art3/ Many environmental issues facing society demand considerable public investment to reverse. However, this investment will only arise if the general community is supportive, and community support is only likely if the issues are widely understood. Scientists often find it difficult to communicate with the general public. The role of the visual and performing arts is often overlooked in this regard, yet the arts have long communicated issues, influenced and educated people, and challenged dominant paradigms. To assess the response of professional ecologists to the role of the arts in communicating science, a series of constructed performances and exhibitions was integrated into the program of a national ecological conference over five days. At the conclusion of the conference, responses were sought from the assembled scientists and research students toward using the arts for expanding audiences to ecological science. Over half the delegates said that elements of the arts program provided a conducive atmosphere for receiving information, encouraged them to reflect on alternative ways to communicate science, and persuaded them that the arts have a role in helping people understand complex scientific concepts. A sizeable minority of delegates (24%) said they would consider incorporating the arts in their extension or outreach efforts. Incorporating music, theatre, and dance into a scientific conference can have many effects on participants and audiences. The arts can synthesize and convey complex scientific information, promote new ways of looking at issues, touch people?s emotions, and create a celebratory atmosphere, as was evident in this case study. In like manner, the visual and performing arts should be harnessed to help extend the increasingly unpalatable and urgent messages of global climate change science to a lay audience worldwide. Research Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:42:35 EDTCurtis, D. J., Reid, N., Ballard, G. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss2/art2/ With a worldwide increase in disasters, the effects of climate change are already being felt, and it is the urban poor in developing countries who are most at risk. There is an urgent need to better understand the factors that determine people?s capacity to cope with and adapt to adverse climate conditions. This paper examines the influence of formal education in determining the adaptive capacity of the residents of two low-income settlements: Los Manantiales in San Salvador (El Salvador) and Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), where climate-related disasters are recurrent. In both case study areas, it was found that the average levels of education were lower for households living at high risk, as opposed to residents of lower risk areas. In this context, the influence of people?s level of education was identified to be twofold due to (a) its direct effect on aspects that reduce risk, and (b) its mitigating effect on aspects that increase risk. The results further suggest that education plays a more determinant role for women than for men in relation to their capacity to adapt. In light of these results, the limited effectiveness of institutional support identified by this study might also relate to the fact that the role of formal education has so far not been sufficiently explored. Promoting (improved access to and quality of) formal education as a way to increase people?s adaptive capacity is further supported with respect to the negative effects of disasters on people?s level of education, which in turn reduce their adaptive capacity, resulting in a vicious circle of increasing risk. Research Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:30:49 EDTWamsler, C., Brink, E., Rantala, O. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss2/art1/ The expansion of renewable energies, such as wind power, is a promising way of mitigating climate change. Because of the risk of collision with rotor blades, wind turbines have negative effects on local bird populations, particularly on raptors such as the Red Kite (Milvus milvus). Appropriate assessment tools for these effects have been lacking. To close this gap, we have developed an agent-based, spatially explicit model that simulates the foraging behavior of the Red Kite around its aerie in a landscape consisting of different land-use types. We determined the collision risk of the Red Kite with the turbine as a function of the distance between the wind turbine and the aerie and other parameters. The impact function comprises the synergistic effects of species-specific foraging behavior and landscape structure. The collision risk declines exponentially with increasing distance. The strength of this decline depends on the raptor?s foraging behavior, its ability to avoid wind turbines, and the mean wind speed in the region. The collision risks, which are estimated by the simulation model, are in the range of values observed in the field. The derived impact function shows that the collision risk can be described as an aggregated function of distance between the wind turbine and the raptor?s aerie. This allows an easy and rapid assessment of the ecological impacts of (existing or planned) wind turbines in relation to their spatial location. Furthermore, it implies that minimum buffer zones for different landscapes can be determined in a defensible way. This modeling approach can be extended to other bird species with central-place foraging behavior. It provides a helpful tool for landscape planning aimed at minimizing the impacts of wind power on biodiversity. Research Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:04:59 EDTEichhorn, M., Johst, K., Seppelt, R., Drechsler, M. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss1/art35/ Oil sand extraction in Alberta, Canada is a multibillion dollar industry operating over 143 km² of open pit mining and 4600 km² of other bitumen strata in northern boreal forests. Oil production contributes to Canada-wide GDP, creates socio-cultural problems, provides energy exports and employment, and carries environmental risks regarding long-term reclamation uncertainties. Of particular concern are the implications for wetlands and water supply management. Mining of oil sands is very attractive because proven reserves of known quality occur in an accessible, politically stable environment with existing infrastructure and an estimated 5.5 billion extractable barrels to be mined over the next five decades. Extraction occurs under a set of limiting factors or thresholds including: limited social tolerance at local to international levels for externalities of oil sand production; water demands > availability; limited natural gas supplies for oil processing leading to proposals for hydroelectric dams and nuclear reactors to be constructed; difficulties in reclaiming sufficient habitat area to replace those lost. Replacement of the 85 km² of peat-forming wetlands forecast to be destroyed appears unlikely. Over 840 billion liters of toxic fluid byproducts are currently held in 170 km² of open reservoirs without any known process to purify this water in meaningful time frames even as some of it leaches into adjacent lands and rivers. Costs for wetland reclamation are high with estimates of $4 to $13 billion, or about 6% of the net profits generated from mining those sites. This raises a social equity question of how much reclamation is appropriate. Time frames for economic, political, and ecological actions are not well aligned. Local people on or near mine sites have had to change their area use for decades and have been affected by industrial development. Examining mining effects to estimate thresholds of biophysical realities, time scales, economic allocations, and social tolerance helps to contextualize the needs for decision making and relevant policy formation as a way of constructively reconciling production with governing safeguards to the environment and citizens. Synthesis Fri, 30 Mar 2012 11:38:22 EDTFoote, L. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss1/art34/ Private gardens collectively comprise the largest green space in most cities and the greatest potential for increasing the extent of wildlife-friendly and native-dominated habitat, improving the quality of ecosystem services, and providing opportunities for urban dwellers to reconnect with nature. Because attitudes and values driving landscape preferences in gardens are complex and often not conducive to biodiversity, and a gap exists between the possession of knowledge or values and the expression of pro-environmental behavior, facilitating change in gardening behavior is challenging. We attempted to improve knowledge and influence values, attitudes, and gardening behavior of 55 householders in favor of native biodiversity and environmentally friendly practices, through a two-way communication process, or interactive dialog, during a process of biodiversity documentation of their gardens. Informative feedback on their garden with a normative component was also provided. Despite being well educated and knowledgeable about common species at the start of the study, an increase in knowledge and shift in attitude was detected in 64% of householders: 40% reported a greater understanding of wildlife, and 26% made changes in their gardens, 13% to support native biodiversity. The normative component of our feedback information was of particular interest to 20% of householders. Because neighborhood norms influence gardening practices, changes adopted by a proportion of householders should be perpetuated across neighborhoods. The process of biodiversity assessment, dialog, and feedback was effective in improving knowledge of wildlife and native species, and stimulated a shift in attitude that resulted in native-friendly gardening practices. These changes were detected primarily through open self-report questions, rather than quantitative measures. Research Fri, 30 Mar 2012 09:16:38 EDTVan Heezik, Y. M., Dickinson, K. J. M., Freeman, C. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss1/art33/ The construction of a flood protection structure that obscured views of the lake in Como, northern Italy, led to unprecedented public protest in 2009–2010 and to the eventual dismantlement of the structure. This provided a focus to investigate the delicate interplay of technical and cultural matters in environmental policy—in this case, catchment management and flood prevention. This article shows how a focus on hydrological control in isolation from the rest of the catchment and from the sociocultural context contributed to the project?s failure. A key message of the article is that data and analyses from the environmental and social sciences are both pivotal to environmental planning, as they inform different yet interdependent components of a single project. There is value in integrating technical and sociocultural knowledge, both at the academic level, as illustrated by the mixed methods used in this article, and at the policy level, through management frameworks that emphasize cross-sectoral learning and public participation. The analysis also reveals that the notion of "place" has a central role to play in this process of integration, both as a conceptual bridge between technical and sociocultural components of environmental studies and as an emphasis in environmental planning activities to foster the interest and engagement of communities. Research Thu, 29 Mar 2012 12:19:46 EDTLaborde, S., Imberger, J., Toussaint, S. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss1/art32/ Humanity faces increasingly intractable environmental problems characterized by high uncertainty, complexity, and swift change. Natural resource governance must therefore involve continuous production and use of new knowledge to adapt to highly complex, rapidly changing social-ecological systems to ensure long-term sustainable development. Bridging and boundary organizations have been proposed as potentially powerful means of achieving these aims by promoting cooperation among actors from the science, policy, and management sectors. However, despite substantial investments of time, capital, and human resources, little agreement exists about definitions and measures of knowledge production and how this is achieved in bridging organizations and there is only meager understanding of how knowledge production and its use are shaped by social interactions, socio-political environments, and power relations. New concepts, methods, and metrics for conceptualizing and measuring learning in support of natural resource governance and testing the conditions under which it can be achieved are therefore badly needed. This paper presents an attempt at a holistic framework to address this, drawing on theory, methods, and metrics from three research areas: knowledge utilization, boundary organizations, and stakeholder theory. Taken together, these provide a solid conceptual and methodological toolkit for conducting cross-case comparisons aimed at understanding the social environmental conditions under which learning in such organizations does and does not occur. We use empirical data to show how the framework can be applied and discuss some of the practical considerations and important challenges that emerge. We close with a general discussion and an agenda for future research to promote discussion around the topic of how to erect systematic comparisons of learning in support of adaptive natural resource governance as it occurs in bridging organizations. Synthesis Thu, 29 Mar 2012 09:40:59 EDTCrona, B. I., Parker, J. N. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss1/art31/ Water and energy are each recognized as indispensable inputs to modern economies. And, in recent years, driven by the three imperatives of security of supply, sustainability, and economic efficiency, the energy and water sectors have undergone rapid reform. However, it is when water and energy rely on each other that the most complex challenges are posed for policymakers. Despite the links and the urgency in both sectors for security of supply, in existing policy frameworks, energy and water policies are developed largely in isolation from one another—a degree of policy fragmentation that is seeing erroneous developments in both sectors. Examples of the trade-offs between energy and water security include: the proliferation of desalination plants and interbasin transfers to deal with water scarcity; extensive groundwater pumping for water supplies; first-generation biofuels; the proliferation of hydropower plants; decentralized water supply solutions such as rainwater tanks; and even some forms of modern irrigation techniques. Drawing on case studies from Australia, Europe, and the United States, this Special Issue attempts to develop a comprehensive understanding of the links between energy and water, to identify where better-integrated policy and management strategies and solutions are needed or available, and to understand where barriers exist to achieve that integration. In this paper we draw out some of the themes emerging from the Special Issue, and, particularly, where insights might be valuable for policymakers, practitioners, and scientists across the many relevant domains. Guest Editorial Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:47:28 EDTHussey, K., Pittock, J. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss1/art30/ Many current water planning and management problems are riddled with high levels of complexity, uncertainty, and conflict, so-called “messes” or “wicked problems.” The realization that there is a need to consider a wide variety of values, knowledge, and perspectives in a collaborative decision making process has led to a multitude of new methods and processes being proposed to aid water planning and management, which include participatory forms of modeling, planning, and decision aiding processes. However, despite extensive scientific discussions, scholars have largely been unable to provide satisfactory responses to two pivotal questions: (1) What are the benefits of using participatory approaches?; (2) How exactly should these approaches be implemented in complex social-ecological settings to realize these potential benefits? In the study of developing social-ecological system sustainability, the first two questions lead to a third one that extends beyond the one-time application of participatory approaches for water management: (3) How can participatory approaches be most appropriately used to encourage transition to more sustainable ecological, social, and political regimes in different cultural and spatial contexts? The answer to this question is equally open. This special feature on participatory water management attempts to propose responses to these three questions by outlining recent advances in theory, practice, and evaluation related to the implementation of participatory water management. The feature is largely based on an extensive range of case studies that have been implemented and analyzed by cross-disciplinary research teams in collaboration with practitioners, and in a number of cases in close cooperation with policy makers and other interested parties such as farmers, fishermen, environmentalists, and the wider public. Guest Editorial Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:05:27 EDTVon Korff, Y., Daniell, K. A., Moellenkamp, S., Bots, P., Bijlsma, R. M. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss1/art29/ Interest in landraces conservation has grown in the last decades with research on the topic focusing on in situ conservation of agrobiodiversity in the tropics. Researchers agree that home gardens play a key role in the maintenance of in situ agrobiodiversity, but few studies have analyzed how farmers actually maintain agrobiodiversity in home gardens and what mechanisms they use to avoid genetic erosion. We evaluate the functioning of a network of seed exchange and explore its contribution to agrobiodiversity conservation. We focus on the exchange of seeds and seedlings among 55 home garden keepers who grow a total of 62 home gardens in Vall Fosca (Catalan Pyrenees). Fieldwork included visits to gardens and surveys to register the frequency and management of local landraces. We also asked about the farmers? network of seed exchange. We identified 20 local landraces belonging to 17 species. People who were mentioned more often in the network of seed exchange (highest indegree) and who had a higher level of intermediation among other people in their personal network (highest egobetweenness) conserved more local landraces and had more local landrace knowledge than people who were less central in the network. Our findings suggest that local landrace conservation is strongly associated with individual position in the network of seed exchange. Research Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:44:08 EDTCalvet-Mir, L., Calvet-Mir, M., Molina, J. Luis, Reyes-Garc?a, V. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss1/art28/ Determinants of fisher success in southern Chile?s loco (Concholepas concholepas) fishery are examined by comparing fisher success in exclusive access territories that vary in relationship to tree-plantation development, which can affect shellfish quality. The relative importance of fishers? experience and capture technology (traditional measures of fisher success) are evaluated against environmental and geospatial characteristics. While knowledge and technology explained variation in catches, this did not translate into higher prices or profit. Fishers succeeded (gained higher prices for locos and had higher monthly incomes from their management areas) when they harvested shellfish from closed (exclusive) nearshore management areas where the environmental condition produced high quality locos regardless of their fishing experience, technology, and the geospatial features of management areas. Experienced fishers who worked in management areas near tree plantations that fail to produce resources of sufficient quality shifted to offshore fisheries where their experience counted. Offshore fishers working in the congrio (Genypterus chilensis) fishery likely exposed themselves to more risk and benefited from their experience and available technology; environmental condition and geospatial factors played little role in their success (price). Closed management areas provided resources to harvest, but may reduce a fisher?s ability to adapt to environmental change because success depends on environmental factors outside of a fisher?s control. Fishers were not financially rewarded for their experience or their technology in the loco fishery. Research Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:48:16 EDTVan Holt, T. http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss1/art27/ A Delphi survey involving experts in forest preference research was carried out to derive scores for the recreational value of 240 forest stand types across Europe. The survey was organized around four regional panels: Great Britain, Nordic Region, Central Europe, and Iberia. In each region, 60 forest stand types were defined according to five forest management alternatives (FMAs) on a continuum of management intensity, four phases of development (establishment, young, medium, and adult), and three tree species types (conifer, broadleaved, and mixed stands of conifer and broadleaved). The resulting scores were examined using conjoint analysis to determine the relative importance of the three structural attributes (FMA, phase of development, and tree species type), and each level or component of the attributes. The findings quantify the extent to which forest visitors prefer a degree of management to unmanaged forest nature reserves across the four regions. Phase of development was shown to make the highest contribution to the recreational value of forests while the contribution of tree species type was shown to be relatively unimportant. While the results are indicative, they provide evidence to support long-term retention and low-impact silviculture in forests where recreation is a primary objective of management. Research Mon, 26 Mar 2012 14:04:40 EDTEdwards, D. M., Jay, M., Jensen, F. S., Lucas, B., Marzano, M., Montagn?, C., Peace, A., Weiss, G.