Reexamining the science of marine protected areas: Linking knowledge to action

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are often implemented to conserve or restore species, fisheries, habitats, ecosystems, and ecological functions and services; buffer against the ecological effects of climate change; and alleviate poverty in coastal communities. Scientific research provides valuable insights into the social and ecological impacts of MPAs, as well as the factors that shape these impacts, providing useful guidance or "rules of thumb" for science-based MPA policy. Both ecological and social factors foster effective MPAs, including substantial coverage of representative habitats and oceanographic conditions; diverse size and spacing; protection of habitat bottlenecks; participatory decisionmaking arrangements; bounded and contextually appropriate resource use rights; active and accountable monitoring and enforcement systems; and accessible conflict resolution mechanisms. For MPAs to realize their full potential as a tool for ocean governance, further advances in policy-relevant MPA science are required. These research frontiers include MPA impacts on nontarget and wide-ranging species and habitats; impacts beyond MPA boundaries, on ecosystem services, and on resource-dependent human populations, as well as potential scale mismatches of ecosystem service flows. Explicitly treating MPAs as "policy experiments" and employing the tools of impact evaluation holds particular promise as a way for policy-relevant science to inform and advance science-based MPA policy. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The impact of geologic variability on capacity and cost estimates for storing CO 2 in deep-saline aquifers

While numerous studies find that deep-saline sandstone aquifers in the United States could store many decades worth of the nation's current annual CO 2 emissions, the likely cost of this storage (i.e. the cost of storage only and not capture and transport costs) has been harder to constrain. We use publicly available data of key reservoir properties to produce geo-referenced rasters of estimated storage capacity and cost for regions within 15 deep-saline sandstone aquifers in the United States. The rasters reveal the reservoir quality of these aquifers to be so variable that the cost estimates for storage span three orders of magnitude and average>$100/tonne CO 2. However, when the cost and corresponding capacity estimates in the rasters are assembled into a marginal abatement cost curve (MACC), we find that ~75% of the estimated storage capacity could be available for<$2/tonne. Furthermore, ~80% of the total estimated storage capacity in the rasters is concentrated within just two of the aquifers-the Frio Formation along the Texas Gulf Coast, and the Mt. Simon Formation in the Michigan Basin, which together make up only ~20% of the areas analyzed. While our assessment is not comprehensive, the results suggest there should be an abundance of low-cost storage for CO 2 in deep-saline aquifers, but a majority of this storage is likely to be concentrated within specific regions of a smaller number of these aquifers. © 2011 Elsevier B.V.

Multiple Response System: Evaluation of Policy Change in North Carolina's Child Welfare System.

Systemic challenges within child welfare have prompted many states to explore new strategies aimed at protecting children while meeting the needs of families, but doing so within the confines of shrinking budgets. Differential Response has emerged as a promising practice for low or moderate risk cases of child maltreatment. This mixed methods evaluation explored various aspects of North Carolina's differential response system, known as the Multiple Response System (MRS), including: child safety, timeliness of response and case decision, frontloading of services, case distribution, implementation of Child and Family Teams, collaboration with community-based service providers and Shared Parenting. Utilizing Child Protective Services (CPS) administrative data, researchers found that compared to matched control counties, MRS: had a positive impact on child safety evidenced by a decline in the rates of substantiations and re-assessments; temporarily disrupted timeliness of response in pilot counties but had no effect on time to case decision; and increased the number of upfront services provided to families during assessment. Qualitative data collected through focus groups with providers and phone interviews with families provided important information on key MRS strategies, highlighting aspects that families and social workers like as well as identifying areas for improvement. This information is useful for continuous quality improvement efforts, particularly related to the development of training and technical assistance programs at the state and local level.

Emergent group level navigation: an agent-based evaluation of movement patterns in a folivorous primate.

The foraging activity of many organisms reveal strategic movement patterns, showing efficient use of spatially distributed resources. The underlying mechanisms behind these movement patterns, such as the use of spatial memory, are topics of considerable debate. To augment existing evidence of spatial memory use in primates, we generated movement patterns from simulated primate agents with simple sensory and behavioral capabilities. We developed agents representing various hypotheses of memory use, and compared the movement patterns of simulated groups to those of an observed group of red colobus monkeys (Procolobus rufomitratus), testing for: the effects of memory type (Euclidian or landmark based), amount of memory retention, and the effects of social rules in making foraging choices at the scale of the group (independent or leader led). Our results indicate that red colobus movement patterns fit best with simulated groups that have landmark based memory and a follow the leader foraging strategy. Comparisons between simulated agents revealed that social rules had the greatest impact on a group's step length, whereas the type of memory had the highest impact on a group's path tortuosity and cohesion. Using simulation studies as experimental trials to test theories of spatial memory use allows the development of insight into the behavioral mechanisms behind animal movement, developing case-specific results, as well as general results informing how changes to perception and behavior influence movement patterns.

The Frequency and Impact of Exposure to Potentially Traumatic Events Over the Life Course.

We examined the frequency and impact of exposure to potentially traumatic events among a nonclinical sample of older adults (n = 3,575), a population typically underrepresented in epidemiological research concerning the prevalence of traumatic events. Current PTSD symptom severity and the centrality of events to identity were assessed for events nominated as currently most distressing. Approximately 90% of participants experienced one or more potentially traumatic events. Events that occurred with greater frequency early in the life course were associated with more severe PTSD symptoms compared to events that occurred with greater frequency during later decades. Early life traumas, however, were not more central to identity. Results underscore the differential impact of traumatic events experienced throughout the life course. We conclude with suggestions for further research concerning mechanisms that promote the persistence of post-traumatic stress related to early life traumas and empirical evaluation of psychotherapeutic treatments for older adults with PTSD.