Aspects of adaptive management of coastal wetlands: Case studies of processes, conservation, restoration, impacts and assessment

Coastal wetlands are dynamic and include the freshwater-intertidal interface. In many parts of the world such wetlands are under pressure from increasing human populations and from predicted sea-level rise. Their complexity and the limited knowledge of processes operating in these systems combine to make them a management challenge.Adaptive management is advocated for complex ecosystem management (Hackney 2000; Meretsky et al. 2000; Thom 2000;National Research Council 2003).Adaptive management identifies management aims,makes an inventory/environmental assessment,plans management actions, implements these, assesses outcomes, and provides feedback to iterate the process (Holling 1978;Walters and Holling 1990). This allows for a dynamic management system that is responsive to change. In the area of wetland management recent adaptive approaches are exemplified by Natuhara et al. (2004) for wild bird management, Bunch and Dudycha (2004) for a river system, Thom (2000) for restoration, and Quinn and Hanna (2003) for seasonal wetlands in California. There are many wetland habitats for which we currently have only rudimentary knowledge (Hackney 2000), emphasizing the need for good information as a prerequisite for effective management. The management framework must also provide a way to incorporate the best available science into management decisions and to use management outcomes as opportunities to improve scientific understanding and provide feedback to the decision system. Figure 9.1 shows a model developed by Anorov (2004) based on the process-response model of Maltby et al. (1994) that forms a framework for the science that underlies an adaptive management system in the wetland context.

Gender, marital status, farm size and other factors influencing the extent of cash cropping in Kenya: A case study

This article examines the effects of commercialisation of agriculture on land use and work patterns by means of a case study in the Nyeri district in Kenya. The study uses cross sectional data collected from small-scale farmers in this district. We find that good quality land is allocated to non-food cash crops, which may lead to a reduction in non-cash food crops and expose some households to greater risks of possible famine. Also the proportion of land allocated to food crops declines as the farm size increases while the proportion of land allocated to non-food cash crops rises as the size of farm increases. Cash crops are also not bringing in as much revenue commensurate with the amount of land allocated to them. With growing commercialisation, women still work more hours than men. They not only work on non-cash food crops but also on cash crops including non-food cash crops. Evidence indicates that women living with husbands work longer hours than those married but living alone, and also longer than the unmarried women. Married women seem to lose their decision-making ability with growth of commercialisation, as husbands make most decisions to do with cash crops. Furthermore husbands appropriate family cash income. Husbands are less likely to use such income for the welfare of the family compared to wives due to different expenditure patterns. Married women in Kenya also have little or no power to change the way land is allocated between food and non-food cash crops. Due to deteriorating terms of trade for non-food cash crops, men have started cultivation of food cash crops with the potential of crowding out women. It is found that both the area of non-cash crops tends to rise with farm size but also the proportion of the farm area cash cropped rises in Central Kenya.

Marital status, farm size and other influences on the extent of cash cropping in Kenya: A household case study

This article examines the effects of marital status, farm size and other factors on the extent of cash cropping (and allocation of land use) by means of a case study in the Nyeri district in Kenya. It was found that married women are involved in the production of a relatively greater amount of output of cash crops than unmarried women since husbands prefer to have more land under cash crops than food crops. Farmers with better quality land allocate a high proportion of it to non-food cash crops, which may expose some households to greater risks of possible famine. The proportion of land allocated to food crops declines as the farm size increases while the proportion of land allocated to non-food cash crops rises as the size of farm increases. Age is also inversely associated with subsistence. Education, though inversely associated with subsistence farming does not appear to be statistically very significant as an influence on the composition of land use and composition of farm output. With growing commercialisation, married women work more hours than unmarried ones, working not only on non-cash food crops but also on non-food cash crops. Married women seem to lose their decision-making ability with growth of agricultural commercialisation, as husbands make most decisions to do with cash crops. Married women in Kenya also have little or no power to change the way land is allocated between food and non-food cash crops.

Ways of using evidence-based medicine in general practice

General practitioners wanting to practise evidence-based medicine (EBM) are constrained by time factors and the great diversity of clinical problems they deal with. They need experience in knowing what questions to ask, in locating and evaluating the evidence, and in applying it. Conventional searching for the best evidence can be achieved in daily general practice. Sometimes the search can be performed during the consultation, but more often it can be done later and the patient can return for the result. Case-based journal clubs provide a supportive environment for GPs to work together to find the best evidence at regular meetings. An evidence-based literature search service is being piloted to enhance decision-making for individual patients. A central facility provides the search and interprets the evidence in relation to individual cases. A request form and a results format make the service akin to pathology testing or imaging. Using EBM in general practice appears feasible. Major difficulties still exist before it can be practised by all GPs, but it has the potential to change the way doctors update their knowledge.

Lexical decision in Parkinson's disease: A reply to Brown, McDonald, and Spicer (1999)

Recent semantic priming investigations in Parkinsons disease (PD) employed variants of Neelys (1977) lexical decision paradigm to dissociate the automatic and attentional aspects of semantic activation (McDonald, Brown, Gorell, 1996; Spicer, Brown, Gorell, 1994). In our earlier review, we claimed that the results of Spicer, McDonald and colleagues normal control participants violated the two-process model of information processing (Posner Snyder, 1975) upon which their experimental paradigm had been based (Arnott Chenery, 1999). We argued that, even at the shortest SOA employed, key design modifications to Neelys original experiments biased the tasks employed by Spicer et al. and McDonald et al. towards being assessments of attention-dependent processes. Accordingly, we contended that experimental procedures did not speak to issues of automaticity and, therefore, Spicer, McDonald and colleagues claims of robust automatic semantic activation in PD must be treated with caution.