Conservation strategy maps: a tool to facilitate biodiversity action planning illustrated using the heath fritillary butterfly

1. The UK Biodiversity Action Plan (UKBAP) identifies invertebrate species in danger of national extinction. For many of these species, targets for recovery specify the number of populations that should exist by a specific future date but offer no procedure to plan strategically to achieve the target for any species. 2. Here we describe techniques based upon geographic information systems (GIS) that produce conservation strategy maps (CSM) to assist with achieving recovery targets based on all available and relevant information. 3. The heath fritillary Mellicta athalia is a UKBAP species used here to illustrate the use of CSM. A phase 1 habitat survey was used to identify habitat polygons across the county of Kent, UK. These were systematically filtered using relevant habitat, botanical and autecological data to identify seven types of polygon, including those with extant colonies or in the vicinity of extant colonies, areas managed for conservation but without colonies, and polygons that had the appropriate habitat structure and may therefore be suitable for reintroduction. 4. Five clusters of polygons of interest were found across the study area. The CSM of two of them are illustrated here: the Blean Wood complex, which contains the existing colonies of heath fritillary in Kent, and the Orlestone Forest complex, which offers opportunities for reintroduction. 5. Synthesis and applications. Although the CSM concept is illustrated here for the UK, we suggest that CSM could be part of species conservation programmes throughout the world. CSM are dynamic and should be stored in electronic format, preferably on the world-wide web, so that they can be easily viewed and updated. CSM can be used to illustrate opportunities and to develop strategies with scientists and non-scientists, enabling the engagement of all communities in a conservation programme. CSM for different years can be presented to illustrate the progress of a plan or to provide continuous feedback on how a field scenario develops.

Conservation strategy maps: a tool to facilitate biodiversity action planning illustrated using the heath fritillary butterfly

1. The UK Biodiversity Action Plan (UKBAP) identifies invertebrate species in danger of national extinction. For many of these species, targets for recovery specify the number of populations that should exist by a specific future date but offer no procedure to plan strategically to achieve the target for any species. 2. Here we describe techniques based upon geographic information systems (GIS) that produce conservation strategy maps (CSM) to assist with achieving recovery targets based on all available and relevant information. 3. The heath fritillary Mellicta athalia is a UKBAP species used here to illustrate the use of CSM. A phase 1 habitat survey was used to identify habitat polygons across the county of Kent, UK. These were systematically filtered using relevant habitat, botanical and autecological data to identify seven types of polygon, including those with extant colonies or in the vicinity of extant colonies, areas managed for conservation but without colonies, and polygons that had the appropriate habitat structure and may therefore be suitable for reintroduction. 4. Five clusters of polygons of interest were found across the study area. The CSM of two of them are illustrated here: the Blean Wood complex, which contains the existing colonies of heath fritillary in Kent, and the Orlestone Forest complex, which offers opportunities for reintroduction. 5. Synthesis and applications. Although the CSM concept is illustrated here for the UK, we suggest that CSM could be part of species conservation programmes throughout the world. CSM are dynamic and should be stored in electronic format, preferably on the world-wide web, so that they can be easily viewed and updated. CSM can be used to illustrate opportunities and to develop strategies with scientists and non-scientists, enabling the engagement of all communities in a conservation programme. CSM for different years can be presented to illustrate the progress of a plan or to provide continuous feedback on how a field scenario develops.

Farmers' willingness to pay for agricultural extension service: evidence from Nigeria

The study was undertaken to investigate how willing would farmers be to pay for agricultural extension service in Nigeria. A multistage random sampling technique was used to select 268 respondents. Results showed that most farmers (95.1 per cent) were willing to pay for improved extension service as long as the service remained relevant to their needs. Farmers were willing to pay N1000 annually as their own share of the service cost. The most important factors that influenced farmers’ willingness to pay were states of origin, items originally paid for, major occupation, minor occupation, number of years in school and sale of farm produce.

Free People of Color: expulsion and enslavement in the Antebellum South

This chapter explores the expulsion and enslavement of free People of Color in the southern states of the USA before the Civil War.

A Guide to Office Clerical Time Standards

A Guide to Office Clerical Time Standards is an instructional performance piece based on a corporate manual from 1960. The pamphlet is focused on the time necessary for the accomplishment of minute labour procedures in the office, from the depressing and releasing of typewriter keys to the opening and closing of filing cabinet drawers. In the performance, seven costumed performers represent the different levels of management and employment while performing the actions described in the guide, accompanied by a live musical score. There has been much discussion of the changes to work in the west following the decline of post-Fordist service sector jobs. These increasingly emphasise the specificity of employees’ knowledge and cognitive skill. However, this greater flexibility and creativity at work has been accompanied by an opposite trajectory. The proletarisation of white collar work has given rise to more bureaucracy, target assessment and control for workers in previously looser creative professions, from academia to the arts. The midcentury office is the meeting point of these cultures, where the assembly line efficiency management of the factory meets the quantifying control of the knowledge economy. A Guide to Office Clerical Time Standards explores the survival of one regime into its successor following the lines of combined and uneven development that have turned the emancipatory promise of immaterial labour into the perma-temp hell of the cognitariat. The movement is accompanied by a score of guitar, bass and drums, the componenets of the rock ‘n’ roll music that rose from the car factories of the motor city and the cotton fields of the southern states to represent the same junction of expression and control.

Spatial patterns and environmental constraints on ecosystem services at a catchment scale

Improved understanding and prediction of the fundamental environmental controls on ecosystem service supply across the landscape will help to inform decisions made by policy makers and land-water managers. To evaluate this issue for a local catchment case study, we explored metrics and spatial patterns of service supply for water quality regulation, agriculture production, carbon storage, and biodiversity for the Macronutrient Conwy catchment. Methods included using ecosystem models such as LUCI and JULES, integration of national scale field survey datasets, earth observation products and plant trait databases, to produce finely resolved maps of species richness and primary production. Analyses were done with both 1x1 km gridded and subcatchment data. A common single gradient characterised catchment scale ecosystem services supply with agricultural production and carbon storage at opposing ends of the gradient as reported for a national-scale assessment. Species diversity was positively related to production due to the below national average productivity levels in the Conwy combined with the unimodal relationship between biodiversity and productivity at the national scale. In contrast to the national scale assessment, a strong reduction in water quality as production increased was observed in these low productive systems. Various soil variables were tested for their predictive power of ecosystem service supply. Soil carbon, nitrogen, their ratio and soil pH all had double the power of rainfall and altitude, each explaining around 45% of variation but soil pH is proposed as a potential metric for ecosystem service supply potential as it is a simple and practical metric which can be carried out in the field with crowd-sourcing technologies now available. The study emphasises the importance of considering multiple ecosystem services together due to the complexity of covariation at local and national scales, and the benefits of exploiting a wide range of metrics for each service to enhance data robustness.

Precise calculations of the existence of multiple AMOC equilibria in coupled climate models Part I: equilibrium states

This study examines criteria for the existence of two stable states of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) using a combination of theory and simulations from a numerical coupled atmosphere–ocean climate model. By formulating a simple collection of state parameters and their relationships, the authors reconstruct the North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) OFF state behavior under a varying external salt-flux forcing. This part (Part I) of the paper examines the steady-state solution, which gives insight into the mechanisms that sustain the NADW OFF state in this coupled model; Part II deals with the transient behavior predicted by the evolution equation. The nonlinear behavior of the Antarctic Intermediate Water (AAIW) reverse cell is critical to the OFF state. Higher Atlantic salinity leads both to a reduced AAIW reverse cell and to a greater vertical salinity gradient in the South Atlantic. The former tends to reduce Atlantic salt export to the Southern Ocean, while the latter tends to increases it. These competing effects produce a nonlinear response of Atlantic salinity and salt export to salt forcing, and the existence of maxima in these quantities. Thus the authors obtain a natural and accurate analytical saddle-node condition for the maximal surface salt flux for which a NADW OFF state exists. By contrast, the bistability indicator proposed by De Vries and Weber does not generally work in this model. It is applicable only when the effect of the AAIW reverse cell on the Atlantic salt budget is weak.

The United States in Southern Africa: Chester Crocker's linkage strategy 1981-1988

Chester Crocker was appointed as Reagan's Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in 1981. He had criticised the inconsistencies of US African policy and proposed a renewed emphasis on the balance between America's global interests with specific regional priorities. While the focus of Congressmen, journalists and public opinion centred on the issue of apartheid, it was the Namibian War of Independence (South African Border War) that initially drew the attention of the Reagan administration, and it was the resolution of this war that remained the priority for the US government in this region throughout Crocker's time in office.

The impact of the stratosphere on the troposphere during the southern hemisphere stratospheric sudden warming, September 2002

Recent research has established that a small but statistically significant link exists between the stratosphere and the troposphere in the northern hemisphere extratropics. In this paper it is shown that a similar link exists between the stratosphere and troposphere during the unprecedented September 2002 sudden warming in the southern hemisphere. Two ensemble forecasts of the stratospheric sudden warming are run which have different stratospheric initial conditions and identical tropospheric initial conditions. Stratospheric initial conditions have an impact on the tropospheric flow at the peak of the major warming (5 days into the run) and on longer time-scales (18 days into the run). The character of this influence is a localized, equatorward shift of the tropospheric storm track. The averaged impact of the change in the position of the storm-track maps strongly onto the Southern Annular Mode structure, but does not have an annular character.

Incorporating Legacy Soil pH Databases into Digital Soil Maps

Soil data and reliable soil maps are imperative for environmental management. conservation and policy. Data from historical point surveys, e.g. experiment site data and farmers fields can serve this purpose. However, legacy soil information is not necessarily collected for spatial analysis and mapping such that the data may not have immediately useful geo-references. Methods are required to utilise these historical soil databases so that we can produce quantitative maps of soil propel-ties to assess spatial and temporal trends but also to assess where future sampling is required. This paper discusses two such databases: the Representative Soil Sampling Scheme which has monitored the agricultural soil in England and Wales from 1969 to 2003 (between 400 and 900 bulked soil samples were taken annually from different agricultural fields); and the former State Chemistry Laboratory, Victoria, Australia where between 1973 and 1994 approximately 80,000 soil samples were submitted for analysis by farmers. Previous statistical analyses have been performed using administrative regions (with sharp boundaries) for both databases, which are largely unrelated to natural features. For a more detailed spatial analysis that call be linked to climate and terrain attributes, gradual variation of these soil properties should be described. Geostatistical techniques such as ordinary kriging are suited to this. This paper describes the format of the databases and initial approaches as to how they can be used for digital soil mapping. For this paper we have selected soil pH to illustrate the analyses for both databases.

Budgetary implications of, and motives for, converting to organic farming: Case study farm business evidence from Great Britain

This paper explores the financial implications of converting to organic farming in Great Britain through a case study of farmers considering conversion in 2002. Most study farmers were motivated to convert for financial, not ideological or life-style reasons; organic meat production was the most common planned enterprise, although those choosing to produce milk, vegetables and cereals were also studied in depth. At the time of study, organic beef and sheep meat production was particularly profitable. It was found that, in these product sectors, a large improvement in Family Farm Income would result if organic production was introduced on the case study farms. With few exceptions, a fall in Family Farm Income during the conversion period would not be an obstacle to farmers changing to organic methods. Fixed cost changes would also not deter conversion but expensive investment in new livestock and appropriate buildings would be required by some of those businesses studied. These findings are, however, dependent upon the price premia assumptions used and, whilst these premia have dropped slightly since the time of study, this would lessen the financial shortfall during the conversion period. There is also the possibility that reversion to conventional agricultural production might occur, perhaps at a faster rate than the original conversion process that was taking place around the turn of the century.

Implications for food production, land use and rural development of the European Union's Single Farm Payment: Indications from a survey of farmers' intentions in Germany, Portugal and the UK

The 2003 reform of the European Union's (EU) Common Agricultural Policy introduced a decoupled income support for farmers called the Single Farm Payment (SFP). Concerns were raised about possible future land use and production changes and their impact on rural communities. Here, such concerns are considered against the workings of the SFP in three EU Member States. Various quantitative studies that have determined the likely impact of the SFP within the EU and the study countries are reviewed. We present the results of a farm survey conducted in the study countries in which farmers' responses to a decoupling scenario similar to the SFP were sought. We found that little short-term change was proposed in the three, rather different, study countries with only 30% of the farmers stating that they would alter their mix of farm activities. Furthermore, less than 30% of all respondents in each country would idle any land under decoupling. Of those who would adopt a new activity, the most popular choices were forestry, woodland and non-food crops. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Method for the production of cotton somatic embryos. United States Patent Application

The present invention provides Inter alia, a method for the production of cotton somatic embryos comprising (a) isolating a totipotent stomatal cell-containing epidermal explant from leaf material excised from a cotton plant; and (b) culturing said explant in a basal medium which comprises an embryogenic callus-inducing quantity of an auxin and a cytokinin under an embryogenic callus inducing intensity of light until embryogenic callus is formed; and (c) sub-culturing said embryogenic callus onto a somatic embryo differentiation media to produce said somatic embryos. Plants may be regenerated from the somatic embryos and in a particular embodiment of the invention said totipotent stomatal cell is transformed, prior to the inducement of embryogenic callus, with a polynucleotide that provides for a desired agronomic trait.