Water Demand and Allocation in the Mara River Basin, Kenya/Tanzania in the Face of Land Use Dynamics and Climate Variability

The Mara River Basin (MRB) is endowed with pristine biodiversity, socio-cultural heritage and natural resources. The purpose of my study is to develop and apply an integrated water resource allocation framework for the MRB based on the hydrological processes, water demand and economic factors. The basin was partitioned into twelve sub-basins and the rainfall runoff processes was modeled using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) after satisfactory Nash-Sutcliff efficiency of 0.68 for calibration and 0.43 for validation at Mara Mines station. The impact and uncertainty of climate change on the hydrology of the MRB was assessed using SWAT and three scenarios of statistically downscaled outputs from twenty Global Circulation Models. Results predicted the wet season getting more wet and the dry season getting drier, with a general increasing trend of annual rainfall through 2050. Three blocks of water demand (environmental, normal and flood) were estimated from consumptive water use by human, wildlife, livestock, tourism, irrigation and industry. Water demand projections suggest human consumption is expected to surpass irrigation as the highest water demand sector by 2030. Monthly volume of water was estimated in three blocks of current minimum reliability, reserve (>95%), normal (80–95%) and flood (40%) for more than 5 months in a year. The assessment of water price and marginal productivity showed that current water use hardly responds to a change in price or productivity of water. Finally, a water allocation model was developed and applied to investigate the optimum monthly allocation among sectors and sub-basins by maximizing the use value and hydrological reliability of water. Model results demonstrated that the status on reserve and normal volumes can be improved to ‘low’ or ‘moderate’ by updating the existing reliability to meet prevailing demand. Flow volumes and rates for four scenarios of reliability were presented. Results showed that the water allocation framework can be used as comprehensive tool in the management of MRB, and possibly be extended similar watersheds.

Supporting the needs of public health decision-makers and review authors in the UK

Introduction Systematic reviews, through the synthesis of multiple primary research studies, can be powerful tools in enabling evidence-informed public health policy debate, development and action. In seeking to optimize the utility of these reviews, it is important to understand the needs of those using them. Previous work has emphasized that researchers should adopt methods that are appropriate to the problems that public health decision-makers are grappling with, as well as to the policy context in which they operate.1,2 Meeting these demands poses significant methodological challenges for review authors and prompts a reconsideration of the resources, training and support structures available to facilitate the efficient and timely production of useful, comprehensive reviews. The Cochrane Public Health Group (CPHG) was formed in 2008 to support reviews of complex, upstream public health topics. The majority of CPHG authors are from the UK, which has historically been at the forefront of efforts to promote the production and use of systematic reviews of research relevant to public health decision-makers. The UK therefore provides a suitably mature national context in which to examine (i) the current and future demands of decision-makers to increase the use, value and impact of evidence syntheses; (ii) the implications this has for the scope and methods of reviews and (iii) the required action to build and support capacity to conduct such reviews.

Estimating the potential impact of entry fees for marine parks on dive tourism in South East Asia

Marine reserves are increasingly being established as a mechanism to protect marine biodiversity and sensitive habitats. As well as providing conservation benefits, marine reserves provide benefits to recreational scuba divers who dive within the reserve, as well as to recreational and commercial fishers outside the reserve through spill-over effects. To ensure benefits are being realised, management of marine reserves requires ongoing monitoring and surveillance. These are not costless, and many marine reserve managers impose an entry fee. In some countries, dive tourism is major income source to coastal industries, and a concern is that high entry fees may dissuade divers. In this paper, the price elasticity of demand for dive tourism in three countries in South East Asia – Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia – is estimated using a travel-cost model. From the model, the total non-market use value associated with diving in the area is estimated to be in the order of US$4.5 billion a year. The price elasticity of demand in the region is highly inelastic, such that increasing the cost of diving through a management levy would have little impact on total diver numbers.

Review of river fisheries valuation in tropical Asia

This study attempts to estimate the economic value of riverine fisheries in tropical Asia and quantify the economic impacts of any changes to the environment that affects rivers and hence fisheries. The value of riverine fisheries has been considered in the following two ways: firstly, through a compilation and summary of the results of existing studies on this topic; secondly, by estimating the direct use value of riverine and floodplain fishing by country using quantities and freshwater fish prices derived from various sources. Furthermore, a review of the characteristics of the fisheries is presented. These fisheries have been shown to be valuable (i.e., economically or socially important) in at least two specific ways: as a generator of commercially marketable output, and as a source of income and employment in relatively impoverished communities.

Produção e consumo de leis penais no capitalismo: o fetichismo da mercadoria

O processo histórico dialético é acompanhado não apenas da transformação do conteúdo normativo das leis, mas da transformação da própria forma legal em si. Conforme a organização da produção vai se desenvolvendo nas relações sociais mais complexas, as categorias do Direito também se tornam mais complexas, cada vez mais autônomas e definidas. O capitalismo é um movimento, que, como tal, se parar, não consegue se sustentar. Se todas as pessoas ficarem em casa, paradas, sem consumir, o sistema entra em colapso, pois a mercadoria precisa circular. Igualmente, o sistema penal precisa produzir normas punitivas para se manter, ainda que a circulação delas aconteça com base apenas em seu valor simbólico. a produção de normas penais reproduz a lógica da produção de mercadorias, a qual, por meio do fetichismo, segrega o valor-de-uso do valor, possibilitando que leis sejam criadas independentemente de serem úteis, mas apenas para circularem e reforçarem a estrutura punitiva. A compreensão da cisão entre valor e utilidade é fundamental para esclarecer o fetichismo da norma penal, que se manifesta por meio da expansão da criminalização e do agravamento das penas. Por mais que se tenha clara a ineficácia da produção de leis punitivas para resolver problemas sociais, a criação de novos tipos penais está ancorada em seu valor, separado de sua utilidade concreta.

A Social and Economic Characterization of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico Recreational Shark Fishery

A mail survey of tournament shark anglers and party boat shark anglers was completed to examine their fishing activity, attitudes, trip expenditures, and consumer surplus. A sample of 700 shark anglers was selected from tournaments in the Gulf of Mexico during 1990, and a sample of party boat shark anglers was drawn from Port Aransas, Tex., party boat anglers during the summer of 1991. A response rate of 58% (excluding nondeliverables) was obtained from tournament anglers. The sample of party boat shark anglers was too small to provide useful results. Tournament shark anglers reported fishing an average of 58 days per year and targeted sharks and other large marine species. Tournaments occupy a small portion of their fishing effort. If this group of anglers were not able to fish for sharks, one-third indicated no other species would be an acceptable substitute, while others were willing to substitute other large marine species. Shark trip expenditures averaged $197 per trip with a consumer surplus of $111 per trip. Based on MRFSS estimates of the number of shark fishing trips, we estimate a total of $43,355,000 was spent by shark anglers in the Gulf of Mexico with a consumer surplus of $23,865,000 for a total gross value of the shark fishery of $66,220,000. MRFSS estimates of the number of sharks landed indicate an equivalent use value of $183 per shark.

单程波算子空间-波数域可分近似方法研究

In the petroleum exploration industry, it is very important to simulate the evolvement of wave field beneath our earth in the aspects of time and space quickly and effectively. Because of the huge data size in petroleum exploration and also the strict requirement of time limit in the actual process of production, simplification of models and approximation of algorithm are necessary. At the same time, every fine improvement to algorithm has its great practical significance and use value. Based on the reasons above, this dissertation researches the separable approximation methods of space-wave number domain for One-way Wave Operator and gets the conclusions as follow: 1. It is insufficient to value One-way Wave Operator purely from the mathematical modulus and phase error, while, holding some specific structural character of operator should be more important. Because, the evaluation criterion of One-way Wave Operator’s imaging ability is quite complicate and obscured, which is similar to the evaluation of an artwork. 2. We can not search for a best or most effective One-way Wave Operator approximation solution for all. However, to different speed model and precision requirement the best approximation solution does exist which is maybe also a compromise, because it is very beneficial to One-way Wave Operator to take full advantage of speed model’s pre-tested information.

Growth Coalitions and Rural Development Police in the EU and the US

A recent issue of EuroChoices (7:1) was devoted to a discussion of comparative US-EU rural development policies. This article discusses the concept of growth coalitions, well developed in urban literature but less so in rural literature. Some light is shed on the different positions of rural and environmental issues in EU and US policies. The agricultural lobby is the dominant actor in agricultural growth coalitions because it perceives land in terms of its exchange value. Environmental and rural development actors perceive land in terms of its use value and its contributions to quality of life: they form a rural development coalition, seeing the need to balance growth with quality of life, but they have less political power than the agricultural growth coalition. In the European context, rural and environmental agendas are linked to a multi-functional agricultural agenda allowing common ground between these two coalitions and greater visibility in the policy arena. In the US, rural interests and environmental groups are more often in opposition to agriculture. This reduces their political visibility and clout. The challenge is how to link the power of the agricultural growth coalitions with rural development coalitions to achieve a broader balance of concerns and a more effective rural development policy.

How many dimensions of biodiversity do we need?

Biodiversity is not a commodity, nor a service (ecosystem or otherwise), it is a scientific measure of the complexity of a biological system. Rather than directly valuing biodiversity, economists have tended to value its services, more often the services of 'key' species. This is understandable given the confusion of definitions and measures of biodiversity, but weakly justified if biodiversity is not substitutable. We provide a quantitative and comprehensive definition of biodiversity and propose a framework for examining its substitutability as the first step towards valuation. We define biodiversity as a measure of semiotic information. It is equated with biocomplexity and measured by Algorithmic Information Content (AIC). We argue that the potentially valuable component of this is functional information content (FIC) which determines biological fitness and supports ecosystem services. Inspired by recent extensions to the Noah's Ark problem, we show how FIC/AIC can be calculated to measure the degree of substitutability within an ecological community. From this, we derive a way to rank whole communities by Indirect Use Value, through quantifying the relation between system complexity and production rate of ecosystem services. Understanding biodiversity as information evidently serves as a practical interface between economics and ecological science.

The Role of Subjectivity and Knowledge Power Struggles in the Formation of Public Policy

There is a growing incentive for sociologists to demonstrate the use value of their research. Research ‘impact’ is a driver of research funding and a measure of academic standing. Academic debate on this issue has intensified since Burawoy’s (2004) call for a ‘public’ sociology. However the academy is no longer the sole or primary producer of knowledge and empirical sociologists need to contend with the ‘huge swathes’ of social data that now exist (Savage and Burrows, 2007). This article furthers these debates by considering power struggles between competing forms of knowledge. Using a case study, it specifically considers the power struggle between normative and empirical knowledge, and how providers of knowledge assert legitimacy for their truth claims. The article concludes that the idea of ‘impact’ and ‘use-value’ are extremely complex and depends in the policy context on knowledge power struggles, and on how policy makers want to view the world. © The Author(s) 2012

Assessing and measuring impact of a digital collection in the humanities: An analysis of the SPHERE (Stormont Parliamentary Hansards: Embedded in Research and Education) Project

Although a substantial corpus of digital materials is now available to scholarship across the disciplines, objective evidence of their use, impact, and value, based on a robust assessment, is sparse. Traditional methods of assessment of impact in the humanities, notably citation in scholarly publications, are not an effective way of assessing impact of digital content. These issues are problematic in the field of Digital Humanities where there is a need to effectively assess impact to justify its continued funding and existence. A number of qualitative and quantitative methods exist that can be used to monitor the use of digital resources in various contexts although they have yet to be applied widely. These have been made available to the creators, managers, and funders of digital content in an accessible form through the TIDSR (Toolkit for the Impact of Digital Scholarly Resources) developed by the Oxford Internet Institute. In 2011, the authors of this article developed the SPHERE project (Stormont Parliamentary Hansards: Embedded in Research and Education) specifically to use TIDSR to evaluate the use and impact of The Stormont Papers, a digital collection of the Hansards of the Stormont Northern Irish Parliament from 1921 to 1972. This article presents the methodology, findings, and analysis of the project. The authors argue that TIDSR is a useful and, critically, transferrable method to understand and increase the impact of digital resources. The findings of the project are modified into a series of wider recommendations on protecting the investment in digital resources by increasing their use, value, and impact. It is reasonable to suggest that effectively showing the impact of Digital Humanities is critical to its survival.

SPHERE: Stormont Parliamentary Hansards: Embedded in Research and Education

SPHERE (Stormont Parliamentary Hansards: Embedded in Research and Education) was a JISC-funded project based at King’s College, London and Queen’s University, Belfast, working in Partnership with the Northern Ireland Assembly Library, and the NIA Official Report (Hansard). Its purpose was to assess the use, value and impact of The Stormont Papers digital resource, and to use the results of this assessment to make recommendations for a series of practical approaches to embed the resource within teaching, learning and research among the wider user community. The project began in November 2010 and was concluded in April 2010.

A series of formal reports on the project are published by JISC online at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/digitisation/impactembedding/sphere.aspx

SPHERE Impact analysis summary
Portable Document Format
SPHERE interviews report
SPHERE Outreach use case
SPHERE research use case
SPHERE teaching use_case
SPHERE web survey report
SPHERE web analysis

The complexity of biodiversity: A biological perspective on economic valuation

To value something, you first have to know what it is. Bartkowski et al. (2015) reveal a critical weakness: that biodiversity has rarely, if ever, been defined in economic valuations of putative biodiversity. Here we argue that a precise definition is available and could help focus valuation studies, but that in using this scientific definition (a three-dimensional measure of total difference), valuation by stated-preference methods becomes, at best, very difficult.We reclassify the valuation studies reviewed by Bartkowski et al. (2015) to better reflect the biological definition of biodiversity and its potential indirect use value as the support for provisioning and regulating services. Our analysis shows that almost all of the studies reviewed by Bartkowski et al. (2015) were not about biodiversity, but rather were about the 'vague notion' of naturalness, or sometimes a specific biological component of diversity. Alternative economic methods should be found to value biodiversity as it is defined in natural science. We suggest options based on a production function analogy or cost-based methods. Particularly the first of these provides a strong link between economic theory and ecological research and is empirically practical. Since applied science emphasizes a scientific definition of biodiversity in the design and justification of conservation plans, the need for economic valuation of this quantitative meaning of biodiversity is considerable and as yet unfulfilled.

Slackers, slashers and sticklers : Hollywood films and audience reception /

This thesis examines the processes through which identity is acquired and the processes that Hollywood :films employ to facilitate audience identification in order to determine the extent to which individuality is possible within postmodem society. Opposing views of identity formation are considered: on the one hand, that of the Frankfurt School which envisions the mass audience controlled by the culture industry and on the other, that of John Fiske which places control in the hands of the individual. The thesis takes a mediating approach, conceding that while the mass media do provide and influence identity formation, individuals can and do decode a variety of meanings from the material made available to them in accordance with the text's use-value in relation to the individual's circumstances. The analysis conducted in this thesis operates on the assumption that audiences acquire identity components in exchange for paying to see a particular film. Reality Bites (Ben Stiller 1994) and Scream (Wes Craven 1996) are analyzed as examples of mainstream 1990s films whose material circumstances encourage audience identification and whose popularity suggest that audiences did indeed identify with them. The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson 2001) is considered for its art film sensibilities and is examined in order to determine to what extent this film can be considered a counter example. The analysis consists of a combination of textual analysis and reception study in an attempt to avoid the problems associated with each approach when employed alone. My interpretation of the filmmakers' and marketers' messages will be compared with online reviews posted by film viewers to determine how audiences received and made use of the material available to them. Viewer-posted reviews, both unsolicited and unrestricted, as found online, will be consulted and will represent a segment of the popular audience for the three films to be analyzed.