Ramp, D & Bekoff, M 2016, 'Animal Ethics in the Age of Humans' in Bovenkerk, B & Keulartz, J (eds), Animal Ethics in the Age of Humans: Blurring boundaries in human-animal relationships, Springer International Publishing, pp. 387-395.
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This book provides reflection on the increasingly blurry boundaries that characterize the human-animal relationship. In the Anthropocene humans and animals have come closer together and this asks for rethinking old divisions.
Riley, S 2016, 'Prioritising the Environment in Sustainable Development: Lessons from Australian Environmental Impact Assessment' in Mauerhofer, V (ed), Legal Aspects of Sustainable Development, Springer International Publishing, Switzerland, pp. 271-288.
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It is a truism that to be effective, the concept of sustainable development (SD) needs to be functionally operational. Environmental impact assessment (EIA) provides such an opportunity; yet EIA also presents decision-makers with a vast array of competing criteria compelling decision makers to prioritize and make trade-offs. Moreover, legislation provides little guidance on how to prioritize these criteria and still achieve SD. Using the Australian state of New South Wale as a case study, the discussion evaluates the relationship between policy, legislation and the weight given to SD. The topic is important for policy makers, decision-makers, proponents of development and conservationists. The paper draws on two bodies of work: the literature on prioritising and trade-offs in decision-making by authors such as Brownlie and Retief et al; and the paradigms and models of science identified by Cashmore. It proffers a means of curtailing the wide discretion available to decision-makers using civic science, which to be effective, needs to be legislatively-based.
Walker, JR 2016, 'Bringing Liquidity to Life: Markets for Ecosystem Services and the New Political Economy of Extinction' in Kohli, K & Menon, M (eds), Business Interests and the Environmental Crisis, SAGE Publications Ltd, New Dehli, pp. 5-37.
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This chapter attempts to situate the rise of market-based conservation policy, and its associated theoretical and policy frameworks such The Economics of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services within a wider history of what might be termed financialisation. Outlining a new chapter in the long history of ontological adjustment of ecological science to dominant accounts of political economy, this chapter explores the emergence of a novel political economy of extinction. This can be analysed in the transformations of theory: the reframing of the sixth extinction crisis within the neoliberal idiom of ‘natural capital’ and ‘ecosystem services’ reflects a history of the reprocessing of political and scientific ecological discourse in order to better accommodate it to reigning economic doctrines. TEEB and other articulations of market-based conservation do little to question the dominant economic theory that has licensed the financialisation of social, political and economic life and led to our current global economic crisis. As a species of power, it can also be analysed in the social connections of the corporate boardroom: where the professional authority, executive expertise, epistemic frameworks and political projects of senior conservation ecologists increasingly converge with those of the worlds most powerful bankers.
Granjou, C & Walker, J 2016, 'Promises that matter: Reconfiguring ecology in the ecotrons', Science and Technology Studies, vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 49-67.
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Ecotrons are large instruments designed to produce experimentally valid knowledge through the controlled manipulation of enclosed, simplifi ed ecosystems. Situating the ecotrons within a select genealogy of artifi cial biospheres, and drawing on interviews with key researchers engaged in the conception and recent construction of two ecotrons in France, we propose to think through ecotrons as promissory and anticipatory infrastructures that materialize a profound reconfi guration of ecologists' roles within wider civilizational narratives. Ecotrons encapsulate ecologists' ambitions to practice a 'hard' science, recognized by international environmental and science policy forums. They were integral to rise of the sub-discipline of functional ecology, which in turn underpins the policy discourse of 'ecosystem services'. Combining patterns of controlled experimentation with live simulations of future environmental conditions anticipated in climate change scenarios, the ecotron materialises a reorientation of the vocation of ecology: To secure the resilience of those 'ecosystem services' deemed critical to social life. Originally tasked with assessing the eff ects of biodiversity loss on the productivity and stability of the biosphere, ecotron research is increasingly focused on anthropogenic microbial ecosystems, and takes place within a terminology resolutely optimistic about the possibilities of microecological engineering, to the exclusion of earlier concerns with mass extinction.
Ramp, D, Wilson, V & Croft, D 2016, 'Contradiction and Complacency Shape Attitudes towards the Toll of Roads on Wildlife', Animals, vol. 6, no. 6, pp. 40-40.
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Most people in the world now live in cities. Urbanisation simultaneously isolates people from nature and contributes to biodiversity decline. As cities expand, suburban development and the road infrastructure to support them widens their impact on wildlife. Even so, urban communities, especially those on the peri-urban fringe, endeavour to support biodiversity through wildlife friendly gardens, green spaces and corridors, and conservation estates. On one hand, many who live on city fringes do so because they enjoy proximity to nature, however, the ever increasing intrusion of roads leads to conflict with wildlife. Trauma (usually fatal) to wildlife and (usually emotional and financial) to people ensues. Exposure to this trauma, therefore, should inform attitudes towards wildlife vehicle collisions (WVC) and be linked to willingness to reduce risk of further WVC. While there is good anecdotal evidence for this response, competing priorities and better understanding of the likelihood of human injury or fatalities, as opposed to wildlife fatalities, may confound this trend. In this paper we sought to explore this relationship with a quantitative study of driver behaviour and attitudes to WVC from a cohort of residents and visitors who drive through a peri-urban reserve (Royal National Park) on the outskirts of Sydney, Australia. We distributed a self-reporting questionnaire and received responses from 105 local residents and 51 visitors to small townships accessed by roads through the national park. We sought the respondents’ exposure to WVC, their evasive actions in an impending WVC, their attitudes to wildlife fatalities, their strategies to reduce the risk of WVC, and their willingness to adopt new ameliorative measures. The results were partitioned by driver demographics and residency. Residents were generally well informed about mitigation strategies but exposure led to a decrease in viewing WVC as very serious. In addition, despite most respo...
Thomson, FJ, Auld, TD, Ramp, D & Kingsford, RT 2016, 'A Switch in Keystone Seed-Dispersing Ant Genera between Two Elevations for a Myrmecochorous Plant, Acacia terminalis', PLOS ONE, vol. 11, no. 6, pp. e0157632-e0157632.
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© 2016 Thomson et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The dispersal capacity of plant species that rely on animals to disperse their seeds (biotic dispersal) can alter with changes to the populations of their keystone dispersal vectors. Knowledge on how biotic dispersal systems vary across landscapes allows better understanding of factors driving plant persistence. Myrmecochory, seed dispersal by ants, is a common method of biotic dispersal for many plant species throughout the world. We tested if the seed dispersal system of Acacia terminalis (Fabaceae), a known myrmecochore, differed between two elevations in the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, in southeastern Australia. We compared ant assemblages, seed removal rates of ants and other vertebrates (bird and mammal) and the dominant seed-dispersing ant genera. At low elevations (c. 200 m a.s.l) seed removal was predominantly by ants, however, at high elevation sites (c. 700 m a.s.l) vertebrate seed dispersers or seed predators were present, removing over 60% of seeds from experimental depots when ants were excluded. We found a switch in the keystone seed-dispersing ant genera from Rhytidoponera at low elevations sites to Aphaenogaster at high elevation sites. This resulted in more seeds being removed faster at low elevation sites compared to high elevation sites, however long-term seed removal rates were equal between elevations. Differences in the keystone seed removalist, and the addition of an alternate dispersal vector or seed predator at high elevations, will result in different dispersal and establishment patterns for A. terminalis at different elevations. These differences in dispersal concur with other global studies that report myrmecochorous dispersal systems alter with elevation.
Webster, E, Ramp, D & Kingsford, RT 2016, 'Spatial sensitivity of surface energy balance algorithms to meteorological data in a heterogeneous environment', Remote Sensing of Environment, vol. 187, pp. 294-319.
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Increasing demand for water security requires improved accuracy in water accounting. Quantification of actual evapotranspiration is an essential part of this accounting and is frequently derived from surface energy balance (SEB) models that combine satellite remote sensing and on-ground measurements of meteorological data. However, many of the world's major water supply catchments are highly heterogeneous with land types, vegetation communities, and topography varying spatially. We compared the performance of seven meteorological interpolation methods and three SEB algorithms (the Simplified Surface Energy Balance Index (S-SEBI), the Hybrid Dual-Source Scheme and Trapezoid Framework-Based Evapotranspiration Model (HTEM), and the Surface Energy Balance System (SEBS)), testing their sensitivity to meteorological and remotely sensed inputs in a heterogeneous environment. Under a two dimensional framework, accuracy of interpolation methods varied among SEB meteorological inputs, suggesting that combining methods could improve overall accuracy. SEB algorithms were influenced by the density, type, and variability of meteorological inputs and sensitivity analysis showed that wind speed and air temperature were almost as influential as surface temperature for HTEM and SEBS. SEBS was the most sensitive to meteorological variability caused by choice of interpolation method when analysed globally, while HTEM was the most sensitive to local meteorological variation at flux towers. S-SEBI's simple structure made it the least sensitive to meteorological inputs and interpolation methods. Continued improvement in spatially explicit interpolation methods, combined with increased densities of meteorological stations, will increase accuracy and confidence in remotely sensed SEB fluxes, contributing to improved water accounting in heterogeneous catchments.