山东省区域生存支持系统可持续发展能力分析

本文以中国科学院可持续发展战略研究组制定的生存支持系统的评价指标为参照,依据山东省的实际情况,在科学性、层次性、可行性原则指导下,制定了一套评价指标体系,利用主成分分析法,合理的简化评价指标体系,客观的评价了山东省17地市的生存支持系统的可持续发展能力,并揭示了山东省生存支持系统空间差异存在的机理。     

新疆阿克苏市土地利用总体规划实施评价

在土地利用总体规划管理的各个环节中,规划的实施评价是极其重要的一环。文章针对土地利用总体规划实施评价中存在的问题,提出了评价指标体系,指出影响规划实施评价的因素包括对社会影响度、经济效益、社会效益、生态效益、完成性指标等8个方面;建立了土地利用总体规划综合评价模型,其中因素权重的确定采用特尔菲（Delph i）法。在对新疆阿克苏市土地利用总体规划实施评价过程中,采用了多种数据标准化方法对数据进行标准化处理,将规划实施评价的结果分为5个质量等级,分别表示好、较好、一般、差和较差。利用上述原理与方法对阿克苏市1996—2006年的土地利用总体规划的实施情况进行评价,其最终得分为77.66分,表明现行规划执行情况较好,但社会影响度指标、限制性上限指标和限制性下限指标得分较低。最后总结了阿克苏市在上一轮规划实施中存在的问题,并对新一轮土地利用总体规划的修编和实施提出了相应的建议。     

水域生物监测研究进展

水域生物监测技术在环境监测中的应用日益广泛。综述了水域生物监测的概念与特征、常用指示生物、水域生物监测方法与应用、水域生物监测的发展前景。     

商洛市可持续发展指标体系构建及综合评价

为了全面系统地评价商洛市可持续发展真实水平,从影响可持续发展的经济、社会和环境因素方面选取了23个单项指标,构建了商洛市可持续发展指标体系.运用层次分析法确定各项指标权重,从可持续发展能力、可持续性和协调性对2008～2012年商洛市可持续发展进行综合评价.结果表明,2008～2012年商洛市经济、社会和环境可持续发展指数、可持续发展综合评价指数和可持续性均呈上升趋势,但可协调性有下降趋势;从各系统贡献得出这与2008～2012年商洛市主要依靠政府投资促进发展有关,需要地方政府尽快调整经济结构、完善社会保障事业和改善环境质量,才能真正达到可持续发展.     

山区典型小流域可持续发展评价——以北京三渡河小流域为例

以三渡河小流域为研究对象,提出适用的、可操作的、简化的小流域综合治理可持续发展指标体系,该指标体系由目标层、类目指标层、项目指标层和指标变量层构成。依照从低到高次序逐层计算各项指标值,最终得出小流域综合治理可持续发展度指标值。并对不同年度三渡河小流域可持续发展进行科学评价。     

The role of ants in conservation monitoring: If, when, and how

Ants are increasingly being recognized as useful tools for land managers to monitor ecosystem conditions. However, despite an abundance of studies on ant responses to both environmental disturbance and land management techniques, an analysis of the practice and value of including ants in monitoring is lacking. Consequently, conservation managers are left with little guidance as to if, when, and how ants can be used to assess conservation activities. Based on our review of approximately 60 published studies, we outline five areas where ants provide valuable information for management-based monitoring: (1) to detect the presence of invasive species, (2) to detect trends among threatened or endangered species, (3) to detect trends among keystone species, (4) to evaluate land management actions, and (5) to assess long-term ecosystem changes. We also discuss practical considerations when designing a monitoring framework for ants, including appropriate methods, taxonomic resolution for sampling, and spatial and temporal scale. We find that when integrated with management goals, monitoring ants can provide information over the short-term on topics such as the status of invasive or keystone species, as well as over longer time frames, for instance the impact of climate change. Overall, we conclude that ants merit monitoring based on their inherent ecological qualities, independent of any “indicator” attributes they might have.     

A weighted coenotic index (WCI): Description and application to soil animal assemblages

The Weighted Coenotic Index (WCI) is a single value that unifies total abundance, dominance structure, species richness and ecological weightings, e.g., habitat preferences and positions of species in the r/K continuum. Studies with simulated species assemblages have shown that ecological weightings and dominance structure are major components of the index; the ecological weightings must be related to the group of organisms studied and to the scope of the investigation. The WCI is a relative measure that needs a reference (control) site in each investigation for a conclusive interpretation. Compared to several diversity indexes, the WCI has a much better discriminant ability because it includes ecological weightings and a log-normal dominance structure. This index has been applied to published data from several field studies using protozoa (testate amoebae, ciliates) and earthworms. The results show that the WCI is an appropriate tool to measure changes and to monitor recovery processes in disturbed ecosystems. The index should be calculated separately for each systematic (indicator) group (e.g., ciliates, nematodes, mites) because the information will be more detailed and an overall index could, for instance, mask a high value for one group, such as ciliates, in conjunction with a low value for another group, such as nematodes. The WCI has been developed on a protozoological background owing to the authors' familiarity with this field. Mathematically and practically it is also applicable to other groups of soil and freshwater organisms.     

Indicator species among resident forest birds - A cross-regional evaluation in northern Europe

In European forests, plants, fungi and invertebrates have been proposed as indicator species for assessing conservation value at the stand scale. To cover larger spatial scales, wide-ranging vertebrates could be added to that set of species. For resident forest birds, we (1) explored whether the occurrence of some species could be used to indicate high species richness and abundances, and (2) compared the results among four regions in the Baltic Sea drainage basin with a common species pool but different forest management intensities and varying proportions of deciduous and coniferous trees (south-central and southern Sweden, south-central Lithuania and northeastern Poland). Assemblages of deciduous forest birds in 100-ha landscape units were generally nested, suggesting that species richness within that group may be predicted based on the presence of a few species. Birds of coniferous forests, however, showed poorer conformity to nestedness in Sweden. Specialised species such as the middle spotted (Dendrocopos medius) and lesser spotted woodpeckers (D. minor) in deciduous forest and the three-toed woodpecker (Picoides tridactylus) in coniferous forest generally figured among the best indicators. In deciduous forest, there was high cross-regional consistency in the identity of the best indicators. Moreover, the sites where the best indicator was present also harboured higher relative abundances of most background species. For coniferous forest, however, such a relationship was not found. We conclude that an indicator species approach may be useful for resident birds of deciduous forests in hemiboreal Europe, emphasising that it should constitute one of many complementary tools for conservation management.     

Grazing promotes dung beetle diversity in the xeric landscape of a Mexican Biosphere Reserve

We analyze the impact of grazing on dung beetle diversity at the Barranca de Metztitlán Biosphere Reserve, a xeric ecosystem in central Mexico with a long history of use by humans. We compared the community structure, as well as the alpha and beta diversity between two cover conditions (open and closed vegetation) that represent the impact of grazing within a habitat, and between habitat types (submountainous and crassicaule scrublands). From 576 samples we collected 75,605 dung beetles belonging to 20 taxa. While mean species richness and diversity were different between habitat types, cumulative species richness was not. The effects of grazing on vegetation structure influenced the cumulative species richness and diversity of dung beetles in the submountainous scrubland, where grazing has created land mosaics of a grassland matrix with scrubland patches. This was not the case in the crassicaule scrubland where the impact of grazing is not as evident. Beta diversity significantly responds to the effects of grazing on habitat conditions. We discuss the ecological factors that may promote these responses by landscape diversity components. We also identify the species that could act as useful indicators to monitor the effect of land management on biodiversity. Our results indicate cattle farming maintains a diversified land mosaic, and these areas support more diverse dung beetle ensembles than homogeneous areas of closed, shrubby vegetation cover. Thus, controlled grazing activity could certainly favour the conservation of dung beetle biodiversity and improve ecosystem functioning by maintaining dung decomposition rates.     

The effects of visual apparency on bias in butterfly recording and monitoring

A basic assumption in conservation is that comparable data are available for species to facilitate risk assessment of extinction. However, the capacity for carrying out cross-species comparisons for abundances and distributions among butterflies depends on the absence of bias in recording and monitoring or the existence of appropriate techniques for removing bias. Here, we investigate potential bias in cross-species comparisons for the apparency of butterfly adults (wing colour, size and behaviour) in three pivotal UK datasets: dates of discovery, Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (BMS) transect measures of abundance and Butterflies for the New Millennium (BNM) national recording scheme. Bias is found in all three datasets. Discovery date is affected by wing colour and size, BNM recording by adult behaviour and wing colour and BMS monitoring by adult behaviour. The nature and degree of bias differs between uncorrected cross-species comparisons and those with the application of phylogenetic contrasts. The findings urge caution in using these datasets for cross-species analysis without improvements and standardisation of recording and monitoring and the development of techniques to adjust for biases, in particular the use of suitable comparative techniques. The latter requires the construction of a molecular phylogeny for butterflies.