Treesearch

A process is described for making comparative valuations of a wide range of environmental management activities when the combined social, economic, managerial, and political benefits of some (but not all) of these activities cannot be adequately described in economic terms, and budgetary constraints do not permit funding all activities under consideration. The process accounts for subjective judgment and contains a formal rigorous decision strategy that takes the place of intuition when quantitative and qualitative values of environmental activities need to be evaluated.

Increased hunting pressure for export, commencing about 1975, resulted in a serious decline in the populations of the Yap fruit bat (pieropus mariannus yapensis). Factors causing this pressure included an export market in the U.S. Territory of Guam and in Saipan, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and increased use of firearms. Research on Yap fruit bat populations generated legislative support for hunting regulations and gun control. As a result, bat populations have increased two to five-fold between 1981 and 1986. Biological, social, and economic considerations pose a challenge...

Traditional exploitation of fruit bats of Yap is limited, however commercial exploitation greatly reduced populations until they were protected indefinitely. There will be continued need to manage this resource. This paper is based on field work conducted while Yap's bats were intensively hunted. Data from field work is augmented with information from literature on other Pteropus to provide an overall picture of the life history of fruit bats for use by Micronesian resource managers. The original data collected on Yap bats suggests that the populations of fruit bats on yap islands and...

Measurements in the plumes from seven forest fires show that the concentrations of NH3 were considerably in excess of ambient values. Calculation of NH3 emissions from the fires, based on the ratio of NH3/CO in the plumes and emissions of CO from biomass burning, suggest that biomass burning may be a significant source of attnospheric NH3.

Fire is an ecosystem property rather than an exogenous force in southern California chaparral, and it interacts with processes of drought-mediated canopy development, production, and mortality to affect stability of community composition. Where species that must reproduce from seed, such as Ceanothus crassifolius or Ceanothus oliganthus, are predominant, composition can be altered by a single fire with little or no recruitment after initial postfire establishment. Water balance apparently regulates subsequent leaf area development; after 15-22 yr of postfire growth, foliage biomass in...

Up to 25 metric tonnes of seeds of Cook pine, raucaria columnaris (Forst. f.) Hook., are exported from Hawaii in abundant seed years. Excess seeds cannot be stored and used to fill orders in poor seed years because the seeds quickly lose their ability to germinate. The effects of storage temperature, seed moisture content, and nitrogen enrichment of storage containers on short-term and long-term seed germinability were studied in the laboratory. Results confirm the need for storage at near-freezing temperatures and seed moisture contents between 15 and 25%. Filling storage containers with...

Gas samples were collected in smoke plumes over the San Dimas Experimental Forest during a 400-acre prescribed chaparral fire on December 12, 1986. A helicopter was used to collect gas samples over areas of vigorous flaming combustion and over areas of mixed stages (vigorous/transitional/smoldering) of combustion. Sampling was conducted at altitudes as low as 35 m and as high as 670 m above ground level. The samples, collected in 20-L Tedlar bags, were returned by helicopter to our field laboratory and immediately transferred to electropolished stainless steel canisters. Analyses for the...

Smoke aerosol was collected on filters from a helicopter during a 400-acre (1.62 km2) prescribed chaparral burn in the San Dimas Experimental Forest on December 12, 1986. Hi-Vol samplers were used to collect particles on both Teflon and glass fiber filters. Scanning electron microscopy of the filters revealed particles that ranged in size from about 0.1 to 100/µm. Many of the large particles (> 10/µm) that appeared irregularly shaped at low magnifications were found at higher magnification to be highly agglomerated smaller spheres, often showing signs of partial coalescence. Energy...

Drastically reducing populations of feral sheep (Ovis aries), mouflon sheep (Ovis musimon), feral-mouflon hybrids, and feral goats (Capra hircus) on Mauna Kea were key management actions done to promote recovery of critical habitat for palila Loxioides bailleui), an endangered Hawaiian forest bird. Recovery of mamane (Sophora ehrysophyllo), the dominant tree in much of the subalpine woodland and the most important plant species for palila, was studied inside and outside exclosures. Five years after feral sheep and goat popUlations were controlled, natural seed and sprout regeneration had...