1,721,218 research outputs found
Managing wildlife-based tourism: Edging slowly towards sustainability?
Full text linkIt is increasingly acknowledged that cetacean-based tourism may not be as low in impact as many hope or presume, and that any long term and systematic human interactions with populations of wild animals need to be rigorously monitored and carefully managed. This paper reviews a series of recent developments in the management of tourist interactions with dolphins at Shark Bay (Western Australia). We argue that collectively these developments represent a paradigmatic shift in the way commercial tourism encounters with dolphins are managed. If so, they represent an important and long overdue advance in the general direction of sustainable management. However, the paper also strikes a note of caution. Shark Bay, a well managed site of relatively low level commercial dolphin-watching activities, carries important insights and austere warnings for the many high-intensity/low visitor management dolphin-tourism sites around the world
An integrated and adaptive management model to address the long-term sustainability of tourist interactions with cetaceans
Full text linkRapid growth in demand for tourist interactions with cetaceans in the wild constitutes a challenge to management. Short-term animal behaviour changes can have long-term biological consequences for individual animals and populations. This paper reviews the whale-watching management context, describing the interplay of the macro (global), meso (national/regional) and micro-level (local/site specific) policy, planning and management settings. Here, an integrated and adaptive management model based largely upon the delineation and monitoring of limits of acceptable change (LAC) parameters is proposed to address current shortcomings in the long-term sustainable management of whale-watching activities. Although no integrated management framework currently exists, a comprehensive management approach must be developed and applied in the interests of the long-term sustainable management of tourist interactions with cetaceans in the wild. The proposed management model highlights the importance of integrating multiple stakeholder perspectives in a way that is both research-informed and adaptive. Beyond tourist interactions with cetaceans, this management framework could be applied to a wide range of wildlife management contexts
Chronic interaction between humans and free-ranging bottlenose dolphins near Panama City Beach, Florida
Full text link‘Swim-with’ activities, in which humans enter the water to interact with free-ranging cetaceans, are a popular form of nature tourism; however, there is considerable disagreement as to whether these encounters constitute a threat to the animals. At the request of the US Marine Mammal Commission, a systematic study was designed to quantify effects of swim-with activities on the behaviour of bottlenose dolphins in waters near Panama City Beach, Florida. Certain dolphin behaviours were identified as indicative of chronic interaction with humans, and based on presence of these behaviours, at least seven dolphins were identified that permitted people to swim nearby. Because these dolphins accepted food handouts from people, they were considered to be conditioned to human interaction through food reinforcement. Specific human-dolphin interactions that posed a risk for dolphins or humans were identified, and it was calculated that human interaction put a specific juvenile dolphin at risk once every 12 min, including being fed by humans once every 39-59 min. Humans interacting with that dolphin were estimated to be at risk once every 29 min. Although the study was of limited duration, the observations were so clear-cut and the nature of interactions so potentially hazardous it was concluded that food provisioning was the probable basis for swimming with free-ranging dolphins near Panama City Beach, Florida, and therefore, human interaction at this location was likely to be harmful to the dolphins and in clear violation of the US Marine Mammal Protection Act. Of equal importance to the findings of this study is the methodology. A systematic behavioural methodology was designed that can be adapted to study potential impacts of nature tourism on coastal communities of cetaceans in which individuals are readily distinguished. The focus was on the behaviour of individual animals in order to describe and quantify in-water interactions between dolphins and humans, to make behavioural comparisons for the same individual dolphins in the presence and absence of swimmers, and to make behavioural comparisons for individual dolphins in the same region that do and do not interact with swimmers. Coupled with standard photo identification techniques, these methods can be used to identify the class of animals, or proportion of a local community, that is more likely to interact with, be detrimentally affected by, and/or avoid human interaction. Sequential observations of the same individuals taken over time can be used to document habituation or sensitisation to human interaction
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The long-term consequences of short-term responses to disturbance: Experiences from whalewatching impact assessment
Full text linkStudies often use behavioral responses to detect the impact of given disturbances on animals. However, the observation of these short-term responses can often lead to contradicting results. Here we describe studies focusing on the impacts of whalewatching to show how the biological relevance of short-term responses can be inferred from contextual information. They showed that short-term behavioral responses could have long-term consequences for individuals and their populations using information about variation in response magnitude with exposure levels, longterm population biology data, and multiple response variables. They showed that the added energetic constraints of the responses can impair life functions and lead to influences on vital rates with the potential to affect population viability. Individuals will manage disturbances as another ecological variable and will assess its costs in relation to other energetic trade-offs associated with the occupancy of the habitat in which the disturbance takes place. This can lead to rapid shift in tactics to cope with the disturbance, such as shift from short-term avoidance tactics to long-term habitat abandonment. When individuals cannot elude proximity to the disturbance, their fitness is reduced as observed through reduced reproductive success. These studies provide mechanisms to inform the US National Research Councils’ Population Consequences of Acoustic Disturbance framework in which the influence of noise impact of on marine mammal conservation can be studied
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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