1,720,959 research outputs found
Who Gets the Fish in Belize?: Evaluating Seafood Access in an Urban Area
No full textEvaluating Local Access to Seafood in Urban Belize City
By
Roberto Pott
May 2010
Small developing countries such as Belize face the dilemma of choosing between using their fisheries catch domestically to feed the population, which preserves cultural diet, or processing and exporting this catch internationally to contribute to GDP, which stimulates the Belizean economy. This study used social survey methods to assess the Belize City resident’s perception of seafood availability that considers the current production levels (supply) and distribution of seafood (access). Results revealed competition for seafood between the two primary domestic consumers, residents (households) and tourists (restaurants). Anecdotally, residents detected a reduction in seafood supply over the years but do not acknowledge reduced access. One inference is that resident’s view of access to seafood has broadened over the years to include retail, marketplace/supermarket access (raw seafood), retail/wholesale, cooperative access (raw seafood), and restaurant access (prepared seafood). These consumers may either have discontinued buying seafood because of the price or are unwilling to go to the current market site for health and safety reasons.
An assessment of fisheries policies regarding domestic consumer access showed that current policies favor export and the tourism sector, since local households must compete with these groups. Moreover, consumption data for the tourism sector and residents are lumped together as a group by fisheries managers, and this gives the false impression that residents receives an adequate and affordable supply of seafood. In addition to ignoring the economic plight of low income households, current policies give minimal consideration to the cultural or social values of domestic seafood in Belizean communities. Future policies should incorporate cultural and social values, and one step can be the documentation of the allocation of fisheries resources in more detail. This information could inform economic analysis which is also recommended. Policy and allocations that could result from this analysis need to consider the residents’ economic, cultural, and social value positions for purchasing seafood; variable demands such as the fluctuating nature of the tourist industry and international seafood export industry; and tradeoffs between benefits from domestic consumption (microeconomic) versus benefits of international consumption (macroeconomic)
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Eliminate the Patch: What the U.S. can do to solve the marine debris issue
No full textMarine debris is a growing problem with increasing presence in the media and public mind. Effective solutions will require guiding federal policy combined with local level planning. This project is a synopsis of research and mitigation techniques for use by managers, municipalities, and citizens in their efforts to eliminate marine debris. Many strategies are required to address the issue of marine debris, including regulations, market-based incentives, and public action. Prevention measures before clean ups are an economically and environmentally preferred solution. Public education and raising awareness are essential and effective tools to mitigate marine debris. For most locales, watershed-scale identification and targeting of concentrated sources of litter is necessary for effective policy
Establishing Volume Reduction Goals and Reducing Stormwater Runoff Using Low Impact Development to Improve Coastal Water Quality
Get PDFDespite the Clean Water Act (CWA), passed by Congress in 1972, coastal water quality has continued to decline. The primary reason is the Act’s failure to adequately deal with stormwater runoff, the leading source of water pollution in coastal areas. Coastal development causes the velocity and volume of rainwater running off the land to increase, picking up pollutants in the process. Traditional stormwater systems convey that runoff directly into watersheds and coastal waters. Alternatives to the tradition stormwater systems exist that prevent runoff, instead of conveying it off the land as fast as possible. Low impact development (LID) is one option that uses a variety of techniques to mimic the lands natural hydrology by holding rainwater on the land and allowing it to infiltrate the soil. LID incorporate fairly simple measures, such as disconnecting downspouts from impervious surfaces, using rain barrels to capture runoff, and installing rain gardens, to reduce the runoff from development.
Reducing stormwater runoff can be an effective way to improve water quality in areas where waters are not meeting their designated uses established under the CWA. This can be done by bringing runoff levels back to historically acceptable volumes. This analysis uses the methods in the NC Coastal Federation’s Watershed Restoration Planning Guidebook to establish a stormwater runoff volume reduction goal by calculating the increase in runoff between 2004 and 2013 in Beaufort, NC. The study demonstrates the ease of setting reduction goals using the NCCF guidebook methods. It then presents various LID techniques as a cost effective approach to meet the reduction target.
The results for the 9-year period show a 7% increase in stormwater runoff volumes. The estimated increase in runoff volume was 423.876 acre-feet. The runoff rate went from 54% to 61%. This correlates closely with the increase seen in impervious surfaces in the study area. Impervious cover went from 29% in 2004, up to 37% in 2013, an 8% increase
COASTAL CLIMATE ADAPTATION: Ecological and Socioeconomic effects of Climate Change in Dare, Hyde, and Tyrrell Counties
No full textClimate change threatens the ecological and socioeconomic sustainability of Dare, Hyde, and Tyrrell counties as they are the three lowest-lying counties in all of North Carolina, making them particularly vulnerable to sea level rise (SLR) and changes in storm intensity and frequency. The objectives of this study are to : (1) summarize the socioeconomic importance of these three counties, including an evaluation of ecosystem services provided by coastal and marine environments; (2) project the potential biophysical impacts climate change may have in the future; and (3) conclude with an evaluation of the current climate adaptation policies and strategies, including land-use plans and shoreline stabilization, that the North Carolina state government, local county governments, and nonprofits are implementing.
The research demonstrates that the local economies in these counties are driven by agriculture, commercial fisheries, and tourism, with ecosystem services providing valuable resources to both local and state populations. The consequences of climate change in the region are vast and unpredictable meaning effective climate adaptation strategies must be developed now before the implications of climate change become a reality. Current climate adaptation policies provide only short-term solutions to a long-term problem. It is recommended that communities weigh the economic, social, and cultural costs of armoring the shoreline versus retreating further inland. Conservation organizations should focus their efforts inland in order to acquire conservation easements anticipating where the coastline will be in 100 years
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Get PDFWe 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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