Publications
The response of seedlings of black cherry (Prunus serotina Ehrh.) to ozone was evaluated in Great Smoky Mountains National Park using open-top chambers during the growing seasons of 1989 and 1992. Two separate sets of seedlings were each exposed to various concentrations of ozone (charcoal-filtered; 0.5 x (not used in 1989), 1.0 x, 1.5 x, and 2.0 x modified ambient) in two different seasons....
Ozone is the most widespread phytotoxic pollutant in the United States, and the National Park Service is concerned about its effects on plants and ecosystems in a number of parks. In Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GRSM), ozone and other meteorological parameters are monitored on a continuous basis throughout the year at two permanent high elevation sites (Look Rock and Cove Mountain), and...
<p>The Sierra Nevada figures boldly in the earliest American articulations of environmental conservation and protection and civil organizing around this concern. The founder of Sierra Club, naturalist John Muir, focused attention on these mountains and since then they have been kept on or near center stage by environmentalists. It is from the early 1990s however, that Californians more...
In conservation biology the focus has recently shifted from individual species to entire biomes. The global strategy for conserving biodiversity assigns high priority to "areas with particular species richness and endemism." The inherent conflicts between these two criteria are noteworthy. Geographic patterns of species richness may reflect current carrying capacity, determined by...
Water as a result of snow and glacier melt is an important resource in the Central Andes of Chile and Argentina, which in terms of precipitation are close to climatic deserts, yet they support large populations and a rich agriculture. In spite of this, little is known of the processes at play and the variability over time. In particular, the specific mechanisms of energy balance and melt on high...
There has been a tremendous amount of commentary and even controversy surrounding the deadly mudslide in north-western Nicaragua that killed between 1,800-2,200 people, destroyed two villages, and became the rallying point for international environmentalists condemning Central American land use policies and deforestation. With the recent highly moving visit to the site by U.S. President Bill...
Usually analysts of acts which generate conflicts and violence, particularly in mountain zones, resort to the characterization of a series of factors of an instrumental type, such as the ineffectual attitudes of the current government, the incapacity of the poor to become part of the modern world, the inadequate mechanisms of development politics, etc., in order to be able to explain the...
In the northern highland sierra of Ecuador, marketing of medicinal teas on a micro-enterprise and supplementary income level offers an opportunity to apply indigenous knowledge to sustainable grassroots development. At the same, this type of project promotes in situ conservation of both indigenous knowledge and biodiversity. This article presents and discusses a project that is currently...
Water: Together we can care for it! A case study of a watershed conservation fund for Quito, Ecuador
The world is three-quarters water and the Latin American and Caribbean region is considered to have comparatively greater availability of this resource: an estimated 30% of the world's fresh water. But human activities are besieging this wealth of water, threatening both its quality and quantity.
Ecuador is not unfamiliar with this reality. The internal water resources available yearly are...
Integrating activities for conservation and development through people's participation and collaboration among different institutional and social actors is being increasingly recognized as the most promising approach to sustainable natural resource management. This document describes and discusses the experience in this area of the Inter-regional Project for Participatory Upland Conservation and...