Planning for water resources

In this article the author describes some of the problems of planning for water resources, and the way in which the recently established Thames Water Authority has organized itself to deal with them. He demonstrates that water resource planning is involved with the whole of the water cycle, and is largely concerned with harnessing and controlling natural phenomena in situations of uncertainty.     

Nest design in a changing world: Great tit <Emphasis Type="Italic">Parus major</Emphasis> nests from a Mediterranean city environment as a case study

Investigations of urbanization effects on birds have focused mainly on breeding traits expressed after the nest-building stage (e.g. first-egg date, clutch size, breeding success, and offspring characteristics). Urban studies largely ignored how and why the aspects of nest building might be associated with the degree of urbanization. As urban environments are expected to present novel environmental changes relative to rural environments, it is important to evaluate how nest-building behavior is impacted by vegetation modifications associated with urbanization. To examine nest design in a Mediterranean city environment, we allowed urban great tits (Parus major) to breed in nest boxes in areas that differed in local vegetation cover. We found that different measures of nest size or mass were not associated with vegetation cover. In particular, nests located adjacent to streets with lower vegetation cover were not smaller or lighter than nests in parks with higher vegetation cover. Nests adjacent to streets contained more pine needles than nests in parks. In addition, in nests adjacent to streets, nests from boxes attached to pine trees contained more pine needles than nests from boxes attached to other trees. We suggest that urban-related alterations in vegetation cover do not directly impose physical limits on nest size in species that are opportunistic in the selection of nesting material. However, nest composition as reflected in the use of pine needles was clearly affected by habitat type and the planted tree species present, which implies that rapid habitat change impacts nest composition. We do not exclude that urbanization might impact other aspects of nest building behaviour not covered in our study (e.g. costs of searching for nest material), and that the strengths of the associations between urbanization and nest structures might differ among study populations or species.     

An avian urban morphotype: how the city environment shapes great tit morphology at different life stages

Urban Ecosystems - Urbanization is a worldwide phenomenon associated with tremendous modifications of natural habitats. Understanding how city dwelling species are affected by those changes is...     

Where Are the Missing Coauthors? Authorship Practices in Participatory Research

Originally marginal, participatory research has become an increasingly important methodology in the social, biophysical, and interdisciplinary sciences. The overall increase in publications based on participatory research has raised questions about crediting the contributions of nonacademic collaborators. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, we analyzed trends and patterns in authorship and acknowledgment practices in a sample of 262 journal articles reporting on participatory research on rural livelihoods published from 1975 to 2013. Six percent of the researchers recognized the intellectual contributions of their nonacademic collaborators with coauthorship and 51 percent with acknowledgment. Through interviews with lead authors of coauthored articles, we analyzed factors that shaped whether authorship was shared with nonacademic collaborators. Despite facing numerous barriers, researchers were motivated to coauthor in order to recognize intellectual contributions, practice research ethics, and work toward epistemic decolonization. We argue that coauthorship can be an important component of epistemic justice in participatory research and encourage participatory researchers to discuss authorship with their nonacademic collaborators as a routine component of engaged scholarship. We also note that nonacademics’ contributions to scientific knowledge need to be taken into account in understandings of the practice of science.