Guy Barnett

Environmental Volunteering: motivations, modes and outcomes

Abstract Volunteers play a key role in natural resource management: their commitment, time and labour constitute a major contribution towards managing environments in Australia and throughout the world. From the point of view of environmental managers, much interest has focused on defining tasks suitable to volunteers. However, we argue that an improved understanding of what motivates volunteers is required to sustain volunteer commitments to environmental management in the long term. This is particularly important given that multiple government programs rely heavily on volunteers in Australia, a phenomenon also noted in the UK, Canada, and the USA. Whilst there is considerable research on volunteering in other sectors (e.g. health), there has been relatively little attention paid to understanding environmental volunteering. Drawing on the literature from other sectors and environmental volunteering where available, we present a set of six broad motivations underpinning environmental volunteers and five different modes through which environmental volunteering is manifested. We developed and refined the sets of motivations and modes through a pilot study involving interviews with volunteers and their coordinators from environmental groups in Sydney and Bass Coast. The pilot study data emphasise the importance of promoting community education as a major focus of environmental volunteer groups and demonstrate concerns over the fine line between supporting and abusing volunteers, given their role in delivering environmental outcomes.

Climate Change and Health in the Urban Environment: Adaptation Opportunities in Australian Cities

Urban populations are growing rapidly throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Cities are vulnerable to the health impacts of climate change because of their concentration of people and infrastructure, the physical (geographical, material, and structural) attributes of the built environment, and the ecological interdependence with the urban ecosystem. Australia is one of the most highly urbanized countries in the region and its already variable climate is set to become hotter and drier with climate change. Climate change in Australia is expected to increase morbidity and mortality from thermal stress, bacterial gastroenteritis, vector-borne disease, air pollution, flooding, and bushfires. The cost and availability of fresh water, food, and energy will also likely be affected. The more vulnerable urban populations, including the elderly, socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, and those with underlying chronic disease, will be most affected. Adaptation strategies need to address this underlying burden of disease and inequity as well as implement broad structural changes to building codes and urban design, and infrastructure capacity. In doing so, cities provide opportunities to realize “co-benefits” for health (eg, from increased levels of physical activity and improved air quality). With evidence that climate change is underway, the need for cities to be a focus in the development of climate adaptation strategies is becoming more urgent.

Indicators for monitoring minesite rehabilitation: trends on waste-rock dumps, northern Australia

Abstract Minesite rehabilitation needs to be monitored with easily measured indicators so that trends can be plotted and assessed over time to address closure criteria. Our aim was to evaluate two traditional vegetation indicators used in woodlands and forests (tree composition and size), and two new landscape surface indicators (integrity of rip-lines and a nutrient cycling index), as well as a new habitat complexity index. We measured these five indicators on rehabilitated waste-rock dumps of differing ages on two mines in northern Australia, and compared these measures to those for nearby natural savannas. Our results confirm that tree composition and size were useful traditional indicators of vegetation development on rehabilitation because trends were towards that expected for nearby savannas. Surface roughness, as indicated by rip-lines, was also a useful indicator of the potential for a landscape to retain resources because these rip-lines persisted until vegetation was well established to assume this role. As this vegetation developed, soil surface condition, as indicated by a nutrient cycling index, also progressed towards values found on nearby natural savannas. A habitat complexity index suggested that older rehabilitation sites were developing the structural features needed by fauna. Although our findings need to be confirmed for other mines and for older sites, they do suggest that these five ecological indicators are useful for monitoring minesite rehabilitation.

NEW TECHNOLOGIES FOR TRANSPORT ROUTE SELECTION

Abstract Planning a new road or railway can be an expensive and time-consuming process. There are numerous environmental issues that need to be addressed, and the problem is exacerbated where the alignment is also influenced by the location of services, existing roads and buildings, and the financial, social and political costs of land resumption. A comprehensive approach to the problem is available through the recent convergence of: geospatial imaging, softcopy photogrammetry, regional significance analysis and alignment optimisation. The first technology is concerned with obtaining low cost data containing far more information than was available in the past. The second two are concerned with extracting from that data, information essential to the planning process. The final technology is about automating the way alignments are generated to produce low cost, high quality routes. The convergence of these enabling technologies can have a major impact on the way that various jobs are performed – or whether they are done at all. Separately, they can have a major influence on a large number of disciplines, but taken in combination they can change the paradigm of alignment planning completely. By taking tasks that were previously difficult, time-consuming and expensive, and making them easy, fast and cheap, they can change completely the way alignments are planned.

A social-ecological perspective on health in urban environments

Human health in our cities is an expression of complex social and environmental interactions not previously faced in our long evolutionary history. In this paper, we present a social-ecological perspective on the complex nature of emerging public health problems in cities and identify some of the research questions emerging from this new view of the city. We argue that an integrative urban science agenda is needed not only to inform urban policy, planning and design, but also to alert people to the consequences of and trade-offs around their choices and behaviours.

Assessment of Urban Heat Island and Mitigation by Urban Green Coverage

Urban heat island (UHI) is a growing threat to human well-being and poses increasing pressure on urban utility infrastructure, especially during summer months. This study examined the UHI in Melbourne using remote sensing imagery from MODIS to derive land surface temperature (LST) for the summer of 2009. Then, the potential of urban green coverage in reducing extreme summer temperatures in Melbourne was investigated using an urban climate model for 2009 and for projected 2050 and 2090 future climates. Modeling results showed that the average summer daily maximum (ASDM) temperature differences between Melbourne CBD, suburbs and rural areas were in the range of 0.5–2.0 °C. It was also found that despite the projected climate warming in 2050 and 2090, the cooling benefit in terms of the reduction in the average summer daily maximum temperature due to various urban forms and vegetation schemes remains similar to that estimated for 2009. Thus, the cooling benefit due to various urban forms and green schemes in future climates can be reasonably projected based on the benefits identified with the present-day climate.

Statistical modeling of a larval mosquito population distribution and abundance in residential Brisbane

Container-inhabiting mosquitoes such as Aedes notoscriptus, Aedes aegypti, and Aedes albopictus are potential vectors of a number of arboviruses of significance to human health and domestic animals. To assess the risk of mosquito-borne viruses, residential properties were surveyed for mosquito larvae within the Brisbane area during 2010–2012. A two-stage modeling approach was used to model both the presence/absence of Ae. notoscriptus larvae and abundance of larvae when present. Results indicate the total number of wet containers found on a property is the main driving factor of both presence/absence and abundance of Ae. notoscriptus larvae. The generalized additive modeling approach used indicates more standard logistic regression and odds ratios may overestimate the importance of common covariates. The two-stage modeling also potentially allows for predictions of Ae. notoscriptus abundance and common risk indices that are not possible using traditional logistic regression. Factors influencing the number of wet containers are explored with a view toward risk mitigation.