What\u27s Really Needed to Effectuate Resource Protection in Communities

This article examines the challenges presented by the complexity of environmental laws at the local level, through the use of a case study. It documents the important role that comprehensive planning and local regulations play in protecting the natural resources in our communities. In considering lessons learned, this article also considers what else is needed to continue protecting the environment at the local level. First, there is an overwhelming need for municipalities to develop a regional strategy to protect their natural resources. Second, local laws play an important role in protecting natural resources. While we often think of the state and federal statutes as being the guardians of our waterways and air, more and more local laws are catching what falls through the cracks of the state and federal system. Third, it is very challenging to be an effective local official. The system is complex; the job requires a tremendous amount of time and dedication, awareness and education. It\u27s no wonder that many supervisors and mayors run unopposed or that it is difficult to find volunteers to serve on local boards. Fourth, if we don\u27t focus on supporting the development of local leadership, then all the discussions about local environmental law and smart growth will be for nothing because the ideas will fall on fallow ground. Local officials need training, financial support and enhanced community process, within a regional framework

Irish Perceptions of the Great Depression

This paper traces how the Great Depression was perceived in 1930s Ireland. Perceptions were complicated by internal political developments. Fianna Fáil, upon acceding to power in 1932, rapidly expanded protection and engaged in (near balanced budget) fiscal expansion. Despite the tariff war with Britain triggered by the land annuities dispute, Ireland appears to have weathered the storm better than most other European economies. The contemporary writings of academic economists reflected the influence of Lionel Robbins and the Austrian School, while – to paraphrase Ronan Fanning – the winds of change in Irish economics blew much more vigorously in the corridors of the public service.Great Depression, Ireland, Irish Economic Thought, Irish Economic Policy

Bridging the digital divide: the role of community online access centres in Indigenous Communities

This paper presents data from the 2001 Census of Population and Housing to highlight the low levels of computer and internet usage by Indigenous Australians. This result is not surprising given the well documented connection between education, income, and use of these technologies. In addition to these demand-side factors, access will also be influenced by the availability of services and evidence shows that internet access is not as easy in remote areas as it is in urban centres. One possible way of addressing the digital divide between capital city dwellers and other Australians is through the development of community online access centres. Using evidence from the literature and from fieldwork in New South Wales, the paper considers some factors that are likely to make these centres more successful. These include a strong commitment by the community to the development of a centre and a close integration of the centre with community activities. It is also important that significant funds be budgeted to training for all involved including centre staff and community members

Stochastic Rainfall-runoff Model with Explicit Soil Moisture Dynamics

Stream runoff is perhaps the most poorly represented process in ecohydrological stochastic soil moisture models. Here we present a rainfall-runoff model with a new stochastic description of runoff linked to soil moisture dynamics. We describe the rainfall-runoff system as the joint probability density function (PDF) of rainfall, soil moisture and runoff forced by random, instantaneous jumps of rainfall. We develop a master equation for the soil moisture PDF that accounts explicitly for a general state-dependent rainfall-runoff transformation. This framework is then used to derive the joint rainfall-runoff and soil moisture-runoff PDFs. Runoff is initiated by a soil moisture threshold and a linear progressive partitioning of rainfall based on the soil moisture status. We explore the dependence of the PDFs on the rainfall occurrence PDF (homogeneous or state-dependent Poisson process) and the rainfall magnitude PDF (exponential or mixed-exponential distribution). We calibrate the model to 63 years of rainfall and runoff data from the Upper Little Tennessee watershed (USA) and show how the new model can reproduce the measured runoff PDF

Stochastic modeling of soil salinity

A minimalist stochastic model of primary soil salinity is proposed, in which the rate of soil salinization is determined by the balance between dry and wet salt deposition and the intermittent leaching events caused by rainfall events. The long term probability density functions of salt mass and concentration are found by reducing the coupled soil moisture and salt mass balance equation to a single stochastic differential equation driven by multiplicative Poisson noise. The novel analytical solutions provide insight on the interplay of the main soil, plant and climate parameters responsible for long-term soil salinization. In particular, they show the existence of two distinct regimes, one where the mean salt mass remains nearly constant (or decreases) with increasing rainfall frequency, and another where mean salt content increases markedly with increasing rainfall frequency. As a result, relatively small reductions of rainfall in drier climates may entail dramatic shifts in long-term soil salinization trends, with significant consequences e.g. for climate change impacts on rain-fed agricultur

Water balance complexities in ephemeral catchments with different land uses: Insights from monitoring and distributed hydrologic modeling

Although ephemeral catchments are widespread in arid and semiarid climates, the relationship of their water balance with climate, geology, topography, and land cover is poorly known. Here we use 4 years (2011–2014) of rainfall, streamflow, and groundwater level measurements to estimate the water balance components in two adjacent ephemeral catchments in south-eastern Australia, with one catchment planted with young eucalypts and the other dedicated to grazing pasture. To corroborate the interpretation of the observations, the physically based hydrological model CATHY was calibrated and validated against the data in the two catchments. The estimated water balances showed that despite a significant decline in groundwater level and greater evapotranspiration in the eucalypt catchment (104–119% of rainfall) compared with the pasture catchment (95–104% of rainfall), streamflow consistently accounted for 1–4% of rainfall in both catchments for the entire study period. Streamflow in the two catchments was mostly driven by the rainfall regime, particularly rainfall frequency (i.e., the number of rain days per year), while the downslope orientation of the plantation furrows also promoted runoff. With minimum calibration, the model was able to adequately reproduce the periods of flow in both catchments in all years. Although streamflow and groundwater levels were better reproduced in the pasture than in the plantation, model-computed water balance terms confirmed the estimates from the observations in both catchments. Overall, the interplay of climate, topography, and geology seems to overshadow the effect of land use in the study catchments, indicating that the management of ephemeral catchments remains highly challenging

Direct Determinations of the Redshift Behavior of the Pressure, Energy Density, and Equation of State of the Dark Energy and the Acceleration of the Universe

One of the goals of current cosmological studies is the determination of the expansion and acceleration rates of the universe as functions of redshift, and the determination of the properties of the dark energy that can explain these observations. Here the expansion and acceleration rates are determined directly from the data, without the need for the specification of a theory of gravity, and without adopting an a priori parameterization of the form or redshift evolution of the dark energy. We use the latest set of distances to SN standard candles from Riess et al. (2004), supplemented by data on radio galaxy standard ruler sizes, as described by Daly and Djorgovski (2003, 2004). We find that the universe transitions from acceleration to deceleration at a redshift of about 0.4. The standard "concordance model" provides a reasonably good fit to the dimensionless expansion rate as a function of redshift, though it fits the dimensionless acceleration rate as a function of redshift less well. The expansion and acceleration rates are then combined with a theory of gravity to determine the pressure, energy density, and equation of state of the dark energy as functions of redshift. Adopting General Relativity as the correct theory of gravity, the redshift trends for the pressure, energy density, and equation of state of the dark energy out to redshifts of about one are determined, and are found to be generally consistent with the concordance model.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures. Invited presentation at Coral Gables 200