Species prioritization for monitoring and management in regional multiple species conservation plans.

Successful conservation plans are not solely achieved by acquiring optimally designed reserves. Ongoing monitoring and management of the biodiversity in those reserves is an equally important, but often neglected or poorly executed, part of the conservation process. In this paper we address one of the first and most important steps in designing a monitoring program - deciding what to monitor. We present a strategy for prioritizing species for monitoring and management in multispecies conservation plans. We use existing assessments of threatened status, and the degree and spatial and temporal extent of known threats to link the prioritization of species to the overarching goals and objectives of the conservation plan. We consider both broad and localized spatial scales to capture the regional conservation context and the practicalities of local management and monitoring constraints. Spatial scales that are commensurate with available data are selected. We demonstrate the utility of this strategy through application to a set of 85 plants and animals in an established multispecies conservation plan in San Diego County, California, USA. We use the prioritization to identify the most prominent risk factors and the habitats associated with the most threats to species. The protocol highlighted priorities that had not previously been identified and were not necessarily intuitive without systematic application of the criteria; many high-priority species have received no monitoring attention to date, and lower-priority species have. We recommend that in the absence of clear focal species, monitoring threats in highly impacted habitats may be a way to circumvent the need to monitor all the targeted species

How Wide is Wide Enough?: Science, Values, and Law in Riparian Habitat Conservation

Difficult environmental policy issues often elicit fervent declarations to “follow the science.” Such declarations ignore the essential role of values in policy making. The main purpose of this article is to clarify the relationships among science, values, and law in environmental policy. An important policy issue in wildlife conservation, is determining “how much is enough?” That is, what is the smallest amount of habitat or minimum population size that is adequate for the long-term survival of wildlife populations? This paper presents three case studies in which policy makers decided how much was enough for protecting freshwater salmonid habitats. The case studies are the federal Northwest Forest Plan, the Habitat Conservation Plan (HCP) for Washington’s forested trust lands, and the HCP for Washington’s forest practices rules. Because all three plans were developed for the same habitats and species in the same region over a span of roughly seven years, all drew from the same body of science. Hence, the differences among the conservation plans cannot be attributed to differences in the available science. We explain how differences in habitat conservation were largely due to differences in societal values that were expressed through different legal frameworks. The legal frameworks established unique policy decision spaces for each plan. Strong leadership, vague or ambiguous statutory language, and commitments to adaptive management expanded the decision space for policy makers. Our case studies also show how values affected each plan through negotiations amongst stakeholders and/or leadership by key political figures. By appropriately integrating science and values these conservation plans led to lawful resolutions of a difficult environmental policy issue but in different ways. The lessons learned are highly relevant to other environmental issues

Optimizing heart rate regulation for safe exercise

Safe exercise protocols are critical for effective rehabilitation programs. This paper aims to develop a novel control strategy for an automated treadmill system to reduce the danger of injury during cardiac rehabilitation. We have developed a control-oriented nonparametric Hammerstein model for the control of heart rate during exercises by using support vector regression and correlation analysis. Based on this nonparametric model, a model predictive controller has been built. In order to guarantee the safety of treadmill exercise during rehabilitation, this new automated treadmill system is capable of optimizing system performance over predefined ranges of speed and acceleration. The effectiveness of the proposed approach was demonstrated with six subjects by having their heart rate track successfully a predetermined heart rate. © 2009 Biomedical Engineering Society

Willamette Valley-PugetTrough-Georgia Basin ecoregional assessment

This assessment is intended to help conservation agencies, planners and organizations direct their resources to the most important places for supporting the ecoregion's biodiversity.Keywords: Puget Trough ecoregion, Georgia Basin ecoregion, Willamette Valley ecoregio