A landmark environmental law looks ahead.

In late December 1973, the United States enacted what some would come to call "the pitbull of environmental laws." In the 50 years since, the formidable regulatory teeth of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) have been credited with considerable successes, obliging agencies to draw upon the best available science to protect species and habitats. Yet human pressures continue to push the planet toward extinctions on a massive scale. With that prospect looming, and with scientific understanding ever changing, Science invited experts to discuss how the ESA has evolved and what its future might hold. -Brad Wible.

A review of the coracoclavicular joint: Description, etiology, and clinical significance.

The coracoclavicular joint (CCJ) is a synovial joint that forms between the conoid tubercle of the clavicle and the coracoid process of the scapula in approximately 2.5% of the population. The number of bilateral to unilateral cases is almost equal. The number of right-sided and left-sided cases is also almost equal. It is found in both males and females but most often in male adults. Very few cases have been identified in juveniles. Found in populations all over the world, the highest frequencies of CCJ are in Asia. The etiology is unknown but it is most likely caused by metaplastic change of the trapezoid and surrounding tissue due to compression and friction of the coracoacromial ligament between the clavicle and coracoid process. Typically asymptomatic, but if so, the most common complaint is anterior should pain exacerbated by extreme abduction. Successful treatment includes steroid injection and surgical excision.

Dasymetric population mapping based on US census data and 30-m gridded estimates of impervious surface.

Assessment of socio-environmental problems and the search for solutions often require intersecting geospatial data on environmental factors and human population densities. In the United States, Census data is the most common source for information on population. However, timely acquisition of such data at sufficient spatial resolution can be problematic, especially in cases where the analysis area spans urban-rural gradients. With this data release, we provide a 30-m resolution population estimate for the contiguous United States. The workflow dasymetrically distributes Census block level population estimates across all non-transportation impervious surfaces within each Census block. The methodology is updatable using the most recent Census data and remote sensing-based observations of impervious surface area. The dataset, known as the U.G.L.I (updatable gridded lightweight impervious) population dataset, compares favorably against other population data sources, and provides a useful balance between resolution and complexity.

Improving inferences about private land conservation by accounting for incomplete reporting.

Private lands provide key habitat for imperiled species and are core components of function protectected area networks; yet, their incorporation into national and regional conservation planning has been challenging. Identifying locations where private landowners are likely to participate in conservation initiatives can help avoid conflict and clarify trade-offs between ecological benefits and sociopolitical costs. Empirical, spatially explicit assessment of the factors associated with conservation on private land is an emerging tool for identifying future conservation opportunities. However, most data on private land conservation are voluntarily reported and incomplete, which complicates these assessments. We used a novel application of occupancy models to analyze the occurrence of conservation easements on private land. We compared multiple formulations of occupancy models with a logistic regression model to predict the locations of conservation easements based on a spatially explicit social-ecological systems framework. We combined a simulation experiment with a case study of easement data in Idaho and Montana (United States) to illustrate the utility of the occupancy framework for modeling conservation on private land. Occupancy models that explicitly accounted for variation in reporting produced estimates of predictors that were substantially less biased than estimates produced by logistic regression under all simulated conditions. Occupancy models produced estimates for the 6 predictors we evaluated in our case study that were larger in magnitude, but less certain than those produced by logistic regression. These results suggest that occupancy models result in qualitatively different inferences regarding the effects of predictors on conservation easement occurrence than logistic regression and highlight the importance of integrating variable and incomplete reporting of participation in empirical analysis of conservation initiatives. Failure to do so can lead to emphasizing the wrong social, institutional, and environmental factors that enable conservation and underestimating conservation opportunities in landscapes where social norms or institutional constraints inhibit reporting.

La incorporación de las tierras privadas a la planeación de la conservación regional y nacional ha sido un reto a pesar de su importancia como hábitat para especies en peligro y como componentes nucleares de las redes funcionales de áreas protegidas. La identificación de las localidades en donde sea probable que los propietarios privados participen en las iniciativas de conservación puede ayudar a evitar conflictos costosos y a aclarar las compensaciones entre los beneficios ecológicos y los costos sociopolíticos. La evaluación empírica y espacialmente explícita de los factores asociados con la conservación en tierras privadas es una herramienta emergente usada para la identificación de oportunidades de conservación en el futuro. Sin embargo, la mayoría de los datos sobre la conservación en tierras privadas es reportada voluntariamente y está incompleta, lo cual complica realizar estas evaluaciones. Usamos una aplicación novedosa de los modelos de ocupación para analizar la presencia de la mitigación por conservación en tierras privadas. Comparamos diferentes formulaciones de los modelos de ocupación con un modelo de regresión logística para predecir las localidades de la mitigación por conservación con base en un marco de trabajo de un sistema socioecológico espacialmente explícito. Combinamos un experimento de simulación con un estudio de caso sobre datos de mitigación en Idaho y Montana (Estados Unidos) para ilustrar la utilidad del marco de trabajo de ocupación para el modelado de la conservación en tierras privadas. Los modelos de ocupación que consideraron explícitamente la variación en los reportes produjeron estimados de los predictores que estuvieron sustancialmente menos sesgados que los estimados producidos por la regresión logística bajo todas las condiciones simuladas. Los modelos de ocupación produjeron estimaciones para seis predictores que evaluamos en nuestro estudio de caso, los cuales fueron mayores en magnitud pero menos certeros que aquellos producidos por la regresión logística. Estos resultados sugieren que los modelos de ocupación tienen como resultado inferencias cualitativamente diferentes a la regresión logística con respecto a los efectos de los predictores sobre la presencia de mitigación por conservación y resaltan la importancia de la integración de los reportes variables e incompletos sobre la participación dentro del análisis empírico de las iniciativas de conservación. Si se falla en lo anterior se puede terminar enfatizando el factor social, institucional y ambiental equivocado que permite la conservación, además de subestimar las oportunidades de conservación en paisajes en donde las normas sociales o las restricciones institucionales inhiben el reporte de datos.

Ecological and sociopolitical assessment of congressional and presidential designation of federal protected areas.

Protected areas are one of the most effective means by which biodiversity is conserved, but are often criticized for either neglecting the importance of local communities or sacrificing conservation objectives for political expedience. In the United States, federal protected areas can be designated via a democratic legislation process or via executive action, which allows for comparison of the ecological and sociopolitical context of these top-down and bottom-up processes. We compared protected areas resulting from congressional designation vs. presidential designation with respect to their ecological context (using measures of biodiversity and climate refugial potential) and sociopolitical context (using measures of local support for conservation and reliance on natural resource-based industries). We found minimal differences between these designation modes for both ecological and sociopolitical variables. These results suggest that presidentially designated protected areas tend to be no more burdensome to local communities and no less valuable for ecological conservation than more widely accepted federal protected areas such as national parks, and they provide new evidence to inform the current debate over national monuments.

Assessing agreement among alternative climate change projections to inform conservation recommendations in the contiguous United States.

Addressing uncertainties in climate vulnerability remains a challenge for conservation planning. We evaluate how confidence in conservation recommendations may change with agreement among alternative climate projections and metrics of climate exposure. We assessed agreement among three multivariate estimates of climate exposure (forward velocity, backward velocity, and climate dissimilarity) using 18 alternative climate projections for the contiguous United States. For each metric, we classified maps into quartiles for each alternative climate projections, and calculated the frequency of quartiles assigned for each gridded location (high quartile frequency = more agreement among climate projections). We evaluated recommendations using a recent climate adaptation heuristic framework that recommends emphasizing various conservation strategies to land based on current conservation value and expected climate exposure. We found that areas where conservation strategies would be confidently assigned based on high agreement among climate projections varied substantially across regions. In general, there was more agreement in forward and backward velocity estimates among alternative projections than agreement in estimates of local dissimilarity. Consensus of climate predictions resulted in the same conservation recommendation assignments in a few areas, but patterns varied by climate exposure metric. This work demonstrates an approach for explicitly evaluating alternative predictions in geographic patterns of climate change.

Assessment of the Conservation Measures Partnership's effort to improve conservation outcomes through adaptive management.

Conservation practice has demonstrated an increasing desire for accountability of actions, particularly with respect to effectiveness, efficiency, and impact to clearly identified objectives. This has been accompanied by increased attention to achieving adaptive management. In 2002, practitioners representing several prominent conservation nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) launched a community of practice called the Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP). The partnership CMP has worked to establish standards of conservation practice to improve accountability of conservation actions through adaptive management. The focal organizing framework for CMP has been the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation (OS). We evaluated, through an online survey and personal interviews, the first decade of CMP and the OS. The CMP has garnered a positive reputation among agencies, NGOs, and funders and has succeeded in developing a large user base of the OS. However, CMP has not fully achieved its goal of making the OS standard operating procedure for the largest NGOs (e.g., The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund), despite it being widely used within these organizations. This lack of institutionalization is attributable to multiple causes, including an increase in the number of partially overlapping decision-support frameworks and challenges achieving full-cycle adaptive management. Users strongly believed the OS fosters better conservation practice and highly valued the OS for improving their practice. A primary objective of the OS is to assist practitioners to achieve full-cycle adaptive management to better integrate learning into improving the effectiveness and efficiency of actions. However, most practitioners had not yet achieved cycle completion for their projects. To improve the effectiveness of CMP, OS, and conservation practice in general, we recommend collaborative efforts among the proponents of multiple decision-support frameworks to foster strong institutional adoption of a common set of adaptive-management standards for conservation accountability.

Combining active restoration and targeted grazing to establish native plants and reduce fuel loads in invaded ecosystems.

Many drylands have been converted from perennial-dominated ecosystems to invaded, annual-dominated, fire-prone systems. Innovative approaches are needed to disrupt fire-invasion feedbacks. Targeted grazing can reduce invasive plant abundance and associated flammable fuels, and fuelbreaks can limit fire spread. Restored strips of native plants (native greenstrips) can function as fuelbreaks while also providing forage and habitat benefits. However, methods for establishing native greenstrips in invaded drylands are poorly developed. Moreover, if fuels reduction and greenstrip establishment are to proceed simultaneously, it is critical to understand how targeted grazing interacts with plant establishment. We determined how targeted grazing treatments interacted with seed rate, spatial planting arrangement (mixtures vs. monoculture strips), seed coating technology, and species identity (five native grasses) to affect standing biomass and seeded plant density in experimental greenstrips. We monitored for two growing seasons to document effects during the seedling establishment phase. Across planting treatments, ungrazed paddocks had the highest second-year seeded plant densities and the highest standing biomass. Paddocks grazed in fall of the second growing season had fewer seedlings than paddocks grazed in spring, five months later. High seed rates minimized negative effects of grazing on plant establishment. Among seeded species, Elymus trachycaulus and Poa secunda had the highest second-year densities, but achieved this via different pathways. Elymus trachycaulus produced the most first-year seedlings, but declined in response to grazing, whereas P. secunda had moderate first-year establishment but high survival across grazing treatments. We identified clear tradeoffs between reducing fuel loads and establishing native plants in invaded sagebrush steppe; similar tradeoffs may exist in other invaded drylands. In our system, tradeoffs were minimized by boosting seed rates, using grazing-tolerant species, and delaying grazing. In invaded ecosystems, combining targeted grazing with high-input restoration may create opportunities to limit wildfire risk while also shifting vegetation toward more desirable species.

Climatic change controls productivity variation in global grasslands.

Detection and identification of the impacts of climate change on ecosystems have been core issues in climate change research in recent years. In this study, we compared average annual values of the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) with theoretical net primary productivity (NPP) values based on temperature and precipitation to determine the effect of historic climate change on global grassland productivity from 1982 to 2011. Comparison of trends in actual productivity (NDVI) with climate-induced potential productivity showed that the trends in average productivity in nearly 40% of global grassland areas have been significantly affected by climate change. The contribution of climate change to variability in grassland productivity was 15.2-71.2% during 1982-2011. Climate change contributed significantly to long-term trends in grassland productivity mainly in North America, central Eurasia, central Africa, and Oceania; these regions will be more sensitive to future climate change impacts. The impacts of climate change on variability in grassland productivity were greater in the Western Hemisphere than the Eastern Hemisphere. Confirmation of the observed trends requires long-term controlled experiments and multi-model ensembles to reduce uncertainties and explain mechanisms.

Complex responses of spring vegetation growth to climate in a moisture-limited alpine meadow.

Since 2000, the phenology has advanced in some years and at some locations on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, whereas it has been delayed in others. To understand the variations in spring vegetation growth in response to climate, we conducted both regional and experimental studies on the central Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. We used the normalized difference vegetation index to identify correlations between climate and phenological greening, and found that greening correlated negatively with winter-spring time precipitation, but not with temperature. We used open top chambers to induce warming in an alpine meadow ecosystem from 2012 to 2014. Our results showed that in the early growing season, plant growth (represented by the net ecosystem CO2 exchange, NEE) was lower in the warmed plots than in the control plots. Late-season plant growth increased with warming relative to that under control conditions. These data suggest that the response of plant growth to warming is complex and non-intuitive in this system. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that moisture limitation increases in early spring as temperature increases. The effects of moisture limitation on plant growth with increasing temperatures will have important ramifications for grazers in this system.

Interpersonal violence between 18th century Native Americans and Europeans in Ohio.

During the winter of 1778-1779, a garrison of 176 individuals lived within the walls of a Revolutionary era stronghold named Ft. Laurens on the banks of the Tuscarawas River, near the present-day town of Bolivar, Ohio. At least 21 individuals were buried in the fort's cemetery during its occupation, 13 of whom were supposedly killed and scalped by Native Americans while gathering firewood and foraging horses. The purpose of this study is to build on previous work by Sciulli and Gramly ([1989] Am J. Phys. Anthropol. 80:11-24) by adding a more detailed analysis of the traumatic lesions, in order to better understand what happened to the victims. Lesions were analyzed based on type, location, and dimensions, as well as their overall pattern on the skeleton. Results indicate that multiple blows to the cranium were common. Out of 12 observable crania, the order of blows could be determined in only one case. Eleven of 12 of the observable crania from ambush victims and four of the seven nonambush victims exhibited lesions consistent with scalping. Evidence of postcranial trauma was noted on four individuals: one was an ambush victim, and the other three were killed at other times. No evidence of gunshot wounds was found.

A fractal analysis of human cranial sutures.

OBJECTIVES: Many biological structures are products of repeated iteration functions. As such, they demonstrate characteristic, scale-invariant features. Fractal analysis of these features elucidates the mechanism of their formation. The objectives of this project were to determine whether human cranial sutures demonstrate self-similarity and measure their exponents of similarity (fractal dimensions). DESIGN: One hundred three documented human skulls from the Terry Collection of the Smithsonian Institution were used. Their sagittal sutures were digitized and the data converted to bitmap images for analysis using box-counting method of fractal software. RESULTS: The log-log plots of the number of boxes containing the sutural pattern, N(r), and the size of the boxes, r, were all linear, indicating that human sagittal sutures possess scale-invariant features and thus are fractals. The linear portion of these log-log plots has limits because of the finite resolution used for data acquisition. The mean box dimension, D(b), was 1.29289 +/- 0.078457 with a 95% confidence interval of 1.27634 to 1.30944. CONCLUSIONS: Human sagittal sutures are self-similar and have a fractal dimension of 1.29 by the box-counting method. The significance of these findings includes: sutural morphogenesis can be described as a repeated iteration function, and mathematical models can be constructed to produce self-similar curves with such D(b). This elucidates the mechanism of actual pattern formation. Whatever the mechanisms at the cellular and molecular levels, human sagittal suture follows the equation log N(r) = 1.29 log 1/r, where N(r) is the number of square boxes with sides r that are needed to contain the sutural pattern and r equals the length of the sides of the boxes.

Variation in midfacial tissue thickness of African-American children.

Forensic anthropologists use facial reconstruction to develop a likeness of an unknown individual in order to generate public interest that may lead to a positive identification. Tissue thicknesses of the face from living persons or cadavers are an essential part of the reconstruction method. The purpose of this study is to add to the growing database of tissue thicknesses along the facial midline of African-American children and to begin to examine the possibility of geographic differences between children of the same ancestral group. Results indicate that significant differences do not exist between males and females or between African-American females from the Midwest and Southeast U.S. Only age was determined to have a significant effect on mean tissue thickness variation, in our sample, with the majority of change occurring in the facial region.