Assessing Factors of Environmental Stewardship Success: Organizational Perceptions from the Niagara Region of Ontario, Canada.

Environmental stewardship is increasingly important as human actions threaten the natural world. Now, more than ever, it is necessary to understand what makes stewardship initiatives successful. This study investigates stewardship success in the Niagara Region of Ontario, Canada. Specifically, the research seeks to determine what factors are associated with the success of environmental stewardship initiatives, differences between stewardship organizations (staff-based vs. volunteer-based), and reasons why those factors are important. Ten factors for successful stewardship initiatives were uncovered. Differences between volunteer and staff-based organizations were revealed, especially regarding factors of motivations and capacity. Qualitative analysis provided rich insights into why factors were important for success, with the physical ability to conduct the work and the importance of motivation being highlighted. The findings from the study provide a basis for future research which expands the empirical contexts for understanding stewardship success, broadens the variety of stewardship organizations considered, and incorporates additional measures of success.

Evaluating ecological outcomes from environmental stewardship initiatives: A comparative analysis of approaches.

Understanding the extent to which stewardship initiatives achieve objectives of enhanced ecological outcomes is important for enhancing effectiveness and efficiency of environmental management initiatives. Alternative approaches - community science, stakeholder perceptions, and remote sensing - are emerging in lieu of the conventional approach of collecting field data that present different benefits and drawbacks and to date have not been directly compared. This research compared the use of four approaches to evaluating ecological outcomes of a grassland restoration project on a 2 ha Niagara Parks Commission property in Ontario, Canada. We collected three levels of quantitative data, from general site assessments to species-specific data using standardized questionnaires and multi-spectral imagery from a remotely piloted aircraft system. We found that community scientists and stakeholders provided comparable general site assessments to the field data, but that as the assessments became more detailed, differences emerged. Further, remotely sensed data were assessed and provided a more positive site assessment than any other method. Experiences and knowledge of nature did not influence assessments by community scientists or stakeholders. Our findings show that for overall site assessments, community scientists and stakeholders may be able to provide a reasonably accurate assessment. If monitoring and evaluation needs (either research-based or practical) extend beyond a broad assessment, use of a field expert or multiple methods of data collection may be warranted.

Long-term follow-up of beta cell replacement therapy in 10 HIV-infected patients with renal failure secondary to type 1 diabetes mellitus.

The approach to transplantation in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive patients has been conservative due to fear of exacerbating an immunocompromised condition. As a result, HIV-positive patients with diabetes were initially excluded from beta cell replacement therapy. Early reports of pancreas transplant in patients with HIV described high rates of early graft loss with limited follow-up. We report long-term follow-up of islet or pancreas transplantation in HIV-positive type 1 diabetic patients who received a kidney transplant concurrently or had previously undergone kidney transplantation. Although 4 patients developed polyoma viremia, highly active antiretroviral therapy and adequate infectious prophylaxis were successful in providing protection until CD4+ counts recovered. Coordination with HIV providers is critical to reduce the risk of rejection by minimizing drug-drug interactions. Also, protocols for prophylaxis of opportunistic infections and strategies for monitoring and treating BK viremia are important given the degree of immunosuppression required. This series demonstrates that type 1 diabetic patients with well-controlled HIV and renal failure can be appropriate candidates for beta cell replacement, with a low rate of infectious complications, early graft loss, and rejection, so excellent long-term graft survival is possible. Additionally, patients with HIV and cardiovascular contraindications can undergo islet infusion.

How do biosphere stewards actively shape trajectories of social-ecological change?

The biosphere faces an uncertain future! Embracing change, uncertainty and complexity calls for creative transformative pathways. Biosphere stewardship provides a novel multi actor approach towards sustainability. Despite the critical role of individual environmental stewards, biosphere stewardship emphasizes the importance of collective action, and therefore governance. Biosphere stewardship denotes novel governance configurations with the capacity to effectively approach to sustainability transformation. In this paper we seek to advance understanding of how biosphere stewardship actively shapes trajectories of change to foster social-ecological resilience and human wellbeing. Considering the crucial role of governance and more specifically its two pillars of collaboration and learning, we conduct our study of biosphere stewardship through the lens of adaptive co-management. We first set out a framework for diagnosing and analyzing the process of biosphere stewardship. Secondly, we provide evidenced-based insights from applying the framework in four UNESCO biosphere reserves situated in Canada and Sweden to shed light on how active collective shaping of biosphere stewardship occurs and what it produces. In view of the lack of framework for environmental stewardship, we suggest that the present study makes a considerable contribution by providing an appropriate holistic and systemic framework with operational measures. The study also highlights how the comprehensive and consensual understanding of stewardship is proving to be a means of catalyzing biosphere stewardship by enabling effective crafting of policy design and strategic interventions. Moreover, the application of the framework to four case studies reveals the importance of the governance process attributes (collaboration and learning) in mediating outcomes from biosphere stewardship. Finally, the framework provides the basis to address new stewardship enquiries, which require further research in this field.

The Inner-Workings of Collaboration in Environmental Management and Governance: A Systematic Mapping Review.

Collaboration has taken centre stage in addressing complex environmental issues and yet several voids are evident in our understanding of it. A systematic mapping review was conducted to synthesize knowledge about the inner workings of collaboration (qualities, outcomes, and their relationship(s)) in environmental management and governance scholarship. Eighty-five scholarly works were included in the review and the analysis revealed 27 qualities, 20 outcomes, and 104 relationships. The frequency and magnitude of each were established through multiple rounds of coding, surfacing their relative prominence in the literature. Collaborative qualities with the greatest prominence included trust building, social learning, dialogue, and active involvement; the most prominent outcomes included social learning and social capital. Descriptive analyses illuminated myriad relationships among collaborative qualities to achieve outcomes, and emphasized the role of collaborative qualities of lesser scholarly attention on achieving outcomes. Findings offer insight for individuals engaging in collaboration and for future work aiming to further explore collaboration.

Examining Collaborative Processes for Climate Change Adaptation in New Brunswick, Canada.

Collaboration is a proposed strategy to address super wicked environmental problems, such as climate change. Yet, understanding how it works for climate change adaptation is nascent. This research aims to advance the understanding of this by a cross-case analysis of three cases in New Brunswick, Canada. We sought to illuminate the inner workings of multiparty collaboration in the context of community climate change adaptation; identify important qualities of the process and outcomes from it, and probe their relationships; and, explore how they come about in practice. A questionnaire was sent to individuals involved in cases and key informant interviews were conducted. Results reveal case-specific variations, but more importantly, common qualities and outcomes across the cases. They offer key insight into elements which may be important in collaborative settings. These are informative for influencing the uptake of collaborative strategies in climate change adaptation and offer the opportunity to better understand their functional effectiveness.

Emergence of Collaborative Environmental Governance: What are the Causal Mechanisms?

Conflict in environmental governance is common, and bringing together stakeholders with diverse perspectives in situations of conflict is extremely difficult. However, case studies of how diverse stakeholders form self-organized coalitions under these circumstances exist and provide invaluable opportunities to understand the causal mechanisms that operate in the process. We focus on the case of the Georgian Bay Biosphere Reserve nomination process, which unfolded over several years and moved the region from a series of serious conflicts to one where stakeholders came together to support a Biosphere Reserve nomination. Causal mechanisms identified from the literature and considered most relevant to the case were confirmed in it, using an 'explaining outcomes' process tracing methodology. Perceived severity of the problem, institutional emulation, and institutional entrepreneurship all played an important role in the coalition-building process. The fear of marginalization was identified as a potential causal mechanism that requires further study. The findings here contribute to filling an important gap in the literature related to causal mechanisms for self-organized coalition-building under conflict, and contribute to practice with important considerations when building a coalition for natural resource management and governance.

How Does Socio-institutional Diversity Affect Collaborative Governance of Social-Ecological Systems in Practice?

Social and institutional diversity ("diversity" hereafter) are important dimensions in collaborative environmental governance, but lack empirical assessment. In this paper, we examine three aspects of diversity hypothesized in the literature as being important in collaborative forms of environmental governance-the presence of diverse actors, diverse perspectives, and diverse institutions. The presence of these aspects and formative conjectures were empirically considered using a mixed methods approach in four biosphere reserves in Sweden and Canada. We found that the diversity of actors involved and domains of authority varied among cases, that stakeholder perspectives were highly diverse in all cases, and that institutional variety (in terms of strategies, norms, and rules) was evident in all cases, but differed among them. Empirical support from the cases further affirms that diversity contributes to the ability to engage with a broader set of issues and challenges; diversity contributes to novel approaches to solving problems within the governance group; and diversity contributes to the flexibility of the group involved in governance in terms of addressing challenges. One conjecture, that diversity decreases the efficiency of governance in decision-making and responding to issues, was not supported by the data. However, our analysis indicates that there might be a trade-off between diversity and efficiency. The findings highlight differences in the ways in which diversity is conceptualized in the literature and on the ground, emphasizing the pragmatic advantages of actively seeking diversity in terms of competencies and capacities.

Analysis of Swedish Forest Owners' Information and Knowledge-Sharing Networks for Decision-Making: Insights for Climate Change Communication and Adaptation.

To further the understanding of climate change adaptation processes, more attention needs to be paid to the various contextual factors that shape whether and how climate-related knowledge and information is received and acted upon by actors involved. This study sets out to examine the characteristics of forest owners' in Sweden, the information and knowledge-sharing networks they draw upon for decision-making, and their perceptions of climate risks, their forests' resilience, the need for adaptation, and perceived adaptive capacity. By applying the concept of ego-network analysis, the empirical data was generated by a quantitative survey distributed to 3000 private forest owners' in Sweden in 2014 with a response rate of 31%. The results show that there is a positive correlation, even though it is generally weak, between forest owner climate perceptions and (i) network features, i.e. network size and heterogeneity, and (ii) presence of certain alter groups (i.e. network members or actors). Results indicate that forest owners' social networks currently serve only a minimal function of sharing knowledge of climate change and adaptation. Moreover, considering the fairly infrequent contact between respondents and alter groups, the timing of knowledge sharing is important. In conclusion we suggest those actors that forest owners' most frequently communicate with, especially forestry experts providing advisory services (e.g. forest owner associations, companies, and authorities) have a clear role to communicate both the risks of climate change and opportunities for adaptation. Peers are valuable in connecting information about climate risks and adaptation to the actual forest property.

Social network analysis of multi-level linkages: a Swedish case study on Northern Forest-Based sectors.

Forest use in Northern Sweden is being influenced both by global trends and local situations. This results in interactions between numerous groups that may impact local forest governance. Social network analysis can here provide insight into the total pattern of positive, negative, and cross-level interactions within user group community structure (within and among groups). This study analyses interactions within selected renewable resource sectors in two northern Swedish municipalities, both with regard to whether they are positive, neutral, or negative, as well as with regard to how local actors relate to actors across levels, e.g., with regional, national, and international actors. The study illustrates that many interactions both within and outside a given sector are seen as neutral or positive, and that considerable interaction and impact are defined as national and in some cases even international. It also indicates that the impact of Sweden's only existing Model Forest may to some extent constitute a bridge between different sectors and levels, in comparison with the interactions between sectors in a municipality where such a cooperation mechanism does not exist.

The who, what, and how of virtual participation in environmental research.

As a group of social scientists supporting a large, national, multi-site project dedicated to studying ecosystem services in natural resource production landscapes, we were tasked with co-hosting kick-off workshops at multiple locations. When, due to project design and the Covid-19 pandemic, we were forced to reshape our plans for these workshops and hold them online, we ended up changing our objectives. This redesign resulted in a new focus for our team-on the process of stakeholder and rightsholder engagement in environmental and sustainability research rather than the content of the workshops. Drawing on participant observation, surveys, and our professional experience, this perspective highlights lessons learned about organizing virtual stakeholder workshops to support landscape governance research and practice. We note that procedures followed for initiating stakeholder and rightsholder recruitment and engagement depend on the convenors' goals, although when multiple research teams are involved, the goals need to be negotiated. Further, more important than the robustness of engagement strategies is flexibility, feasibility, managing expectations-and keeping things simple.

Use of crowdsourced images for determining 2D:4D and relationship to pro-environmental variables.

The primary purpose of this study was to examine whether 2D:4D ratios (a putative measure of prenatal androgen exposure) could be determined using participant-submitted hand images. The secondary purpose was to examine whether 2D:4D ratio was associated with pro-environmental behaviors, attitudes, and empathy, given the recent literature linking sex to environmental attitudes and actions. Participants (N = 1065) were asked via an online survey to submit a clear photograph of their right hand, palm side up. Participants also completed a questionnaire to assess (a) demographics, (b) dispositional empathy, and (c) environmental attitudes and behavior. A 2D:4D ratio was calculated for each participant, and the quality of each image was classified as poor, moderate, or good. We then examined the reliability of the 2D:4D image measurements, and the relationship between 2D:4D and our environmental measures. 2D:4D ratios fell somewhat outside of previously reported ranges, but the measurements did show acceptable intra-rater consistency. Although we did not find a sex difference in 2D:4D, we did find a sex by ratio interaction for both empathy and the number of pro-environmental behaviors in which individuals had engaged. Specifically, as 2D:4D ratio increased, males reported lower empathy and less engagement in pro-environmental behaviors, whereas females reported more engagement in pro-environmental behaviors (but no differences in empathy). These findings were contrary to expectations, as we anticipated that greater digit ratios (i.e., feminized) would be associated with greater empathy and pro-environmental behaviors. Overall, the findings of this study present a preliminary examination of the utility of measuring digit ratio with online samples. Furthermore, our results provide information regarding the complex relationship between sex and pro-environmental behaviors. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10211-022-00401-5.

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi colonization and phosphorus nutrition in organic field pea and lentil.

Phosphorus (P) can be low in soil under low input organic management; however, beneficial crop plant associations with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are known to promote crop nutrition and increase phosphorus uptake. Thus, management strategies that promote AMF associations are particularly desirable for low-input cropping systems. The objectives of this study were to determine the impact of seeding rate on AMF colonization and the impact of AMF colonization on P concentration and uptake by organically grown field pea and lentil. Field experiments examined the impact of three seeding rates of field pea and lentil on P uptake and crop yield. Phosphorus accumulation was examined further in a controlled growth chamber experiment, in which field pea was sown at rates corresponding to those used in the field and harvested at 10-day intervals until 50 days after emergence. In the field, the level of AMF colonization of roots remained at 80% for field pea, while colonization of lentil increased with increasing seeding rates from 77% to 88%. The level of AMF colonization of field pea achieved in the growth chamber after 50 days was 80% for the two highest seeding rates and 60% for the low seeding rate. The rate at which AMF colonization occurred did not vary between treatments. Ultimately, AMF colonization level did not affect P accumulation. In contrast to several previous studies, both field and growth chamber experiments revealed that AMF colonization was not reduced at higher seeding rates. These results suggest that organic farmers may increase seeding rates without adversely affecting P nutrition.

Individual differences predict endorsement of water resilience.

In the epoch of the Anthropocene change, complexity, and uncertainty create a demand for new systems of water management and governance. One such management model that is rapidly gaining traction amongst both scholars and practitioners is the concept of water resilience. Although increasing attention has been paid to the overarching theoretical and applied issues surrounding water resilience, few have examined individual attitudes and perceptions towards this concept. In this paper, we examine to what extent individuals endorse - that is, agree with and see the importance of using - social-ecological resilience as a framework for management and governance of water resources. We approach the problem and promise of water governance in this way because individuals' mindsets (and shifts in mindsets) offers one of the most effective leverage points for larger system change. To explore water resilience endorsement, we developed a scale (i.e., a water resilience scale) that was designed to capture individual endorsement of each of the seven principles of social-ecological water resilience. Three additional sets of questionnaires were also used to examine whether individual characteristics (i.e., demographics, psychological factors, and environmental attitudes) predict water resilience endorsement. Overall, there was considerable societal endorsement of water resilience. However, the degree to which individuals endorsed the concept of water resilience differed as a function of demographics, psychological characteristics, and attitudes toward the environment. Future research should examine the nuances of endorsement and consider targeted approaches to influence endorsement levels by using the predictor variables as a basis for engaging and shifting mindsets.

How do environmental governance processes shape evaluation of outcomes by stakeholders? A causal pathways approach.

Multi-stakeholder environmental management and governance processes are essential to realize social and ecological outcomes. Participation, collaboration, and learning are emphasized in these processes; to gain insights into how they influence stakeholders' evaluations of outcomes in relation to management and governance interventions we use a path analysis approach to examine their relationships in individuals in four UNESCO Biosphere Reserves. We confirm a model showing that participation in more activities leads to greater ratings of process, and in turn, better evaluations of outcomes. We show the effects of participation in activities on evaluation of outcomes appear to be driven by learning more than collaboration. Original insights are offered as to how the evaluations of outcomes by stakeholders are shaped by their participation in activities and their experiences in management and governance processes. Understanding stakeholder perceptions about the processes in which they are involved and their evaluation of outcomes is imperative, and influences current and future levels of engagement. As such, the evaluation of outcomes themselves are an important tangible product from initiatives. Our research contributes to a future research agenda aimed at better understanding these pathways and their implications for engagement in stewardship and ultimately social and ecological outcomes, and to developing recommendations for practitioners engaged in environmental management and governance.

Three- and Four-Carbon Elongating Ring Expansion of Cyclic Acetals to Medium-Sized Dioxacycloalkenones. Use of the Intramolecular Formation of Oxonium Ylides.

The Rh(II)-catalyzed reaction of 2-(3'-diazo-2'-oxopropyl)-2-methyldioxolane (1) in the presence of a protic nucleophile (NuH) such as AcOH resulted in effective ring enlargement to give the 8-membered 3-acetoxydioxocanone 4a (41%) and dioxocan-2-en-1-one 3 (46%). Similar treatment of 2-(4'-diazo-3'-oxobutyl)-2-methyldioxolane (9) with AcOH gave 4-acetoxydioxonanone 10 (67%), which was readily hydrolyzed on silica gel to a tautomeric mixture of hydrolysis products 16a and 16b (total yield 46%). In contrast, similar treatment of 2-(5'-diazo-4'-oxopentyl)-2-methyldioxolane (19) gave 2,5-dioxa-1-methyldecalin-7-one (20, 24%), and the yield increased to 61% in the absence of AcOH, by Stevens rearrangement. The reaction of 1,3-dioxane homologues 26 and 31 gave similar results. All of these reactions can be explained in terms of the intermediacy of bicyclooxonium ylides, which undergo either a Stevens rearrangement or, after protonation by a NuH, ring enlargement through release of the strain of the bicyclic ylides. Evidence of the reversible formation of oxonium ylides is also provided.