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Management Projects (management + project)
Selected AbstractsPayments for Ecosystem Services in Nicaragua: Do Market-based Approaches Work?DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 3 2010Gert Van Hecken ABSTRACT The concept of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) is gaining increasing attention among scholars as well as conservation and development practitioners. The premises of this innovative conservation approach are appealing: private land users, usually poorly motivated to protect nature on their land, will do so if they receive payments from environmental service buyers which cover part of the land users' opportunity costs of developing the land. However, this article warns against an over-enthusiastic adoption of a one-sided market-based PES approach. Based on a field study of the Regional Integrated Silvopastoral Approaches to Ecosystem Management Project (RISEMP), one of the main PES pilot projects in Nicaragua, it suggests that a mixture of economic and non-economic factors motivated farmers to adopt the envisaged silvopastoral practices and that the actual role of PES is mistakenly understood as a simple matter of financial incentives. The authors argue that PES approaches should be understood as a part of a broader process of local institutional transformation rather than as a market-based alternative for allegedly ineffective government and/or community governance. [source] Fisheries of two tropical lagoons in Ghana, West AfricaFISHERIES MANAGEMENT & ECOLOGY, Issue 6 2004H. R. Dankwa Abstract, The fisheries of two coastal lagoons, Keta and Songor, were studied as part of Ghana Coastal Wetlands Management Project (GCWMP) aimed at sustainable exploitation of wetland resources. Fish samples were obtained with seine nets and cast net as well as from local fishermen. Water quality parameters (pH, dissolved oxygen, temperature and turbidity) were similar in the two lagoons, except for salinity, which was significantly different (P < 0.001). Despite their close geographical proximity, the two lagoons supported different fish assemblages with the blackchin tilapia, Sarotherodon melanotheron Rüppell, and the redchin tilapia, Tilapia guineensis (Bleeker), being the most important commercial fishes in both lagoons. The number of individuals for each species in Songor Lagoon were far more abundant, with densities several orders of magnitude higher than in Keta Lagoon. However, both species were significantly larger (P < 0.01) in the latter [15,121 and 25,157 mm standard length (SL)] than in the former lagoon (30,102 and 15,95 mm SL) for S. melanotheron and T. guineensis respectively. Over-fishing, use of small-size mesh nets, limited mixing of marine and fresh water were some of the factors limiting fish production in both lagoons. [source] The loneliness of the university museum curatorMUSEUM INTERNATIONAL, Issue 2 2000Jane Weeks Doubly isolated , from their colleagues within the university and from those in the larger museum community , university museum curators are learning to develop new approaches and missions for their institutions. Jane Weeks, a museum consultant specializing in museums in non-museum organizations, describes how this is being done in the United Kingdom. She has considerable experience of university museums, having managed a major Collections Management Project for University College London, and undertaken two regional surveys of university museums and collections in the south-west and the midlands of England, in conjunction with Kate Arnold-Forster. [source] Kaiser Permanente Community Partners Project: Improving Geriatric Care Management PracticesJOURNAL OF AMERICAN GERIATRICS SOCIETY, Issue 5 2003Susan M. Enguidanos MPH This article describes a geriatric care management project that is testing whether geriatric care management plus a brief purchase of service (POS) intervention will lower medical costs, improve satisfaction with care, increase care plan adherence, and improve perceived quality of life. Kaiser Permanente members aged 65 and older who were eligible for geriatric care management and consented to participate in the study were randomized to one of four study groups: information and referral via mail, telephone care management, geriatric care management, or geriatric care management with POS capability. The POS intervention provides up to $2,000 of designated, paid services including in-home supportive services, transportation, respite, or medical equipment within the first 6 months of care management enrollment. Approximately 1,400 senior members were referred to the geriatric care management program, and 451 were randomly assigned to one of the four study groups. Those enrolled in the geriatric care management program were significantly more likely to be ethnic minorities and have lower income than the general Kaiser Permanente senior enrollment. Barriers encountered in implementing the POS intervention included establishing contractual agreements between Kaiser Permanente and private and community agencies, locating adequate and sufficient community agencies to provided needed services, monitoring service contracts, and delaying use of the POS benefit. [source] Paradox of participation: giving or taking part?JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY & APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 3 2004Kerlijn Quaghebeur Abstract In this article we address our experiences with a so-called participatory approach in a Vietnamese-Belgian water management project. This project aimed, in its social science component, at stimulating and studying processes of reflexive social learning and of participation and negotiation on local water management issues and on project activities. In this article we intend to show how specific project-related strategies and attempts towards facilitating participation fail and how other initiatives seem to succeed or at least to elicit valuable processes of negotiation and learning. We start from the commonly held view on participation as committed to reverse or subvert power relations. However, our research experiences indicate that participation is always part of an operation of power, governing people to behave themselves in a particular determined way. From this Foucauldian governmental perspective, we are able to reconsider the success and failure of participatory approaches, not so much in terms of the effectiveness of their application, but rather in terms of the possibility to refuse ,participatory' government. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Knowledge management and decision support for electrical power utilitiesKNOWLEDGE AND PROCESS MANAGEMENT: THE JOURNAL OF CORPORATE TRANSFORMATION, Issue 4 2001G. M. West This paper describes a case study for a knowledge management project carried out in conjunction with two major UK electrical utilities. The focus of the work is on the design of protection schemes for electrical power transmission systems. A brief overview is provided of the traditional protection system design processes implemented within both companies and the associated shortcomings relating to the management of the data, information and knowledge throughout this process. The development of the Design Engineering Knowledge Application System (DEKAS), designed to address the knowledge management issues within both companies, is described, and the perceived benefits this system offers the existing protection design and application process of each company will be discussed. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Scientific workflow management and the Kepler systemCONCURRENCY AND COMPUTATION: PRACTICE & EXPERIENCE, Issue 10 2006Bertram Ludäscher Abstract Many scientific disciplines are now data and information driven, and new scientific knowledge is often gained by scientists putting together data analysis and knowledge discovery ,pipelines'. A related trend is that more and more scientific communities realize the benefits of sharing their data and computational services, and are thus contributing to a distributed data and computational community infrastructure (a.k.a. ,the Grid'). However, this infrastructure is only a means to an end and ideally scientists should not be too concerned with its existence. The goal is for scientists to focus on development and use of what we call scientific workflows. These are networks of analytical steps that may involve, e.g., database access and querying steps, data analysis and mining steps, and many other steps including computationally intensive jobs on high-performance cluster computers. In this paper we describe characteristics of and requirements for scientific workflows as identified in a number of our application projects. We then elaborate on Kepler, a particular scientific workflow system, currently under development across a number of scientific data management projects. We describe some key features of Kepler and its underlying Ptolemy II system, planned extensions, and areas of future research. Kepler is a community-driven, open source project, and we always welcome related projects and new contributors to join. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Examining the role of the forest industry in collaborative ecosystem management: implications for corporate strategyCORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2005Jennifer Dyke Abstract The North American timber industry owns or controls a substantial amount of commercial timberland, and it is within this privately held acreage that major portions of critical natural habitat and areas of biodiversity are found. Because significant ecosystem components and processes lie within the ownership of forestry operations, industry participation in collaborative ecosystem management initiatives is vital to protect the integrity of ecological units at the landscape scale. This article analyzes and identifies the role of industry in ecosystem management projects, industry's willingness to participate in collaborative ecosystem management and the motivations behind company participation. Companies indicated active involvement in collaborative ecosystem management as both project initiators and collaborators. Motivations for participating in collaborative ecosystem management initiatives include the desires to decrease governmental regulations, collect data, develop relationships and improve current practices. Many companies also feel that participation is financially beneficial because it positively impacts corporate public relations. We discuss the implications of these results for developing an effective corporate environmental strategy associated with resource-based industries. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source] Population size, weight distribution and food in a persistent population of the rare medicinal leech, Hirudo medicinalisFRESHWATER BIOLOGY, Issue 8 2008J. M. ELLIOTT Summary 1. It is important for species recovery and conservation management projects to know the minimum viable population size for rare and endangered species, such as the medicinal leech, Hirudo medicinalis. Therefore, using a catch-removal method, this study estimated every two years (1986, 1988, 1990, 1992) the total number of medicinal leeches in a tarn in the English Lake District, and the number of mature adults in the population. 2. Four samples were taken each year in June and July, when water temperatures exceeded 20 °C. Population size was estimated both by maximum likelihood and regression methods. All leeches were weighed alive and size groups were separated by polymodal frequency analysis. A small sample of the blood meal in each leech gut was taken before the leeches were returned to the tarn, and was used to estimate the proportion of mammalian and non-mammalian blood in the meals. 3. Both methods of estimation produced similar values, increasing confidence in the population estimates. Values for the total population in June and July varied among years from 248 to 288, the maximum value being only 16% higher than the minimum. Values for the number of mature leeches varied from 48 to 58 (19,20% of the total population), and this was an estimate of the effective population size. 4. There were four size groups. The largest mature leeches (live weight >5 g) in group IV formed only 1% of the population, and the smallest (0.02,0.5 g) in group I 14,17%. Most leeches were in two overlapping groups of immature (64,67% of population) and mature (18%) leeches with size ranges of 0.4,3.4 g and 2.5,5 g respectively. The percentage of leeches in each size group was very consistent among years. Blood meals were found in 38,44% of the leeches in group I, 45,50% in group II, 70,75% in group III, and 100% in group IV, but mammalian blood was present only in larger mature leeches (>3.5 g). 5. Medicinal leeches were first detected in the tarn in 1980 and are still present in 2007, so the population has persisted for at least 27 years. Compared with minimum viable population sizes for other species, including many endangered species, values for this medicinal leech population are extremely low, but may be typical of some rare freshwater invertebrates in isolated habitats. [source] Intraspecific structure within three caviar-producing sturgeons (Acipenser gueldenstaedtii, A. stellatus, and Huso huso) based on mitochondrial DNA analysisJOURNAL OF APPLIED ICHTHYOLOGY, Issue 6 2005P. Doukakis Summary A survey of three mitochondrial DNA regions (control region, NADH5, cytochrome b) and comprehensive sequencing of the control region (631,646 bps) was conducted to examine whether subspecies and geographic populations within three species of Eurasian sturgeons, Acipenser gueldenstaedtii, A. stellatus, and Huso huso, are genetically distinct. Neither subspecies nor populations exhibited diagnostic distinction or reciprocal monophyly in any gene region examined. For the control region, molecular variance analyses (amova) indicate that most of the variance is because of differences among haplotypes within subspecies (H. huso: 99.6%; A. stellatus: 95.0%; A. gueldenstaedtii: 81.0%) and populations (A. gueldenstaedtii: 76.1%). Significant pairwise F -values were found for all pairwise comparisons except for Sea of Azov and Caspian Sea A. gueldenstaedtii and Caspian Sea and Black Sea A. stellatus and H. huso. Only weak genetic differentiation is apparent between select subspecies and populations, reflective of biogeographic and management history. High genetic diversity within A. gueldenstaedtii suggests the possibility of additional population structure. Future research and management projects should consider these results. [source] Point and areal PMP estimates for durations of two and three days in IndiaMETEOROLOGICAL APPLICATIONS, Issue 1 2000P R Rakhecha The risk of dam failure in India, coupled with better analysis of extreme storm events, has led to the estimation of revised one-day probable maximum precipitation (PMP). For some water conservation projects where the catchment area is very large, there is a need to have estimates of PMP for durations of both two and three days. These are provided in this paper. It was found that the two-day PMP over the Indian region varied from 100 cm over the central peninsula to over 290 cm in eastern India. For a duration of three days the corresponding values are 120 cm and 370 cm. For water management projects which include impounding reservoirs, an estimate has been made of the probable maximum flood (PMF) based on the new PMP estimates. The results of the design flood estimates were compared with existing estimates at the same sites and in most cases were found to be considerably higher. A comparison of the revised estimates of PMF and recorded floods in India shows that the trend of the rates of runoff in relation to catchment area differ by an average of 38% for an area of 1000 km2 and 46% for an area of 10 000 km2. These results show that some dams in India may be unsafe in the event of the probable maximum flood. Copyright © 2000 Royal Meteorological Society [source] From Global Knowledge Management to Internal Electronic Fences: Contradictory Outcomes of Intranet DevelopmentBRITISH JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT, Issue 2 2001Sue Newell This paper considers the adoption of intranet technology as a vehicle for encouraging organization-wide knowledge sharing within a large, global bank. Ironically, the outcome of intranet adoption was that, rather than integrate individuals across this particular organization, the intranet actually helped to reinforce the existing functional and national boundaries with ,electronic fences'. This could be partly explained by the historical emphasis on decentralization within the bank, which shaped and limited the use of the intranet as a centralizing, organization-wide tool. This is possible because the intranet can be described as an interactive and decentred technology, which therefore has the potential for multiple interpretations and effects. Thus, while the intranet is often promoted as a technology that enables processes of communication, collaboration and social coordination it also has the potential to disable such processes. Moreover, it is argued that to develop an intranet for knowledge-sharing requires a focus on three distinctive facets of development. These different facets may require very different, sometimes contradictory, sets of strategies for blending the technology and the organization, thus making it extremely difficult for a project team to work effectively on all three facets simultaneously. This was evidenced by the fact that none of the independent intranet-implementation projects considered actually managed to encourage knowledge-sharing as intended, even within the relatively homogeneous group for which it was designed. Broader knowledge-sharing across the wider organizational context simply did not occur even among those who were working on what were defined as ,knowledge management' projects. A paradox is that knowledge-sharing via intranet technologies may be most difficult to achieve in contexts where knowledge management is the key objective. [source] | ||||||||||||||||