A conservation planning protocol based on components from successful conservation projects in Mexico and other countries was developed to evaluate conservation planning practices and to serve as a template to guide future conservation planning efforts in Mexico. My research specifically explored stakeholder analysis and performance measurement as currently applied to conservation planning. Twenty-seven natural protected area (NPA) management plans and 6 plans from modified rural landscape projects (MDRL), all within Mexico, were evaluated. Additionally, 38 planning team members from 8 selected case studies were interviewed. I used the Laguna de Babicora Watershed planning process and management plan as the focus of my examination of stakeholder analysis. Seventy-four individuals who represented 5 major stakeholder categories were identified and interviewed. Examples of process-, outcome-, output-, and input-related performance measures (PMs) were developed for the Babicora project using information collected from my interviews, the existing management plan, and my conservation planning protocol. The approaches used and products generated from NPA and MDRL plans differed substantially. NPA plans often used pre-established planning guidelines dictated by the overseeing or authorizing agency. Institutional rigidity was a limiting factor to development of NPA management plans. NPA plan content suggested that planners focused more attention on inventory and strategic planning than on other planning components, yet recommended operational strategies in NPA management plans still were comprehensive. MDRL planning processes were more sensitive to local conditions, but less comprehensive than NPA plans. With MDRL plans, on-the-ground pilot projects often were initiated concurrent with inventory and strategic planning efforts. As a result, MDRL planning teams often did not complete management plans due to demands imposed by these concurrent projects. Performance measurement systems for both plan implementation and monitoring of planning processes largely were absent in all NPA and most MDRL projects. Only one MDRL case study addressed process-related performance measures. NPA and MDRL plans both suffered from poor issue identification and problem definition, offering only generic strategic statements that lacked indicators of spatial scale, geographic location, and causative agents. Management plans overall, but NPA in particular, also lacked clear links among identified problems, other key stages of the planning process, and desired or stated outcomes. Unfamiliarity with or failure to use effective diagnostic tools, coupled with a need to comply with existing planning protocols, produced management recommendations that frequently were not justified or related to identified management problems, particularly among NPA plans. MDRL case studies, which typically targeted smaller geographic areas, were not as comprehensive as NPA plans. However, MDRL case studies more often incorporated stronger participatory components. Demands from participatory processes often delayed final development of MDRL management plans. Although NPAs and MDRLs currently follow different planning processes, ultimate success in conservation management may best be served by blending complementary components from each approach. Stakeholders who participate in conservation planning fundamentally are issue specific. Current environmental literature on stakeholder methodologies endorses use of general categories. Although cross-category stakeholder analysis is useful during inventory and strategic planning, within-stakeholder analysis is necessary for successful plan implementation. My findings suggest that within-stakeholder analysis helps (1) identify problems or needs important to particular stakeholders, (2) identify stakeholders with contrasting behavior within categories, and (3) establish areas for potential collaboration. Stakeholder involvement, tailored to local conditions, should occur in all planning stages. Successful conservation planning in Mexico currently should be addressed more as a question of human organization. Suggested performance measures to help monitor and evaluate both the planning process and plan implementation were developed. Process-related PMs focused on the 4 major planning stages. Process-related PMs allow planners to analyze and reassess the direction of the planning process; they are not prescriptive, rather statements that recognize planning as a social exercise likely to face areas where trade-offs are likely to occur (e.g., problem identification, sharing decision-making, public involvement). Performance measures for plan implementation should be hierarchical, nested, and include input-, output-, and outcome-related assessment attributes. / Ph. D.

No description available.

For several centuries following their introduction into the British Isles by the Normans, rabbits were farmed on man-made warrens. The right to hunt rabbits during the medieval period was restricted to the highest strata of society and warrens, and rabbit products, carried connotations of wealth and exclusivity. During the post-medieval period, as rabbits became less expensive, their exclusivity declined and access to the species increased across a wider spread of the population. Consequently, later warrens tended to be purely commercial ventures that in places lingered as a form of animal husbandry up until the early twentieth century. Evidence of these warrens is particularly common across England and Wales and typically, although not exclusively, takes the form of pillow mounds, earthworks created to encourage rabbits to burrow. Despite their longevity and high numbers, warrens remain relatively little studied. This thesis investigates surviving warren architecture within south-west England, incorporating archaeological data into a GIS in order to identify the locational, morphological and typological trends of the region’s warrens. It also assesses associations between warrens and other classes of archaeology, notably elite residences and parks, large ecclesiastical institutions and prehistoric earthworks. Doing so allows for a better understanding of warrens’ roles within their immediate environs and of their relationships with other aspects of the human landscape. This study also addresses natural geographical aspects of the landscape in order to determine the principal factors that influenced where warrens were installed. This study investigates documentary reference to warrens as many have not survived within the landscape. Medieval chancery rolls in particular allow for the creation of a national framework of warrening so that the South West can be compared and contrasted to other regions of medieval England. Documentary references, both medieval and post-medieval, to the South West’s warrens allow for the creation of a discrete regional history that defines the context for the establishment of the region’s warren architecture. This study assesses how rabbits were interpreted by medieval society and discusses symbolism, particularly the visual role played by warrens in advertising their owners’ wealth and any possible religious concepts associated with rabbits.

Ph.D. Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2011 / This study analyses the manner in which animals are represented in selected poetry from Malawi, Zimbabwe and South Africa. It discusses the various modes of animal representation the poets draw on, and the ideological influences on their manner of animal representation. It explores the kinds of poetic forms the poets employ in their representation of animals and examines the manner in which ecological or environmental issues are reflected in the poetry. Further, the study determines the extent to which the values expressed in the poems are consistent with, or different from, current ecological orthodoxies and the ways in which the metaphors generated in relation to animals influence the way we treat them. The study shows that in the selected poetry animals occupy a significant position in the poets’ exploration of social, psychological, political, and cultural issues. As symbols in, and subjects of, the poetry animals, in particular, and nature in general, function as tools for the poets’ conceptualisation and construction of a wide range of cultural, political, and philosophical ideas, including among others, issues of justice, identity, compassion, relational selfhood, heritage, and belonging to the cosmos. Hence, the animal figure in the poetry acts as a site for the convergence of a variety of concepts the poets mobilise to grapple with and understand relevant political, social, psychological and ecological ideas. The study advances the argument that studying animal representation in the selected poetry reveals a range of ecological sensibilities, as well as the limits of these, and opens a window through which to view and appreciate the poets’ conception, construction and handling of a variety of significant ideas about human to human relationships and human-animal/nature relationships. Further, the study argues that the poets’ social vision influences their animal representation and that their failures at times to fully see or address the connection between forms of abuse (nature and human) undercuts their liberationist quests in the poetry.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:32:03Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 4456.pdf: 1247547 bytes, checksum: ea5094b8a857fd0fd716f021fd9cf991 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-05-18 / Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos / Riparian ecosystems are being rapidly degraded due to deforestation for conversion of natural areas to agriculture, pasture, and urban development. In rural areas, riparian forest remnants can be very important for biodiversity conservation and for the maintenance and improvement of water physical and chemical characteristics as the deforested stream passes through these remnants. Here, we evaluated whether distance from the forest edge and forest structure influenced stream water physical and chemical characteristics and leaf breakdown rates, a measure of ecosystem function. Sampling was carried out from 150 m outside the remnant until 600 m inside the forest remnant. Water physical and chemical characteristics, leaf breakdown rates and riparian forest structure were evaluated at 50 m intervals until 300 m inside the remnant, and then each 100 m. Forest structure was evaluated by mean diameter at breast height, total basal area, mean canopy height, tree stratification, and tree density per plot; the variables were later reduced to the first two axes of a Principal Components Analysis (PCA), representing two gradients, 1) forest stratification vs. tree size, and 2) tree density vs. basal area. Electric conductivity and ammonium concentrations reduced as the stream passed through the remnant, whereas dissolved oxygen, total phosphorus, total dissolved P, organic P, silicate concentrations, and leaf breakdown rates increased along the remnant, as determined by first-order exponential models. Residual variation of these models was regressed against the first two PCA axes of forest structure. More stratified parts of the forest, with smaller trees, resulted in lower electric conductivity values and concentrations of total nitrogen and nitrite, whereas higher density of trees resulted in lower levels of total and dissolved P, but higher rates of leaf breakdown. This suggests that the distribution of fragments with different qualities of forest, with different structures possibly influences the quality of the water stream on a scale of watersheds. / Ecossistemas ripários vêm sendo rapidamente degradados devido ao desmatamento resultante da conversão de áreas naturais para agropecuária e desenvolvimento urbano. Em áreas rurais, remanescentes de florestas podem ter grande importância para a conservação da biodiversidade e para a manutenção e melhoria das características físicas e químicas da água de córregos que cortam estes remanescentes. Neste estudo avaliamos se a distância a partir da borda da floresta e a estrutura da floresta influenciaram as características físicas e químicas da água do córrego e as taxas de decomposição foliar, uma medida da função do ecossistema. Realizamos a amostragem a partir de 150 m fora do fragmento florestal até 600 m no interior do mesmo. Avaliamos as características físicas e químicas da água, as taxas de decomposição foliar e a estrutura da floresta ripária em intervalos de 50 m até atingir 300 m no interior do fragmento, a partir daí realizamos a avaliação a cada 100 m. Avaliamos a estrutura da floresta através das medidas do diâmetro médio à altura do peito, área basal total, altura média do dossel, estratificação e densidade de árvores por trecho, e as variáveis foram posteriormente reduzidas aos dois primeiros eixos da Análise de Componentes Principais (ACP), representando dois gradientes: 1) estratificação da floresta versus tamanho das árvores, e 2) densidade de árvores versus área basal. A condutividade elétrica e as concentrações de amônio diminuiram à medida que o córrego passou ao longo do fragmento, enquanto as concentrações de oxigênio dissolvido, fósforo total, fosfato total dissolvido, fosfato orgânico e silicato, e as taxas de decomposição foliar aumentaram ao longo do fragmento, conforme determinado pelos modelos exponenciais de primeira ordem. Os resíduos destes modelos foram usados em um modelo de regressão linear com os dois primeiros eixos da ACP da estrutura da vegetação. Os trechos mais estratificados da floresta e com árvores menores, resultaram em menores valores da condutividade elétrica e das concentrações de nitrogênio total e nitrito, enquanto maior densidade de árvores resultaram em baixos níveis de fósforo total e fosfato total dissolvido, mas taxas de decomposição foliar mais elevadas. Isto sugere que a distribuição de fragmentos com qualidades da floresta diferentes, ou seja, com estruturas diferentes possivelmente influencia a qualidade da água do córrego em uma escala de bacias hidrográficas.

This final creative project involved preparation of a cultural landscape report for the properties that were previously known as The Lightcroft Estate. This study has determined the historical significance of The Lightcroft Estate as a designed historic landscape and presents preservation guidelines for future improvement at the site. Historical evidence indicates that the Lightcroft Estate was developed over a period of forty-three years under the direction of Mr. and Mrs. Charles N. Teetor with the services of an architect Charles E. Werking and the possible collaboration of an engineer, John W. Mueller. Existing features in the landscape surrounding the home suggest an extensive landscape that included a Japanese Garden, two fishing lakes, a formal garden with tea house, pergola, fountains and basins, a power house/roller wheel with adjacent water works and water features throughout the landscape. The home and the grounds are found to be significant for its association with the Country Place Era in landscape architecture and the role the Teetor family served in bringing prosperity to their family and community during the industrial revolution and early automotive industry. A cultural landscape report is presented which follows the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties with Guidelines for the Treatment of Cultural Landscapes. Treatment recommendations are presented which focus on the preservation of existing features, reconstruction of the formal garden. / Department of Landscape Architecture