Search for: All records

IntroductionHuman-wildlife coexistence in cities depends on how residents perceive and interact with wildlife in their neighborhoods. An individual’s attitudes toward and responses to wildlife are primarily shaped by their subjective cognitive judgments, including multi-faceted environmental values and perceptions of risks or safety. However, experiences with wildlife could also positively or negatively affect an individual’s environmental attitudes, including their comfort living near wildlife. Previous work on human-wildlife coexistence has commonly focused on rural environments and on conflicts with individual problem species, while positive interactions with diverse wildlife communities have been understudied. MethodsGiven this research gap, we surveyed wildlife attitudes of residents across twelve neighborhoods in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area, AZ to ask: how do the environments in which residents live, as well as their values, identities, and personal characteristics, explain the degree to which they are comfortable living near different wildlife groups (coyotes, foxes, and rabbits)? ResultsWe found that residents who were more comfortable living near wildlife commonly held pro-wildlife value orientations, reflecting the expectation that attitudes toward wildlife are primarily driven be an individual’s value-based judgements. However, attitudes were further influenced by sociodemographic factors (e.g., pet ownership, gender identity), as well as environmental factors that influence the presence of and familiarity with wildlife. Specifically, residents living closer to desert parks and preserves were more likely to have positive attitudes toward both coyotes and foxes, species generally regarded by residents as riskier to humans and domestic animals. DiscussionBy improving understanding of people’s attitudes toward urban wildlife, these results can help managers effectively evaluate the potential for human-wildlife coexistence through strategies to mitigate risk and facilitate stewardship. 

Abstract Understanding the chemical composition of our planet's crust was one of the biggest questions of the 20th century. More than 100 years later, we are still far from understanding the global patterns in the bioavailability and spatial coupling of elements in topsoils worldwide, despite their importance for the productivity and functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. Here, we measured the bioavailability and coupling of thirteen macro‐ and micronutrients and phytotoxic elements in topsoils (3–8 cm) from a range of terrestrial ecosystems across all continents (∼10,000 observations) and in response to global change manipulations (∼5,000 observations). For this, we incubated between 1 and 4 pairs of anionic and cationic exchange membranes per site for a mean period of 53 days. The most bioavailable elements (Ca, Mg, and K) were also amongst the most abundant in the crust. Patterns of bioavailability were biome‐dependent and controlled by soil properties such as pH, organic matter content and texture, plant cover, and climate. However, global change simulations resulted in important alterations in the bioavailability of elements. Elements were highly coupled, and coupling was predictable by the atomic properties of elements, particularly mass, mass to charge ratio, and second ionization energy. Deviations from the predictable coupling‐atomic mass relationship were attributed to global change and agriculture. Our work illustrates the tight links between the bioavailability and coupling of topsoil elements and environmental context, human activities, and atomic properties of elements, thus deeply enhancing our integrated understanding of the biogeochemical connections that underlie the productivity and functioning of terrestrial ecosystems in a changing world. 

Abstract Our urban systems and their underlying sub-systems are designed to deliver only a narrow set of human-centered services, with little or no accounting or understanding of how actions undercut the resilience of social-ecological-technological systems (SETS). Embracing a SETS resilience perspective creates opportunities for novel approaches to adaptation and transformation in complex environments. We: i) frame urban systems through a perspective shift from control to entanglement, ii) position SETS thinking as novel sensemaking to create repertoires of responses commensurate with environmental complexity (i.e., requisite complexity), and iii) describe modes of SETS sensemaking for urban system structures and functions as basic tenets to build requisite complexity. SETS sensemaking is an undertaking to reflexively bring sustained adaptation, anticipatory futures, loose-fit design, and co-governance into organizational decision-making and to help reimagine institutional structures and processes as entangled SETS.