Pro-environmental analysis of farmers'concerns and behaviors towards soil conservation in central district of Sari County,Iran

This study aimed to pro-environmentally analyze farmers'concerns and behaviors towards soil conservation.This research was a descriptive,causal,and correlational and conducted through a survey technique.The study population consisted of all farmers at the central district of Sari county,Iran(N=9621).Based on the Cochran's formula,120 farmers were selected using stratified random sampling.The instrument employed in this study was a questionnaire with its validity being confirmed by a number of academic experts and agriculture specialists and its reliability being proved using Cronbach's alpha coefficients in a pilot study(outside the scope of the current study).(0.66≤α≤0.90).The results of the analysis regarding the effects of independent variables on the variables"soil conservation behavior"and"soil conservation concern"indicated that,among the variables affecting these two variables,the variable"attitude towards soil conservation"was the most powerful predictor of"soil conservation concerns"and the variable"social pressures on soil conservation"predicted farmers'"soil conservation behaviors"better.Furthermore,the independent variables used in this research could predict 42% of the variance in terms of soil conservation concern and 21% of the variance in terms of soil conservation behavior.These findings can be practical and appropriate for executive officials since,instead of making efforts to direct change the behavior,they can first focus on conceptual changes and persuasive changes like changing attitudes towards soil conservation.

Using the movement patterns of reintroduced animals to improve reintroduction success

Despite their importance to conservation, reintroductions are still a risky endeavor and tend to fail, highlighting the need for more efficient post-release monitoring techniques. Reintroduced animals are released into unfamiliar novel environ ments and must explore their surroundings to gain knowledge in order to survive. According to theory, knowledge gain should be followed by subsequent changes to the animal＇s movement behavior, making movement behavior an excellent indicator of reintroduction progress. We aim to conceptually describe a logical process that will enable the inclusion of behavior （in particular, movement behavior） in management decision-making post-reintroductions, and to do so, we provide four basic components that a manager should look for in the behaviors of released animals. The suggested components are release-site fidelity, recurring locations, proximity to other individuals, and individual variation in movement behavior. These components are by no means the only possible ones available to a manager, but they provide an efficient tool to understanding animals＇ decision-making based on ecological theory; namely, the exploration-exploitation trade-off that released animals go through, and which underlies their behavior. We demonstrate our conceptual approach using data from two ungulate species reintroduced in Israel： the Persian fallow deer Dama mesopotamica and the Arabian oryx Oryx leucoryx [Current Zoology 60 （4）： 515-526, 2014] .

Assessing the dynamics of chromophoric dissolved organic matter(CDOM) in the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea in autumn by EEMs-PARAFAC

In this study we have successfully characterized the fluorescent components of chromophoric dissolved organic matter(CDOM) in the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea in autumn using excitation-emission matrix fluorescence spectroscopy(EEMs) combined with parallel factor analysis(PARAFAC).PARAFAC aids the characterization of fluorescence CDOM by decomposing the fluorescence matrices into individual components.Four humic-like components(C1,C2,C3,and C4),one marine biological production component(C6),and two protein-like components(C5 and C7) were identified by PARAFAC.We researched the distributional patterns of fluorescence intensity,regression analyses between salinity,chlorophyll a concentration and fluorescence intensities of individual fluorophore,and regression analysis between salinity and fluorescence intensities percent of individual fluorophore.The results revealed that C2 and C4 showed conservative mixing behavior,while C1 and C3 possessed conservative mixing behavior in high salinity region and additional behavior in low and middle salinity region,which were considered to be derived from riverine and degradation of organic matter from resuspended and/or sinking particles and show non-conservative mixing behavior.In addition to riverine sources,the tryptophan-like C5 may receive widespread addition(likely from photo-degradation or biodegradation),while the most likely sources for the one marine humic-like C6 and tyrosine-like C7 were biological activity and microbial processing of plankton-derived CDOM,which were suggested to be of autochthonous origin and biologically labile.The application of EEM-PARAFAC modeling presents a unique opportunity to observe compositional changes,different mixing behavior and temporal variability in CDOM in the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea.