A holistic perspective on changing rainfall-driven flood risk is provided for the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Economic losses from floods have greatly increased, principally driven by the expanding exposure of assets at risk. It has not been possible to attribute rain-generated peak streamflow trends to anthropogenic climate change over the past several decades. Projected increases in the frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall, based on climate models, should contribute to increases in precipitation-generated local flooding (e.g. flash flooding and urban flooding). This article assesses the literature included in the IPCC SREX report and new literature published since, and includes an assessment of changes in flood risk in seven of the regions considered in the recent IPCC SREX report—Africa, Asia, Central and South America, Europe, North America, Oceania and Polar regions. Also considering newer publications, this article is consistent with the recent IPCC SREX assessment finding that ...

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Flood risk and climate change: global and regional perspectives

The use of captive breeding in species recovery has grown enormously in recent years, but without a concurrent growth in appreciation of its limitations. Problems with (1) establishing self-sufficient captive populations, (2) poor success in reintroductions, (3) high costs, (4) domestication, (5) preemption of other re- covery techniques, (6) disease outbreaks, and (7) maintaining administrative continuity have all been signif- icant. The technique has often been invoked prematurely and should not normally be employed before a care- ful field evaluation of costs and benefits of all conservation alternatives has been accomplished and a determination made that captive breeding is essential for species survival. Merely demonstrating that a spe- cies" population is declining or has fallen below what may be a minimum viable size does not constitute enough analysis to justify captive breeding as a recovery measure. Captive breeding should be viewed as a last resort in species recovery and not a prophylactic or long-term solution because of the inexorable genetic and phenotypic changes that occur in captive environments. Captive breeding can play a crucial role in re- covery of some species for which effective alternatives are unavailable in the short term. However, it should not displace habitat and ecosystem protection nor should it be invoked in the absence of comprehensive ef- forts to maintain or restore populations in wild habitats. Zoological institutions with captive breeding pro- grams should operate under carefully defined conditions of disease prevention and genetic~behavioral man- agement. More important, these institutions should help preserve biodiversity through their capacities for public education, professional training, research, and support of in situ conservation efforts.

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Limitations of Captive Breeding in Endangered Species Recovery

How successful are plant species reintroductions

Trends in ocean and coastal tourism: the end of the last frontier?

We review and compare well-studied examples of five large, infrequent disturbances (LIDs)—fire, hurricanes, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, and floods—in terms of the physical processes involved, the damage patterns they create in forested landscapes, and the potential impacts of those patterns on subsequent forest development. Our examples include the 1988 Yellowstone fires, the 1938 New England hurricane, the 1985 Tionesta tornado, the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, and the 1993 Mississippi floods. The resulting landscape patterns are strongly controlled by interactions between the specific disturbance, the abiotic environment (especially topography), and the composition and structure of the vegetation at the time of the disturbance. The very different natures of these interactions yield distinctive temporal and spatial patterns and demand that ecologists increase their knowledge of the physical characteristics of disturbance processes. Floods and fires can occur over a long period, whereas volcanic eruptions and wind-driven events often last for no more than a few hours or days. Tornadoes and floods produce linear patterns with sharp edges, but fires, volcanic eruptions, and hurricanes can affect broader areas, often with gradual transitions of disturbance intensity. In all cases, the evidence suggests that LIDs produce enduring legacies of physical and biological structure that influence ecosystem processes for decades or centuries.

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Landscape Patterns and Legacies Resulting from Large, Infrequent Forest Disturbances

struction project. It was and still is a common scenario in the mitigation wars, the struggle to reduce damage to endangered plants: a developer would learn from state biologists that the land on which he was building was the habitat of an endangered plant. Berg would check the plant's status and meet with the developer, who would spread out project blueprints five years in the making. The developer, who already was counting on his profits from the project, would want to know quickly what he had to do to comply with laws governing endangered species. The clock was ticking on loans and investments that the developer already had sunk into the project. As the negotiations would begin, the pressure was on Berg to reconcile the long-term realities of ecology with the short-term imperatives of the economic bottom line. "Anything I would try in terms of mitigation to reduce the ecological impact was seen as taking profits out of his pockets," says Berg, who recently became program manager for special-status plants with the Bureau of Land Management in Washington, DC. When negotiating a mitigation, the participants may trade off an existing population of plants or habitat for creation or protection of a

Reintroduction of endangered plants

plane flying at a few thousand feet last July, Gordon Farabee looked down over the Missouri River near St. Louis and smiled the smile of a biologist witnessing a natural wonder. "What really impresses me is to see the width of the floodplain like this," said Farabee, who coordinates the Missouri Department of Conservation's research and management programs along the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. "I see quite a few nursery areas off to the sides where fish are feeding. We're going to see production that we haven't seen on the river in 50 years." While most people in the region, including some on his staff, struggled with flood damage to human interests, Chuck Theiling, a river ecologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey, launched an intensive research project. At the height of the flood, he was studying littoral zone productivity on the Illinois River north of where it meets the Mississippi. Bob Hrabik of the Missouri Department of Conservation, who like Theiling runs a long-term monitoring station, also was conducting productivity studies 170 miles downstream on the Mississippi, near Cape Girardeau, Missouri. "This is a great opportunity to determine exactly what happens during a large disturbance like this," Hrabik says. "We've long made the assumption that fish go into the shallow areas, that they're spawning out there, and that productivity generally goes way up. But nobody ever really measured it." Both research groups hope to report their results early in 1994. In the

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/1312316

The Great Flood of 1993Animals and plants of the floodplain thrive, while river researchers have a field day

ne hot, windy day last summer, Daniel Janzen leaned in through the window of an open-air schoolhouse in northwestern Costa Rica and called to the teacher. The teacher left the blackboard, where he had been working a math problem. After chatting with the teacher for a few minutes in Spanish, Janzen handed him a photocopied note inviting the elementary school students to attend a speech by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez in which Arias was to reaffirm conservation as one of the nation's top priorities. The speech would be given at nearby Santa Rosa National Park, where the class had already studied natural history as part of a new educational program. The invitation was delivered to several other elementary schools in the region, as well as to farmers, politicians, and other local residents.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/1310447

Biocultural restoration of a tropical forestArchitects of Costa Rica's emerging Guanacaste National Park plan to make it an integral part of local culture

Increased dangers to Caribbean marine ecosystems.

The rise of the botanical databaseComputerized information offers increased efficiency, access to unpublished records, and new ways of asking questions

William H. Allen

Papers

Reintroduction of endangered plants

The Great Flood of 1993Animals and plants of the floodplain thrive, while river researchers have a field day

Biocultural restoration of a tropical forestArchitects of Costa Rica's emerging Guanacaste National Park plan to make it an integral part of local culture

Increased dangers to Caribbean marine ecosystems.

The rise of the botanical databaseComputerized information offers increased efficiency, access to unpublished records, and new ways of asking questions