title: Weed management - Lessons form the USA

authors: Madsen, John

abstract: Aquatic weed management has a more than 100 year history in the United States, with the first efforts by the US Army Corps of Engineers to remove water hyacinth from southeastern United States waters in 1899. Through these efforts, several important lessons have been learned. First, plant management requires a plan of action that considers the level of infestation, makes site-specific management recommendations, and considers all potential techniques for use both spatially and temporally.
A good plan also includes public involvement and education. Integrated Plant Management has become the model for aquatic plant management. It includes developing an understanding of factors that exacerbate plant growth, and methods to mitigate plant growth and enhance management success, including an understanding of target plant biology and phenology. In addition, most natural water bodies will require selective management, targeting the weed and minimizing the impact on desirable native plant species.
Steady funding to invest in plant management is a necessity. Disruptions to funding will result in larger problems in the future. An important part of the investment is a consistent investment in applied research, with the target of improved plant control. In the United States, an attempt is made to consider biological, chemical, mechanical, and physical techniques for management of aquatic weeds. The use of these techniques is restricted by economic, environmental, and regulatory thresholds.
While biological control may appear to be the preferred approach, many weeds do not have an effective biological control agent. Even effective biological control agents do not provide uniform control across the ecological range of a weed. Chemical control is still the most widely used technique in the United States. Chemical control is effective and relatively inexpensive, but increased regulatory restriction has impacted the use of herbicides in some areas.
Mechanical techniques use machines to remove plant growth. In particular, harvesting is widely used as an immediate control to plant growth. However, harvesting is relatively slow and expensive, and may have a significant fish and aquatic animal bycatch. Physical control involves altering the environment to reduce plant growth. In the United States, this includes the use of benthic barriers, shading materials, and drawdown. Each of these techniques can be considered tools in our plant management toolbox, and all have their place and utility.

text: Weed management - Lessons form the USA Aquatic weed management has a more than 100 year history in the United States, with the first efforts by the US Army Corps of Engineers to remove water hyacinth from southeastern United States waters in 1899. Through these efforts, several important lessons have been learned. First, plant management requires a plan of action that considers the level of infestation, makes site-specific management recommendations, and considers all potential techniques for use both spatially and temporally.
A good plan also includes public involvement and education. Integrated Plant Management has become the model for aquatic plant management. It includes developing an understanding of factors that exacerbate plant growth, and methods to mitigate plant growth and enhance management success, including an understanding of target plant biology and phenology. In addition, most natural water bodies will require selective management, targeting the weed and minimizing the impact on desirable native plant species.
Steady funding to invest in plant management is a necessity. Disruptions to funding will result in larger problems in the future. An important part of the investment is a consistent investment in applied research, with the target of improved plant control. In the United States, an attempt is made to consider biological, chemical, mechanical, and physical techniques for management of aquatic weeds. The use of these techniques is restricted by economic, environmental, and regulatory thresholds.
While biological control may appear to be the preferred approach, many weeds do not have an effective biological control agent. Even effective biological control agents do not provide uniform control across the ecological range of a weed. Chemical control is still the most widely used technique in the United States. Chemical control is effective and relatively inexpensive, but increased regulatory restriction has impacted the use of herbicides in some areas.
Mechanical techniques use machines to remove plant growth. In particular, harvesting is widely used as an immediate control to plant growth. However, harvesting is relatively slow and expensive, and may have a significant fish and aquatic animal bycatch. Physical control involves altering the environment to reduce plant growth. In the United States, this includes the use of benthic barriers, shading materials, and drawdown. Each of these techniques can be considered tools in our plant management toolbox, and all have their place and utility.

year: 2015

title: Experiences of care at the nexus of intellectual disability and leisure travel

authors: Gillovic, Brielle

abstract: This thesis explores lived experiences of care at the nexus of intellectual disability and leisure travel, notably among a sample of carers and people with intellectual disabilities, whose voices are otherwise absent in much previous tourism scholarship. The originality of this research therefore lies in its approach, which favours the cognisance of situated, contextual and value-laden care experiences between self and other, privileging subjective and inter-subjective ways of knowing, and humanising the intricacies of the participants’ individual, relational and emotional lives.

In this way, this thesis seeks to honour the participants’ authentic voices, positionalities and subjectivities as they narrate their lived experiences. It offers, thus, a person-centred, strengths- and abilities-based approach to inclusive tourism research. As such, this research adopts a Heideggerian interpretive phenomenological approach, exploratory in its nature and qualitative in its design. The data has been collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviewing with fifteen carers and nine people with intellectual disabilities. The data was then thematically analysed, inductively eliciting a depth and richness of meaning embedded in the participants’ experiential knowledge, iteratively and recursively negotiated with the theoretical knowledge.

Findings of this thesis define the leisure travel phenomenon both as a meaningful experience in and of itself, and as the situated context in which carers and people with intellectual disabilities make sense of, and ascribe meaning to, their lived experiences of care. The analysis reveals three key emergent themes: giving, attunement, and (in)visibility. Experiences of care at the nexus of intellectual disability and leisure travel, indeed, are a labour of love. They reflect a complex and dynamic (re)negotiation of the paradoxical tensions involved in being in between two worlds, and span practical, emotional and socio-political caring spheres. This thesis concludes with implications for (re)imagining the transformative potential of tourism through an ethic of care as an ethos to guide our social relations, wherein we meet one another morally.

text: Experiences of care at the nexus of intellectual disability and leisure travel This thesis explores lived experiences of care at the nexus of intellectual disability and leisure travel, notably among a sample of carers and people with intellectual disabilities, whose voices are otherwise absent in much previous tourism scholarship. The originality of this research therefore lies in its approach, which favours the cognisance of situated, contextual and value-laden care experiences between self and other, privileging subjective and inter-subjective ways of knowing, and humanising the intricacies of the participants’ individual, relational and emotional lives.

In this way, this thesis seeks to honour the participants’ authentic voices, positionalities and subjectivities as they narrate their lived experiences. It offers, thus, a person-centred, strengths- and abilities-based approach to inclusive tourism research. As such, this research adopts a Heideggerian interpretive phenomenological approach, exploratory in its nature and qualitative in its design. The data has been collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviewing with fifteen carers and nine people with intellectual disabilities. The data was then thematically analysed, inductively eliciting a depth and richness of meaning embedded in the participants’ experiential knowledge, iteratively and recursively negotiated with the theoretical knowledge.

Findings of this thesis define the leisure travel phenomenon both as a meaningful experience in and of itself, and as the situated context in which carers and people with intellectual disabilities make sense of, and ascribe meaning to, their lived experiences of care. The analysis reveals three key emergent themes: giving, attunement, and (in)visibility. Experiences of care at the nexus of intellectual disability and leisure travel, indeed, are a labour of love. They reflect a complex and dynamic (re)negotiation of the paradoxical tensions involved in being in between two worlds, and span practical, emotional and socio-political caring spheres. This thesis concludes with implications for (re)imagining the transformative potential of tourism through an ethic of care as an ethos to guide our social relations, wherein we meet one another morally.

year: 2019

title: Māori education and principles of self-determination in the twenty-first century.

authors: O’Sullivan, Dominic

subjects: Maori

abstract: This paper argues that self-determination to the greatest extent possible is a legitimate aspiration for Maori people. It is argued that in education this requires a philosophical and policy response more focused on Maori autonomy than can be provided within the bicultural framework that has lately informed Maori relationships with other actors in the education arena. The paper considers the place of kohanga reo, kura kaupapa Maori and wananga in relation to broader Maori aspirations for self-determination and discusses proposals that these aspirations be furthered through the establishment of a Maori Education Authority. It is also argued that opportunities for self-determination in New Zealand are compromised by the government's unwillingness to alter a tightly controlled centralised education market to provide genuine Māori autonomy over what type of education might be available and to what end.

text: Māori education and principles of self-determination in the twenty-first century. This paper argues that self-determination to the greatest extent possible is a legitimate aspiration for Maori people. It is argued that in education this requires a philosophical and policy response more focused on Maori autonomy than can be provided within the bicultural framework that has lately informed Maori relationships with other actors in the education arena. The paper considers the place of kohanga reo, kura kaupapa Maori and wananga in relation to broader Maori aspirations for self-determination and discusses proposals that these aspirations be furthered through the establishment of a Maori Education Authority. It is also argued that opportunities for self-determination in New Zealand are compromised by the government's unwillingness to alter a tightly controlled centralised education market to provide genuine Māori autonomy over what type of education might be available and to what end.

year: 2001