ALBERT

Description: An effective protected area system is essential for the long-term conservation of Myanmar's biodiversity. This study examined the attitudes of 2915 residents in 97 communities around three protected areas (PAs) in upper Myanmar: Alaungdaw Kathapa National Park in the western mountains, Htamanthi Wildlife Sanctuary in the hills bordering the Chindwin and Uru rivers, and Chatthin Wildlife Sanctuary in the central dry zone. Logistic regression indicated a positive attitude toward the PAs was most highly correlated with a perception of conservation benefits and benefits resulting from management of the areas. Attitude was also significantly correlated with a perception of extraction benefits, conflicts with PA staff and crop damage by wildlife. Socioeconomic variables were less powerful than perceptions in predicting attitude and, unlike perceptions, their effects varied among the areas. The much greater effect of perceptions, especially positive ones, on people's attitudes indicates that understanding perceptions is important to improving the relationship between local residents and these PAs. This finding underscores the fact that a focus on conflicts to understand people's attitudes toward PAs may undervalue or miss critical positive perceptions that people hold. Understanding local residents' perceptions of PAs makes possible the creation of strategic, place-based management strategies that build on people's positive perceptions and mitigate their negative perceptions.

Description: The lower bathyal Ocean Drilling Program Hole 1261A was sampled near an upper Quaternary oxygen minimum zone (OMZ). Glauconite, the percentage of the foraminiferal assemblage as benthic specimens and assemblage composition were used to investigate the behaviour of the OMZ. Benthic foraminifera and glauconite were comparable with the upper margin of the modern OMZ off California. The percentage abundances of U. peregrina and C. laevigata were on the Demerara Rise negatively correlated, the proportional abundance of U. peregrina increasing upwards through the section. This reflects variations in proximity to the upper margin of the OMZ. This might reflect either crustal subsidence or long-term shallowing of the OMZ during the earlier late Quaternary. Neither hypothesis can be accepted unequivocally. The purported subsidence can be ascribed to crustal loading by the Amazon and Orinoco deep-sea fans, but this would require that the palaeodepth to the top of the OMZ remains constant across several glacial–interglacial cycles. In contrast, it is difficult to envisage any mechanism that could have caused progressive shallowing of the OMZ across several glacial–interglacial cycles. The epifaunal Planulina wuellerstorfi is related to more oxic waters and enhanced current action. This suggests that intervals with more abundant P. wuellerstorfi were somewhat less dysoxic than those with few. These intervals approximate to those with more abundant C. laevigata. Superimposed on this low-frequency signal is a higher-frequency signal, indicated by a between-sample assemblage turnover index (ATIs) that might prove useful for long-range sequence stratigraphic correlation at bathyal depths.