Fifty-seven percent of North American grassland bird species are undergoing significant, long-term population declines. Almost 90% of grassland-obligate bird species breeding in the western Great Plains are migratory and fully 90% of these species overwinter in the Chihuahuan Desert.
This report compares for the first time the history, sampling strategy and results of the Canadian National Air Pollution Surveillance (NAPS) and the US National Dioxin Air Monitoring Net-work (NDAMN) for polychlorinated dioxin and furan (PCDD/Fs) concentrations for the periods 1989–2009, and 1999–2002, respectively, for co-planar polychlorinated biphenyl ethers (Co-PCBs) for the periods 2005–2009 and […]
A lack of conservation tools and incentives to steward native prairie in Canada has placed a disproportionate cost for environmental stewardship on livestock producers managing natural grasslands. The Ranchers Stewardship Alliance Inc. (RSAI) has investigated conservation tools that would help distribute the cost of maintaining declining ecosystem services from native rangelands more proportionally among those who value and use those services.
The aim of this report is to provide background information and a proposed operating framework that US and Mexican state and federal land and natural resource management agencies can use in making collaborative decisions relating to that portion of the Rio Grande that extends from its confluence with the Río Conchos, at Presidio, Texas, to […]
Assessing individual or community risk from environmental pollution is complex and requires consideration of chemical and non-chemical stressors, community priorities and values, and numerous other factors. This framework document is intended to serve as an information and awareness resource for the development of environmental health assessment tools. It draws from an exhaustive review of scholarly and grey literature from varied disciplines (e.g., environmental pollution, nutrition, social sciences, health and public health promotion), and from consultations with subject-matter experts and stakeholders from the three North American countries.
The borderlands of the Chihuahuan Desert, in the Big Bend-Río Bravo (BBRB) region, have one of the highest levels of diversity and endemic species among the world’s arid and semiarid ecosystems. This large binational area, comprised by a total of eleven protected areas in Texas, Coahuila, and Chihuahua, offers a unique opportunity for conservation because of its isolation from human settlements and the unfragmented nature of its landscape. Private land conservation efforts underway in both countries add an important dimension to these efforts by extending the region’s conservation potential to include essential habitat for mammals, birds, aquatic and other species from the Davis Mountains and Marfa in the north, to the Sierra de Hechiceros and Lagunas de Sanchez y de Montoya in the west, the Devils River to the east, and the Sierra de Santa Rosa to the south.
This short document provides an overview of various green building codes and standards, ratings and certification programs, and benchmarking systems used across North America. This initiative aims to increase knowledge and awareness of green building practices and materials, help stakeholders facilitate decision-making and thus greater uptake of green building practices and materials, as well as […]
Among other factors, increasing uptake of green-building construction in North America requires access to financial capital, enabling policies, and a skilled workforce. As part of the report series “Improving Conditions for Green Building Construction in North America,” this report describes three financial mechanisms with strong potential for changing the green-building financing landscape in North America and recommends changes and supporting initiatives that may help overcome existing barriers to a more widespread adoption of those models.
Among other factors, increasing uptake of green-building construction in North America requires access to financial capital, enabling policies, and a skilled workforce. As part of the report series Improving Conditions for Green Building Construction in North America, this report reviews education and training opportunities throughout North America and compares those opportunities to the skills and capabilities that are needed now, or will be needed over the next decade, in ten vital workforce sectors: builders, building trades, design professionals, building operators and managers, owners and developers, real estate and finance sector, manufacturers, municipal and other government officials, specialty consultants, and occupants.
Among other factors, increasing uptake of green-building construction in North America requires access to financial capital, enabling policies, and a skilled workforce. As part of the report series, “Improving Conditions for Green Building Construction in North America,” this report describes some of the most successful and innovative green building policies from jurisdictions across North America, analyzes key ingredients of their success, and presents a five-step policy framework model for the incorporation and use of those ingredients.
This background report assesses the effects of fire, grazing and wetlands on grassland bird abundance in National Wildlife Area (NWA) at Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Suffield. The data for this project were provided by Environment Canada (EC) and the Department of National Defence (DND).
This report summarizes the activities related to the North American Regional Action Plan (NARAP) on Lindane and Other Hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH) Isomers carried out by the Lindane Task Force under the auspices of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) as it endeavored to meet its commitments under the NARAP from its inception in 1999 until formal […]
