Four beaches that share physiographic characteristics (sandy, wide, and long) but differ in socioeconomic and cultural terms (three are located in northwestern Mexico and one in California, USA) were evaluated by beach users. Surveys (565) composed of 36 questions were handed out to beach users on weekends and holidays in 2005. The 25 questions that revealed the most information were selected by factor analysis and classified by cluster analysis. Beach users' preferences were assigned a value by comparing the present survey results with the characteristics of an "ideal" recreational urban beach. Cluster analysis separated three groups of questions: (a) services and infrastructure, (b) recreational activities, and (c) beach conditions. Cluster linkage distance (r=0.82, r=0.78, r=0.67) was used as a weight and multiplied by the value of beach descriptive factors. Mazatlán and Oceanside obtained the highest values because there are enough infrastructure and services; on the contrary, Ensenada and Rosarito were rated medium and low because infrastructure and services are lacking. The presently proposed method can contribute to improving current beach evaluations because the final score represents the beach users' evaluation of the quality of the beach. The weight considered in the present study marks the beach users' preferences among the studied beaches. Adding this weight to beach evaluation will contribute to more specific beach planning in which users' perception is considered.
A large amount of birds are harvested from the natural environment for the pet market. This trade is a conservation issue and an economic income for many people, two aspects not analyzed yet as a complex system of causes and effects. Though bird trade is common in Latin-America there are few published studies. Therefore, we reviewed available literature to understand the background of this topic and to identify future relevant research topics. We collected, summarized and discussed literature about bird use as pets in Latin-America, with a detailed approach in México. We searched by keywords in search engines. We got a database of 128 documents. Brazil was identified as one of the main countries of bird use research. Most of the papers focused on parrots (27%) and were conducted at a local geographical level (47%). Half of the papers are focused on the general use of birds, 44% on the use as pets and 5% on other uses. The most common techniques employed for gaining information belong to the social sciences. In Mexico, 82% of the information is “gray literature”, mainly congress abstracts. This literature review shows that wildlife use in general and wild birds use as pets in particular are common in Latin-America. We bring to light that most information is not found in peer review journals and contains only useful bird lists. Finally, we found that social organization and actor’s perception research is scarce so we suggest more research in this direction in order to implement better management policies
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.