of the Equal Rights Center, who also made contributions to the design of the project.A panel of expert advisers made valuable contributions to the understanding of the housing issues faced by the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender community and of the e-mail testing approach. We express special thanks to Gregory M. Herek, Jim McCarthy, Robert Schwemm, and Gregory D. Squires; as well as Lee Badgett, Roger Doughty, Kate Kendall, Jerry Malitz, Justin Nelson, Terry Stone, and Laura Young.We also thank Jennifer A. Stoloff, the project's Government Technical Representative from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research, for providing significant guidance and support at all stages.We offer special thanks to Louisa Elfman of M. Davis and Company, Inc., for managing the packaging of the report.The contents of this report are the views of the contractor and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development or the U.S. government. List of Tables List of Figures Executive SummaryThis is the first large-scale, paired-testing study to assess housing discrimination against same-sex couples in metropolitan rental markets via advertisements on the Internet. The research is based on 6,833 e-mail correspondence tests conducted in 50 metropolitan markets across the United States from June through October 2011. For each correspondence test, two e-mails were sent to the housing provider, each inquiring about the availability of the unit advertised on the Internet. The only difference between the two e-mails was the sexual orientation of the couple making the inquiry. Two sets of correspondence tests were conducted, one assessing the treatment of gay male couples relative to heterosexual couples and one assessing the treatment of lesbian couples relative to heterosexual couples. This methodology provides the first direct evidence of discriminatory treatment of same-sex couples compared with the treatment of heterosexual couples when searching for rental housing advertised on the Internet in the United States.The study finds that same-sex couples experience less favorable treatment than heterosexual couples in the online rental housing market. The primary form of adverse treatment is that same-sex couples receive significantly fewer responses to e-mail inquiries about advertised units than heterosexual couples. Study results in jurisdictions with state-level protections against housing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation unexpectedly show slightly more adverse treatment of same-sex couples than results in jurisdictions without such protections. This study provides an important initial observation of discrimination based on sexual orientation at the threshold stage of the rental transaction and is a point of departure for future research on housing discrimination against same-sex couples. BackgroundFederal fair housing laws, seeking to ensure equal access to housing, prohibit housing discrimination based on race...
Elders and Indigenous land users in the Peace-Athabasca Delta (PAD) have observed a dramatic decline in the relative abundance of muskrat in recent decades (~1935–2014). The main explanation for the decline has been reduction in suitable habitat as a result of decades with reduced frequency of ice-jam flooding on the Peace River. Under favourable conditions, ice jams can cause flooding of perched basins within the PAD that would otherwise receive no recharge from floodwaters. To examine whether abundance of muskrat in the PAD is driven by flooding, we tested the predictions that the density of muskrat (estimated by winter counts of houses) (1) was inversely related to the number of years since major ice jam floods and (2) increased with water depth. An ongoing collaborative monitoring program initiated in 2011, combined with analysis of data from past surveys (1973–2015), allowed Indigenous land users and scientists to document a 10 to 100-fold increase in the density of muskrat houses in 24 basins, over the two years following ice-jam flood events in the PAD. During 1973–2015, in the periods between major floods, density of houses dropped by approximately 79% for every year after a significant flood. In 27 basins surveyed from 2011 to 2015, density of muskrat houses increased by two orders of magnitude in the two years following a flood in the spring of 2014. Density of muskrat houses had a non-linear relationship with estimated depth of water at the time of fall freeze-up; the highest densities of muskrat houses were in basins with about 60 – 250 cm of water at the time of freeze-up. The depth of snow at the time of surveys did not have a strong relationship with the density of muskrat houses. However, few houses were counted in basins with more than 20 cm of snow, likely because deeper snow made it more difficult to conduct surveys and spot houses. Factors other than an increase in the depth of water at fall freeze-up may provide the mechanisms by which flooding affects muskrat. Density of muskrat houses is clearly tied to ice-jam flooding in the PAD. However, the local mechanisms by which floods affect muskrat are best understood by Indigenous land users and remain poorly understood by Western science. Indigenous peoples continue to regard muskrat as an indicator of ecological and cultural health of the PAD. This study highlights the value of consistent ecological monitoring that includes Indigenous knowledge.
Increased use and protection of groundwater resources are seen as possible solutions to mitigating water scarcity in arid and semi-arid regions. The DRASTIC index method is one of the most commonly used approaches to assess groundwater vulnerability to pollution. However, this method has been criticized in the past due to its subjectivity as well as the failure to account for some important hydrogeological characteristics (e.g. multi-layer vadose zone and preferential flow) and specific properties of contaminants (e.g. sorption and decay). These problems were addressed in this study with the objective of improving the DRASTIC method for assessment of groundwater vulnerability to generic aqueous-phase contaminants. Literature data and laboratory measurements were used in order to define categories and weighing factors for hydrogeological characteristics and specific contaminant properties. The new DRASTIC method developed in this study provides an improved categorization of the impact of the vadose zone, which accounts for the following factors: multi-layer vadose zone, based on site-specific conceptual models; hydraulic properties of the unsaturated zone (flow mechanism, drainage and travel time); and specific chemical properties (sorption and decay). The information was packaged in a user-friendly format for rating groundwater vulnerability. The method can be used for applications in site-specific environmental impact assessments for new developments, for regional groundwater vulnerability assessment as well as in integrated water resources management.
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