Land trusts play an increasingly important role in conservation both in terms of the magnitude of conservation activities in which they participate and the total proportion of all conservation that they represent. Making informed conservation management decisions and local community engagement are two critical problems facing operators of locally-owned protected areas including those managed by land trusts. Engaging volunteers for critical management needs, such as collecting ecological data, is one way to overcome the challenge of managing and monitoring resources as a small organization. Partnering with volunteers can also help achieve other conservation goals including educational outreach and increasing public support. Land trusts that engage in volunteer-based monitoring (VBM) provide an opportunity to study how citizen science activities can contribute to conservation in practice. We surveyed land trust organizations across the United States to learn about their VBM programs. We received survey responses 332 organization, 133 of which maintain VBM programs. We found that the majority of land trusts with VBM programs are small organizations with less than ten employees (79.1%), few volunteers (50.4% with <10 volunteers, 87.2% with <50 volunteers), and little funding dedicated to the volunteer management (70.9% with <$1000 annually). Volunteers collect data on a wide variety of monitoring targets including vertebrate, invertebrate, and plant species, as well as water, soil and air quality measurements. Volunteers also engage in many different stages of the monitoring process including data collection, entry and analysis, and even dissemination of results. While increasing civic engagement and educational outreach were reported as the most important motivations for land trusts to engage in VBM, organizations reported that increasing civic engagement is the most difficult benefit to achieve. These results have implications for how land trusts can use citizen science and other participatory approaches to engage volunteers for conservation actions and increase public engagement. This study also shows that scientists interested in citizen science may engage with land trusts to learn about the potential for citizen science to improve conservation management.
Objective To investigate the clinical features of pulmonary nocardiosis (PN) in patients with different underlying diseases. Methods Clinical, imaging, treatment and prognosis data from patients diagnosed with PN from July 2011 to June 2021 at the First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine were collected and analyzed. According to different underlying diseases, patients were grouped into immunocompromised host (ICH) group and immunocompetent host (ICO) group, and clinical characteristics were compared between the two groups. Results There were 64 patients with PN, including 42 males, aged from 21 to 86 (57.1 ± 15.7) years. The most common clinical manifestations were cough, expectoration, fever. There were 41 cases in the ICH group and 23 cases in the ICO group. There were 11 cases with underlying pulmonary diseases in the ICH group, including 2 cases of bronchiectasis, 4 cases of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), etc. There were 11 cases of underlying pulmonary basic diseases in ICO group, including 7 cases of bronchiectasis and COPD, 1 case of bronchiectasis, 1 case of COPD, etc. The proportion of patients with bronchiectasis and COPD in the ICO group was significantly higher (P < 0.05). Extrapulmonary nocardiosis infection occurred in 6 patients of the ICH group. During the period of hospitalization, 87.0% patients in ICO group received SMZ/TMP therapy, 73.2% of patients in ICH group received two drug combination therapy. In the ICH group, mortality at 28 days was 14.6% and 8.7% in the ICO group. Conclusion PN mainly occurred in ICH patients, but also occurred in the ICO cases to a lesser extent, especially in patients with bronchiectasis and/or COPD. Complicated with extrapulmonary infections mainly occurred in ICH population and combination of two antibiotics was often used in ICH group. The case fatality rates were 14.6% in ICH and 8.7% in ICO cases, respectively.
Mucormycosis is a rare and invasive fungal infection with high mortality. Cases of invasive pulmonary mucormycosis that involve allergic reactions such as allergic bronchopulmonary mycosis are rarely reported. Herein, we describe a case of invasive pulmonary mucormycosis overlapping with allergic diseases in a patient who presented with eosinophilia and high total plasma immunoglobulin E (IgE). The patient was successfully treated with systemic corticosteroids (initial dose of prednisolone approximately 0.5 mg/kg per day, total duration less than 3 months) combined with posaconazole antifungal therapy. The treatment resulted in recovery of peripheral-blood eosinophil count and total plasma IgE, and significant reduction in lung lesions. A subsequent lobectomy was performed. The findings in this case indicate that systemic corticosteroid therapy may contribute to the treatment of pulmonary mucormycosis combined with allergic factors.
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.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.