This study uses travel cost and contingent valuation methods to derive estimates of economic value for recreational use of Los Nevados National Park in the Andean region of Colombia. Park visitors were surveyed regarding their travel costs and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for ecological restoration of areas affected by wildfires in 2006. The travel cost data was analyzed using a zonal travel cost m...

Marine protected areas (MPAs) have become a common conservation and management tool for reducing exploitation from the commercial and recreational fisheries sectors. However, the recreational fisheries sector has the potential to be compatible with no-take MPAs when catchand-release angling is practiced because, in theory, no fish are actually harvested. This presumes that the effects of catch-...

The investigations were conducted in the Lublin province (south-eastern Poland) in areas of high agricultural and recreational value. Among the 418 patients admitted to medical clinics due to arthropod bites in the years 2003-2005, 184 people (44%) had been bitten by ticks. As shown by the research, high-risk groups include people whose stay in tick habitats is connected with their occupational...

Beginning within the context of the classical risk assessment framework, this chapter discusses the origins of risks to microbiological water quality. The importance of a preventative multiple barrier approach is discussed and the advantages of controlling contamination as near to the source as possible are presented briefly. Practical, simple to use approaches are needed to identify risks and ...

In this article, we present results that demonstrate the utility of close range photogrammetry in the measurement of decks in recreational craft as an alternate measurement system to the one based on direct acquisition of coordinates. The areas of deck covered with teakwood for aesthetic or security reasons were measured. Both methods were compared in terms of precision of measurements, time co...

A comprehensive survey assessing the presence of Acanthamoeba was conducted on 50 samples from water sources in parks and public squares from 22 municipal districts of Tehran, Iran. The prevalence and genotypes of Acanthamoeba were determined by PCR and the PCR fragments of ribosomal RNA genes sequenced. Sixteen (32%) samples were positive for Acanthamoeba spp. Sequence analysis revealed that t...

This study reports the occurrence of Blastocystis in water from two rivers, Sungai Congkak and Sungai Batu, located in recreational areas in Malaysia. This protozoan was detected in samples from both rivers with an average of 33.3% and 22.1%, respectively. It was detected highest at the downstream (73.8% and 33.8%) followed by midstream (17.5% and 25.0%) and upstream (8.8% and 7.5%) stations, w...