Boundary issues in academia are rarely addressed by college or university policy despite the risk of problematic or unethical faculty-student interactions (Owen and Castro 2007). These twelve tips are suggested for the development of an institutional boundary guideline and training program and are based on the outcomes and feedback from an existing institutional boundary training program. For this work, we developed and administered a survey to faculty and staff both before a group discussion session and again after the training session. Based on a review of the literature and the survey responses, these 12 “tips” or best practices to mitigate possible ethical and legal issues that can arise between faculty/staff and students are suggested as guidance for developing an institutional boundary policy.

Boundary issues in academia are rarely addressed by college or university policy despite the risk of problematic or unethical faculty-student interactions (Owen and Castro 2007). These twelve tips are suggested for the development of an institutional boundary guideline and training program and are based on the outcomes and feedback from an existing institutional boundary training program. For this work, we developed and administered a survey to faculty and staff both before a group discussion session and again after the training session. Based on a review of the literature and the survey responses, these 12 “tips” or best practices to mitigate possible ethical and legal issues that can arise between faculty/staff and students are suggested as guidance for developing an institutional boundary policy.

Filtered dataset focusing on Boundaries dating styles and their relationship patterns

In 2020, a total share of ** percent of Poles believed that relationships between co-workers should be kept strictly within the professional boundaries.

Filtered dataset focusing on Poor Boundaries dating styles and their relationship patterns

Presentation given as part of a Minisymposium at BEER 2015.

Reported needs concerning additional training on ethically important topics pertaining to relationships and boundaries during practice (Mean±SD).

The 1991 Census Expanded Community Profiles present 44 tables comprising more detailed information than that of the basic community profiles which provide characteristics of persons and/or dwellings for Local Government Areas (LGA) in Australia. This table contains data relating to relationship in household by age and sex. Counts are of all persons (a), based on place of enumeration on census night which; includes overseas visitors; excludes Australians overseas; and excludes adjustment for under-enumeration. The data is by LGA 1991 boundaries. Periodicity: 5-Yearly. This data is ABS data (cat. no. 2101.0 & original geographic boundary cat. no. 1261.0.30.001) used with permission from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The tabular data was processed and supplied to AURIN by the Australian Data Archives. The cleaned, high resolution 1991 geographic boundaries are available from data.gov.au. For more information please refer to the 1991 Census Dictionary. Please note: (a) Excludes temporarily absent persons unless such person were, despite being from their usual residence, enumerated elsewhere in this geographical area. Information on temporary absentees was used to determines the correct family/household type at the dwelling of usual residence.

Several studies have explored the relationship between socially constructed neighbourhood boundaries (henceforth social boundaries) and ethnic tensions. To measure these relationships, studies have used area-level demographic data to predict the location of social boundaries and their characteristics. The most common approach uses areal wombling to locate neighbouring areas with large differences in residential characteristics. Areas with large differences (or higher boundary values) are used as a proxy for well-defined social boundaries. However, to date, the results of these predictions have never been empirically validated. This article presents results from a simple discrete choice experiment designed to test whether the areal wombling approach to boundary detection produces social boundaries that are recognisable to local residents and experts as such. We conducted a small feasibility trial with residents and experts in Rotherham, England. Our results shows that participants were more likely to recognise boundaries with higher boundary values as local community borders. We end with a discussion on the scalability of the design and suggest future improvements.

The 2023 cartographic boundary shapefiles are simplified representations of selected geographic areas from the U.S. Census Bureau's Master Address File / Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing (MAF/TIGER) Database (MTDB). These boundary files are specifically designed for small-scale thematic mapping. When possible, generalization is performed with the intent to maintain the hierarchical relationships among geographies and to maintain the alignment of geographies within a file set for a given year. Geographic areas may not align with the same areas from another year. Some geographies are available as nation-based files while others are available only as state-based files. Census tracts are small, relatively permanent statistical subdivisions of a county or equivalent entity, and were defined by local participants as part of the 2020 Census Participant Statistical Areas Program. The Census Bureau delineated the census tracts in situations where no local participant existed or where all the potential participants declined to participate. The primary purpose of census tracts is to provide a stable set of geographic units for the presentation of census data and comparison back to previous decennial censuses. Census tracts generally have a population size between 1,200 and 8,000 people, with an optimum size of 4,000 people. When first delineated, census tracts were designed to be homogeneous with respect to population characteristics, economic status, and living conditions. The spatial size of census tracts varies widely depending on the density of settlement. Physical changes in street patterns caused by highway construction, new development, and so forth, may require boundary revisions. In addition, census tracts occasionally are split due to population growth, or combined as a result of substantial population decline. Census tract boundaries generally follow visible and identifiable features. They may follow legal boundaries such as minor civil division (MCD) or incorporated place boundaries in some states and situations to allow for census tract-to-governmental unit relationships where the governmental boundaries tend to remain unchanged between censuses. State and county boundaries always are census tract boundaries in the standard census geographic hierarchy. In a few rare instances, a census tract may consist of noncontiguous areas. These noncontiguous areas may occur where the census tracts are coextensive with all or parts of legal entities that are themselves noncontiguous. For the 2010 Census and beyond, the census tract code range of 9400 through 9499 was enforced for census tracts that include a majority American Indian population according to Census 2000 data and/or their area was primarily covered by federally recognized American Indian reservations and/or off-reservation trust lands; the code range 9800 through 9899 was enforced for those census tracts that contained little or no population and represented a relatively large special land use area such as a National Park, military installation, or a business/industrial park; and the code range 9900 through 9998 was enforced for those census tracts that contained only water area, no land area.

Crosswalk tables allow data analyses across decennial census boundaries. This crosswalk allows census tract-level data, created using 2020 decennial census boundaries, to be compared to data created using 2010 decennial census boundaries.

Aim

To understand the representativeness and accuracy of expert range maps, and explore alternate methods for accurately mapping species distributions.

Location

Global

Time period

Contemporary

Major taxa studied

Terrestrial vertebrates, and Odonata

Methods

We analyzed the biases in 50,768 animal IUCN, GARD and BirdLife species maps, assessed the links between these maps and existing political and various non-ecological boundaries to assess their accuracy for certain types of analysis. We cross-referenced each species map with data from GBIF to assess if maps captured the whole range of a species, and what percentage of occurrence points fall within the species’ assessed ranges. In addition, we use a number of alternate methods to map diversity patterns and compare these to high resolution models of distribution patterns.

Results

On average 20-30% of species’ non-coastal range boundaries overlapped with administrative national boundaries. In total, 60% of areas with the highest spatial turnover in species (high densities of species range boundaries marking high levels of shift in the community of species present) occurred at political boundaries, especially commonly in Southeast Asia. Different biases existed for different taxa, with gridded analysis in reptiles, river-basins in Odonata (except the Americas) and county-boundaries for Amphibians in the US. On average, up to half (25-46%) species recorded range points fall outside their mapped distributions. Filtered Minimum-convex polygons performed better than expert range maps in reproducing modeled diversity patterns.

Main conclusions

Expert range maps showed high bias at administrative borders in all taxa, but this was highest at the transition from tropical to subtropical regions. Methods used were inconsistent across space, time and taxa, and ranges mapped did not match species distribution data. Alternate approaches can better reconstruct patterns of distribution than expert maps, and data driven approaches are needed to provide reliable alternatives to better understand species distributions.

Methods Materials and methods

We use a combination of approaches to explore the relationship between species range maps and geopolitical boundaries and a subset of geographic features. In some cases we used the density of species range boundaries to explore the relationship between these and various features (i.e. administrative boundaries, river basin boundaries etc.). Additionally, species richness and spatial turnover are used to explore changes in richness over short geographic distances. Analyses were conducted in R statistical software unless noted otherwise. All code scripts are available at https://github.com/qiaohj/iucn_fix. Workflows are shown in Figure S1a-c with associated scripts listed.

Species ranges and boundary density maps

ERMs (Expert range maps) were downloaded from the IUCN RedList website for mammals (5,709 species), odonates (2,239 species) and amphibians (6,684 species; https://www.iucnredlist.org/resources/grid/spatial-data). Shapefile maps for birds were downloaded from BirdLife (10,423 species, http://datazone.birdlife.org/species/requestdis), and for reptiles from the Global Assessment of Reptile Distributions (GARD) (10,064 species; Roll et al., 2017). Each species’ polygon boundaries were converted to a polylines to show the boundary of each species range (Figure S1a-II; codes are lines 7 – 18 in line2raster_xxxx.r ; xxxx varies based on the taxa). The associated shapefile was then split to produce independent polyline files for each species within each taxon (see Figure S1a-I, codes are lines 29 to 83 in the same file above.).

To generate species boundary density maps, species range boundaries were rasterized at 1km spatial resolution with an equal area projection (Eckert-IV), and stacked to form a single raster for each taxon (at the level of amphibians, odonates, etc.). This represented the number of species in each group and their overlapping range boundaries (Figure S1b-II, codes are in line2raster_all.r). Each cell value indicated the number of species whose distribution boundaries overlapped with each cell, enabling us to overlay this rasterized information with other features (i.e. administrative boundaries) so that the overlaps between them can be calculated in R. These species boundary density maps underlie most subsequent analyses. R code and caveats are given in the supplements, links are provided in text and Figure S1.

Geographic boundaries

Spatial exploration of species range boundaries in ArcGIS suggested that numerous geographic datasets (i.e. political and in few cases geographic features such as river basins) were used to delineate the species ranges for different regions and taxa (this is sometimes part of the methodology in developing ERMs as detailed by Ficetola et al., 2014). Thus in addition to analyzing the administrative bias and the percentage of occurrence records within each species’ ERM for all taxa, additional analyses were conducted when other biases were evident in any given taxa or region (detailed later in methods on a case-by-case basis).

For all taxa, we assessed the percentage of overlap between species range boundaries and national and provincial boundaries by digitizing each to 1km (equivalent to buffering thie polyline by 500m), both with and without coastal boundaries. An international map was used because international (Western) assessors use them, and does not necessarily denote agreed country boundaries (https://gadm.org/). The different buffers (500m, 1000m, 2500m, 5000m) were added to these administrative boundaries in ArcMap to account for potential, insignificant deviations from political boundaries (Figure S1b). An R script for the same function is provided in “country_line_buffer.r”.

To establish where multiple species shared range boundaries we reclassified the species range boundary density rasters for each taxa into richness classes using the ArcMap quartile function (Figure S1). From these ten classes the percentage of the top-two, and top-three quartiles of range densities within different buffers (500m, 1000m, 2500m, 5000m) was calculated per country to determine what percentage of highest range boundary density approximately followed administrative borders. This was done because people drawing ERMs may use detailed administrative maps or generalize near political borders, or may use political shapefiles that deviate slightly. It is consequently useful to include varying distances from administrative features to assess how range boundary densities vary in relation to administrative boundaries. Analyses of relationships between individual species range boundaries and administrative boundaries (coastal, non-coastal) were made in R and scripts provided (quantile_country_buffer_overlap.r).

Spatial turnover and administrative boundaries

Heatmaps of species richness were generated by summing entire sets of compiled species ranges for each taxon in polygonal form (Figure 1; Figure S1b-I). To assess abrupt diversity changes, standard deviations for 10km blocks were calculated using the block statistics function in ArcMap. Abrupt changes in diversity were signified by high standard deviations based on the cell statistics function in ArcGIS, which represented rapid changes in the number of species present. Maps were then classified into ten categories using the quartile function. Given the high variation in maximum diversity and taxonomic representation, only the top two –three richness categories were retained per taxon. This was then extracted using 1km buffers of national administrative boundaries to assess percentages of administrative boundaries overlapping turnover hotspots by assessing what proportion of political boundaries were covered by these turnover hotspots.

Taxon-specific analyses

Data exploration and mapping exposed taxon and regional-specific biases requiring additional analysis. Where other biases and irregularities were clear from visual inspection of the range boundary density maps for each taxa, the possible causes of biases were assessed by comparing range boundary density maps to high-resolution imagery and administrative maps via the ArcGIS server (AGOL). Standardized overlay of the taxon boundary sets with administrative or geophysical features from the image-server revealed three types of bias which were either spatially or taxonomically limited between: 1) amphibians with county borders in the United States, 2) dragonflies and river basins globally and 3) gridding of distributions of reptiles. In these cases, species boundary density maps were used as a basis to identify potential biases which were then explored empirically using appropriate methods.

For amphibians, counties in the United States (US) were digitized using a county map from the US (https://gadm.org/), then buffered by with 2.5km either side. Amphibian species range boundary density maps were reclassified showing where species range boundaries existed (with other non-range boundary areas reclassified as “no data,”) and all species boundaries numerically indicated (i.e. values of 1 indicates one species range boundary, values of 10 indicates ten species range boundaries). Percentages of species boundary areas falling on county and in the buffers, in addition to species range boundaries which did not overlap with county boundaries were calculated to give measures of what percentage of the species boundaries fell within 2.5km of county boundaries.

For Odonata, many species were mapped to river basin borders. We used river basins of levels 6-8 (sub-basin to basin) in the river hierarchy (https://hydrosheds.org) to assess the relationship between Odonata boundaries and river boundaries. Two IUCN datasets exist for Odonata; the IUCN Odonata specialist group spatial dataset

The central aim of the research was to investigate the underlying premises of UK neighbourhood crime policies through a comparative study of the responses to crime and disorder within both affluent and deprived neighbourhoods, the extent and nature of informal means of social control utilised by their residents and how collective efficacy is related to social capital and social cohesion. A further aim of the research was to examine the nature of social interaction relating to crime and disorder between the neighbourhoods in order to identify the extent to which such defensive or exclusive strategies may contribute to the social and spatial exclusion of deprived neighbourhoods.

The key research objectives were: