Effects of livestock grazing and well construction on prairie vegetation structure surrounding shallow natural gas wells.

Short and sparse vegetation near shallow gas wells has generally been attributed to residual effects from well construction, but other mechanisms might also explain these trends. We evaluated effects of distance to shallow gas wells on vegetation and bare ground in mixed-grass prairies in southern Alberta, Canada, from 2010 to 2011. We then tested three hypotheses to explain why we found shorter vegetation and more bare ground near wells, using cattle fecal pat transects from 2012, and our vegetation quadrats. We evaluated whether empirical evidence suggested that observed patterns were driven by (1) higher abundance of crested wheatgrass (Agropyron cristatum) near wells, (2) residual effects of well construction, or (3) attraction of livestock to wells. Crested wheatgrass occurrence was higher near wells, but this did not explain effects of wells on vegetation structure. Correlations between distance to wells and litter depth were the highest near newer wells, providing support for the construction hypothesis. However, effects of distance to wells on other vegetation metrics did not decline as time since well construction increased, suggesting that other mechanisms explained observed edge effects. Cattle abundance was substantially higher near wells, and this effect corresponded with changes in habitat structure. Our results suggest that both residual effects of well construction and cattle behavior may explain effects of shallow gas wells on habitat structure in mixed-grass prairies, and thus, to be effective, mitigation strategies must address both mechanisms.

Existential despair and bipolar disorder: the therapeutic alliance as a mood stabilizer.

Talking with a manic patient is not easy, but it is also not hopeless. Manic patients are hopeful, ever hopeful, and indeed often too hopeful. But their hopes and dreams, however big, are usually brief and soon damaged by the realities of life. Ultimately, most patients with bipolar disorder become chronically depressed, denied of their hopes by others. Appropriate medication treatment is necessary, but not sufficient, for many such persons. The job of the clinician is twofold initially: first, to seek to existentially be with manic patients and then, to counterprojectively give perspective to those patients about their manic worldview, without completely denying it. This twofold approach then can lead to a healthy therapeutic alliance, which itself has a mood-stabilizing effect. Along with mood-stabilizing medications, this alliance can then lead patients toward full recovery. Put more simply, clinicians need to talk to manic patients about their hopes, to explore the limits of their grandiosity without judging it, to seek out their strengths and to validate them. They also need to go where the patients are, to encounter patients and find the person beneath the illness, to provide a strong relationship, an alliance that cannot be shaken, to conflict with the patient sometimes and not at other times. It is a tall order, and one not infrequently avoided. Yet the times seem to call for a return to actually talking with manic patients, and maybe curing them with such talk. Or perhaps that is grandiose.