中原经济区能源消费视角下的大气环境压力评估

研究以能源消费模式为切入点,分析中原经济区能源消费总量、消费结构和利用效率的现状水平,并分析能源消费引起的大气环境压力状况。基于经济发展速度调控及节能减排力度的不同,设置2020年三种能源消费情景,使用区域能源消费总量优化模型模拟预测不同情景下的能源消费总量,并分析不同情景下的大气环境压力。结果表明,快速发展和适度发展Ⅰ情景下,2020年区域能源消费总量将比2012年增加4.2×10~8tce和2.4×10~8tce,煤炭消费总量将增加3.1×10~8tce和1.2×10~8tce,大气污染物排放压力增加30%和50%;适度发展Ⅱ情景下,能源消费总量将增加0.2×10~8tce,煤炭消费总量将下降0.3×10~8tce,大气污染物排放压力将降低20%。因此,要实现经济发展稳步增长(年均增长率7.7%)和大气污染物排放总量削减10%目标,重中之重是实现煤炭消费总量"零增长"或"负增长",同时力争能源消费总量控制在5×10~8~6×10~8tce,凭借煤炭占比大幅下降(降至65%左右)最大限度发挥能源供给领域节能效应,依靠产业结构升级节能效应和技术节能拓展能源消费领域节能空间,将能效水平提高至0.6tce/万元以下。     

大气环境约束下的中国煤炭消费总量控制研究

煤炭消费过程中排放的大气污染物已成为我国大气污染的重要来源。本文采用WRF-CAMx 空气质量模型定量分析了煤炭消费- 污染物排放- 空气质量之间的影响关系,基于情景分析方法,研究了2020 年、2030年空气质量改善需求对地区大气污染物排放总量与煤炭消费总量的约束作用。在此基础上,结合重点地区行业发展与能源供需等因素,提出各省煤炭消费总量控制目标与控煤对策建议。研究结果表明,要实现2020 年、2030 年空气质量改善阶段性目标,全国煤炭消费总量应分别控制在40.8 亿吨和37.7 亿吨左右,京津冀鲁豫等11 个重点省份2020 年煤炭消费量应控制在15.8 亿吨、2030 年控制在13.1 亿吨,全国煤炭清洁化利用水平需要在当前基础上大幅度提升。     

宁夏焦化企业清洁生产分析探讨

截至2012年底,宁夏焦炭产能达到972万t/a,已成为宁夏煤化工重要产业链之一,然而炼焦行业污染非常严重,对当地环境构成了很大威胁。通过对宁夏焦化行业的清洁生产相关内容进行调研,重点对焦化企业的生产工艺与装备、大气污染物排放及废物回收利用等方面进行了综合分析,提出了相应的建议,以提高焦化企业清洁生产水平。     

京津冀地区重点耗煤行业大气污染物排放清单研究

本研究通过京津冀地区各行业的年度煤炭消费量确定火电行业、钢铁行业和焦化行业为重点耗煤行业,以在线监测数据、污染源调查(现场调研、环评、验收)数据、排放因子数据为基础,自下而上建立了2013年京津冀地区重点耗煤行业大气污染物排放清单,分析研究了SO_2、NO_x和PM_(10)的排放量与污染贡献分布情况,掌握了京津冀地区重点耗煤行业大气污染物排放现状,为大气污染物减排提供数据基础。研究表明,2013年京津冀火电、钢铁焦化行业共排放SO_2 72.35万t、NO_x 131.99万t、PM_(10) 30.36万t。     

中国煤炭消费对PM2.5污染的影响研究

国务院颁布的《大气污染防治行动计划》明确提出制定国家煤炭消费总量中长期控制目标,到2017年,煤炭占能源消费总量比重降低到65%以下,然而煤炭消费对PM_(2.5)污染的贡献到底多大,这是当前亟待研究的科学问题。为定量分析煤炭消费对我国PM_(2.5)污染的影响,本研究首先计算了2012年煤炭消费产生的大气污染物排量,然后利用CAMx空气质量模型,分别采用组分分析法和情景模拟法两种方法研究了煤炭消费对全国PM_(2.5)污染的影响。组分分析法研究表明,煤炭消费对全国PM_(2.5)年均浓度的贡献率约为61%,其中煤炭直接燃烧、煤炭相关行业的贡献率分别约为37%、24%;情景模拟法研究表明,煤炭消费对全国PM_(2.5)年均浓度的贡献率约为56%。因此,我国由于煤炭消费对全国PM_(2.5)年均浓度的贡献率为56%~61%。     

能源消费结构对京津冀经济发展的影响研究——基于Panel-Data模型

能源是经济发展的重要引擎,能源消费结构对区域经济发展质量有着重要影响。作为我国重要的经济增长极之一,京津冀地区能源消费巨大,能源消费结构改善关系到区域经济协同发展、人们生活水平提高和环境保护。通过选取京津冀2000—2014年的煤炭、石油、天然气、电力等能源消费结构和经济发展指标数据,建立能源消费结构与经济发展指标的面板数据模型。研究发现,京津冀能源消费总量对人均地区生产总值具有正向作用,电力对人均地区生产总值具有正向影响,而煤炭、石油具有反向影响。在此基础上,提出在改善区域能源供给方面采用适度提高能源总量,减少煤炭等重污染能源比重的政策措施,以有效促进京津冀的经济协同发展和人们生活水平提高。     

环境资讯

正【环境新闻】我国可再生能源占能源消费的比重尚不足10%加剧雾霾天气产生我国部分地区连续爆发雾霾天气,不合理的能源结构,特别是燃煤过度排放,是加剧雾霾天气的重要原因。我国煤炭消费占能源消费总量的67%,占全球煤炭消费量的40%,仍以年均5%的速度增长。与此形成对比的是我国可再生能源占能源消费的比重尚不足10%,且弃风、弃水问题突出。因此,加快转变能源利用方式,     

京津冀地区公众对雾霾污染认知的调查研究

针对京津冀地区公众,围绕雾霾污染的基本情况、影响状况、预防与治理措施三个方面,展开认知"摸底"调查。结果显示:多数居民对雾霾污染有一定了解,认为以煤炭为主的能源消费与汽车尾气是京津冀雾霾污染的主要成因;近70%的居民认为雾霾污染是对人体健康影响最大的因素;大多数居民在雾霾天气会选择防护措施,认为调整产业、能源结构应是治理京津冀雾霾污染的首要措施,34%的居民认为短距离出行尽量选用公交、自行车。通过准确了解京津冀地区公众对于雾霾污染的认知现状,从政府和公众两个方面提出京津冀雾霾污染治理的有效路径选择。     

中国怎样走煤炭清洁化利用之路

中国正处于煤炭经济调整阶段,短期内煤炭消费总量仍会上升,但增速放缓。因此,当前我们应在控制消费总量、加速煤炭减量化进程的同时,进一步加快煤炭的清洁利用步伐:制定和强力实施严格的空气质量标准,重点针对电厂制定严格的排放标准,从源头上控制煤炭污染排放;利用国际能源市场,优化国内能源结构;提高煤炭利用效率,大力发展并推动洁净煤技术在煤炭开采和燃烧环节的应用;促进煤炭消费进一步向发电和冶金行业集中,从而在末端采用低成本、高效率的清洁处理技术。     

京津冀雾霾“病因”明朗 冬奥会空气达标减煤是关键

北京,2013年12月2日：绿色和平与英国利兹大学研究团队最新发布的《雾霾真相——京津冀地区PM2.5污染解析及减排策略研究》显示：煤炭燃烧排放出的大气污染物是整个京津冀地区雾霾的最大根源。从行业来看,煤电、钢铁和水泥生产是京津冀首要的“污染”行业,其排放出的烟尘、二氧化硫、氮氧化物和挥发性有机物等是雾霾的主要来源。     

Conversion of temperate forests into heaths: Role of ecosystem disturbance and ericaceous plants

Fire and logging in nutrient-poor temperate forests with certain ericaceous understory plants may convert the forests into heaths. The process of disturbance-induced heath formation is documented by using examples ofCalluna in western Europe,Kalmia in Newfoundland, andGaultheria (salal) in coastal British Columbia. In a cool, temperate climate, rapid vegetative growth ofCalluna, Kalmia, and salal following disturbance results in increasing organic accumulation (paludification), nutrient sequestration, soil acidification, and allelochemicals. These are thought to be the main reasons to conifer regeneration failure in disturbed habitats. If continuation in forest is a land-use objective, then temperate forests with an ericaceous understory should not be logged unless effective silvicultural methods are devised to control the ericaceous plants and restore forest regeneration. Preharvest vegetation control may be considered as an option. Failure to control the understory plants may lead to a long-term vegetation shift, from forest to heathland, particularly in nutrient-poor sites. Successful methods of controllingKalmia andGaultheria, however, have yet to be developed. While theKalmia- andGaultheria- dominated heathlands are undesirable in Canada and the Pacific Northwest, a wide range ofCalluna heathlands of western Europe are being conserved as natural and seminatural vegetation.     

Using Paleo Reconstructions to Improve Streamflow Forecast Lead Time in the Western United States

In water stressed regions, water managers are exploring new horizons that would help in long‐range streamflow forecasts. Oceanic‐atmospheric oscillations have been shown to influence streamflow variability. In this study, long‐lead time streamflow forecasts are made using a multiclass kernel‐based data‐driven support vector machine (SVM) model. The extended streamflow records based on tree ring reconstructions were used to provide a longer time series data. Reconstructed data were used from 1658 to 1952 and the instrumental record was used from 1953 to 2007. Reconstructions for oceanic‐atmospheric oscillations included the El Niño‐Southern Oscillation, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, and North Atlantic Oscillation. Streamflow forecasts using all four oscillations were made with one‐year to five‐year lead times for 21 gages in the western United States. This is the first study that uses both instrumental and reconstructed data of oscillations in SVM model to improve streamflow forecast lead time. SVM model was able to provide “satisfactory” to “very good” forecasts with one‐ to five‐year lead time for the selected gages. The use of all the oscillation indices helped in achieving better predictability compared to using individual oscillations. The SVM modeling results are better when compared with multiple linear regression model forecasts. The findings are statistical in nature and are expected to be useful for long‐term water resources planning and management.     

Urban ecological systems: scientific foundations and a decade of progress

Urban ecological studies, including focus on cities, suburbs, and exurbs, while having deep roots in the early to mid 20th century, have burgeoned in the last several decades. We use the state factor approach to highlight the role of important aspects of climate, substrate, organisms, relief, and time in differentiating urban from non-urban areas, and for determining heterogeneity within spatially extensive metropolitan areas. In addition to reviewing key findings relevant to each state factor, we note the emergence of tentative "urban syndromes" concerning soils, streams, wildlife and plants, and homogenization of certain ecosystem functions, such as soil organic carbon dynamics. We note the utility of the ecosystem approach, the human ecosystem framework, and watersheds as integrative tools to tie information about multiple state factors together. The organismal component of urban complexes includes the social organization of the human population, and we review key modes by which human populations within urban areas are differentiated, and how such differentiation affects environmentally relevant actions. Emerging syntheses in land change science and ecological urban design are also summarized. The multifaceted frameworks and the growing urban knowledge base do however identify some pressing research needs.     

Neighbourhood characteristics and urban gardens in the Toledo metropolitan area: staffing and voluntarism,food production,infrastructure, and sustainability practices

Urban gardens are important sources of sustenance for communities with limited access to food. Hence, this study focuses on food production in gardens in the Toledo metropolitan area in Northwest Ohio. We administered surveys to 150 garden managers from November 2014 to February 2015 in our attempt to better understand how neighbourhood racial composition and poverty levels are related to staffing and voluntarism, food production and distribution, the development of infrastructure, and the adoption of sustainability practices in urban gardens. The results from 30 gardens are presented in this paper. We used Geographic Information Systems to map the gardens and overlay the map with 2010 census data so that we could conduct demographic analyses of the neighbourhoods in which the gardens were located. Though the gardens were small – two acres or less – up to 46 varieties of food were grown in a single garden. Gardens also operated on small budgets. Food from the gardens was gifted or shared with friends, family, and neighbourhood residents. Gardens in predominantly minority neighbourhoods tended to have fewer institutional partners, less garden infrastructure, and had adopted fewer sustainable practices than gardens in predominantly White neighbourhoods. Nonetheless, residents of predominantly minority and high-poverty neighbourhoods participated in garden activities and influenced garden operations. Volunteering and staffing were racialised and gendered.     

Predicting deer-vehicle collisions in an urban area

Collisions with deer and other large animals are increasing, and the resulting economic costs and risks to public safety have made mitigation measures a priority for both city and wildlife managers. We created landscape models to describe and predict deer-vehicle collision (DVCs) within the City of Edmonton, Alberta. Models based on roadside characteristics revealed that DVCs occurred frequently where roadside vegetation was both denser and more diverse, and that DVCs were more likely to occur when the groomed width of roadside right-of-ways was smaller. No DVCs occurred where the width of the vegetation-free or manicured roadside buffer was greater than 40 m. Landscape-based models showed that DVCs were more likely in more heterogeneous landscapes where road densities were lower and speed limits were higher, and where non-forested vegetation such as farmland was in closer proximity to larger tracts of forest. These models can help wildlife and transportation managers to identify locations of high collision frequency for mitigation. Modifying certain landscape and roadside habitats can be an effective way to reduce deer-vehicle collisions.     

BIOLOGICAL INDICATORS AND BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF ESTUARINE/COASTAL POLLUTION1

ABSTRACT: Sustained interest in and concern about the health status of the aquatic environment has resulted in extensive research focused on (1) effects of pollution on survival, growth, and reproduction of resource species at all life stages; (2) diseases of fish and shellfish, as they may be related to pollution and as they may serve as indicators of environmental stress; and (3) contaminant body burdens in fish and shellfish - their effects on the aquatic animals and their potential effects on humans. Effects, lethal and sublethal, of pollutants on life history stages of fish and shellfish have been documented, as have impacts on local stocks in badly degraded habitats, but as yet there has been no adequate quantitative demonstration of effects on entire aquatic species - probably because of the difficulty in sorting out relative effects of the many environmental factors that influence abundance. Sublethal effects, especially those that result in disease, have been examined intensively, and some diseases and disease syndromes have been associated statistically with pollution. Other pollution indicators (biochemical, physiological, genetic, behavioral, and ecological) have also received some attention, as have body burdens of contaminants in aquatic species. Research, especially that conducted during the past decade, has done much to clarify the many pathways and toxic effects of contaminants on aquatic animals, and has also helped to identify mechanisms for survival of fish and shellfish in the presence of environmental changes caused by human activities.     

Journalists' views of advertiser pressures on agricultural news

All major journalism ethical codes explicitly state that journalists should protect editorial copy from undue influence by outside sources. However, much of the previous research on agricultural information has concentrated on what information various media communicate (gatekeeping studies) or communication's role in increasing innovation adoption (diffusion studies). Few studies have concentrated specifically on organizational and structural constraints that might adversely affect agricultural journalists' ethical standards; those that have, focus largely on farm magazines. A study of newspaper reporters who cover agricultural news found that the most pressing ethical concern is the effect of advertiser (agri-business) pressure on editorial copy, and that their concerns in general parallel those of farm magazine writers and editors. The majority reported being in situations in which they might be exposed to advertiser pressure, including pressures to change or withhold editorial copy. Large minorities suggested that advertising pressures affect the overall environment in which agricultural journalists work, and more than one in ten said they allow advertiser pressures to influence editorial decisions. The newspaper reporters who cover agricultural beats showed slightly more resistance to advertiser pressure than did farm magazine editors in a parallel study.     

Definition Procedures Have Little Effect on Performance of Environmental Classifications of Streams and Rivers

Mapped environmental classifications are defined using various procedures, but there has been little evaluation of the differences in their ability to discriminate variation in independent ecological characteristics. We tested the performance of environmental classifications of the streams and rivers of France that had been defined from the same environmental data using geographic regionalization and numerical classification of individual river valley segments. Test data comprised invertebrate assemblages, water chemistry, and hydrological indexes obtained from sites throughout France. Classification performance was measured by analysis of similarity (ANOSIM). Geometric regions defined by a regular grid and without regard to environmental variables and a posteriori classifications based on clustering the test datasets defined lower and upper bounds of performance for a given number of classes. Differences in classification performances were generally small. The ANOSIM statistics for the a posteriori classifications were around twice that of all environmental classifications, including geometrically defined regions. The hydro-ecoregions performed slightly better for the invertebrate data and the network classification performed slightly better for the chemistry and hydrological data. Our results indicate that environmental classifications that are defined using different procedures can be comparable in terms of their ability to discriminate variation of ecological characteristics and that alleged differences in performance arising from different classification procedures can be small relative to unexplained variation. We conclude that definition procedures might have little effect on the performance of large-scale environmental classifications and decisions over which procedures to use should be based primarily on pragmatic considerations.     

MANGANESE CYCLE IN IMPOUNDMENT WATER

Manganese entering impounded water will undergo a cyclic transformation. Oxidation precipitates manganese from top waters. At the bottom of the lake, biological activity will render manganese soluble by both intracellular as well as extracellular activity. The study was made to demonstrate that biological reduction and transformation, organometallic complexation, together with the presence of carbon dioxide and the lowering of pH all have some effect on the solubility of manganese. Dissolved manganese may be brought back to top waters during the lake overturn and therefore deteriorates the water quality.     

Provincial development plans in Zimbabwe: an analysis of their content,structure and methodology

Zimbabwean provincial plans were instituted to help in the achievement of the national goal of the creation of an egalitarian, socialist and integrated society. The national goal itself was adopted as an antithesis to the dualist society characterised by spatial, economic, social, politican and technological inequalities that Zimbabwe inherited from colonialism. This meant that provincial plans had to play both a functional (or growth allocating/distribution) and a territorial (or redistribution) role.

This paper reviews their role in achieving the national goal by examining their functions, content, structure and methodology. The paper concludes that because of their nature, provincial plans are not suitable tools for the achievement of the national goal.