黄山近50年的气候变化研究

利用1956-2005年黄山风景区光明顶气象站的气象资料，分析了近50年黄山旅游风景区气温、降水、日照时数的变化特征。结果显示，黄山风景区年均温、冬季、夏季气温均呈上升趋势，冬季增温强于夏季；降水总体趋势下降；年平均日照时数也呈总体下降趋势，表明黄山风景区气候正在趋向变暖，特别是20世纪90年代以来气温升高显著，冬季增温明显，夏季降水变化加剧。     

安徽砀山水果产区近十年气候变化的R/S分析

基于1996—2005年的地面气象资料,应用R/S方法对砀山近十年平气温、降水和日照量等气候要素进行了分析。结果表明,砀山年平均气温、极端最高气温和极端最低气温均呈下降趋势,年降水量呈上升趋势,年日照量变化和缓,且具有较强的持续性。气候要素年际季节变化趋势表现为:冬、夏季平均温差减小,气温年较差有减小的趋势;降水夏季增加,其他各季节平均降水变率减小,各季节平均日照量变率减小。     

长江黄河源地气候变化诊断分析

根据长江源地伍道梁,托托河两站,黄河源地玛多站分析了近４０年江河源地气温、降水的变化。结果表明两地年平均气温总体呈变暖趋势,黄河源地温度变化倾向率大于长江源地。黄河源地最高、最低气温存在明显的非对称性变化,即最低气温趋向上升,而最高气温却趋向下降。长河源地最高、最低气温不存在非对称变化,但是最低气温的上升趋势大于最高气温的上升趋势,两地气温日较差显著减少。长江源地年降水量呈减少趋势,而黄河源地年降水量呈增加趋势,长江源地降水减少主要发生在夏季,黄河源地降水增加主要发生在冬、春季节。     

都兰县近40年气候资源变化特征分析

利用都兰县1961－2000年40年气象资料，运用统计学方法，对光、热、水等气候资源以及蒸发、风等气象要素的变化进行了分析，揭示了气候资源变化的基本事实和变化规律。结果表明：随着全球气候的变暖，近40年来，都兰县平均气温以0.269℃/10a的气候倾向率呈较明显的增温趋势，进入20世纪90年代升温趋势更加明显；气温≥0℃、≥5℃和≥10℃期间的积温均呈上升趋势，其中，≥10℃期间的积温上升趋势最为明显；年和汛期降水量增加，夏季降水量增加尤为明显；日照时数、蒸发和风速的年际变化呈下降趋势。     

西宁市近50年气候变化特征分析

利用西宁市气象观测站1961~2010年的气温和降水资料,分析了西宁市近50年的气候特征及周期变化。结果表明:50年来西宁市年平均气温呈现非连续性上升趋势,线性倾向值为0.09℃/10a,各季的变暖趋势和变暖幅度不尽相同,增幅依次为冬季、春季、秋季、夏季。50年来降水总体为波动中明显增加的趋势,增长率为16.3mm/10a,各季降水量也呈增加的趋势。西宁市降水和气温的年代分布具有明显的阶段性,显示气候变化具有阶段性、季节差异性特征。近50年来,西宁市年气温和降水变化均以27a为第1主周期。     

55年来门源地区气温变化特征分析

为了研究门源地区气温变化特征趋势,作者利用1961~2015年门源地区气象站逐月平均气温、最高气温和最低气温资料,采用线性倾向估计和Mann-Kendall法等方法,分析了近55年来门源地区气温变化特征。研究结果表明:(1)近55年来门源地区年和四季平均气温、最高气温和最低气温均呈极显著的增加趋势,而年和冬季气温日较差呈极显著的减小趋势。(2)门源地区最高气温和最低气温存在着非对称性变化。(3)年平均气温、最高气温和最低气温均表现为60~80年代较气候平均值偏低,90年代基本持平,进入21世纪00年代变暖突出,属于年代最高值,气温日较差在60~70年代比气候平均值偏高,80年代至21世纪00年代基本持平。(4)门源地区年平均气温、最高气温和最低气温在1993~1994年发生突变,气温日较差没有发生突变。     

近57年格尔木市气候变化特征

利用格尔木市气象台观测站1961—2017年年平均气温、最高气温、最低气温及降水资料,采用气候倾向率的方法及Mann-Kendall突变检验,分析格尔木市近57a气候变化趋势及突变年份。结果表明:近57a来,格尔木市年平均气温、最高气温和最低气温均呈极显著的增温趋势,最低气温增温最明显,冬季增温对年平均气温增高贡献率最大。年代际变化中最低温度是历史温度升温最快的一项。最高温度在1996年发生了明显的突变。近57a的年降水量呈增加趋势,气候倾向率为2.2mm/10a。季节变化中冬季降水量增加显著。年代际中表现为21世纪降水量增加最明显。降水日数呈弱增加趋势,冬夏比春秋增加略多,夏半年和冬半年气候倾向率均为0.6d/10a,说明57a来降水日数无论冬半年还是夏半年变化一致,且变幅较小。     

近60年山西省气候变化趋势及其对粮食作物产量的影响

利用山西省近60年的气象数据,采用重标极差方法对该省未来的气候变化趋势进行了预测和分析,并建立了种植业生产函数的线性模型,引入气候要素与非气候要素的交互项分析非气候要素投入如何改变气候要素对粮食作物单产的影响。结果表明:未来日照时数和降水会呈下降趋势,气温会保持上升趋势,而日照时数减少、气温上升和降水减少不利于粮食增产;非气候要素投入会改变气候要素变化对粮食作物生产的影响,随着气温上升、降水减少,增加灌溉、化肥投入对玉米增产意义不大,但可显著提升小麦单产。从人工光照技术开发、推广耐旱作物品种、完善农田灌溉设施等方面给出了提升山西省粮食作物生产适应气候变化能力的建议。     

秦皇岛湿润生态环境变化

利用线性倾向分析、滑动平均和计算干燥度等方法对秦皇岛市1954-2005年降水、气温、相对湿度、蒸发量、干燥度等变化进行分析研究，结果表明：近50年秦皇岛地区气温逐渐升高，降水减少，气候干燥度普遍增大，生态环境呈干旱化趋势，南部干旱化进程较北部大，90年代后干旱化趋势增大。     

1961—2010年西双版纳傣族自治州极端气温时空变化特征

利用1961—2010年西双版纳傣族自治州的逐日气象格点数据(0.25°×0.25°),运用R软件摘出研究区范围内的每个格点数据,利用STARDEX中的FORTRAN子程序计算出57个极端气候指数,选取其中与气温相关的9个主要极端指数,结合线性趋势分析与Mann-Kendall秩次检验等方法分析了1961—2010年西双版纳极端气温变化的特征。结果表明:(1)西双版纳近50年来气温呈显著上升趋势,平均气温、平均最高气温和平均最低气温分别以0.27℃/10a、0.22℃/10a和0.36℃/10a的速率上升,其值的空间分布呈现出自西北向东南递减趋势;(2)气温日较差平均值和较大气温日较差阈值呈下降趋势,分别以0.13℃/10a和0.25℃/10a的速率下降,其值的空间分布呈现出自西向东递减趋势;(3)冷暖日、冷暖夜阈值均呈上升趋势,分别以0.27℃/10a、0.16℃/10a、0.46℃/10a和0.27℃/10a的速率上升趋势,其值的空间分布呈现出北部、西北部向南部、东南部递减趋势。西双版纳气温变化呈明显增温趋势,研究区冷事件在减少,暖事件在增多。     

AN APPLICATION RUNOFF MODEL STRATEGY FOR UNGAGED WATERSHEDS1

ABSTRACT: Mathematical models for predicting watershed surface flow responses are available, most of which are elaborate nonlinear numerical surface and channel flow models linked with infiltration models. Such models may be used to make predictions for ungaged areas, assuming an acceptable fitting of the model to the topography and roughness of the real system. For some application purposes, these models are impractical because of their complexity and expensive computer solutions. A procedure is developed that uses a complex model of an ungaged area to derive a simpler parametric nonlinear system model for repetitious simulation with input sequences. The predicted flow outputs are obtained with the simpler model at significant savings of money and time. The procedures for constructing a complex kinematic model of a 40 acre (161,880 m²) reference watershed and deriving the simpler system model are outlined. The results of predictions from both models are compared with a selected set of measured events, all having essentially the same initial conditions. Peak discharges ranged from 3 to 118 ft³/sec (0.085 to 3.34 m³/sec), which includes the largest event of record. The inherent limitations of lumped systems models are demonstrated, including the bias caused by their inability to model infiltration losses after rainfall ceases. Computer costs and times for the models were compared. The derived simple model has a cost advantage when repeated use of a model is required. Such an applications hydrologic model has an engineering tradeoff of reduced accuracy, and lumping bias, but is more economical for certain design purposes.     

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.     

Biodiversity and biotechnology

The maintenance of biodiversity is urged from many quarters and on grounds ranging from aesthetic considerations to its usefulness, particularly for biotechnology. But regardless of the grounds for preserving biodiversity, writers are generally in agreement that it should be preserved. But, in examining the various references biodiversity, such as species diversity, genetic diversity, and habitat diversity, it is apparent that we cannot aim to preserve biodiversityas such, since there are a number of conflicts in any such undertaking. In preserving one aspect of biodiversity, we damage another aspect. Five arguments which attempt to ground our moral concern for biodiversity are reviewed and critiqued, not only for their consistency but also for their power to move us to action. The final section of the paper shows how conflicts in the values of personal and environmental health can impair ethical action and especially policy formation.An earlier version of this paper was read at the conference on Agriculture, Food, and Human Values: Tradition and Change, Orlando, Florida, October 7–9, 1987.     

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.