Spatial attributes and reserve design models: A review

A variety of decision models have been formulated for the optimal selection of nature reserve sites to represent a diversity of species or other conservation features. Unfortunately, many of these models tend to select scattered sites and do not take into account important spatial attributes such as reserve shape and connectivity. These attributes are likely to affect not only the persistence of species but also the general ecological functioning of reserves and the ability to effectively manage them. In response, researchers have begun formulating reserve design models that improve spatial coherence by controlling spatial attributes. We review the spatial attributes that are thought to be important in reserve design and also review reserve design models that incorporate one or more of these attributes. Spatial modeling issues, computational issues, and the trade-offs among competing optimization objectives are discussed. Directions for future research are identified. Ultimately, an argument is made for the development of models that capture the dynamic interdependencies among sites and species populations and thus incorporate the reasons why spatial attributes are important.     

Between economics and ecology: some historical and philosophical considerations for modelers of natural capital

Natural capital models attempt to remediate the relationship between economics and ecology either by conjoining models and theories from each discipline or by finding a type of phenomena that can be meaningfully measured by both fields. The developmentof a widely accepted model which integrates economics and ecologyhas eluded researchers since the early 1970s. This paper offers an historical and philosophical perspective on some of the conceptual problems or obstacles that hinder the development ofnatural capital models. In particular, the disciplinary assumptions of economic science and ecological science are examined and it is argued that these assumptions are antithetical. Hence, the development of an effective and acceptednatural capital model will require that economics and ecology reconsider their self-conceptions as sciences. For the purposesof theoretical research and practical policy, the paper cautionsagainst confusing the issue of whether or not economic models accord with ecological models with the issue of whether or not economic activities accord with ecological realities.     

The Impact of Landsat Satellite Monitoring on Conservation Biology

Landsat 7s recent malfunctioning will result in significant gaps in long-term satellite monitoring of Earth, affecting not only the research of the Earth science community but also conservation users of these data. To determine whether or how important Landsat monitoring is for conservation and natural resource management, we reviewed the Landsat programs history with special emphasis on the development of user groups. We also conducted a bibliographic search to determine the extent to which conservation research has been based on Landsat data. Conservation biologists were not an early user group of Landsat data because a) biologists lacked technical capacity – computers and software – to analyze these data; b) Landsats 1980s commercialization rendered images too costly for biologists budgets; and c) the broad-scale disciplines of conservation biology and landscape ecology did not develop until the mid-to-late 1980s. All these conditions had changed by the 1990s and Landsat imagery became an important tool for conservation biology. Satellite monitoring and Landsat continuity are mandated by the Land Remote Sensing Act of 1992. This legislation leaves open commercial options. However, past experiments with commercial operations were neither viable nor economical, and severely reduced the quality of monitoring, archiving and data access for academia and the public. Future satellite monitoring programs are essential for conservation and natural resource management, must provide continuity with Landsat, and should be government operated.     

A study of assessment indicators for environmental sustainable development of science parks in Taiwan

This study adopted the ecological footprint calculation structure to calculate the ecological footprints of the three major science parks in Taiwan from 2008 to 2010. The result shows that the ecological footprints of the Hsinchu Science Park, the Central Taiwan Science Park, and the Southern Taiwan Science Park were about 3.964, 2.970, and 4.165 ha per capita. The ecological footprint (EF) of the Central Taiwan Science Park was the lowest, meaning that the influence of the daily operations in the Central Taiwan Science Park on the environment was rather low. Secondly, the population density was relatively high, and the EF was not the highest of the Hsinchu Science Park, meaning that, while consuming ecological resources, the environmental management done was effective. In addition, the population density in Southern Taiwan Science Park is 82.8 units, lower than that of Hsinchu Science Park, but its ecological footprint per capita is 0.201 units, higher than Hsinchu, implying its indicator management has space for improvement. According to the analysis result above, in the science parks, the percentages of high-energy-consuming industries were rather high. It was necessary to encourage development of green industries with low energy consumption and low pollution through industry transformation.     

Monitoring of growth and yield and response to silvicultural treatments

The objectives for monitoring the growth and yield of forests can range from collecting data to validate current management on an ownership to collecting data at a regional level to develop models, measure treatment response, or observe long-term growth trends. Traditional inventory and research data each have drawbacks for observing growth and yield and treatment response. The actual design of a monitoring system should try to minimize these problems, but will depend on the specific objectives. Monitoring of operations may take an inventory-type approach, while gathering regional information to build models requires a design more like research. Each organization must be responsible for monitoring its own operations, however, cooperatives offer a viable and cost effective alternative to gathering regional growth and response data. Monitoring programs will lead to confidence and credibility in management practices and in the use of tested models.     

Multimedia Integrated Modeling for Environmental Protection: Introduction to a Collaborative Framework

The EPA's Office of Research and Development is embarking on a long term project to develop a Multimedia Integrated Modeling System (MIMS). The system will have capabilities to represent the transport and fate of nutrients and chemical stressors over multiple spatial and temporal scales. MIMS will be designed to improve the environmental management community's ability to evaluate the impact of air and water quality and watershed management practices on stream and estuarine conditions. The system will provide a computer-based problem-solving environment for testing understanding of multimedia (atmosphere, land, water) environmental problems, such as the movement of chemicals through the hydrologic cycle, and the response of aquatic ecological systems to land-use change, with initial emphasis on the fish health endpoint. The design will attempt to combine the state-of-the-art in computer science, system design, and numerical analysis (i.e., object-oriented design, parallel processing, advanced numerical libraries including analytic elements) with the latest advancements in process level science (hydrology, atmospheric sciences, chemistry, ecology). The purpose of this paper is to introduce a vision for a MIMS and anticipate the challenges to its development.     

A Hierarchical Approach to Designing Compact Ecological Reserve Systems

A number of mathematical models and solution techniques have been developed to design systems of reserve sites to protect species and their natural habitats. This paper presents two optimization models for obtaining ecological reserve systems that are spatially compact. Compact reserve systems will increase species persistence relative to more fragmented systems and can reduce the costs associated with reserve boundaries. These optimization models employ a hierarchical approach that incorporates both the boundary length of all clusters and the sum of within-cluster distances. Unlike previous approaches, we argue that measuring the distance between sites within clusters (and not between clusters) is more appropriate. Numerical experiments are conducted on synthetic grid systems and on a real-world hexagonal data set. These experiments confirm that the models produce reasonably compact clusters of reserve sites that respect species availability and budget constraints. Simplifications to the models are developed that significantly reduce the computational effort, while still identifying reasonable sets of reserve clusters. Sensitivity of the results to changes in model parameters (number of allowable sites, number of possible clusters, and rarity of species covered) is also explored.     

Mathematical Methods for Spatially Cohesive Reserve Design

The problem of designing spatially cohesive nature reserve systems that meet biodiversity objectives is formulated as a nonlinear integer programming problem. The multiobjective function minimises a combination of boundary length, area and failed representation of the biological attributes we are trying to conserve. The task is to reserve a subset of sites that best meet this objective. We use data on the distribution of habitats in the Northern Territory, Australia, to show how simulated annealing and a greedy heuristic algorithm can be used to generate good solutions to such large reserve design problems, and to compare the effectiveness of these methods.     

Development of a landfill model to prioritize design and operating objectives

The application of scientifically based decision making tools to help address solid waste management issues dates back to the early 1960s. Researchers continue to use operations research tools to help optimize landfill design and operating parameters. This paper discusses the application of another type of decision making tool, the analytical hierarchy process (AHP), to address priority ranking for a number of landfill engineering design and operating objectives in developing and developed countries. In this application, the AHP is used to rank, and prioritize, economic, environmental, health and safety, legislative and public perception objectives for landfill design and operations specific to landfill distance from a community, and precipitation levels. Results from a global survey using the Delphi process are included, with a discussion on the survey’s impact on the objective rankings relative to community proximity and precipitation. The Delphi process worked extremely well, and was an excellent tool to use in this application. The initial results from the objective rankings show promise in the development of an integrated model for landfill design and operation.     

吉林省地方生态环境标准体系研究及发展思考

地方生态环境标准是国家生态环境标准的有效补充。以吉林省为例,通过系统研究地方生态环境标准体系现状,发现吉林省地方生态环境标准存在体系不健全、黑土地分布区生态环境协同保护待加强、标准的全过程管理机制待加强等问题,提出加强顶层设计,完善地方生态环境标准体系,并推动东北黑土地分布区地方生态环境标准体系协同发展,紧跟政策完善重点区域和流域污染物协同管控标准,强化标准宣贯等发展构想,可为其他地区生态环境标准体系构建工作提供参考。     

新形势下环境监测科技发展现状与展望

结合国家生态环境监测网络建设方案和环境监测管理方式的变化,依据"十三五"期间环境保护重点工作和国家科技体制改革方向,对环境监测科研现状进行了分析。从环境监测技术体系建设、国家重点研发计划、国家科技重大专项等方面综合考虑,分析了水、气、土等方面的科研工作现状和问题,总结了"十三五"期间环境监测技术体系建设需求和进度安排,归纳了国家层面环境监测科技发展需求,提出了"十三五"环境监测科技发展的展望与思路。     

Hiking Trails and Tourism Impact Assessment In Protected Area: Jiuzhaigou Biosphere Reserve,China

More and more visitors are attracted to protected areas nowadays, which not only bring about economic increase but also seriously adverse impacts on the ecological environment. In protected areas, trails are linkage between visitors and natural ecosystem, so they concentrate most of the adverse impacts caused by visitors. The trampling problems on the trails have been received attentions in the tremendous researches. However, few of them have correlated the environmental impacts to trail spatial patterns. In this project, the trails were selected as assessment objective, the trampling problems trail widening, multiple trail, and root exposure were taken as assessment indicators to assess ecological impacts in the case study area Jiuzhaigou Biosphere Reserve, and two spatial index, connectivity and circularity, were taken to indicate the trail network spatial patterns. The research results showed that the appearing frequency of the trampling problems had inverse correlation with the circularity and connectivity of the trail network, while the problem extent had no correlation with the spatial pattern. Comparing with the pristine trails, the artificial maintenance for the trails such as wooden trails and flagstone trails could prohibit vegetation root from exposure effectively. The research finds will be useful for the future trail design and tourism management.     

Efficiency,costs and trade-offs in marine reserve system design

With marine biodiversity conservation the primary goal for reserve planning initiatives, a site's conservation potential is typically evaluated on the basis of the biological and physical features it contains. By comparison, socio-economic information is seldom a formal consideration of the reserve system design problem and generally limited to an assessment of threats, vulnerability or compatibility with surrounding uses. This is perhaps surprising given broad recognition that the success of reserve establishment is highly dependent on widespread stakeholder and community support. Using information on the spatial distribution and intensity of commercial rock lobster catch in South Australia, we demonstrate the capacity of mathematical reserve selection procedures to integrate socio-economic and biophysical information for marine reserve system design. Analyses of trade-offs highlight the opportunities to design representative, efficient and practical marine reserve systems that minimise potential loss to commercial users. We found that the objective of minimising the areal extent of the reserve system was barely compromised by incorporating economic design constraints. With a small increase in area (<3%) and boundary length (<10%), the economic impact of marine reserves on the commercial rock lobster fishery was reduced by more than a third. We considered also how a reserve planner might prioritise conservation areas using information on a planning units selection frequency. We found that selection frequencies alone were not a reliable guide for the selection of marine reserve systems, but could be used with approaches such as summed irreplaceability to direct conservation effort for efficient marine reserve design.     

Environmental impact of Information Communication Technology: A review of econometric assessment methods,influential mechanism,and influential direction

In recent decades, the rapid development of the global society and economy has brought serious environmental problems, such as air pollution, greenhouse effect, and ecosystem degradation, all of which have attracted wide attention. Simultaneously, the use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) has been on the rise since the 1980s, which stimulates the growth of the economy and has a certain degree of impact on the ecological environment. Accordingly, the scientific community's interest in assessing this impact has grown considerably, and econometric methods are widely used as evaluation tools. However, the research results are often different in different regions, periods, environmental proxies, and ICT. Some studies indicate that the development of ICT is beneficial to environmental improvement, while others state that it is not. Therefore, a comprehensive analysis of the methods, mechanisms, and relative policy suggestions of this topic is desiderated. To address this gap, this paper carries out a systematic literature review of the usage of econometric methods in the assessment of the environmental impact of ICT. Among the 472 articles retrieved from scientific literature databases, 46 met the inclusion criteria and were analyzed in detail. This study aims to provide scholars with a mental picture of the current state of scientific research, identify the factors that influence the direction of ICT's impact on the environment, and enable future researchers to use more reliable and accurate estimation methods. The methods used in selected articles were divided into two main groups (i.e., time series models and panel data models), and panel data models were further subdivided into five categories. The detailed flow of these methods is summarized, and new advanced pre-test methods and estimators are highlighted. Furthermore, the analysis also indicates that among all the countries and regions involved in the selected articles, there is a non-strict inverted U-shaped curve between the level of socio-economic development and the direction of the impact of ICT on the environment. Finally, current research challenges are discussed, and potential directions for future research on this topic are also projected.     

我国新污染物污染现状、问题及治理对策

新污染物具有生物毒性、环境持久性和生物累积性,威胁人体健康和生态环境。随着综合国力的提升和人民对美好生活的向往,新污染物治理是“十四五”及今后的重点任务。简述了新污染物的定义、分类及危害,分析了我国新污染物的分布特征,针对新污染物风险防范过程中存在的新污染物底数不清、管理水平缺乏、环保意识不强等问题。提出,开展摸底调查,提高管理水平,科普宣传等措施建议,以期为实现新污染物的风险管控和保障人民生命健康安全提供参考。     

污水库自净与运行情况调查及分析

为了了解独山子石化总厂贮存式氧化塘型污水库使用多年的实际情况，统计，分析了近二年的水质监测数据及水生态情况，结果表明，污水库自净及运行状态良好，近期发生的生态环境被破坏事件主要是由于库区水面降低，底质毒物富集造成，控制生产排污，加强库区运行管理对污水库的水源保护极为重要。     

不同层级环境应急救援资源储备体系建设探索——以安庆市粗苯泄漏事件为例

以安庆市粗苯泄漏事件为例,分析了事件特点及应急处置过程中存在的主要问题,阐述了环境应急救援资源储备体系在环境应急管理中的重要作用,从应急物资储备网络建设、应急救援装备储备网络建设和环境应急救援信息库建设3个方面探索了不同层级应急救援资源储备体系建设的重点内容,为环境应急救援资源储备体系建设提供参考。     

水生态环境质量评价方法及在黄河流域的应用进展

开展水生态环境质量评价方法研究，建立合适的河流健康评价体系是解决河流健康问题的前提和实现河流健康管理的重要手段。黄河自上而下生态环境现状迥异，水生态环境脆弱，寻求一种或多种适合黄河流域水生态环境质量的评价方法具有重要意义。该文介绍了国内外水生态环境质量评价方法及在黄河流域的应用进展，总结了鱼类生物完整性指数(F-IBI)、底栖无脊椎动物完整指数(B-IBI)、着生藻类生物完整性指数(P-IBI)及水生态环境质量综合评价法的主要指标，以及黄河流域不同区域生物种类的评价指标，分析了各评价方法优缺点及应用范围，并根据目前研究基础评述了黄河流域水生态环境质量评价存在的问题，对黄河流域水生态环境质量评价方法、指示生物的选择及水生态环境质量综合评价法的研究等提出了具体建议。     

金山三岛陆域生态系统健康状况分析评价

在对上海市金山三岛自然保护区陆域生态系统调查研究的基础上,采用层次分析法-综合指数评价模型对其进行生态健康状况评价分析。结果表明,该陆域生态系统综合健康指数(CEI)为0.648,保护区的生态质量一般,生态系统稳定性差,自我恢复能力不强。建议采取一定的人为干预措施来保护金山三岛陆域生态系统,使其朝更优的方向发展。     

关于省级生态环境监测机构发展规划的思考

在剖析新形势下生态环境监测发展形势需求的基础上,分析了生态环境监测机构发展在精准支撑环境管理、提升监测科研创新驱动力和建设高水平人才队伍等方面存在的问题。提出了以支撑、服务、引领生态环境决策管理为导向,深化制度建设、强化人才队伍、加强科研创新、夯实基础能力、打造特色亮点,全面提升核心竞争力的省级生态环境监测机构发展规划思路,以及环境监测预警能力建设、科研创新发展、人才队伍建设、体制机制建设等方面建设任务。为实现生态环境治理体系和治理能力现代化,全面改善生态环境质量提供有力支撑。