活性污泥工艺的多目标优化分析

研究了多目标优化方法在活性污泥工艺优化中应用的可行性,以国际水协(IWA)发布的基准仿真模型BSM1的工艺流程为对象,以出水水质、过程能耗和反应池体积的指标为优化目标,以反应池池容(5个)、混合液回流量、污泥回流量、污泥排放量、反应池氧气传质系数(3个)等11个变量为决策变量,构建了基于BSM1的多目标优化模型,并利用MatLab非支配排序遗传算法NSGA-II进行求解,获得了BSM1多目标优化模型的Pareto解.研究结果表明,在Dry进水条件下,通过将体积指标增大4.1%,可以明显改善出水水质指标(降低81.5%),能耗指标也能得到一定改善(降低13.3%);在3种进水条件(Dry,Rain,Storm)下,相对于BSM1工艺参数的缺省值,利用本研究的优化解作为工艺参数,均能不同程度改善出水水质、降低能耗.研究结果显示,在活性污泥过程不同目标之间进行权衡可以通过多目标优化方法来实现.     

基于生态系统服务权衡的生态安全多情景决策

聚焦于成渝城市群生态安全格局识别的主题,耦合多源数据,运用相应的模型与算法对区域粮食生产、碳固存、产水、土壤保持、生境质量5类生态系统服务进行估算,在此基础上借助空间统计与分析厘清生态系统服务功能间的权衡/协同关系,并构建不同风险情景,明确未来区域发展的生态安全格局.结果显示,2000~2015年,成渝城市群粮食生产、固碳和产水量这3类服务功能均呈下降趋势,土壤保持、生境质量服务呈上升趋势,且各类服务的空间分异性突出;固碳、产水、土壤保持与生境质量两两之间均表现为协同关系,粮食生产与这4类服务间表现为权衡关系,但这种冲突性在区域发展过程中逐渐呈减弱趋势;在空间分布上,成渝城市群生态系统服务间的权衡/协同关系表现出了一定的集聚特征;不同决策风险下生态系统服务间的权衡值也不同,随着决策风险系数的增加权衡值呈现先上升后下降的趋势;最终确定风险系数α=1.6为最适宜情景,此时权衡值最高、区域生态系统风险适中.将决策者的态度纳入生态安全格局识别过程中,使结果更全面,为城市群生态安全格局评价和管理提供科学支撑.     

Incorporating basic needs to reconcile poverty and ecosystem services

Conservation managers frequently face the challenge of protecting and sustaining biodiversity without producing detrimental outcomes for (often poor) human populations that depend on ecosystem services for their well-being. However, mutually beneficial solutions are often elusive and can mask trade-offs and negative outcomes for people. To deal with such trade-offs, ecological and social thresholds need to be identified to determine the acceptable solution space for conservation. Although human well-being as a concept has recently gained prominence, conservationists still lack tools to evaluate how their actions affect it in a given context. We applied the theory of human needs to conservation by building on an extensive historical application of need approaches in international development. In an innovative participatory method that included focus groups and household surveys, we evaluated how human needs are met based on locally relevant thresholds. We then established connections between human needs and ecosystem services through key-informant focus groups. We applied our method in coastal East Africa to identify households that would not be able to meet their basic needs and to uncover the role of ecosystem services in meeting these. This enabled us to identify how benefits derived from the environment were contributing to meeting basic needs and to consider potential repercussions that could arise through changes to ecosystem service provision. We suggest our approach can help conservationists and planners balance poverty alleviation and biodiversity protection and ensure conservation measures do not, at the very least, cause serious harm to individuals. We further argue it can be used as a basis for monitoring the impacts of conservation on multidimensional poverty.     

Greening the structural change process: ranking sustainability of countries in climate change

This paper proposes an analytical toolkit to measure the sustainability of industrialization across countries. Drawing from a methodology developed to analyze economic development as a process of modernization, it ranks countries on the basis of the emissions they produce and their stage of development. The proposed index penalizes environmental pressures taking into account the modernization level of a country. The paper also proposes an assessment of the environmental performance of countries at the same level of modernization. It introduces the notion of policy space as the difference between the best and worst environmental performer at a given level of modernization. An important finding of the paper is that the magnitude of the policy space is not homogenous across different levels of income and environmental targets.     

植物对环境污染的适应代价

生物长期暴露在低浓度污染环境中会作自我调整来适应环境.适应继续, 其代价即可检测到.一般来讲,适应代价由进化代价和生态代价组成.进化代价主要集中在污染程度上,也就是说,适应于目前环境的植物群落会失去适应其他环境的能力,进化敏捷性减弱.尽管有一些学者并不赞成,但有大量科学数据支持这一观点.生态代价指的是生物适应寒冷、炎热、干燥和其他压力的能力降低,这些都是基于trade-offs理论产生的.     

Sexual selection for male parental care in the sand goby, Pomatoschistus minutus

Male parental care is typically thought to come at a cost to mate attraction and future mating success. However, it has also been hypothesized that paternal care may be under sexual, as well as natural, selection, such that good fathers actually attract more mates. Here we show experimentally that in the sand goby, Pomatoschistus minutus, females prefer to mate with males that provide higher levels of parental care. We manipulated male behavior using (1) different nest sizes and (2) an application of low-O₂ water in the nests, and found that females consistently preferred males with elevated levels of care in dichotomous mate choice tests. This complements our earlier study in which we showed that males increase the amount and quality of care they provide in the presence of females. Our results demonstrate that male care may have evolved as a result of sexual selection rather than natural selection alone, and furthermore, that male care may not necessarily be in conflict with mate attraction.     

An adaptive plan for prioritizing road sections for fencing to reduce animal mortality

Mortality of animals on roads is a critical threat to many wildlife populations and is poised to increase strongly because of ongoing and planned road construction. If these new roads cannot be avoided, effective mitigation measures will be necessary to stop biodiversity decline. Fencing along roads effectively reduces roadkill and is often used in combination with wildlife passages. Because fencing the entire road is not always possible due to financial constraints, high-frequency roadkill areas are often identified to inform the placement of fencing. We devised an adaptive fence-implementation plan to prioritize road sections for fencing. In this framework, areas along roads of high, moderate, and low levels of animal mortality (respectively, roadkill hotspots, warmspots, and coldspots) are identified at multiple scales (i.e., in circles of different diameters [200–2000 m] in which mortality frequency is measured). Fence deployment is based on the relationship between the amount of fencing being added to the road, starting with the strongest roadkill hotspots, and potential reduction in road mortality (displayed in mortality-reduction graphs). We applied our approach to empirical and simulated spatial patterns of wildlife–vehicle collisions. The scale used for analysis affected the number and spatial extent of roadkill hot-, warm-, and coldspots. At fine scales (e.g., 200 m), more hotspots were identified than at coarse scales (e.g., 2000 m), but combined the fine-scale hotspots covered less road and less fencing was needed to reduce road mortality. However, many short fences may be less effective in practice due to a fence-end effect (i.e., animals moving around the fence more easily), resulting in a trade-off between few long and many short fences, which we call the FLOMS (few-long-or-many-short) fences trade-off. Thresholds in the mortality-reduction graphs occurred for some roadkill patterns, but not for others. Thresholds may be useful to consider when determining road-mitigation targets. The existence of thresholds at multiple scales and the FLOMS trade-off have important implications for biodiversity conservation.     

Biosynthetic origin of carbon-based secondary compounds: cause of variable responses of woody plants to fertilization?

Summary. We propose that variation in the responses of carbon-based secondary compounds to fertilization in woody plants has a biosynthetic cause. The synthesis of phenylpropanoids and derived compounds (e.g., condensed tannins) competes directly with the synthesis of proteins, and therefore with plant growth, because of a common precursor, phenylalanine. In contrast, the biosynthesis of terpenoids and of hydrolyzable tannins proceeds presumably without direct competition with protein synthesis. Therefore, accelerated plant growth induced by fertilization may cause a reduction in concentrations of phenylpropanoids but may affect less or not at all the levels of other classes of secondary compounds. A meta-analysis based on fertilization experiments with 35 woody plant species supported the predicted differences fertilizing significantly decreased concentrations of phenylpropanoids but not of terpenoids or hydrolyzable tannins. Received 14 May 1998; accepted 23 June 1998.     

基于生产可能性边界的黄河三角洲湿地生态系统服务权衡强度

提出了一种基于生产可能性边界（PPF）的湿地生态系统服务权衡强度计算方法,包括湿地生态系统服务定量评估、权衡关系判定、PPF曲线绘制和权衡强度计算四个步骤。以黄河三角洲湿地为研究对象,对保护情景、现状发展情景及开发情景三种土地利用发展模式下的主导生态系统服务进行了定量化权衡分析。结果表明：各生态系统服务间呈现显著相关关系（R²≥0.9,P<0.01）,各发展情景下,栖息地质量与碳储量之间均为协同关系;物质生产与栖息地质量间均为权衡关系,排序为保护情景<基期<现状发展情景<开发情景;而对于物质生产与碳储量之间,在保护及现状发展情景下存在协同关系;而开发情景下转变为权衡关系。该模型通过灵活比较不同生态服务间权衡关系分析进行系列管理规划的方案优选,为实现区域可持续发展提供科学依据。     

Structuring decisions about energy in developing communities: an example from Canada's north

Decisions about energy in developing communities are challenging from a technical standpoint, and because of the unique characteristics that typify them, e.g. limited infrastructure and government budgets, complex social and political arrangements, and economic vulnerability. Against the backdrop of these challenges, the government of Canada's Northwest Territories (NWT) is attempting to reform the region's energy system. This paper provides insights from the decision sciences, stemming from our work on the NWT's energy planning process, about how to structure decisions about energy development and delivery so as to effectively meet a range of stakeholders’ objectives in a transparent and inclusive manner.