Environmental cost of using poor decision metrics to prioritize environmental projects

Conservation decision makers commonly use project‐scoring metrics that are inconsistent with theory on optimal ranking of projects. As a result, there may often be a loss of environmental benefits. We estimated the magnitudes of these losses for various metrics that deviate from theory in ways that are common in practice. These metrics included cases where relevant variables were omitted from the benefits metric, project costs were omitted, and benefits were calculated using a faulty functional form. We estimated distributions of parameters from 129 environmental projects from Australia, New Zealand, and Italy for which detailed analyses had been completed previously. The cost of using poor prioritization metrics (in terms of lost environmental values) was often high—up to 80% in the scenarios we examined. The cost in percentage terms was greater when the budget was smaller. The most costly errors were omitting information about environmental values (up to 31% loss of environmental values), omitting project costs (up to 35% loss), omitting the effectiveness of management actions (up to 9% loss), and using a weighted‐additive decision metric for variables that should be multiplied (up to 23% loss). The latter 3 are errors that occur commonly in real‐world decision metrics, in combination often reducing potential benefits from conservation investments by 30–50%. Uncertainty about parameter values also reduced the benefits from investments in conservation projects but often not by as much as faulty prioritization metrics.     

How certain are we about the certainty-equivalent long term social discount rate?

Theoretical arguments for using a term structure of social discount rates (SDR) that declines with the time horizon have influenced government guidelines in the US and Europe. The certainty equivalent discount rate that often underpins this guidance embodies uncertainty in the primitives of the SDR, such as growth. For distant time horizons the probability distributions of these primitives are ambiguous and the certainty equivalent itself is uncertain. Yet, if a limited set of characteristics of the unknown probability distributions can be agreed upon, ‘sharp’ upper and lower bounds can be defined for the certainty-equivalent SDR. Unfortunately, even with considerable agreement on these features, these bounds are widely spread for horizons beyond 75 years. So while estimates of the present value of intergenerational impacts, including the social cost of carbon, can be bounded in the presence of this ambiguity, they typically remain so imprecise as to provide little practical guidance.     

Evaluating the impact of uncertainty and variability on the value chain optimization of a forest biomass power plant using Monte Carlo Simulation

Mathematical programming models have been used to optimize the design and management of forest bioenergy supply chains. A deterministic mathematical model is beneficial for making optimum decisions; however, its applicability to real-world problems may be limited because it does not capture all the complexities, including uncertainties in the parameters, in the supply chain. In this paper, a combination of Monte Carlo Simulation and optimization model is used to evaluate the impact of uncertainty in biomass quality, availability and cost, and electricity prices on the supply chain of a forest biomass power plant. The optimization model is a deterministic mixed integer non-linear model with monthly time steps over a 1-year planning horizon. Variability in biomass quality, i.e. moisture content (MC) and higher heating value (HHV), based on the historical data of a real case study is studied in detail and fitted probability distributions are used in the model, while for electricity prices different scenarios are considered. The results show that the impact of variability in the MC on profit is higher than that of uncertainty in HHV. It is observed that the annual profit ranges between $13.3 million and $17.9 million in the presence of all possible uncertainties while its average is $15.5 million. Uncertainty in biomass availability and cost and electricity price results in the risks of having annual profit of less than $14 million and low monthly storage levels.     

Irrigation Water Allocation Using an Inexact Two‐Stage Quadratic Programming with Fuzzy Input under Climate Change

Agricultural irrigation accounts for nearly 70% of the total water use around the world. Uncertainties and climate change together exacerbate the complexity of optimal allocation of water resources for irrigation. An interval‐fuzzy two‐stage stochastic quadratic programming model is developed for determining the plans for water allocation for irrigation with maximum benefits. The model is shown to be applicable when inputs are expressed as discrete, fuzzy or random. In order to reflect the effect of marginal utility on benefit and cost, the model can also deal with nonlinearities in the objective function. Results from applying the model to a case study in the middle reaches of the Heihe River basin, China, show schemes for water allocation for irrigation of different crops in every month of the crop growth period under various flow levels are effective for achieving high economic benefits. Different climate change scenarios are used to analyze the impact of changing water requirement and water availability on irrigation water allocation. The proposed model can aid the decision maker in formulating desired irrigation water management policies in the wake of uncertainties and changing environment.     

中国国际贸易隐含碳文献比较研究

贸易中的隐含碳流动对中国的二氧化碳排放具有重要影响。从现有的文献来看,尽管出现了大量的针对中国贸易中隐含碳的相关研究,但由于数据及方法的不同,结果之间存在较大差异,很大程度上影响了研究结果的科学性和应用价值。本文对现有的中国国际贸易隐含碳文献进行了比较研究,结果发现:不同研究得出了相对一致的结论,但在隐含碳的具体数量上差异巨大。定性来看,中国是一个隐含碳净出口国,净出口量呈现出逐年增加的趋势。定量来看,1997-2007年,中国隐含碳出口量从3.1-8.8亿t增长到17.2-30.2亿t二氧化碳;隐含碳进口量从1.0-7.0亿t增长到5.8-16.5亿t二氧化碳;隐含碳净出口量从1.8-7.3亿t增长到11.4-22.6亿t二氧化碳;隐含碳净出口量占国内总排放量的比重由5%-20%增长到17%-30%。贸易中隐含碳核算结果的不确定性主要来自三个方面:核算方法产生的不确定性、数据融合产生的不确定性以及原始数据引入的不确定性。总体来看,多区域投入产出模型的研究结果相对稳定,可重复性较高;从数据精度和数据可获得性方面考虑,40个左右的部门分类可以取得较为理想的结果:把中国划分为多个区域研究国际贸易中的隐含碳在理论上更加可靠。国家气候变化对外谈判和国内减排目标的实现都需要对碳排放进行精确管理。在未来的研究中,应重视隐含碳核算的不确定性研究,逐步提高隐含碳核算的精度,更好地服务于国家的气候变化政策。     

基于ISO14067的长江上游某水电项目碳足迹分析

以长江上游某大型水电站为案例,根据国际标准化组织碳足迹量化标准(ISO14067)评价流程,对该水电站全生命周期(建设阶段,运行维护阶段,退役阶段)碳足迹进行估算,并着重考虑了蓄水前后水库温室气体通量差异。研究以碳足迹系数和能源回收率作为指标进行评价,结果表明生命周期碳足迹为5 417.0万t CO_(2eq),碳足迹系数为7.0~13.1 g CO_(2eq)/kW·h,中位值为9.4 g CO_(2eq)/kW·h,该水电站项目能源回收率达236.4。与各种能源电站以及国内外同类型水电站相比较,该水电站碳足迹明显较低,且能源回收率显著较高,说明以该水电站为代表的我国西南水电具有显著的优质性,大力开发水电能有效节能减排,明确了生命周期评价方法对于水电站碳足迹评估的适用性。     

Testing the feasibility of a hypothetical whaling‐conservation permit market in Norway

A cap‐and‐trade system for managing whale harvests represents a potentially useful approach to resolve the current gridlock in international whale management. The establishment of whale permit markets, open to both whalers and conservationists, could reveal the strength of conservation demand, about which little is known. This lack of knowledge makes it difficult to predict the outcome of a hypothetical whale permit market. We developed a bioeconomic model to evaluate the influence of economic uncertainty about demand for whale conservation or harvest. We used simulations over a wide range of parameterizations of whaling and conservation demands to examine the potential ecological consequences of the establishment of a whale permit market in Norwegian waters under bounded (but substantial) economic uncertainty. Uncertainty variables were slope of whaling and conservation demand, participation level of conservationists and their willingness to pay for whale conservation, and functional forms of demand, including linear, quadratic, and log‐linear forms. A whale‐conservation market had the potential to yield a wide range of conservation and harvest outcomes, the most likely outcomes were those in which conservationists bought all whale permits.     

Implications of Conceptual Channel Representation on SWAT Streamflow and Sediment Modeling

Hydrologic modeling outputs are influenced by how a watershed system is represented. Channel routing is a typical example of the mathematical conceptualization of watershed landscape and processes in hydrologic modeling. We investigated the sensitivity of accuracy, equifinality, and uncertainty of Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) modeling to channel dimensions to demonstrate how a conceptual representation of a watershed system affects streamflow and sediment modeling. Results showed the amount of uncertainty and equifinality strongly responded to channel dimensions. On the other hand, the model performance did not significantly vary with the changes in the channel representation due to the degree of freedom allowed by the conceptual nature of hydrologic modeling in the parameter calibration. Such findings demonstrated good modeling performance statistics do not necessarily mean small output uncertainty, and partial improvements in the watershed representation may neither increase modeling accuracy nor reduce uncertainty. We also showed the equifinality and uncertainty of hydrologic modeling are case‐dependent rather than specific to models or regions, suggesting great caution should be used when attempting to transfer uncertainty analysis results to other modeling studies, especially for ungauged watersheds. Editor's note: This paper is part of the featured series on SWAT Applications for Emerging Hydrologic and Water Quality Challenges. See the February 2017 issue for the introduction and background to the series.     

Implications of different population model structures for management of threatened plants

Population viability analysis (PVA) is a reliable tool for ranking management options for a range of species despite parameter uncertainty. No one has yet investigated whether this holds true for model uncertainty for species with complex life histories and for responses to multiple threats. We tested whether a range of model structures yielded similar rankings of management and threat scenarios for 2 plant species with complex postfire responses. We examined 2 contrasting species from different plant functional types: an obligate seeding shrub and a facultative resprouting shrub. We exposed each to altered fire regimes and an additional, species‐specific threat. Long‐term demographic data sets were used to construct an individual‐based model (IBM), a complex stage‐based model, and a simple matrix model that subsumes all life stages into 2 or 3 stages. Agreement across models was good under some scenarios and poor under others. Results from the simple and complex matrix models were more similar to each other than to the IBM. Results were robust across models when dominant threats are considered but were less so for smaller effects. Robustness also broke down as the scenarios deviated from baseline conditions, likely the result of a number of factors related to the complexity of the species’ life history and how it was represented in a model. Although PVA can be an invaluable tool for integrating data and understanding species’ responses to threats and management strategies, this is best achieved in the context of decision support for adaptive management alongside multiple lines of evidence and expert critique of model construction and output.     

Analysis of uncertainty consideration in environmental assessment: an empirical study of Canadian EA practice

Identifying and communicating uncertainty is core to effective environmental assessment (EA). This study evaluates the extent to which uncertainties are considered and addressed in Canadian EA practice. We reviewed the environmental protection plans, follow-up programs, and panel reports (where applicable) of 12 EAs between 1995 and 2012. The types of uncertainties and levels of disclosure varied greatly. When uncertainties were acknowledged, practitioners adopted five different approaches to address them. However, uncertainties were never discussed or addressed in depth. We found a lack of suitable terminology and consistency in how uncertainties are disclosed, reflecting the need for explicit guidance, and we present recommendations for improvement. Canadian Environmental Impact Statements are not as transparent with respect to uncertainties as they should be, and uncertainties in EA need to be better considered and communicated.