Investigating the malleable socioeconomic resilience pathway to urban cohesion: a case of Taipei metropolitan area

It is known that globalization has led first- and second-tier cities’ urban restructuring trajectories, excreted pressures, and caused tremendous socioeconomic volatility. This resulted in marginalized communities in dire of social empowerment, employment structure variance, and industry sectoral adjustment. Moreover, recent successive climate and health crisis unfolded and affirmed the state of our urban incompetence to sustain socioeconomic resilience or otherwise; lacking swift responses in providing critical management and services, cites are facing multifaceted challenges. Urban well-being and resilience are at stake. Although the environmental and health dimensional effects are apparent, this study ascertains that the transept multi-scalar analysis within the urban socioeconomic structure is crucial in sustaining core resilience to foster health and well-being of the community. As an integral part of the investigation, the revised DPSIR assessment framework is applied to evaluate the sectoral shift; spatial structure disarray and urban codependence degree are examined within the Taipei metropolitan area (TMA), a medium size but densely populated metropolitan area in Taiwan. The place-based DPSIR analysis ascertained the states and impacts in TMA: (1) A population decline speeded the restructuring of the urban core, while the impact of demographic aging and shrinkage rate mandates proper management and planning responses to the decline process; (2) the socioeconomic state effect is determined but does not critically affect the periphery zone, while an uneven demographic shift within the urban core necessitates dynamic adjustment responses to appropriately provide intergenerational services; (3) the uneven sector redistribution stimulated the core’s spatial and structural inter-dependency with peripheral zones, requiring governance with tighter cross-administration cooperation among respective public sectors; and (4) facing the sector/temporal and demographic pressure, urban cohesiveness in the TMA is greatly affected, which in turn disrupts the resilience pathway toward a cohesion. The study ascertained that the revised DPSIR framework could provide cities facing pressing socioeconomic drivers with effective analysis to allocate pressures, states, and impacts and formulate the necessary responses. To assure the socioeconomic resilience and urban cohesiveness, planning policy should carefully monitor and evaluate socio-demographic and sector redistribution factors to promote the urban resilience.

     

手机定位人口数据在应急救援中的应用

随着智能手机的普及,基于手机定位的人口数据在突发性灾害应急救援领域发挥着日益重要的作用。以近几年地震灾区为主要研究对象,选择灾区中有代表性的旅游景区、县城及乡镇,获取这些区域手机定位的人口数据,同时采用传统方法估算区域内人口数量,并进行差异性对比。研究结果表明:差异性最大的是旅游景区、其次是县城和乡镇;在人口年度变化上,旅游景区的人口在7、8月份达到高峰,乡镇人口高值区出现在2月份,县城人口年度差异无明显规律。     

Catalytic degradation of toxic organic dye using an aluminum-doped Cu0.4Zn0.6-xAlxFe2O4 (x = 0.0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6) spinel ferrite in a photo-Fenton system

Catalytic activity of spinel ferrite in breaking down toxic dye materials are promising due to their uniqueness. In this study, aluminum-doped copper zinc ferrite, Cu_0.4Zn_0.6-xAl_xFe₂O₄ (x = 0.0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6), a catalyst for toxic dye degradation is synthesized through chemical co-precipitation route. The formation of the spinel ferrite catalyst is initially confirmed by Fourier transform infrared spectra, which shows the frequency of metal-oxygen bond vibration at 539 and 427 cm⁻¹ attributed to the tetrahedral and octahedral sites respectively. Higher intensity sharp peak of X-ray diffraction for (311) plane is the evidence for the phase purity and the formation of spinel ferrite. The crystallite size is found to decrease with the increase of Al³⁺ ion. The surface structure of the obtained particles is investigated using a scanning electron microscope. Analyses of the material's magnetic characteristics using a vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) revealed that it is, in fact, a soft magnet, as evidenced by the loop of its hysteresis, which is narrow. The catalytic degradation of methylene blue dye under the mechanism of the photo-Fenton process is studied with the obtained spinel ferrites and the result is found to be as high as 96.5%. The process follows pseudo-second order kinetics and the Langmuir isotherm.     

Temporal trends in agricultural water use and the relationships to hydroclimatic factors in the High Plains aquifer region

The High Plains aquifer (HPA) is the primary water source for agricultural irrigation in the US Great Plains. The water levels in many locations of the aquifer have declined steadily over the past several decades because the rate of water withdrawals exceeds recharge, which has been a serious concern to the water resources management in the region. We evaluated temporal trends and variations in agricultural water use and hydroclimatic variables including precipitation, air temperature, reference evapotranspiration, runoff, groundwater level, and terrestrial water storage across the HPA region for different periods from 1985 to 2020 at the grid, county, or region scale. The results showed that water withdrawals decreased from 21.3 km³/year in 1985 to 18.2 km³/year in 2015, while irrigated croplands increased from 71,928 km² in 1985 to 78,464 km² in 2015 in the entire HPA. The hydroclimatic time-series showed wetting trends in most of the northern HPA, but drying and warming trends in the southern region from 1985 to 2020. The groundwater level time-series indicated flat trends in the north, but significant declining in the central and southern HPA. Trends in irrigation water withdrawals and irrigation area across the HPA were controlled by the advancement of irrigation systems and technologies and the management of sustainable water use, but also were affected by dynamical changes in the hydroclimatic conditions.     

A Satisficing Framework for Environmental Policy Under Model Uncertainty

We propose a novel framework for the economic assessment of environmental policy. Our main point of departure from existing work is the adoption of a satisficing, as opposed to optimizing, modeling approach. Along these lines, we place primary emphasis on the extent to which different policies meet a set of goals at a specific future date instead of their performance vis-a-vis some intertemporal objective function. Consistent to the nature of environmental policymaking, our model takes explicit account of model uncertainty. To this end, the decision criterion we propose is an analog of the well-known success-probability criterion adapted to settings characterized by model uncertainty. We apply our criterion to the climate-change context and the probability distributions constructed by Drouet et al. (2015) linking carbon budgets to future consumption. Insights from computational geometry facilitate computations considerably and allow for the efficient application of the model in high-dimensional settings.

     

Dynamics of the Community of Hole-nesting Birds upon Reduction of Industrial Emissions (the Example of the Middle Ural Copper Smelter)

Russian Journal of Ecology - The dynamics of the species richness, breeding density, and structure of the community of birds occupying nest-boxes upon a 50-fold reduction of atmospheric emissions...     

Fisheries sustainability assessment and sensitivity analysis: an illustration

Using a modified Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) framework, this paper assesses progress towards sustainability over time with a case study of the demersal trawl fishery of Oman, which has been transformed and turned into the coastal fishery after the trawl ban. A multi-criteria decision analysis method is used for ranking the years and deciding on the best performing year under five alternative scenarios related to the core components involving humans and the environment. Under the environment component, the year 2001 stood out as the best across all scenarios. The combined results also echoed the same in four out of five scenarios. With reference to progress towards sustainability during the study period, no clear positive year-to-year trend was observed from the overall results. The analysis of the S2 scenario revealed that the closed fishing season during 1998–2001 yielded a positive spill-over effect on the local economy. The results from a comparative analysis indicated that the strengths (weaknesses) of the year 2001 were predominantly associated with the environment (human) component, and thereby, reflecting a comparatively higher conservation outcome in the year 2001. The findings from the comparative analysis would guide fishery managers in designing appropriate strategies for improving weaknesses of the preferred option and reducing the inter-scenario risk by combining positive features of the second-best option. The framework outlined in the present paper can be used to guide the sustainability assessment of other local fisheries (for instance, the lobster, abalone, and shrimp fisheries) including the recently developed coastal fishery.

     

Ultrasound-assisted electrodeposition synthesis of nZVI-Pd/AC toward reductive degradation of methylene blue

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - A novel composite (nZVI/Pd-AC) was prepared by loading nanoscale zero-valent iron (nZVI) and Pd on activated carbon (AC) electrode under...     

A multibiomarker approach to assess lead toxicity on the black clam,Villorita cyprinoides (Gray, 1825), from Cochin estuarine system (CES), southwest coast,India

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The southwest coast of India along the Cochin region is seriously affected by metal contamination from increasing industrial activities. This...     

Spatiotemporal variation of odor-active VOCs in Thessaloniki,Greece: implications for impacts from industrial activities

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - A yearlong study of odor-active VOCs was carried out in the northwestern district of the city of Thessaloniki, Greece, which is in close vicinity to a...