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.

     

Towards saving freshwater: halophytes as unconventional feedstuffs in livestock feed: a review

Water represents 71% of all earth area and about 97% of this water is salty water. So, only 3% of the overall world water quantity is freshwater. Human can benefit only from 1% of this water and the remaining 2% freeze at both poles of earth. Therefore, it is important to preserve the freshwater through increasing the plants consuming salty water. The future prosperity of feed resources in arid and semi-arid countries depends on economic use of alternative resources that have been marginalized for long periods of time, such as halophytic plants, which are one such potential future resource. Halophyte plants can grow in high salinity water and soil and to some extent during drought. The growth of these plants depends on the contact of the salted water with plant roots as in semi-desert saline water, mangrove swamps, marshes, and seashores. Halophyte plants need high levels of sodium chloride in the soil water for growth, and the soil water must also contain high levels of salts, as sodium hydroxide or magnesium sulfate. There are many uses for halophyte plants, including feed for animals, vegetables, drugs, sand dune stabilizers, wind shelter, soil cover, wetland cultivation, laundry detergents, and paper production. This paper will focus on the use of halophytes as a feed additive for animals. In spite of the good nutritional value of halophytes, some anti-nutritional factors as nitrates, nitrite complexes, tannins, glycosides, phenolic compounds, saponins, oxalates, and alkaloids may be present in some of them. The presence of such anti-nutritional agents makes halophytes unpalatable to animals, which tends to reduce feed intake and nutrient use. Therefore, the negative effects of these plants on animal performance are the only objection against using halophytes in animal feed diets. This review article highlights the beneficial impact of considering halophytes in animal feeding on saving freshwater and illustrates its nutritive value for livestock from different aspects.     

Natural Resource Use with Vague-Transferability in Property Right

The purpose of this paper is to study the impacts of the vagueness about the transfer of the harvest right on the use of a natural resource. We develop one-period non-cooperative game frameworks to examine whether the choice of the resource owner to be hazy about the transmission of the harvest contract is optimal. In the perfect information situation, we show that it is optimal for the resource owner to forbid the transfer of the harvest right instead of being hazy about it when the transfer fees are lesser than the collected net punishment fines of the monitoring costs even though the resource would be inefficiently used. In particular, we find in this case that the government’s announcement to forbid the transfer of the right should be public. We further show that there are subgame Nash equilibria in the perfect information context and a unique Nash equilibrium in the imperfect information setting. Specifically, we show that, when the transfer fees are greater or equal to the (net) punishment fines, there is a Nash equilibrium both in perfect and imperfect information situations, precisely when the owner chooses to allow the transfer of harvest title and the resource harvester transfers it.     

Groundwater Modeling in Agricultural Watershed under Different Recharge and Discharge Scenarios for Quaternary Aquifer Eastern Nile Delta,Egypt

Different scenarios of recharge and discharge were assessed for sustainable management of groundwater in Quaternary aquifer east of Nile Delta. MODFLOW was utilized to investigate the effect of land use change and damming construction in the upstream of the Nile River on the current and short-term groundwater management strategies. The interpretive transient simulation was performed between 2004 and 2016 after steady-state calibration in 2004, and transient state from 2004 to 2013 with different irrigation recharges associated with land use change in this period. Sensitivity analysis was performed for hydraulic conductivities, recharge, and conductance parameters. The predictive transient simulation was run till 2023 under three scenarios of increasing pumping rates by 15, 30, and 50% for agriculture expansion and specified head reduction of Port Said Canal by 0.2, 0.4, and 0.6 m associated with the reduction of Nile water levels after Grand Ethiopian Residence Dam, GERD operation in 2017. Results from the in- and out-flow budgets showed that groundwater aquifer is stable at the current rate of pumping till 2023. Groundwater heads decreased by 0.2 and 0.42 m in the southern section, and a slight increase in the northern part was noticed for the first and second scenarios, respectively. When additional pumping stress is applied (50% increase), groundwater head dropped by 0.66 m, and the storage is no longer able to maintain the aquifer capacity after 2020 (worst-case scenario).     

Behavioral intentions toward genetically modified crops in Southwest Iran: a multi-stakeholder analysis

This study examined the influencing factors of the self-reported behavioral intentions toward genetically modified (GM) crops using a multi-stakeholder approach in the Khuzestan Province in Southwest Iran. The study focused on three different groups, including: “agricultural students,” “agricultural private firms’ managers” and “rich-resource farmers.” Data were collected using a researcher-made questionnaire and was analyzed by SPSS (V20) and AMOS (V20). Results indicated that the respondents perceive more benefits than risks for GM crops and that the perception of benefits and risks, respectively, had positive and negative impacts on the self-reported behavioral intention of the respondents. The knowledge of the respondents regarding these crops had positive impacts on perception of benefits. The results showed that both managers and students worried about the food safety and impact of GM crops on human health while farmers worried about the environmental risks of GM crops. The results also revealed that those who are the most conscious about GM crops are more trusted. The findings also showed that the majority of the respondents hold a positive view of the potential of GM crops.     

Reduction of sludge formed during a coagulation treatment of Ridomil Gold by means of non-thermal quenched plasma pre-treatment

Chemical coagulation and adsorption, despite many drawbacks, are actually the main techniques used for the removal of pollutants from aqueous solution; however, these techniques are becoming ineffective due to the exponential increase in the amount and complexity of discharged pollutants; thus, the sludge treatment process became a more complex challenge. The present study focuses on the way to reduce the quantity of sludge formed during the removal of Ridomil Gold, a widely used pesticide-fungicide in agriculture. Results revealed that pre-treatment of initial waste solution by the gliding arc (Glidarc), a source of non-thermal plasma, leads to a significant reduction of the sludge formed during the coagulation treatment. For a 20-min pre-treated effluent Glidarc followed by chemical coagulation, there was a reduction in the volume of sludge formed in the order of 90 and 80% for alum and ferric sulfate coagulants respectively without reducing the performance of pesticide removal. Therefore, there is a positive synergism between treatment by chemical coagulation and plasma treatment. These results suggest that the Glidarc can be an effective solution for the reduction of sludge obtained during treatment by coagulation.     

Monitoring saltwater intrusion in Rupert Bay,Québec,Canada, after the partial diversion of a major tributary

As part of a large hydroelectric project in northern Québec (Canada), a portion of the flow of the Rupert River was diverted toward the existing La Grande hydroelectric complex. As a result of the partial diversion, the discharge of the Rupert River at its mouth is reduced by an average of 50% annually. This corresponds to an 18% decrease in the total freshwater inflow into the bay and, thus, to a shift of the upstream limit of the saltwater intrusion in Rupert Bay. Changes in saltwater intrusion had been predicted numerically as part of the project’s environmental impact assessment (EIA). In the project’s conditions of authorization, monitoring the hydraulic conditions and the extent of saltwater intrusion in the Rupert Bay was required by government authorities. The objective of this paper is to present the results of this environmental monitoring and, more specifically, to validate the modifications predicted in the EIA in terms of both saltwater intrusion limit and hydraulic conditions in the Rupert Bay. Results obtained during 2 years of monitoring are within the predicted trends and order of magnitude of changes anticipated in the EIA. The results, thus, confirm that the shift of the upstream limit of the saltwater front along the channels of the bay was conservatively predicted by numerical modeling.     

Spatial distribution characteristics of soil organic carbon in subtropical forests of mountain Lushan,China

The study on the spatial distribution of forest soil organic carbon (SOC) is of great significance for accurate assessment of carbon storage in forest ecosystems. In the present study, by taking eight kinds of forest soils of Mountain Lushan in the subtropical area as the research object, we studied the spatial distribution characteristics of SOC in this mountainous area. The results showed that the SOC content and SOC density (SOCD) of main forest types in the Mountain Lushan were lower than the national and the world average. The soil layer of Lushan forest was thinner, and the SOC and active SOC (ASOC) contents of different forest types and SOCDs are the highest in the surface soil. SOCD of the topsoil accounts for 32.64–54.03% of the total SOCD in the whole soil profile. Surface litter is an important source of SOC, and the different vegetation types are the important reason for the different spatial distribution of SOC in this area. Soil SOC contents in the high-altitude forest (bamboo forest, deciduous broadleaf forest, Pinus taiwanensis forest, evergreen-deciduous forest, and coniferous-broadleaved mixed forest) were higher than those in the low-altitude forest (evergreen broadleaf forest, shrub, and Pinus massoniana forest). However, the difference in SOC content exhibited at the altitude gradient is significantly lower than that in SOC in the soil profile. This indicates that both soil depth and elevation are the important factors that affected SOC distribution. However, the influence of soil depth on spatial distribution of SOC may be more complex than that of altitude. Vegetation types and soil properties are the main reasons for the large differences of reduction rate in the contents of SOC and ASOC.     

长江三角洲城市群工业用水效率评价及时空差异研究

在水资源约束趋紧的背景下，选取长江三角洲城市群中26个城市2005~2014年的面板数据，运用SBM模型对工业用水效率进行测算，并基于可分解的泰尔指数分析长江三角洲城市群内部工业用水效率的空间差异。结果显示：（1）长江三角洲城市群工业用水效率水平整体偏低，在不考虑与考虑非期望产出的情况下，工业用水效率10a平均值分别为 0.591 8.和 0.519 7;（2）工业用水效率的地区内部差异是造成总差异的主要部分，并且有随时间递增的趋势，其中安徽省对于地区内部差异的贡献率最大，其次为浙江省，江苏省贡献率最低;（3）江苏省各城市工业用水效率虽然差异不大但整体水平较低，而上海市工业用水效率较高并处于稳步上升状态。因此，缩小地区内部差异是实现长江三角洲城市群工业用水效率整体上升的重要途径。     

Plant Species Richness and Developmental Morphology Stage Influence Mycorrhizal Patagonia Plants Root Colonization

The objectives of this study were to determine the percentage of root colonization by arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi at various levels of plant species richness and developmental morphology stages in various perennial grass, and herbaceous and woody dicots species using experimental plots during 2013 and 2014. An auger was used to obtain six replicate root + soil samples at each sampling time on each of the study parameters. Roots were washed free of soil, and percentage AM was determined. The shrub Larrea divaricata was the species which showed the lowest percentage of colonization by AM at the vegetative developmental morphology stage at the monocultures and six-species-mixtures on the experimental plots. Dicots, but not grass, species showed a greater percentage colonization by AM fungi at the greatest (i.e., six-species-mixtures) than lowest (i.e., monocultures) species richness. Although at different degrees of species richness and developmental morphology stages, the perennial grasses Nassella longiglumis and N. tenuis, the herbaceous dicot Atriplex semibaccata, and the shrubs L. divaricata and Schinus fasciculatus showed a greater (p < 0.050) percentage colonization by AM fungi during the second than the first study year. Even though it was species- and sampling time-dependent, percentage colonization by AM fungi increased as species richness also increased most of the times. Our results demonstrated that the plant species differences in percentage colonization by AM fungi in the experimental plots were species richness-, developmental morphology stage-, and sampling-time dependents.