Will polycentric cities cause more CO2 emissions? A case study of 232 Chinese cities

From 2000 to 2010 China experienced rapid economic development and urbanization. Many cities in economically developed areas have developed from a single-center status to polycentricity. In this study, we used exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA) to identify the population centers, which identified 232 cities in China as having urban centers. COMP was used to represent urban agglomeration, and POLYD (representing how far is the city's sub-centers to the main center), POLYC (representing the number of a city's centers), and POLYP (representing the population distributed between the main center and the sub-centers) were used to indicate urban polycentricity. Night light data were used to determine the CO₂ emissions from various cities in China. A mixed model was used to study the impact of urban aggregation and polycentric data on the CO₂ emission efficiency in 2000 and 2010. The study found that cities with higher compactness were distributed in coastal areas, and the cities with higher multicentricity were distributed in the Yangtze River Delta and Shandong Province. The more compact the city was, the less conducive it was to improving CO₂ emission efficiency. Polycentric development of the city was conducive to improving the CO₂ emission efficiency, but the number of urban centers had no significant relationship with the CO₂ emission efficiency. Our research showed that the compactness and multicentricity of the city had an impact on the CO₂ emission efficiency and provided some planning suggestions for the low carbon development of the city.     

Problems of correlation of global and local monitoring of air pollution

1. The Air Polluttion Monitoring System has got a significant development of late, which is in direct relation with a considerable extention and improvement of the observation network in cities and industrial areas, with creation of a new network for assessing regional and global background of the atmosphere pollution, as well as with the wide involvement of meteorologists to monitoring organization.
2. While developing a new global monitoring system, it is necessary to take into account its relationship with the local monitoring within the region of air pollution sources, i.e. at the \lsimpact\rs level. The need in such an account is dictated first of all by the physics of pollutant spreading that states: changes in air pollution over large territories must be in a certain agreement with greater changes in the vicinity of emission sources. Methods applied in the global and local monitoring have also a number of common peculiarities. White organizing regional network for observations of the background pollution of the atmosphere twin stations (one of the pair of stations located outside the city boundaries in a small community, and the other, in the nearest city with the population of 200–400 thousand inhabitants) were established in the U.S.S.R. and in a number of socialist countries in Europe.
3. Implementation of the twin-station principles in the U.S.S.R. has contributed to data interpretation and representativity assessment as well as to correction of the station location. Observation results from the Soviet background stations and those abroad have been compared by now according to a number of indices.
4. The correlation of monitoring systems of various scales tells positively both on mutual improvement and completion of observational methods. The methods of obtaining integral characteristics of air pollution were used for the global monitoring, in particular spectral actinometric observations and chemical analysis of the precipitation composition. Now they find still wider employment. Thus methods of spectral actinometric measurements and data processing were used to estimate the degree of aerosol pollution of a number of industrial centres. The theory of solar radiation spreading and aerosol contents determination in urban atmosphere has also been developed. It is a generalization of an earlier developed theory, used to estimate global atmosphere pollution basing on actinometric data. The organization of precipitation collection and analysis on a network of stations around Leningrad and in Donbass area enables us to compare the admixture content in precipitations falling in industrial and agricultural areas.
5. A considerable increase of possibilities to measure microconcentrations of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and of a number of other pollutants is connected with the use of solid solvents for sampling. Their use will allow to avoid establishment of special laboratories at background stations and only send samples by post for their analysis in centralized laboratories.

They will also allow to considerably increase precision and accuracy of measurements. The international comparisons of methods of air pollution measurements on the background level allow to judge about the effiency of these methods.     

Ammonia uptake by plants

The paper considers the methodology and results of experimental determination of dry deposition and ammonia uptake by isolated plant leaves. Analytical expressions are proposed which allow a transition from rates obtained in an isolated chamber to dry ammonia deposition by standing crops leaves.     

Fungal biodegradation and removal of cyanobacteria and microcystins: potential applications and research needs

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Harmful cyanobacterial blooms (HCB) have severe impacts on marine and freshwater systems worldwide. They cause oxygen depletion and produce potent...     

岩溶关键带微量元素运移的时空变化:以豫西鸡冠洞为例

为探索岩溶关键带元素运移时空变化特征及过程,自2009年10月至2015年5月对我国北方典型岩溶关键带——河南西部鸡冠洞相互作用带中各组分(大气降水、土壤、基岩、洞穴滴水、洞穴现代沉积物)进行了连续定点监测及取样分析,共获得650个实验数据.对比了Ca、Mg、Ba、Sr、δ~(13)C及元素比值在不同组分中的变化情况及运移规律.结果表明:(1)土壤与基岩是滴水的主要物质来源,Mg、Ba、Sr符合"土壤-基岩"二元物源模型,但各自所占比例并不相同.(2)在空间上,洞穴系统相互作用带中各元素迁移相互联系.滴水继承了土壤及基岩的信号,现代沉积物又能延续滴水各元素的信息.元素在土壤纵剖面中表现出了明显的淋溶和淀积作用,最下层土壤较好地继承了基岩中微量元素的信息.(3)在时间上,洞穴系统相互作用带中各元素迁移复杂多变.土壤及滴水受降水淋滤作用影响皆表现明显的季节差异,然在岩溶水运移路径、PCP作用、极端干旱和年降水雨型的影响下,滴水元素浓度旱、雨季差异明显较土壤小.而PCP作用及元素选择性淋滤等因素又改变了沉积物中元素对滴水元素的延续特性.     

城市工业区环境系统中的Cd污染循环及其健康风险——以杭州市半山工业区为例

为揭示重金属元素Cd在城市环境系统多种介质中的迁移途径及其潜在危害性,系统分析了杭州市半山工业区主要环境介质（土壤-尘埃-水-底泥-生物）样品中Cd的指标含量,并用连续提取法分析了土壤、尘埃、底泥中Cd的化学形态特征.结果表明,Cd的迁移途径主要有两种,一是以尘埃为媒介在地表环境中迁移,二是通过水介质进入水体环境（水和...