Microrefugia: Not for everyone

Microrefugia are sites that support populations of species when their ranges contract during unfavorable climate episodes. Here, we review and discuss two aspects relevant for microrefugia. First, distributions of different species are influenced by different climatic variables. Second, climatic variables differ in the degree of local decoupling from the regional climate. Based on this, we suggest that only species limited by climatic conditions decoupled from the regional climate can benefit from microrefugia. We argue that this restriction has received little attention in spite of its importance for microrefugia as a mechanism for species resilience (the survival of unfavorable episodes and subsequent range expansion). Presence of microrefugia will depend on both the responses of individual species to local climatic variation and how climate-forcing factors shape the correlation between local and regional climate across space and time.     

Food Security: Crops for People Not for Cars

Humankind is currently faced with the huge challenge of securing a sustainable energy supply and biofuels constitute one of the major options. However, the commercially traded edible crops are barely sufficient to meet food demand of the present world population. Certain regions, for example EU-27, do not even have a sufficient indigenous crop production. Of this follows that motor biofuels based on edible crops should be avoided. To replace more than some percent of the fossil motor fuels, non-edible biomass—rest products and wastes—should instead be considered for conversion to biofuels. In this way, about 10% of the current fossil fuels can be replaced. Feeding a world population expected to grow by some 50% during the next 50 years will be a major challenge. For environmental reasons it seems that agricultural land cannot be expanded very much, maybe not at all. The solution to the increasing food demand seems therefore to be using the present crop production more efficiently and increasing output from present agricultural land, maintaining biodiversity and climate stability within reasonable limits. In the future, agriculture will need more energy and more water irrigation. Food production is, however, already very energy demanding, requiring several times more externally provided energy than the energy content of the food itself. A sufficient energy supply will be a key issue for the future farming!     

Transnational multistakeholder partnerships for sustainable development: Conditions for success

This perspective discusses nine conditions for enhancing the performance of multistakeholder partnerships for sustainable development. Such partnerships have become mainstream implementation mechanisms for attaining international sustainable development goals and are also frequently used in other adjacent policy domains such as climate change, health and biodiversity. While multistakeholder arrangements are widely perceived as a positive contribution to addressing global change, few studies have systematically evaluated the existing evidence for their positive performance. This poses an urgent and important challenge for researchers and practitioners to understand and improve the effectiveness of partnerships, in particular since their popularity increases despite their past track record. The recommendations presented are based on own research, a literature survey and discussions with a large number or international Civil Society Organizations at two occasions during 2014. This article proceeds as follows: first, we define multistakeholder partnerships, outline their rational and summarize available assessments on partnership success; second, we provide a set of concrete recommendations based on lessons-learned from over 10 years of scholarship; and third, we conclude with some reflections on the future of multistakeholder governance for sustainability.     

Wastewater management for Istanbul: basis for treatment and disposal

A number of studies have so far been conducted to assess the magnitude of pollution generated by domestic and industrial sources in the Istanbul Metropolitan Area. They indicate that a management scheme for wastewater treatment and disposal should involve a total discharge of 15.4 m3 s(-1) with a potential pollution load of 330 tons BOD5 day(-1) for 1990. A scheme of this magnitude inevitably requires careful evaluation of receiving water characteristics, both from an oceanographic and a quality standpoint. In this paper significant water quality parameters related to the Black Sea-Bosphorus Strait-Marmara Sea System are reviewed and incorporated in the evaluation of treatment and disposal alternatives. In this context, the pollution exchange between the Mamara Sea and Bosphorus is quantified, pollutant contents of the Mamara Sea and discharges from the Istanbul Metropolitan Area are compared, and a number of scenarios are evaluated to define the optimum treatment and disposal strategy.     

LogD: lipophilicity for ionisable compounds

The octanol/water partition coefficient (Kow) for organic compounds is widely used in predictive environmental studies. A significant proportion of contaminants of surface and ground water are ionisable (e.g. many pesticides, pharmaceuticals, metabolites). Such compounds may be partially ionised dependent on the pH. Since the neutral and ionic species exhibit different polarities, the Kow value of ionisable pesticides is pH dependent. It is therefore essential to determine Kow values over the full range of pH that occurs in the environment in order to get appropriate predictors. Numerous methods are available to measure lipophilicity but only a few are appropriate for ionisable pesticides (e.g. pH metric and filter probe methods). Parameters such as pH and ionic strength need to be carefully controlled when working with ionisable compounds. Variation of these factors probably explains why literature can yield Kow values that differ by more than one order of magnitude for some compounds. In this article, Kow values obtained for six acidic pesticides with three different methods are compared as well (data from the literature, measured by pH metric method and calculated with five computer programs). The values used in predictive regression equations needs to be either measured with a suitable method or selected from the literature with great care.     

Metal biomonitoring with mosses: procedures for correcting for soil contamination

Highly variable total concentrations of 15 elements have been found in five species of epigeic mosses growing in remote areas of Italy and in northern Victoria Land (continental Antarctica). It is very likely that soil particles entrapped in the mosses cause these high element concentration differences, thereby leading to inexact interpretations of baseline concentrations and of element distribution in different parts of mosses. A simple procedure for estimating more plausible background values that consists of subtracting the substratum contribution from raw concentrations of elements in mosses is reported. The normalization of total concentrations to the regional soil composition is also emphasized, in order to point out other possible metal sources.     

Nature apps: Waiting for the revolution

Apps are small task-orientated programs with the potential to integrate the computational and sensing capacities of smartphones with the power of cloud computing, social networking, and crowdsourcing. They have the potential to transform how humans interact with nature, cause a step change in the quantity and resolution of biodiversity data, democratize access to environmental knowledge, and reinvigorate ways of enjoying nature. To assess the extent to which this potential is being exploited in relation to nature, we conducted an automated search of the Google Play Store using 96 nature-related terms. This returned data on ~36 304 apps, of which ~6301 were nature-themed. We found that few of these fully exploit the full range of capabilities inherent in the technology and/or have successfully captured the public imagination. Such breakthroughs will only be achieved by increasing the frequency and quality of collaboration between environmental scientists, information engineers, computer scientists, and interested publics.     

Excess nitrogen deposition: issues for consideration

This paper briefly reviews some major mechanisms by which deposition of inorganic N compounds from the atmosphere could be damaging forest and natural ecosystems. Twelve issues which needed further discussion or research were identified. These were: has N deposition increased; what is a N-saturated ecosystem; can the time of onset of N saturation be predicted; can fertiliser experiments simulate the effects of atmospheric deposition; are there relationships between N input and N leaching; is N deposition leading to acidification; does high N input lead to toxicity symptoms in trees; does N input increase tree susceptibility to stress; does N input induce nutrient deficiency; does increasing N affect natural plant communities; what are the effects on aquatic ecosystems; can a 'critical load' for protection of ecosystems be defined? There is a brief critical discussion of each issue. It is concluded that there is not enough understanding of ecosystem function to define a critical load objectively, but that limits can be defined for some ecosystems.     

Vegetation: A Sink for Atmospheric Pollutants

The possibility of vegetation being an important sink for gaseous air pollutants was investigated. Plant pollutant uptake measurements were made utilizing a typical vegetation canopy and chambers that were designed specifically for gaseous exchange studies. The data indicate that an alfalfa canopy removed gases from the atmosphere in the following order: hydrogen fluoride (HF) > sulfur dioxide (SO₂) > chlorine (Cl₂) > nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) > ozone (O₃) > peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) > nitric oxide (NO) > carbon monoxide (CO). The absorption rate of NO was low, and no absorption of CO could be detected with the methods used. In the typical ambient concentration range uptake increased linearly with increasing concentration except for O₃ and Cl₂ which caused partial stomatal closure at the higher concentrations. Wind velocity above the plants, height of the canopy, and light intensity were shown to affect the pollutant removal rate. A relationship between the absorption rate and solubility of the pollutant in water was also shown. It was concluded that vegetation may be an important sink for many gaseous air pollutants.     

Photocatalysis for arsenic removal from water: considerations for solar photocatalytic reactors

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The following work provides a perspective on the potential application of solar heterogeneous photocatalysis, which is a nonselective advanced...     

Technology for nature conservation: An industry perspective

Information age technology has the potential to change the game for conservation by continuously monitoring the pulse of the natural world. Whether or not it will depends on the ability of the conservation sector to build a community of practice, come together to define key technology challenges and work with a wide variety of partners to create, implement, and sustain solutions. I describe why these steps are necessary, outline the latest developments in the field and offer actionable ways forward for conservation agencies, universities, funding bodies, professional societies, and technology corporations to come together to realize the revolution that computational technologies can bring for biodiversity conservation.