Does the presence of wind turbines have negative externalities for people in their surroundings? Evidence from well-being data

Throughout the world, governments foster the deployment of wind power to mitigate negative externalities of conventional electricity generation, notably CO₂ emissions. Wind turbines, however, are not free of externalities themselves, particularly interference with landscape aesthetics. We quantify these negative externalities using the life satisfaction approach. To this end, we combine household data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) with a novel panel dataset on over 20,000 installations. Based on geographical coordinates and construction dates, we establish causality in a difference-in-differences design. Matching techniques drawing on exogenous weather data and geographical locations of residence ensure common trend behaviour. We show that the construction of wind turbines close to households exerts significant negative external effects on residential well-being, although they seem both spatially and temporally limited, being restricted to about 4000 m around households and decaying after five years at the latest. Robustness checks, including view shed analyses based on digital terrain models and placebo regressions, confirm our results.     

What motivates farmers to participate in sustainable agriculture? Evidence and policy implications

Sustained growth in agricultural productivity has become an ideal model and a political goal of agricultural development in China. Local participation is essential for the implementation of sustainable agriculture strategy. We conducted a case study in Hailun County, an important grain production base in China, to find ways to motivate farmers to participate in sustainable agriculture. We obtained data from semi-structured interviews of 98 households using participatory rural appraisal methods. Logistic regression models were used to explore factors that underlie farmers' attitudes towards agricultural production and their environmental awareness. Results indicated that low agricultural economic efficiency could result in less enthusiasm for agriculture among local farmers. This is a potential risk for China's food security and sustainable agricultural development. The backward development of the rural economy limited improvement of farmers' environmental awareness. Moreover, poor rural labour quality implied a lack of local participation in sustainable agriculture. Suggestions for sustainable agricultural development include establishment of a reasonable market and agricultural subsidy mechanisms, basic and vocational education for young adults, effective agricultural instruction and environmental education agencies and two-way communication mechanisms.     

Are functional traits good predictors of demographic rates? Evidence from five neotropical forests

A central goal of comparative plant ecology is to understand how functional traits vary among species and to what extent this variation has adaptive value. Here we evaluate relationships between four functional traits (seed volume, specific leaf area, wood density, and adult stature) and two demographic attributes (diameter growth and tree mortality) for large trees of 240 tree species from five Neotropical forests. We evaluate how these key functional traits are related to survival and growth and whether similar relationships between traits and demography hold across different tropical forests. There was a tendency for a trade-off between growth and survival across rain forest tree species. Wood density, seed volume, and adult stature were significant predictors of growth and/or mortality. Both growth and mortality rates declined with an increase in wood density. This is consistent with greater construction costs and greater resistance to stem damage for denser wood. Growth and mortality rates also declined as seed volume increased. This is consistent with an adaptive syndrome in which species tolerant of low resource availability (in this case shade-tolerant species) have large seeds to establish successfully and low inherent growth and mortality rates. Growth increased and mortality decreased with an increase in adult stature, because taller species have a greater access to light and longer life spans. Specific leaf area was, surprisingly, only modestly informative for the performance of large trees and had ambiguous relationships with growth and survival. Single traits accounted for 9-55% of the interspecific variation in growth and mortality rates at individual sites. Significant correlations with demographic rates tended to be similar across forests and for phylogenetically independent contrasts as well as for cross-species analyses that treated each species as an independent observation. In combination, the morphological traits explained 41% of the variation in growth rate and 54% of the variation in mortality rate, with wood density being the best predictor of growth and mortality. Relationships between functional traits and demographic rates were statistically similar across a wide range of Neotropical forests. The consistency of these results strongly suggests that tropical rain forest species face similar trade-offs in different sites and converge on similar sets of solutions.     

Does environmental regulation affect labor demand in China? Evidence from the textile printing and dyeing industry

Developing countries, including China, are just beginning to figure out how to balance economic development with the desire to address numerous severe environmental problems. In this paper, we use two enterprise-level data sets – China's Environmental Statistics Database and China's Industrial Enterprise Database – to estimate the impact of a more stringent wastewater discharge standard imposed on all the textile printing and dyeing enterprises in the Lake Tai, Jiangsu region, on labor demand. We find that enterprises which face this new more stringent standard decreased labor demand by approximately 7%. Furthermore, we find that the new standard had heterogeneous impacts on different types of enterprises. For example, our results indicate that the more stringent discharge standard reduced employment in domestically-owned private enterprises by 7.4%, but had little or no impact on state-owned or foreign-owned enterprises.     

Is a voluntary approach an effective environmental policy instrument?: A case for environmental management systems

Using Japanese facility-level data from an OECD survey, we estimate the effects of implementation of ISO14001 and publication of environmental reports on the facilities’ environmental performance. While most previous studies focused on an index of emissions toxicity, this study examines three areas of impacts, none of which have been explored in the literature: natural resource use, solid waste generation, and wastewater effluent. The study is also unique in that the effectiveness of ISO14001 is considered in relation to environmental regulations. Our findings are summarized as follows. First, both ISO14001 and report publication help reduce all three impacts; the former appears more effective in all areas except wastewater. Second, environmental regulations do not weaken the effect of ISO14001. Third, assistance programs offered by local governments—a voluntary approach—promote facilities’ adoption of ISO14001. These findings suggest that governments can use command-and-control and voluntary approaches concurrently.     

Are Lévy flight patterns derived from the Weber–Fechner law in distance estimation?

Honeybees (Apis mellifera) are regularly faced with the task of navigating back to their hives from remote food sources. They have evolved several methods to do this, including compass-directed “vector” flights and the use of landmarks. If these hive-centered mechanisms are disrupted, bees revert to searching for the hive, using an optimal Lévy flight searching strategy. The same strategy is adopted when a food source at a known location ceases to be available. Here, we show that the programming for this Lévy strategy does not need to be very sophisticated or clever on the bee’s part, as Lévy flight patterns can be derived from the Weber–Fechner law in a bee’s odometer. Odometry errors of a different kind occur in desert ants (Cataglyphis spp., Melophorus bagoti). The searching behaviors of these ants are very similar in overall structure to that of honeybees but do not display any Lévy flight characteristics. We suggest that errors in the estimation of distance can be implicitly involved in shaping the structure of systematic search behavior and should not be regarded as merely deficiencies in the odometer.     

Do EPA regulations affect labor demand? Evidence from the pulp and paper industry

Any opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Census Bureau or the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. All results have been reviewed to ensure that no confidential information is disclosed. We thank Wang Jin and Shital Sharma for excellent research assistance; we also thank Jim Davis at the Boston Research Data Center for his continued help, and Reed Walker and participants at the 2011 AERE Summer Conference and the Environmental Economics seminar at Harvard University?s Kennedy School for helpful comments. Any remaining errors are ours.     

Do energy prices influence investment in energy efficiency? Evidence from energy star appliances

I examine whether electricity prices influence the likelihood that consumers purchase high efficiency appliances by using state-year panel data on electricity prices and the proportion of sales of new appliances that involve high efficiency “Energy Star” models. I find no evidence that electricity prices affect the propensity for consumers to choose high efficiency appliances. Point estimates are extremely small and precisely estimated. The findings suggest that price-based energy policies may be limited in the extent to which they increase investment in residential energy efficiency, which has been considered one of the lowest cost opportunities for reducing carbon emissions.     

Leading from the front? Social networks in navigating groups

In many group-living animals, leadership by only a fraction of the group members can be important for group navigation. It has been shown that subgroups of informed individuals can steer the remainder of the group without direct communication, resolving conflicts of interest through individual-to-individual interactions. We present a model for the navigation of collectively moving groups that includes preferential interactions between individuals as a way of imposing social network structures, known to be present in many species. We show that effective leadership can occur when leaders do not occupy frontal spatial positions and when navigation tendency is appropriately balanced with social position. Our model also shows that small minorities can dominate movement decisions if they have navigational knowledge combined with influential social network positions. Our findings highlight the mechanistic importance of social networks for the movement decisions of animal groups. We discuss the implications of our research for interpreting empirical observations.     

Does the promotion pressure on local officials matter for regional carbon emissions? Evidence based on provincial-level leaders in China

Environmental Geochemistry and Health - This paper constructs data from 30 provinces in mainland China from 1997 to 2016 and mainly adopts panel data fixed effects models to investigate how the...     

Is sexual monomorphism a predictor of polygynandry? Evidence from a social mammal, the collared peccary

Sexual dimorphism is common in polygynous species, and there is clear evidence that both intra-sexual competition and female preferences can drive the evolution of large body size in males. In contrast, sexual monomorphism is often argued to reflect a relaxation of male mate competition or an intensification of resource competition among females. Alternatively, it might imply opportunities for females to circumvent or counteract male mate competition in a polygynandrous mating system. We test the prediction that sexual monorphism is associated with polygynandry in the collared peccary (Pecari tajacu, Tayassuidae), a social ungulate closely related to the old-world suids. The genetic mating system in the Tayassuidae is unknown, but its sexual monomorphism presents a striking contrast to the strong size dimorphism found in most Suidae, so that a departure from the polygynous system common in Suidae would be noteworthy. We characterized genetic relationships among adults within herds in three geographically distinct populations, assigned parents to 75 offspring, and tested for skew in individual reproductive success. Parentage assignment data indicated that multiple males sire offspring within a herd, and in the population for which genetic data were most complete, 19% of parentage assignments were potentially sired by extra-herd males. Some litters have multiple sires, and neither males nor females monopolized reproduction, even in small herds. This result supports our prediction and suggests that sexual monomorphism may either select for or be an evolutionary consequence of a promiscuous mating system.     

Do environmental regulations disproportionately affect small businesses? Evidence from the Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures survey

This paper examines whether the impact of environmental regulations differs by the size of the business. We consider the net effect of statutory, enforcement, and compliance asymmetries by estimating the relationship between plant size and pollution abatement expenditures, using establishment-level data on U.S. manufacturers from the Census Bureau's Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures (PACE) survey and from its Annual Survey of Manufactures and Census of Manufactures. We model establishments' pollution abatement operating costs (PAOC) per unit of economic activity as a function of establishment size, industry, state, and year. Our results show that PAOC intensity increases with establishment and firm size.     

Do environmental regulations disproportionately affect small businesses? Evidence from the Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures survey

This paper examines whether the impact of environmental regulations differs by the size of the business. We consider the net effect of statutory, enforcement, and compliance asymmetries by estimating the relationship between plant size and pollution abatement expenditures, using establishment-level data on U.S. manufacturers from the Census Bureau's Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures (PACE) survey and from its Annual Survey of Manufactures and Census of Manufactures. We model establishments' pollution abatement operating costs (PAOC) per unit of economic activity as a function of establishment size, industry, state, and year. Our results show that PAOC intensity increases with establishment and firm size.     

Evidence for a symbiosis between bacteria of the genus Rhodobacter and the marine sponge Halichondria panicea : harbor also for putatively toxic bacteria?

Halichondria panicea (Pallas) is a marine sponge, abundantly occurring in the Adriatic Sea, North Sea, and Baltic Sea. It was the aim of the present study to investigate if this sponge species harbors bacteria. Cross sections through H. panicea were taken and inspected by electron microscopy. The micrographs showed that this sponge species is colonized by bacteria in its mesohyl compartment. To identify the bacteria, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis of the 16S rRNA gene segment, typical for bacteria, was performed. DNA was isolated from sponge material that had been collected near Rovinj (Adriatic Sea), Helgoland (North Sea), and Kiel (Baltic Sea) and was amplified with bacterial primers by PCR. The data gathered indicate that in all samples bacteria belonging to the genus Rhodobacter (Proteobacteria, subdivision α) are dominant, suggesting that these bacteria live in symbiotic relationship with the sponge. In addition, the results show that the different samples taken contain further bacterial species, some of them belonging to the same genus even though found in sponges from different locations. The possibility of the presence of toxic bacteria was supported by the finding that organic extracts prepared from sponge samples displayed toxicity, when analyzed in vitro using leukemia cells. Received: 7 March 1997 / Accepted: 2 October 1997     

An effective dietary survey framework for the assessment of total dietary arsenic intake in Bangladesh: Part-A—FFQ design

Groundwater contaminated with arsenic (As), when extensively used for irrigation, causes potentially long term detrimental effects to the landscape. Such contamination can also directly affect human health when irrigated crops are primarily used for human consumption. Therefore, a large number of humans are potentially at risk worldwide due to daily As exposure. Numerous previous studies have been severely limited by small sample sizes which are not reliably extrapolated to large populations or landscapes. Human As exposure and risk assessment are no longer simple assessments limited to a few food samples from a small area. The focus of more recent studies has been to perform risk assessment at the landscape level involving the use of biomarkers to identify and quantify appropriate health problems and large surveys of human dietary patterns, supported by analytical testing of food, to quantify exposure. This approach generates large amounts of data from a wide variety of sources and geographic information system (GIS) techniques have been used widely to integrate the various spatial, demographic, social, field, and laboratory measured datasets. With the current worldwide shift in emphasis from qualitative to quantitative risk assessment, it is likely that future research efforts will be directed towards the integration of GIS, statistics, chemistry, and other dynamic models within a common platform to quantify human health risk at the landscape level. In this paper we review the present and likely future trends of human As exposure and GIS application in risk assessment at the landscape level.     

Data quality assessment for studies investigating microplastics and nanoplastics in food products: Are current data reliable?

● Data quality assessment criteria for MP/NPs in food products were developed. ● Data quality of 71 data records (69 of them only focused on MPs) was assessed. ● About 96% of the data records were considered unreliable in at least one criterion. ● Improvements need to be made regarding positive controls and polymer identification. ● A mismatch between MP/NPs used in toxicity studies and those in foods was recorded. Data on the occurrence of microplastics and nanoplastics (MP/NPs) in foods have been used to assess the human health risk caused by the consumption of MP/NPs. The reliability of the data, however, remains unclear because of the lack of international standards for the analysis of MP/NPs in foods. Therefore, the data quality needs to be assessed for accurate health risk assessment. This study developed 10 criteria applicable to the quality assessment of data on MP/NPs in foods. Accordingly, the reliability of 71 data records (69 of them only focused on MPs) was assessed by assigning a score of 2 (reliable without restrictions), 1 (reliable but with restrictions), or 0 (unreliable) on each criterion. The results showed that only three data records scored 2 or 1 on all criteria, and six data records scored 0 on as many as six criteria. A total of 58 data records did not include information on positive controls, and 12 data records did not conduct the polymer identification, which could result in the overestimation or underestimation of MP/NPs. Our results also indicated that the data quality of unprocessed foods was more reliable than that of processed foods. Furthermore, we proposed a quality assurance and quality control protocol to investigate MP/NPs in foods. Notably, the characteristics of MP/NPs used in toxicological studies and those existing in foods showed a remarkable discrepancy, causing the uncertainty of health risk assessment. Therefore, both the estimated exposure of MP/NPs and the claimed potential health risks should be treated with caution.     

Small-scale spatial and seasonal differences in the distribution of beach arthropods on the northwestern Tunisian coast. Are species evenly distributed along the shore?

Spatial distributions of sand beach arthropods were studied at Zouara (Nefza), a beach dune system along the northwestern coast of Tunisia. Two transects with pitfall traps, perpendicular to the shoreline and placed from sea towards land, captured spontaneously crawling arthropods. The pitfalls were used to obtain data on horizontal zonations for 2 days during different seasons (April, October). In April, in order to assess local, long-shore distributions of surface-active beach invertebrates, ten transects with pitfall traps were placed every 100 m, for 2 days. Core samples were also taken in correspondence with each of the ten transects to obtain the distribution of burrowing individuals. Sand samples were taken for successive laboratory analyses (salinity, grain size and organic contents). Local climatic conditions were also recorded. One isopod (Tylos europaeus, subdivided into three different size classes), two amphipods (Talitrus saltator, Talorchestia brito and indistinguishable juveniles) and four coleopteran species (Eurynebria complanata, Scarites laevigatus, Phytosus nigriventris, Phaleria acuminata) were considered. Mean zonations perpendicular to the shoreline showed that crustaceans were found closer to the sea-line limits than coleopterans and that between seasons some species changed their mean zonation more than others. Local, long-shore distributions of active and burrowing individuals showed that most species were unevenly distributed along the shore. These discontinuous distributions differed according to the species and age class and were mainly related to specific microclimatic conditions and to nutrition.     

Chelipeds are the real weapon: cheliped size is a more effective determinant than body size in male–male competition for mates in a hermit crab

To understand the evolution of weapons, we must understand both their functions and relative importance compared to body size in determining fighting success. Many decapod crustaceans develop disproportionately large chelipeds for their body size and use them as a weapon in agonistic interaction. There are, however, examples where weapons are merely signals of resource holding potential (RHP) and the RHP is actually determined by body size. We investigated the function and relative efficacy of body size and major cheliped size in male–male contests for females in the hermit crab Diogenes nitidimanus. Contests over females took two forms: (1) males preemptively guarded females and opponents did not fight with the guarding male. Cheliped size contributed significantly to the settlement of these contests and probably functioned as a visual signal for the opponents. (2) Guarding males engaged in physical combat with an opponent. In these cases, both body and cheliped sizes affected contest outcomes. The effect size for cheliped size was as strong, or stronger, than that for body size. These results suggest that large chelipeds have evolved as a true weapon and are effective in escalated fights for resources. Therefore they are also efficient visual signals for settling contests with only display. Our results are a rare example that clearly demonstrate that weapons are a more important determinant of fights than body size when both body and weapon size affect resource acquisition.