Risk preference,trust, and willingness-to-accept subsidies for pro-environmental production: an investigation of hog farmers in China

Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - The objectives of this study are to investigate Chinese hog farmers’ minimum willingness-to-accept (WTA) subsidies for complying pro-environmental...     

PCDD/F formation during thermal desorption of chlorobenzene contaminated soil

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Unintentional formation of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/F) is observed and investigated during the thermal desorption in...     

Energy transfer and kinetics in mechanochemistry

Mechanochemistry (MC) exerts extraordinary degradation and decomposition effects on many chlorinated, brominated, and even fluorinated persistent organic pollutants (POPs). However, its application is still limited by inadequate study of its reaction kinetic aspects. In the present work, the ball motion and energy transfer in planetary ball mill are investigated in some detail. Almost all milling parameters are summarised in a single factor—total effective impact energy. Furthermore, the MC kinetic between calcium oxide/Al and hexachlorobenzene is well established and modelled. The results indicate that total effective impact energy and reagent ratio are the two factors sufficient for describing the MC degradation degree of POPs. The reaction rate constant only depends on the chemical properties of reactants, so it could be used as an important index to appraise the quality of MC additives. This model successfully predicts the reaction rate for different operating conditions, indicating that it could be suitably applied for conducting MC reactions in other reactors.

     

A triangular fuzzy TOPSIS-based approach for the application of water technologies in different emergency water supply scenarios

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Because of the increasing frequency and intensity of unexpected natural disasters, providing safe drinking water for the affected population following...     

Synergies and trade‐offs in achieving global biodiversity targets

After their failure to achieve a significant reduction in the global rate of biodiversity loss by 2010, world governments adopted 20 new ambitious Aichi biodiversity targets to be met by 2020. Efforts to achieve one particular target can contribute to achieving others, but different targets may sometimes require conflicting solutions. Consequently, lack of strategic thinking might result, once again, in a failure to achieve global commitments to biodiversity conservation. We illustrate this dilemma by focusing on Aichi Target 11. This target requires an expansion of terrestrial protected area coverage, which could also contribute to reducing the loss of natural habitats (Target 5), reducing human‐induced species decline and extinction (Target 12), and maintaining global carbon stocks (Target 15). We considered the potential impact of expanding protected areas to mitigate global deforestation and the consequences for the distribution of suitable habitat for >10,000 species of forest vertebrates (amphibians, birds, and mammals). We first identified places where deforestation might have the highest impact on remaining forests and then identified places where deforestation might have the highest impact on forest vertebrates (considering aggregate suitable habitat for species). Expanding protected areas toward locations with the highest deforestation rates (Target 5) or the highest potential loss of aggregate species’ suitable habitat (Target 12) resulted in partially different protected area network configurations (overlapping with each other by about 73%). Moreover, the latter approach contributed to safeguarding about 30% more global carbon stocks than the former. Further investigation of synergies and trade‐offs between targets would shed light on these and other complex interactions, such as the interaction between reducing overexploitation of natural resources (Targets 6, 7), controlling invasive alien species (Target 9), and preventing extinctions of native species (Target 12). Synergies between targets must be identified and secured soon and trade‐offs must be minimized before the options for co‐benefits are reduced by human pressures.