全球环境变化国际人力因素计划推出的工业转变研究举措

本文侧重于全球环境变化国际人力因素计划(IHDP)工业转变项目(IHDP-IT)--一个以当前工业体系向可持续工业体系转变的机制为重点的国际研究举措--迄今为止所取得的结果和进展.这个IHDP-IT项目研究从三个角度分析了工业转变:宏观体系,包括工业体系、金融体系和自然体系;生产体系;和消费体系.     

Synthesis of hydroxylated PCB metabolites with the Suzuki-coupling

An improved synthesis of hydroxylated polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) which are structurally related to the major hydroxy PCB congeners identified in human plasma is described. The coupling of (chlorinated) aryl boronic acids with bromochloro anisoles using the standard conditions of the Suzuki coupling gave the desired hydroxylated PCB metabolites in good to excellent yields. The approach offers the advantage of high selectivity and good yields compared to conventional methods such as the Cadogan reaction and allows the use of less toxic starting materials.     

Geographic information systems (GIS) based model of dairy manure transportation and application with environmental quality consideration

Survey information was used to develop a minimum cost spatial dairy manure transportation model where environmental quality and crop nutrient requirements were treated as constraints. The GIS model incorporated land use types, exact locations of dairy farms and farmlands, road networks, and distances from each dairy farm to receiving farmlands to identify dairy manure transportation routes that minimized costs relative to environmental and other constraints. Our analyses indicated that the characteristics of dairy manure, its bulk and relatively low primary N, P₂O₅ and K₂O nutrient levels limit the distribution areas or distances between the farms and the land over which the manure can be economically spread. Physical properties of the land limit the quantities of nutrients that can be applied because of excess nutrient buildup in soil and potential to harm nearby waterbodies and downstream people and places. Longer distances between dairy and farmland favor the use of commercial fertilizers due to the high cost of manure transportation. At $0.08 per ton per km transportation cost, the optimal cut-off distances for dairy manure application is 30 km for N and 15 km each for P₂O₅ and K₂O consistent rules. An analysis of dairy manure application to different crop types suggest that, on average, 1 ha of land requires 61 tons of dairy manure to meet the recommended N, P₂O₅ and K₂O needs.     

Water Resource Management in Botswana: Balancing Sustainability and Economic Development*

Botswana is a rapidly developing country in southern Africa. Over the last three decades, diamond mining and tourism have provided double-digit rates of economic growth. Yet most of Botswana’s land is in the Kalahari desert where the climate is subject to sustained periods of severe drought. In this environment, water resources are the most crucial of all environmental resources. Water use directly affects economic development because water utilization impacts all the major national economic sectors. A sustainable water use resource management plan must stretch several decades into the future to assure the availability of adequate supplies of water to future generations while not compromising the ability of the current generation to reasonable rates of economic development. Yet thinking about sustainability is present in Botswana water policy mostly only in rhetoric. A series of cultural traditions and political constraints, coupled with bureaucratic managerial weaknesses, serve to maintain a system of water allocation that is unsustainable in the long run and inefficient in the short-term. Unless sustainable water use patterns are adopted, the results for the short-term, as well as the long-term, will be devastating. Drawing on data obtained through a series of interviews with government officials, leaders of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and water resource researchers, this paper explores water policy in Botswana within the larger context of sustainable natural resource management practice and the pressures of economic development. This research was partially funded under U.S. Department of State, College and University Affiliations Grant # ASCS-1095.     

Analysis of a Fisheries Model for Harvest of Hawksbill Sea Turtles (Eretmochelys imbricata)

The hawksbill sea turtle ( Eretmochelys imbricata ) is valued for its mottled shell, called bekko in Japan. Populations of hawksbills have declined worldwide, and currently there is a ban on all international trade of hawksbill shell and products (Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). In 1992 the Bekko Association of Japan introduced a fisheries model for hawksbill sea turtles in Cuba. The model estimated a sustainable yield of 5500 turtles from Cuban feeding grounds. We examined the model to determine whether this level of harvest was reasonable. Little biological information is available for hawksbills, so the model contained a number of simplifying assumptions, and several of its parameters were unsupported by data. The population was assumed to be at equilibrium, with a constant number of recruits (1-year-old turtles) and constant annual survival and growth rates. We analyzed the model to see how population size and sustainable yield results were affected by changes in various model parameters, and we found that the model was most sensitive to annual survival probability, which was assumed to be a constant 90% per year for all turtles greater than 1 year old. When we entered growth curves generated by mark-recapture data from other hawksbill populations, the model predicted a wide range of population sizes and sustainable yields. We determined that the assumptions of the current model make it unreliable for predicting sustainable yield of hawksbills, and that much research is needed to produce a more accurate model for management of this endangered species.