Evaluating pollution-related damage and restoration success in urban forests with participatory monitoring and digital tools

Peri-urban forest monitoring requires indicators of vegetation damage. An example is the sacred fir (Abies religiosa) forests surrounding Mexico City, which have been heavily exposed to tropospheric ozone, a harmful pollutant, for over 4 decades. We developed a participatory monitoring system with which local community members and scientists generated data on ozone tree damage. Santa Rosa Xochiac rangers (13) used the digital tool KoboToolBox to record ozone damage to trees, tree height, tree ages, tree condition, tree position, and whether the tree had been planted. Thirty-five percent of the trees (n = 1765) had ozone damage. Younger trees had a lower percentage of foliage damaged by ozone than older trees (p < 0.0001), and asymptomatic trees tended to be younger (p < 0.0001). Symptomatic trees were taller than asymptomatic trees of the same age (R²_c = 0.43, R²_m = 0.27). Involving local communities facilitated forest monitoring and using digital technology improved data quality. This participatory system can be used to monitor forest condition change over time and thus aids restoration efforts driven by government or local communities’ interests, facilitating local decision-making.     

Opportunities and challenges in CO2 utilization

CO₂ utilizations are essential to curbing the greenhouse gas effect and managing the environmental pollutant in an energy-efficient and economically-sound manner.This paper seeks to critically analyze these technologies in the context of each other and highlight the most important utilization avenues available thus far.This review will introduce and analyze each major pathway,and discuss the overall applicability,potential extent,and major limitations of each of these pathways to util...     

Another outlook into energy-growth nexus in Mexico for sustainable development: Accounting for the combined impact of urbanization and trade openness

This study corroborates the importance of United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG-7), intended to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable energy for all, and SDG-8, designed to promote decent work and sustainable economic growth. This article is motivated by the highlighted SDGs and empirically explores the long-run and causality relationship between energy consumption, urbanization, trade openness, and economic growth for annual frequency data from 1965 to 2021 for the case of Mexico. To this end, we leverage the use of fully modified ordinary least squares, dynamic ordinary least squares, and canonical regression estimation methods, while for the direction of causality, the gradual shift and wavelet coherence methods are used. According to the Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL), the bounds test traces a long-run relationship between the outlined variables over the sampled period. Empirical evidence validates the energy-induced growth hypothesis. This result resonates with the causality analysis, where energy consumption drives economic growth one way in Mexico. This suggests that Mexico cannot embark on energy-conservative policies, as such actions will hurt economic progress. In addition, unidirectional causality is seen between urbanization, trade openness, and economic growth. These findings have far-reaching implications for economic growth and macroeconomic indicators in Mexico. More insights are highlighted in the concluding section.     

From conflict to collaboration: Atewa Forest governance

The problem of forest degradation and loss has become the concern of many countries. To address this challenge, some collaborate in sustainable forest management. The most successful outcomes, however, are observed where local participation is an essential part of conservation efforts. In Ghana, forests have experienced various degrees of exploitation over the years, resulting in their ecological decline. Despite its designation as a protected area for biodiversity and ecosystem services, the Atewa Range Forest Reserve in Ghana has been significantly impacted by deforestation, illegal mining, and other destructive activities. The purpose of this paper is to examine ecologically based management approaches that could be adopted to generate beneficial outcomes for all forest stakeholders and actors in Ghana. The study sampled forest stakeholders in Kwabeng, the administrative capital of the Atewa West District, to understand forest governance challenges and outline strategies for overcoming them. The study revealed that a bottom-up all-inclusive approach to managing forest resources is necessary. This paper, therefore, proposes an integrated forest governance that prioritizes the UN Sustainable Development Goal 15—Life on Land-related to forest preservation.     

Development of a field test method to evaluate gaseous air cleaner performance in a multizone building

The performance of gaseous air cleaners for commercial and residential buildings has typically been evaluated using test protocols developed for a controlled laboratory chamber or a test duct. It is currently unknown how laboratory measurements relate to the actual performance of an air cleaner installed in a real building. However, to date, there are no air cleaner field test protocols available, thereby limiting the existing field data. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has conducted a series of experiments to support test procedure development for evaluating the installed performance of gaseous air cleaning equipment, as well as metrics for characterizing field performance. To date, over 100 experiments have been completed, of which 23 portable air cleaner experiments and 6 in-duct air cleaner experiments are described in this paper. Tests were conducted in a finished three-bedroom/two-bathroom manufactured house equipped with several gas chromatographs to semi-continuously measure air change rates and volatile organic compound concentrations. Experimental variables included air cleaner location, isolation of zones by closing doors, and contaminant source location. For each experiment, air cleaner removal of decane was directly measured using the air cleaner inlet and outlet concentrations, as well as with mass balance analyses using measured room concentrations. With a verified mass balance model, a field performance metric was developed to compare installed whole-building performance to the performance predicted by a laboratory result. The results provide insight into the protocols and metrics that might prove useful for characterizing the field performance of air cleaners as well as the impact of air cleaner removal on zonal concentration levels in a variety of situations.     

应用大气扩散模式进行区域稻田甲烷源强估算

传统通量箱方法对区域稻田甲烷源强的估算具有很大不确定性 .本研究应用箱模式和 ATDL模式估算区域稻田甲烷排放率 .箱模式和 ATDL模式估算排放率分别为 :6月 13.2～ 30.4mg· (m²·h)^-1 和 6.1～ 8.5mg·(m²·h)^-1,9月 10.4～20.0 mg·(m²·h)^-1 和 5.5～9.3mg·(m²·h)^-1;而传统通量箱方法估算排放率为 :6月 0.3～ 14.3mg·(m²·h)^-1 ,9月 0～0.3mg·(m²·h)^-1.分析表明 ,北京地区水稻生长季的接地逆温等不利气象条件使箱模式应用的基本假设难以满足 ,使之得出偏高的估算结果 . ATDL模式能较好地适应这种不利气象条件 ,并在 6月得出了与通量观测结果相近的估算结果 ,而其 9月高于通量观测结果的估算 ,却可能证实了通量箱方法难以测得的干旱稻田土壤裂缝的甲烷排放 ,有待于进一步研究证实 .     

Genetic and Demographic Threats to the Black Rhinoceros Population in the Ngorongoro Crater

A resident population of 13 black rhinoceros ( Diceros bicornis ) persist in Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania. The effective population size ( N _e ) may be as few as 5 animals. Projected growth for this population suggests that the effective population size will remain small for the near future, threatening this Iocal population with extinction due to the stochastic factors associated with small population size. A summary of historic and recent demographic data for this population reveals a population crash during the period of heavy poaching that affected this species throughout its range. Although poaching of this species has been brought under control the population remains small. These data and models of projected population growth argue for consideration of more-intensive management within the framework of the small population paradigm. This case is an example of applied conservation resulting from this paradigm used in conjunction with rather than competing with the declining population paradigm. We identify additional monitoring, particularly of density-dependent behaviors, that will be necessary for designing a successful management program. Finally, the use of molecular markers for developing an accurate pedigree for this population is suggested in order to maintain a genetically healthy population. These strategies have broad applicability to black rhinoceros conservation throughout Africa.     

Effects of interpolation and data resolution on methane emission estimates from rice paddies

Rice paddies are an important source of the greenhouse gas methane (CH₄). Global methane emission estimates are highly uncertain and do not account for effects of interpolation or data resolution errors. This paper determines such scaling effects for the influence of soil properties on calculated CH₄ emissions for the island of Java, Indonesia. The effects of different interpolation techniques, variograms and neighbor optimization were tested for soil properties by cross-validation. Interpolated organic carbon values were not significantly different from the original soil samples, in contrast to interpolated soil iron contents. Interpolation of soil properties coupled to a process-based model on CH₄emissions led to a significant change in distribution of calculated CH₄ emissions, i.e., the variance decreased. Effects of data resolution were examined by interpolating soil properties to derive data at different data resolutions and then calculating CH₄ emissions by applying the process-based model at these resolutions. The soil properties did not differ significantly for different data resolutions, in contrast to calculated CH₄ emissions. These scaling effects were caused by the combination of interpolation and a non-linear model. Real scaling effects may even be larger because small-scale variability was not accounted for. Scaling effects, including those caused by small-scale variability, have to be considered to achieve unbiased and less uncertain global CH₄emissions estimates from rice paddies.