Sectoralization of an Integrated Coastal Management Programme: A Case Study in Madagascar

This paper focuses on integrated environmental management and shows why emphasis should be put on implementation issues. The authors take the example of integrated coastal management (ICM) and analyse a case study they recently conducted in Madagascar, where an ambitious ICM programme is being implemented. They explain a strong perverse mechanism called sectoralization, which appears to threaten many integration efforts and is a good example of what is at stake with the implementation of the integration concept. They conclude especially that integrated environmental management should not be considered as the only modern form of environmental action, and that a certain type of case study is now needed to analyse existing environmental management systems before designing integration programmes.     

Evolution of self-organized division of labor in a response threshold model

Division of labor in social insects is determinant to their ecological success. Recent models emphasize that division of labor is an emergent property of the interactions among nestmates obeying to simple behavioral rules. However, the role of evolution in shaping these rules has been largely neglected. Here, we investigate a model that integrates the perspectives of self-organization and evolution. Our point of departure is the response threshold model, where we allow thresholds to evolve. We ask whether the thresholds will evolve to a state where division of labor emerges in a form that fits the needs of the colony. We find that division of labor can indeed evolve through the evolutionary branching of thresholds, leading to workers that differ in their tendency to take on a given task. However, the conditions under which division of labor evolves depend on the strength of selection on the two fitness components considered: amount of work performed and on worker distribution over tasks. When selection is strongest on the amount of work performed, division of labor evolves if switching tasks is costly. When selection is strongest on worker distribution, division of labor is less likely to evolve. Furthermore, we show that a biased distribution (like 3:1) of workers over tasks is not easily achievable by a threshold mechanism, even under strong selection. Contrary to expectation, multiple matings of colony foundresses impede the evolution of specialization. Overall, our model sheds light on the importance of considering the interaction between specific mechanisms and ecological requirements to better understand the evolutionary scenarios that lead to division of labor in complex systems. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00265-012-1343-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Normative barriers improvement through the MADS/MOSAR methodology

During the past 30 years, safety and environmental topics have moved up on the list of society’s significant concerns. Administrations and regulatory bodies have to publish rules for the protection of the public, decide whether to authorize the use of a chemical product or the construction of a new plant, limit the environmental impact, regulate waste disposal, etc. All these rules i.e. the legislative, normative and procedural corpus of a country, a state, a city or a factory can be designated to a barrier function. These barriers are indispensable and play an important role in industrial safety management. In developed countries, growth during the past few years in the number of laws directed at regulating environmental and safety aspects in industry is well known to everyone. Now the definition, classification and performance of the legislative and normative barriers definitely allow the management of technological risks. So it is possible to permit the identification of the flux of hazard and to perform risk reduction in order to enhance the acceptability in a regional context. A systemic risk analysis methodology was applied to Colombian industrial sectors. The current legislation was analyzed with three scenarios. A global panorama of the different existing instruments allowing future management opportunities was suggested. The obtained analysis results propose a point of view, which could be useful for a local government or a whole national system to evaluate or improve the risk legislative and normative barriers. This modeling can be applied to other countries and to other industrial sectors.     

Discussion of “Tang,H., Zhang,H., & Yuan,S. (2018). Hydrodynamics and contaminant transport on a degraded bed at a 90-degree channel confluence. Environmental Fluid Mechanics, 18(2), 443–463”

The authors measured and computed the hydrodynamics and passive scalar dispersion in 90-degree open channel confluences over flat and degraded beds with a dominant upstream or tributary inflow. The present discussion essentially deals with the direction of rotation of the secondary currents, reported for the flat bed configuration with dominant tributary inflow. This rotation direction is indeed surprisingly opposite to the ones reported in the literature, both from calculations and measurements, even if present geometry slightly differs from literature geometries.     

Intensity of land use changes in a sugarcane expansion region,Brazil

In the last decades, Brazil has been consolidated as one of the world’s largest producers of food, with emphasis on soybeans, sugarcane and beef production. With the opening of new markets and the increase in demand, a competitive scenario was developed among farming activities, resulting in changes in land use and cover. Thus, this study aimed to verify the spatial and temporal land use changes, through intensity analysis, in the microregion of Presidente Prudente, São Paulo state, in two time intervals, 2004–2007 and 2007–2015, in addition to determining the relevance of pasture in this context. The identification of land uses occurred through the analysis of the spectrum-temporal pattern of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), in such a way that six classes were identified, annual crop, water, sugarcane, forest, pasture and urban area. The categories annual crop and sugarcane had more intense variations of losses and gains in the studied time intervals. The category pasture was the primary supplying source of the area, showing a reduction of approximately 180,000 hectares in the analyzed period, losing area with greater intensity for the categories of annual crop and sugarcane.     

New thiol adsorbent grafted on silica gel: synthesis,characterization and employment for heavy metal adsorptions

Silica gel surface has been modified in two reaction steps: (i) the silylating agent 3-mercaptopropyltrimetoxysilane was firstly immobilized to give a surface Sil-SH and (ii) this precursor incorporated an ethylene sulfide molecule to obtain the surface denoted Sil-SSH. This material was characterized by elemental analysis, IR spectroscopy, thermogravimetry, solid state 13C and 29Si NMR, and surface area measurement. These materials were employed as adsorbents for divalent heavy cations from aqueous solutions at room temperature and the isotherms were adjusted to a modified Langmuir equation. The maxima number of moles adsorbed were 1.0, 1.5, 1.6, 2.2, 2.4 and 3.3 mmol g(-1) for Co, Cu, Ni, Cd, Pb, and Hg, respectively.