Adapting to climate variability: Pumpkins, people and policy

Understanding of how best to support those most vulnerable to climate stress is imperative given expected changes in climate variability. This paper investigates local adaptation strategies to climate variability, focusing on agricultural decision‐making in a communal irrigation scheme in Vhembe District, Limpopo Province, South Africa. Research done through interviews, surveys and participatory methods demonstrates that adaptation strategies within a community are socially differentiated and present differing objectives and priorities. These results highlight the need for intervention and policy that support a heterogeneous response to a wide range of stresses. Evidence for climate change is clear and the need for adaptation is urgent. However, adaptation measures have to be sensitively integrated with ongoing development pathways to ensure they are sustainable and relevant to local priorities.     

Activity and multiple forms of α-L-fucosidase and hexosaminidase in chorion biopsy specimens and some fetal organs

It was shown that activities and isoenzyme patterns of x-L-fucosidase and hexosaminidase were similar in biopsy specimens of chorion obtained immediately before induced abortion in normal pregnancy and in chorion tissue itself. A comparative study of isoenzyme patterns of these glycosidases showed their similarity in chorion and human fetal kidney, liver and lungs. The data obtained may be applied to the investigation of the multiple forms of α-L-fucosidase and hexosaminidase in chorion biopsy specimens for the prenatal diagnosis of fucosidosis (α-L-fucosidase deficiency). Tay-Sachs diseases (hexosaminidase A deficiency) and Sandhoff disease (deficiency of hexosaminidase A and B).     

Replacement of a multiple hearth by a fluid bed incinerator the Greensboro case history

The incinerator at the T.Z. Osborne Plant in Greensboro, North Carolina burns sludge from its own waste water treatment plant and sludge pumped from the nearby North Buffalo plant. The two plants have a combined capacity of 36 million gallons per day of wastewater. Because of the age of and increasing high maintenance on the existing multiple hearth incinerator, and the need to increase treatment capacity, the Osborne plant concluded a study in 1992 evaluating its options for future municipal sewage sludge disposal. Options which were evaluated during the study included; (i) rehabilitation of the existing eight-year old multiple hearth unit; (ii) addition of a new multiple hearth; (iii) addition of a new fluid bed system; (iv) drying, composting, or land application. The chosen option, based on both economic and environmental considerations, was a new fluid bed system with a capacity of 2.55 tons per hour, approximately double that of the existing multiple hearth. Design of the new fluid bed system began in December 1994 and equipment delivery for the incineration system was begun in April 1995. Initial operation occurred in August 1996. Primary and secondary sludge, dewatered to 28% dry solids by centrifuge, is delivered by piston pumps to the twenty-foot freeboard ID incinerator. A shell and tube heat exchanger recuperates heat from the exhaust gas and preheats the combustion air to 1250°F, resulting in minimal auxiliary fuel use. The air pollution control device is a high-energy Tandem Nozzle® scrubber. Greensboro was the initial installation of this scrubber design on a fluid bed incinerator and its characteristics and performance are discussed. Ash is dewatered in an ash thickener/belt press system prior to disposal to landfill. The system includes a state of the art Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) system for computer control of the operation. The unit was commissioned in August 1996 and has been in continuous operation since that time except for a one week inspection and maintenance shutdown in February 1999. The plant operates 24 h/day, 7 days per week. The initial performance test showed the system to readily meet federal and state air emission standards. Particulate released was 0.002 grains per dry standard cubic foot, carbon monoxide was 22.5 parts per million volumetric (ppmv) and opacity was 0.4%. These results show a significant emission reduction with the fluid bed when compared to the multiple hearth. Annual tests conducted since then and continuous emission monitoring have shown the unit to be in consistent compliance. Since the fluid bed system became operational, the old multiple hearth system has been maintained on standby as a backup, but its use has not been required. Operational experience is discussed, the most interesting of which is the relatively trouble-free operation. The minor problems which occurred and their solutions are detailed. Also included is a comparison of operation and maintenance experience of the fluid bed and the multiple hearth. Current sludge disposal actual cost data are also provided including the average cost per ton of dry solids treated. The almost three years of operational experience to date has shown that the decision to install a new fluid bed system was the correct one on both an environmental and economic basis. It has provided benefits to all interested parties — the wastewater treatment plant, the regulators, the taxpayers, and the surrounding community.     

Developing sustainable practices to adapt to the impacts of climate change: a case study of agricultural systems in eastern England (UK)

The weight of scientific evidence suggests that human activities are noticeably influencing the world's climate. However, the effects of global climate change will be unevenly spread, due to local variations in vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Using downscaled projections of future UK climates over the next 50 years, this paper investigates the impacts of, and possible responses to, climate change in one small area in eastern England, selected as a test-bed for sustainable agriculture. It shows that local agricultural systems are vulnerable to changes in the climate. At present, however, these considerations have a limited effect on agricultural operations, which are mainly driven by short-term events and 'non-climate' policies, such as agricultural price support. The capacity of agricultural systems to adapt successfully to climate change will be determined by the ability of producers to integrate climate change into their planning strategies with a view to ultimately ensuring sustainable agricultural practices in the long term. Electronic Publication     

Statistical approach for the source identification of boron in leachates from industrial landfills

Boron has been found in high concentrations in leachates from landfills located throughout Japan. However, the source(s) of boron in the leachates, i.e., what kind of waste(s) releases this element into the leachate, has not been clarified. In this study, boron concentrations in leachates from 48 industrial landfills were evaluated, in relation to the categories of waste constituting the landfill in each of the sites, by multiple regression analysis. The multiple regression analyses were carried out using the log-transformed boron concentration as a dependent variable and each of 19 categories of industrial waste (according to the Japanese Waste Disposal and Public Cleansing Law) as independent variables. Stepwise variable selection was employed in the analyses. Although the significant variable(s) selected varied according to the data sets analyzed (viz., data sets from least controlled landfill sites, from controlled landfill sites, and from both), cinders, slag, and waste plastics emerged as wastes with positive partial regression coefficients that significantly explained the boron levels in the leachates. These results indicated that cinders, slag, and waste plastics were the sources of high concentrations of boron in the leachates. The results of the present exploratory statistical analyses warrant a systematic survey of the boron contents of, and leachability from, cinders, slag, and waste plastics. Received: January 17, 2000 / Accepted: July 24, 2000     

Comparing environmental influences on coral bleaching across and within species using clustered binomial regression

Differential susceptibility among reef-building coral species can lead to community shifts and loss of diversity as a result of temperature-induced mass bleaching events. We evaluate environmental influences on coral colony bleaching over an 8-year period in the Florida Keys, USA. Clustered binomial regression is used to develop models incorporating taxon-specific responses to the environment in order to identify conditions and species for which bleaching is likely to be severe. By building three separate models incorporating environment, community composition, and taxon-specific responses to environment, we show observed prevalence of bleaching reflects an interaction between community composition and local environmental conditions. Environmental variables, including elevated sea temperature, solar radiation, and reef depth, explained 90% and 78% of variability in colony bleaching across space and time, respectively. The effects of environmental variables were only partially explained (33% of variability) by corresponding differences in community composition. Taxon-specific models indicated individual coral species responded differently to local environmental conditions and had different sensitivities to temperature-induced bleaching. For many coral species, but not all, bleaching was exacerbated by high solar radiation. A 25% reduction in the probability of bleaching in shallow locations for one species may reflect an ability to acclimatize to local conditions. Overall, model results indicate predictions of coral bleaching require knowledge of not just the environmental conditions or community composition, but the responses of individual species to the environment. Model development provides a useful tool for coral reef management by quantifying the influence of the local environment on individual species bleaching sensitivities, identifying susceptible species, and predicting the likelihood of mass bleaching events with changing environmental conditions.     

Male lagoon gobies, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Knipowitschia panizzae</Emphasis>, prefer more ornamented to larger females

Female ornamentation may be directly sexually selected, by male choice or female competition, or occurs as the result of a genetic correlation, arising from sexual selection on males. However, increasing evidence supports the former hypothesis, suggesting that males actively choose their partner preferring traits indicative of female quality. In the lagoon goby, Knipowitschia panizzae, a polygynous species whose males perform parental care to eggs, body length and the size of a sex-specific yellow patch on the belly are known to be reliable indicators of female fecundity. In this paper, we tested, using dummies, the male’s mating preferences for female body and yellow belly patch sizes. The two experimental trials in which a single female trait was variable showed that males prefer a larger belly patch and a larger body size, indicating that both these characters are selected by male mate choice. However, when faced with dummies exhibiting an inverse combination of body and belly patch sizes (experiment 3), males significantly preferred the smaller ones with larger yellow belly patches. A calculation of dummy theoretical fecundity reveals that in the first two experiments, males would have received an immediate benefit from their choice in terms of egg number, whereas in the third one, males chose partners that would have provided them with fewer eggs. The male lagoon goby preference for females with larger belly patches, regardless of their size, suggests that this trait, in addition to indicating fecundity, conveys information about other aspects of female and/or egg quality.     

Assessment of Flood Vulnerability Based on CMIP5 Climate Projections in South Korea

The objective of this article was to assess flood vulnerability based on the representative concentration pathways (RCP) scenarios at city and county levels. A quantile mapping method was adopted to correct bias that is inherent in climate change scenarios. A series of proxy variables related to climate exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity were chosen to assess flood vulnerability. Proxy variables were standardized using the Z‐score method. Principal component analysis was carried out to calculate the weighting of proxy variables. The study area was the Korean peninsula. The spatial resolution was on a city and county basis and the temporal resolution was 1990s, 2025s, 2055s, and 2085s (divided into 1976‐2005, 2011‐2040, 2041‐2070, and 2071‐2100). In the spatial comparison, we found that the areas with high‐level flood vulnerability increased over time in the central region, including metropolitan areas, and near the southern coast. In the temporal comparison, we found that the RCP4.5 scenario showed a tendency to increase steadily and the RCP8.5 scenario showed a tendency to decrease in the 2055s slightly and increase again in the 2085s. The study findings may provide useful data for the determination of priority for countermeasure development, though robustness of these findings with additional future projections should be established.     

基于连锁效应化工储罐区火灾爆炸定量风险评价

综合考虑热辐射、爆炸冲击波和爆炸碎片引发不同类型目标装置的连锁破坏效应,建立了基于连锁效应的化工储罐区火灾爆炸定量风险评价流程.结合实例分析,证明了装置之间的连锁效应已经成为影响装置本身及区域整体风险的关键因素.     

Multiple paternity and individual variation in sperm precedence in the simultaneously hermaphroditic land snail Arianta arbustorum

Intraspecific variation in the proportion of offspring sired by the second mate with a female (P₂) is an aspect of sperm competition that has received little attention. I examined the effects of delay between copulations (range 9–380 days) and size of sperm donor on sperm precedence in double-mated individuals of the simultaneously hermaphroditic land snail Arianta arbustorum. Using shell colour as a genetic marker, paternity was analysed in 132 broods produced by 35 snails that had mated with two partners of different genotype. Sperm precedence (P₂) was influenced by the time between the two matings when the mating delay exceeded 70 days (one reproductive season). P2 averaged 0.34 in the first brood of snails that mated twice within 70 days indicating first mate sperm precedence. In contrast, P₂ averaged 0.76 in broods of snails that remated in the following season, indicating a decreased viability of sperm from the first mate. The size of sperm-donating individuals had no effect on the fertilization success of their sperm in the first brood produced after the second copulation. Analysis of long-term sperm utilization in 23 snails that laid three to nine egg batches over 2 years revealed striking differences among individuals. Five snails (21.7%) exhibited first-mate sperm precedence throughout, eight snails (34.8%) showed second-mate sperm precedence throughout, whereas ten snails (43.5%) exhibited sperm mixing in successive batches. It is suggested that the individual variation in sperm precedence in A. arbustorum may partly be due to differences in the amount of sperm transferred. Paternity analysis in 34 batches laid by 19 wild-caught individuals of A. arbustorum indicated that at least 12 snails (63.2%) used sperm from two or more mates for the fertilization of their eggs. This suggests a high incidence of multiple paternity in broods of A. arbustorum under field conditions.