Carbon benefits from Amazonian forest reserves: leakage accounting and the value of time

Amazonian forest reserves have significant carbon benefits, but the methodology used for accounting for these benefits will be critical in determining whether the powerful economic force represented by mitigation efforts to slow global warming will be applied to creating these reserves. Opportunities for reserve creation are quickly being lost as new areas are opened to deforestation though highway construction and other developments. Leakage, or the effects that a reserve or other mitigation project provokes outside of the project boundaries, is critical to a proper accounting of net carbon benefits. Protected areas in the Amazon have particularly great potential mitigation benefits over an extended time horizon. Over a 100-year time frame, virtually no unprotected forest is likely to remain, meaning that potential leakages (both leakage to the vicinity of the reserves and that displaced by removing protected areas from the land-grabbing market) should not matter much because any short-term leakage would be “recovered” eventually. The effect of the value attributed to time greatly influences the impact of leakage on benefits credited to reserves. Simple assumptions regarding leakage scenarios illustrate the benefits of reserves and the critical areas where agreement is necessary to make this option a practical component of mitigation efforts. The stakes are too high to allow further delays in reaching agreement on these issues.     

A case study on period vehicle routing in a refuse collection system

Period vehicle routing, a multi-period extension of the capacitated vehicle routing problem, is the problem of determining a service combination of each customer as well as the vehicle routes in each period of the planning horizon while satisfying the restrictions on the vehicle capacity and the travel distance (time). The problem can typically be found in refuse collection systems in which end-of-life products or wastes are collected and moved to the facilities where further treatment is taken care of. In this study, we report a case study on the problem for the objective of minimising the fleet size, i.e. the maximum number of vehicles simultaneously required over the planning horizon. To solve the problem, we adopt the two-stage heuristic in which an initial solution is obtained by assigning a service combination to each collection point, and then it is improved by changing the service combination assigned to each collection point. Computational experiment was done on the case data and significant improvement over the conventional method is reported.     

Can the envisaged reductions of fossil fuel CO<Subscript>2</Subscript> emissions be detected by atmospheric observations?

The lower troposphere is an excellent receptacle, which integrates anthropogenic greenhouse gases emissions over large areas. Therefore, atmospheric concentration observations over populated regions would provide the ultimate proof if sustained emissions changes have occurred. The most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO(2)), also shows large natural concentration variations, which need to be disentangled from anthropogenic signals to assess changes in associated emissions. This is in principle possible for the fossil fuel CO(2) component (FFCO(2)) by high-precision radiocarbon ((14)C) analyses because FFCO(2) is free of radiocarbon. Long-term observations of (14)CO(2) conducted at two sites in south-western Germany do not yet reveal any significant trends in the regional fossil fuel CO(2) component. We rather observe strong inter-annual variations, which are largely imprinted by changes of atmospheric transport as supported by dedicated transport model simulations of fossil fuel CO(2). In this paper, we show that, depending on the remoteness of the site, changes of about 7-26% in fossil fuel emissions in respective catchment areas could be detected with confidence by high-precision atmospheric (14)CO(2) measurements when comparing 5-year averages if these inter-annual variations were taken into account. This perspective constitutes the urgently needed tool for validation of fossil fuel CO(2) emissions changes in the framework of the Kyoto protocol and successive climate initiatives.     

《京都议定书》生效给林区经济发展带来新机遇——碳汇的利用途径与前景

<京都议定书>生效.它的实质是保护人类生存环境和地球生态平衡.清洁发展机制CDM是在<京都议定书>中建立的一个国际合作机制,清洁发展机制造林、再造林项目是利用森林的固碳生态功能,削减部分大气中CO2含量,研究CDM机制对于发展林区经济可持续发展具有重要意义.     

环渤海滨海湿地土壤磷形态特征研究

利用SMT分级方法和液相31P核磁共振分析方法,研究了环渤海典型滨海湿地表层土壤磷形态.结果发现,湿地土壤中总磷在410.35~691.57 mg·kg-1之间,其中以HCl-P为主,占总磷的46.67%~82.95%;较易释放的Na OH-P含量较少,占4.98%~22.31%;同时,由于有机质含量丰富,有机磷含量也较高,在受水产养殖污染的湿地中,有机磷含量明显偏高.使用31P-NMR技术在湿地土壤中共检测到6类磷化合物:正磷酸盐(Ortho-P)、磷酸单酯(Mono-P)、磷脂(Lipid-P)、DNA磷(DNA-P)、焦磷酸盐(Pyro-P)及膦酸盐(Phon-P),其中以正磷酸盐为主,含量在181.69~350.64 mg·kg-1之间;磷酸单酯为有机磷的主要组分,占总量的5.25%~37.17%.渤海湾南部湿地土壤中有机磷含量明显高于北部湿地,以稳定性较高的磷酸单酯为主,同时,DNA磷较多地存在于南部湿地,北部湿地含量极少,说明南部湿地微生物活性较高.     

九龙江流域水稻土重金属赋存形态及污染评价

采用改进的BCR四步提取-电感耦合等离子体质谱法(ICP-MS)分析九龙江流域71个水稻土中12种重金属元素的赋存形态特征,运用风险评价编码法(RAC)、次生相与原生相分布比值法(RSP)和地质积累指数法(Igeo)评价重金属污染特征.结果表明,大部分重金属总量已存在不同程度的富集且不同重金属元素在水稻土中的赋存形态特征差异较大.Cd和Mn主要以F1弱酸溶态存在,平均比例分别为46.2%和35.2%;Fe和Pb主要以F2可还原态存在,平均比例分别为64.5%和41.5%;而V、Cr、Ni、As、Co、Sr、Zn和Cu主要以F4残渣态存在,平均比例分别为79.6%、78.4%、73.1%、67.7%、51.9%、49.7%、45.3%和38.4%.3种污染评价方法分别重点关注弱酸溶态、次生相和重金属总量,均有应用价值,缺点是不够全面.结合3种评价方法能更准确全面评估重金属污染特征.九龙江流域水稻土中Cd为中度~重度污染,Mn和Sr为轻度~重度污染,Zn、Pb、Cu和Co为轻度~中度污染,As和Ni为无污染~中度污染,V、Fe和Cr为无污染~轻度污染.     

Assessing and improving management practices when planning packaging waste collection systems

Packaging waste collection systems are responsible to collect, within a geographic area, three types of packaging materials (paper, glass and plastic/metal) that are disposed by the final consumer into special bins. Those systems are often characterized by having a network with multiple depots that act as transfer and sorting stations, and where the vehicle fleet is based. However, each depot is often managed independently and not as a part of a unique system. In this work, four current tactical/operational practices that contribute to the independent management of each depot are analysed. The change of such practices is investigated and their impact assessed on the total collection cost. A solution methodology based on mathematical formulations is developed to plan service areas, vehicle routes and vehicle schedules taking into account new alternative solutions in managing the system as a whole. Such methodology is applied to a real case study of a company responsible for the collection of the packaging waste in 7 municipalities in mainland Portugal. New service areas, collection routes and vehicle schedules are defined and significant savings are obtained in terms of the total distance travelled as well as in terms of the number of required vehicles, resulting in a decreasing of the total system cost.