Economic growth,international trade,and the depletion or conservation of renewable natural resources

Conservation of renewable natural resources and promotion of economic growth are both sustainable development goals. Here, we study the interdependency between economic growth, international trade, and the use of renewable natural resources—under alternative institutional settings of either open access or full property rights—in an endogenous growth model. We find that if the resource is depleted over time, consumption growth is reduced. Economic growth and international trade only impact resource use when the resource is harvested under full property rights. Then, widening international trade can lead countries to shift from conservation to depletion. Changes in the institutional setting of resource use in one country may have repercussions on trading partners. Our results indicate potential trade-offs between the sustainable development goals and imply that policies focusing on resource use or trade (e.g., international trade bans or certified trade) are not sufficient to prevent resource depletion.     

Temporal trends in agricultural water use and the relationships to hydroclimatic factors in the High Plains aquifer region

The High Plains aquifer (HPA) is the primary water source for agricultural irrigation in the US Great Plains. The water levels in many locations of the aquifer have declined steadily over the past several decades because the rate of water withdrawals exceeds recharge, which has been a serious concern to the water resources management in the region. We evaluated temporal trends and variations in agricultural water use and hydroclimatic variables including precipitation, air temperature, reference evapotranspiration, runoff, groundwater level, and terrestrial water storage across the HPA region for different periods from 1985 to 2020 at the grid, county, or region scale. The results showed that water withdrawals decreased from 21.3 km³/year in 1985 to 18.2 km³/year in 2015, while irrigated croplands increased from 71,928 km² in 1985 to 78,464 km² in 2015 in the entire HPA. The hydroclimatic time-series showed wetting trends in most of the northern HPA, but drying and warming trends in the southern region from 1985 to 2020. The groundwater level time-series indicated flat trends in the north, but significant declining in the central and southern HPA. Trends in irrigation water withdrawals and irrigation area across the HPA were controlled by the advancement of irrigation systems and technologies and the management of sustainable water use, but also were affected by dynamical changes in the hydroclimatic conditions.     

A framework for allocating conservation resources among multiple threats and actions

Land managers decide how to allocate resources among multiple threats that can be addressed through multiple possible actions. Additionally, these actions vary in feasibility, effectiveness, and cost. We sought to provide a way to optimize resource allocation to address multiple threats when multiple management options are available, including mutually exclusive options. Formulating the decision as a combinatorial optimization problem, our framework takes as inputs the expected impact and cost of each threat for each action (including do nothing) and for each overall budget identifies the optimal action to take for each threat. We compared the optimal solution to an easy to calculate greedy algorithm approximation and a variety of plausible ranking schemes. We applied the framework to management of multiple introduced plant species in Australian alpine areas. We developed a model of invasion to predict the expected impact in 50 years for each species-action combination that accounted for each species’ current invasion state (absent, localized, widespread); arrival probability; spread rate; impact, if present, of each species; and management effectiveness of each species-action combination. We found that the recommended action for a threat changed with budget; there was no single optimal management action for each species; and considering more than one candidate action can substantially increase the management plan's overall efficiency. The approximate solution (solution ranked by marginal cost-effectiveness) performed well when the budget matched the cost of the prioritized actions, indicating that this approach would be effective if the budget was set as part of the prioritization process. The ranking schemes varied in performance, and achieving a close to optimal solution was not guaranteed. Global sensitivity analysis revealed a threat's expected impact and, to a lesser extent, management effectiveness were the most influential parameters, emphasizing the need to focus research and monitoring efforts on their quantification.     

Microtargeting for conservation

Widespread human action and behavior change is needed to achieve many conservation goals. Doing so at the requisite scale and pace will require the efficient delivery of outreach campaigns. Conservation gains will be greatest when efforts are directed toward places of high conservation value (or need) and tailored to critical actors. Recent strategic conservation planning has relied primarily on spatial assessments of biophysical attributes, largely ignoring the human dimensions. Elsewhere, marketers, political campaigns, and others use microtargeting—predictive analytics of big data—to identify people most likely to respond positively to particular messages or interventions. Conservationists have not yet widely capitalized on these techniques. To investigate the effectiveness of microtargeting to improve conservation, we developed a propensity model to predict restoration behavior among 203,645 private landowners in a 5,200,000 ha study area in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed (U.S.A.). To isolate the additional value microtargeting may offer beyond geospatial prioritization, we analyzed a new high-resolution land-cover data set and cadastral data to identify private owners of riparian areas needing restoration. Subsequently, we developed and evaluated a restoration propensity model based on a database of landowners who had conducted restoration in the past and those who had not (n = 4978). Model validation in a parallel database (n = 4989) showed owners with the highest scorers for propensity to conduct restoration (i.e., top decile) were over twice as likely as average landowners to have conducted restoration (135%). These results demonstrate that microtargeting techniques can dramatically increase the efficiency and efficacy of conservation programs, above and beyond the advances offered by biophysical prioritizations alone, as well as facilitate more robust research of many social–ecological systems.     

Bird conservation and the land sharing-sparing continuum in farmland-dominated landscapes of lowland England

Empirical evidence from many regions suggests that most species would be least negatively affected if human food demand were met through high-yield agricultural production and conservation of nonfarm ecosystems (land sparing), rather than through wildlife-friendly farming over a larger area (land sharing). However, repeated glaciation and a long history of agriculture may lead to different results in regions such as western Europe. We compared the consequences of land sparing and land sharing on breeding bird species in 2 lowland regions of England, The Fens, with 101 species, and Salisbury Plain, with 83. We derived density–yield responses for each species and then estimated regional population size under regional food production strategies, including land sharing and land sparing, a range of intermediate strategies, and a novel mixed strategy. In both regions, more species achieved maximum regional population size under land sparing than land sharing. In The Fens, the majority of birds were loser species (estimated to have smaller populations under all food production strategies than in the preagricultural baseline scenario), whereas in Salisbury Plain the majority were winners (smaller populations in the preagricultural baseline scenario). Loser species overwhelmingly achieved maximum regional population size under land sparing, whereas winner species achieved maximum regional population size under either land sharing or an intermediate strategy, highlighting the importance of defining which groups of species are the target of conservation. A novel 3-compartment strategy (combining high-yield farming, natural habitat, and low-yield farming) often performed better than either land sharing or land sparing. Our results support intermediate or 3-compartment land-sparing strategies to maximize bird populations across lowland agricultural landscapes. To deliver conservation outcomes, any shift toward land sparing must, however, ensure yield increases are sustainable in the long term, do not entail increased negative effects on surrounding areas, and are linked to allocation of land for nature.     

HUD状态下飞行员视觉注意资源分配机制研究

为了解决平视显示器（Head Up Display,HUD）飞行中的注意资源分配问题，基于飞行模拟器，设计双作业飞行任务开展相关研究。基于事件相关电位（Event Related Potential，ERP）技术，选取行为绩效和P300成分为评价指标，采用oddball模式，在双作业飞行任务条件下开展实验研究。结果表明:随主任务难度的增加，主、辅任务的作业绩效均显著下降，被试者对HUD上异常信息的正确操作率降低，且反应时间延长；随主任务难度的增加，由辅任务所诱发的P300的波幅显著降低。在实验结果的基础上，最终提出了HUD状态下飞行员视觉注意资源分配机制。     

南岳衡山风景名胜区景观资源的调查与评价

景观资源是旅游资源的重要组成因素,本文以自然综合体的南岳衡山为考察对象,对其景观资源进行较详尽的调查,并进行定性和定量的评价,为确定南岳衡山风景名胜区性质、规划提供基础资料.     

论环境、资源与循环经济

根据质量守恒定律推导出环境与资源的数学关系,从而揭示了环境污染产生的根本原因,找到了解决环境和资源问题的根本途径,为发展循环经济,实现环境与资源可持续发展提供了科学的依据。     

钢铁酸洗废液的资源化处理技术

钢铁酸洗废液中含有大量的酸和铁盐，已被各国作为危险废物进行管理，多年来，研究者已经研究出多种有效、可行的资源化处理方法和技术，从技术成熟性、工艺特性、工艺关键、过程控制、应用前景和发展方向等方面介绍了技术上比较成熟和具有良好前景的7种主要方法，以利于保护环境和酸洗废液资源化处理技术的进步。     

超高浓度萘系磺酸染料中间体废液资源化

本文介绍了胺盐萃取回收率液中萘磺酸染料中间体的方法，回收率达９５％以上，回收浓缩液工艺套用，１０ｔ／ｄ废液量的资源化年净效益达５８０万元，投资费用两个月即可全部收回，采用Ｌａｎｇｍｕｉｒ等温方程描述体系中萃取剂用量，待萃物含量和萃取率的关系，使工艺参数的确立和工程设计完全处理指导之下。