Human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) in Nova Scotia,Canada

Photosynthetically fixed energy from the sun, in the form of net primary production, ultimately supports the majority of life on earth. Given the importance of this energy source, we calculate the human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) for the province of Nova Scotia, Canada. We find that over 25% of potentially available production is appropriated by humans through harvest (forestry and agriculture) and land cover change. The level of appropriation in Nova Scotia is close to the global average, when methodological differences between studies are taken into account, but substantially less than in Austria and India where detailed surveys have also been conducted. Furthermore, HANPP is not distributed evenly throughout the province, but is instead concentrated in the north-central counties, where appropriation reaches 50%. We discuss the implications of these results, and the novel method used to obtain them, in the context of biophysical assessment and the species-energy hypothesis.     

北京城市生态系统地表水硝酸盐污染空间变化及其来源研究

利用2009～2010年北京城市生态系统地表水10处监测点水环境监测数据,评价了北京城市生态系统地表水硝酸盐污染状况及其空间分布,结合水化学因子相关关系分析了硝酸盐的主要来源.结果表明,北京城市生态系统地表水硝态氮(NO3--N)质量浓度为0.7～7.6 mg.L-1,其中,位于北京市东南部的地表水监测点(东便门和通惠河)水体NO3--N质量浓度为7.0～7.6 mg.L-1,显著高于上游8个监测点NO3--N质量浓度(P<0.01);Cl-质量浓度为14.8～86.0 mg.L-1,东便门、通惠河地表水监测点水体Cl-质量浓度为81.5～85.0 mg.L-1,约为上游其他8个监测点的2.3～5.8倍.东便门、通惠河地表水监测点水体电导率(EC)、SO24-质量浓度也表现出同NO3--N、Cl-相似的变化规律,表明东便门、通惠河两处地表水监测点附近存在明显的污染源.相关分析表明,地表水Cl-/Na+和SO24-/Ca2+呈明显的线性相关,说明地表水NO3--N污染来源比较单一;水体中NO3--N/Cl-及NO3--N的质量浓度状况说明北京城市生态系统地表水NO3--N污染来源主要是城市污水,包括污水处理厂的废水、垃圾沥出液及生活污水.未来北京市地表水治理应重点关注东便门、通惠河等东南部下游水体污染治理.     

Incorporating Social Context Variables Into Paired Watershed Designs to Test Nonpoint Source Program Effectiveness1

Prokopy, Linda Stalker, Z. Asligül Göçmen, Jing Gao, Shorna Broussard Allred, Joseph E. Bonnell, Kenneth Genskow, Alicia Molloy, and Rebecca Power, 2011. Incorporating Social Context Variables Into Paired Watershed Designs to Test Nonpoint Source Program Effectiveness. Journal of the American Water Resources Association (JAWRA) 47(1):196‐202. DOI: 10.1111/j.1752‐1688.2010.00508.x Abstract: In a traditional paired watershed study, watersheds are selected to be as similar as possible so that conclusions may be drawn about the performance of Best Management Practices. We have extended the paired watershed concept to examine the effectiveness of watershed management programs by adding comparative criteria for social characteristics. For four different 8 or 11/12 digit hydrologic unit code (HUC) watersheds in the Midwest, we have piloted a systematic method for selecting paired subwatersheds. First, we developed a list of 11 key variables. Next, a factor analysis was conducted to determine the underlying structure of the 11 input variables. Finally, in each of the four watersheds, potential paired subwatersheds (all 14 digit HUCs) were selected using the factors in a cluster analysis. Informal interviews were then held with key informants in each watershed to provide qualitative assessments of criteria that could impact the comparability of the subwatersheds. This method for selecting paired watersheds should be helpful for other researchers to test the effectiveness of watershed management programs focused on behavior change.     

安全生产“十二五”规划若干统计指标考量

生产安全事故统计指标是安全生产监督管理及宏观决策重要依据。为进一步完善我国职业伤害统计指标体系,对安全生产规划中若干指标的科学性和实用性以及存在问题进行了探索。在进行初步实验计算、理论分析和国内外安全生产事故主要统计指标特点对比研究后,提出：在该规划指标中调整或删去＂亿元国内生产总值死亡率＂;增加非致死性事故统计数据,以能更好代表职业伤害事故总量;适度应用重特大事故起数指标和提高十万人死亡率统计指标精确性等几点建议。作者认为应加强职业伤害指标体系研究,从而尽快实现我国统计指标与国际接轨,在《国际劳工统计年鉴》中重现中国职业伤害统计数据。     

Designing sustainable and economically attractive brownfield revitalization options using an integrated assessment model

We describe the development of an integrated assessment model which evaluates redevelopment options of large contaminated brownfields and we present the application of the model in a case study. Aiming to support efficient and sustainable revitalization and communication between stakeholders, the presented assessment model integrates three pinnacles of brownfield revitalization: (i) subsurface remediation and site preparation costs, (ii) market-oriented economic appraisal, and (iii) the expected contribution of planned future land use to sustainable community and regional development. For the assessment, focus is set on the early stage of the brownfield redevelopment process, which is characterized by limited data availability and by flexibility in land use planning and development scope. At this stage, revealing the consequences of adjustments and alterations in planning options can foster efficiency in communication between the involved parties and thereby facilitates the brownfield revitalization process. Results from the case-study application indicate that the integrated assessment provides help in the identification of land use options beneficial in both a sustainable and an economical sense. For the study site it is shown on one hand that brownfield redevelopment is not automatically in line with sustainable regional development, and on the other hand it is demonstrated that additional contributions to sustainability are not intrinsically tied to increased costs.     

A characterization of sustainability with indicators

Economists favor the use of criteria to characterize sustainability. In practice, policy-makers use indicators, i.e., measurements based on the current economic state and decisions, representing given sustainability issues. In this paper, I introduce a criterion characterizing sustainability with indicators and thresholds acting as constraints. I interpret the thresholds as minimal rights to be guaranteed to all generations, and define sustainable trajectories as those satisfying all the constraints at all times. The new criterion is a “generalized” maximin criterion. The approach is applied to a simple production-consumption economy with non-renewable resources. To derive some policy recommendations on the use of indicators to deal with sustainability, I discuss the implications of such a criterion in terms of trade-off between sustainability thresholds, efficiency, and time-consistency. In particular, the resulting problem is time-inconsistent, and sustainability thresholds may be revised over time. Following the time-inconsistent policy based on indicators, with dynamic revision of the thresholds, may, however, result in a sustained utility path, and even in utility growth.     

Measuring and decomposing changes in agricultural productivity, nitrogen use efficiency and cumulative exergy efficiency: Application to OECD agriculture

This paper uses an aggregate quantity space to decompose the temporal changes in nitrogen use efficiency and cumulative exergy use efficiency into changes of Moorsteen-Bjurek (MB) Total Factor Productivity (TFP) changes and changes in the aggregate nitrogen and cumulative exergy contents. Changes in productivity can be broken into technical change and changes in various efficiency measures such as technical efficiency, scale efficiency and residual mix efficiency. Changes in the aggregate nitrogen and cumulative exergy contents can be driven by changes in the quality of inputs and outputs and changes in the mixes of inputs and outputs. Also with cumulative exergy content analysis, changes in the efficiency in input production can increase or decrease the cumulative exergy transformity of agricultural production. The empirical study in 30 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation Development from 1990 to 2003 yielded some important findings. The production technology progressed but there were reductions in technical efficiency, scale efficiency and residual mix efficiency levels. This result suggests that the production frontier had shifted up but there existed lags in the responses of member countries to the technological change. Given TFP growth, improvements in nutrient use efficiency and cumulative exergy use efficiency were counteracted by reductions in the changes of the aggregate nitrogen contents ratio and aggregate cumulative exergy contents ratio. The empirical results also confirmed that different combinations of inputs and outputs as well as the quality of inputs and outputs could have more influence on the growth of nutrient and cumulative exergy use efficiency than factors that had driven productivity change.     

Forests in common: Learning from diversity of community forest arrangements in Europe

Europe has a wealth of community forest arrangements. This paper aims to transcend the diversity of locally specific terms and forms, to highlight the value of considering them inclusively. Building on methods to make sense of diversity, we use reflexive grounded inquiry in fifteen cases in Italy, Scotland, Slovenia and Sweden. Within four dimensions (forest, community, relationships between them, and relationships with wider society), we identify 43 subdimensions to describe them collectively. Our approach shows how European arrangements contribute to wider discourses of collective natural resource management. Both tradition and innovation in Europe inform options for environmental governance. Arrangements challenge the distinction between ‘communities of place’ and ‘communities of interest’, with implications for social and environmental justice. They exemplify multilevel environmental governance through both vertical and horizontal connections. Emerging from long histories of political and environmental pressures, they have a role in enhancing society’s connection with nature and adaptive capacity.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s13280-020-01377-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorised users.     

Creating an academic landscape of sustainability science: an analysis of the citation network

Sustainability is an important concept for society, economics, and the environment, with thousands of research papers published on the subject annually. As sustainability science becomes a distinctive research field, it is important to define sustainability clearly and grasp the entire structure, current status, and future directions of sustainability science. This paper provides an academic landscape of sustainability science by analyzing the citation network of papers published in academic journals. A topological clustering method is used to detect the sub-domains of sustainability science. Results show the existence of 15 main research clusters: Agriculture, Fisheries, Ecological Economics, Forestry (agroforestry), Forestry (tropical rain forest), Business, Tourism, Water, Forestry (biodiversity), Urban Planning, Rural Sociology, Energy, Health, Soil, and Wildlife. Agriculture, Fisheries, Ecological Economics, and Forestry (agroforestry) clusters are predominant among these. The Energy cluster is currently developing, as indicated by the age of papers in the cluster, although it has a relatively small number of papers. These results are compared with those obtained by natural language processing. Education, Biotechnology, Medical, Livestock, Climate Change, Welfare, and Livelihood clusters are uniquely extracted by natural language processing, because they are common topics across clusters in the citation network.