Will Evolving Climate Conditions Increase the Risk of Floods of the Large U.S.‐Canada Transboundary Richelieu River Basin?

In spring 2011, an unprecedented flood hit the complex eastern United States (U.S.)–Canada transboundary Lake Champlain–Richelieu River (LCRR) Basin, destructing properties and inducing negative impacts on agriculture and fish habitats. The damages, covered by the Governments of Canada and the U.S., were estimated to C$90M. This natural disaster motivated the study of mitigation measures to prevent such disasters from reoccurring. When evaluating flood risks, long‐term evolving climate change should be taken into account to adopt mitigation measures that will remain relevant in the future. To assess the impacts of climate change on flood risks of the LCRR basin, three bias‐corrected multi‐resolution ensembles of climate projections for two greenhouse gas concentration scenarios were used to force a state‐of‐the‐art, high‐resolution, distributed hydrological model. The analysis of the hydrological simulations indicates that the 20‐year return period flood (corresponding to a medium flood) should decrease between 8% and 35% for the end of the 21st Century (2070–2099) time horizon and for the high‐emission scenario representative concentration pathway (RCP) 8.5. The reduction in flood risks is explained by a decrease in snow accumulation and an increase in evapotranspiration expected with the future warming of the region. Nevertheless, due to the large climate inter‐annual variability, short‐term flood probabilities should remain similar to those experienced in the recent past.     

过硫酸铵含铜废液预处理工艺改造

采用离子交换工艺对过硫酸铵含铜废液预处理原有工艺进行改造,改造后降低了废液预处理成本,减少二次污染,提高铜资源的回收率,达到综合利用的目的,具有很高的环境效益及经济效益。     

Greening the structural change process: ranking sustainability of countries in climate change

This paper proposes an analytical toolkit to measure the sustainability of industrialization across countries. Drawing from a methodology developed to analyze economic development as a process of modernization, it ranks countries on the basis of the emissions they produce and their stage of development. The proposed index penalizes environmental pressures taking into account the modernization level of a country. The paper also proposes an assessment of the environmental performance of countries at the same level of modernization. It introduces the notion of policy space as the difference between the best and worst environmental performer at a given level of modernization. An important finding of the paper is that the magnitude of the policy space is not homogenous across different levels of income and environmental targets.     

A sustainability index for small island developing states

This paper proposes a novel approach to measuring the progress of small island developing states (SIDS) towards sustainable development (SD) as set by the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030. Currently, these goals do not provide adequate guidance on how countries might measure their progress towards sustainability. We use these goals and a subset of their targets to develop an index with concrete targets, through the use of pertinent sustainability indicators, that SIDS should aim to achieve a sustainable society. In addition to the three categorical pillars of SD (social, economic and environmental), we included the category Climate Change and Disaster Management (incorporating Disaster Risk Reduction). The basis of our decision is that the UN and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have both recognized the vulnerability of SIDS to both environmental hazards. Our index scores a total 70 individual indicators for the four categories to track the progress of a SIDS towards a sustainable society. Using the Caribbean nation, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, as our SIDS case study, we report the average of the scores for each category to illustrate its progress towards sustainability. Overall Trinidad and Tobago is slowly progressing towards a more sustainably developed society. Our results show that the nation is only moderately successful regarding progress in three traditional pillars of SD, social, economic and environmental. However, Trinidad and Tobago scores poorly in the Climate Change and Disaster Management category and needs to improve in this area especially due to its vulnerability.     

Trees and rural households’ adaptation to local environmental change in the central highlands of Ethiopia

This study assesses the role of trees in adaptation strategies of rural households to local environmental change in the central highlands of Ethiopia. Change in tree cover was assessed by producing Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) maps using satellite remote sensing images, and household survey was conducted to generate socioeconomic data. The results show that tree cover has increased over the last 30 years, mostly in the form of eucalyptus woodlots around homesteads. Eucalyptus reportedly helps households pass through livelihood shocks and provide protection against negative effects of climate change and variability. Despite some concerns on the part of local agricultural experts that planting eucalyptus may affect future food production, farmers are converting their croplands into eucalyptus woodlots. We conclude that land use planning and proper allocation of land resource is important to improve local livelihoods while also supporting adaptation of communities to local environmental change in general and climate change in particular.     

干旱区气候条件对道路灰尘及土壤 Pd、Rh累积的影响

以乌鲁木齐市为研究区,选取河滩路、友好南路、温泉西路、乌奎高速公路及七道湾路等5条典型道路,对道路灰尘与土壤中Pd、Rh季节变化特征进行研究.结果表明,春、夏、秋、冬的灰尘中Pd含量分别为74.61(31.59~126.3),134.26(54.59~332.51),100.49(20.935~244.9), 83.43(47.97~125.40)ng/g;灰尘中Rh含量分别为8.41(4.56~14.63),18.48(11.62~31.56),10.27(3.83~19.1),9.20(5.34~16.68)ng/g;土壤中Pd含量分别为44.42(13.59~109.40),30.47(13.24~70.87),30.01(21.55~49.19),26.28(14.85~44.83)ng/g;土壤Rh含量分别为8.47(5.93~13.40), 8.11(4.65~ 13.45),3.81(1.67~8.02),3.22(2.56~4.26)ng/g. Pd、Rh含量均表现出明显的季节变化,其中,灰尘中Pd、Rh含量在夏秋季高,冬春季低;土壤中Pd、Rh含量在春夏季高,冬季最低,秋季为中间水平,地域气候条件是PGEs季节变化的主要影响因素.冬、春季节的降雪、扫雪及积雪堆积习惯使乌鲁木齐道路环境中灰尘与土壤的季节变化并没有完全相同. 湿润区与干旱区城市PGEs的季节变化明显不同,两类地区的气候特征不同是造成这种差异存在的根本原因.     

漳卫河流域水文循环过程对气候变化的响应

气候变化对我国各地区水资源影响的时空格局变化,是气候变化影响评估的重要内容。论文以漳卫河为研究流域,采用线性回归法、Mann-Kendall非参数检验等方法,分析了1957-2001年的水文气象要素变化特征;基于数字高程模型、土地利用和土壤类型等资料,建立了SWAT分布式水文模型,验证了SWAT模型在该流域的适用性;根据IPCC第四次评估报告多模式结果,分析了IPCC SRES-A2、A1B、B1情景下21世纪降水、气温、径流、蒸发的响应过程。结果表明漳卫河流域未来2011-2099年降水量变化较基准期呈现出增加趋势,年平均气温较基准期也呈现出显著的上升趋势,各年代径流量较基准期将出现先减少后增大的态势。     

中国能源消费排放的CO2测算

基于“能源-经济-环境”的MARKAL-MACRO模型和数理人口学中的Keyfitz模型,测算未来中国能源消费需求;考虑能源效率、能源结构的变化以及气候变化问题的约束,设定了能源消费的3种情景,并分别测算了CO2排放量.结果表明,在基准情景下,中国的CO2排放在2042年达到峰值,为118.47亿t;在能源结构优化情景下,CO2排放在2036年达到峰值,为107.53亿t;在气候变化约束情景下,CO2排放在2031年达到峰值,为94.72亿t,相对于基准情景,排放峰值降低了23.75亿t,且峰值时间提前11a.随着城市化与工业化的推进,电力、水泥、钢铁行业的碳排放将先上升后下降;由于机动车保有量的增加,交通运输业的碳排放将持续上升.     

Origins and scales of hypoxia on the Louisiana shelf: Importance of seasonal plankton dynamics and river nutrients and discharge

Management plans for the Mississippi River Basin call for reductions in nutrient concentrations up to 40% or more to reduce hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM), while at the same time the government is considering new farm subsidies to promote development of biofuels from corn. Thus there are possibilities of both increasing and decreasing river nutrients depending on national priorities. River flow rates which also influence the extent of hypoxia on the shelf may be altered by global climate change. We have therefore developed a series of simulations to forecast ecosystem response to alterations in nutrient loading and river flow. We simulate ecosystem response and hypoxia events using a linked model consisting of multiple phytoplankton groups competing for nitrogen, phosphorus and light, zooplankton grazing that is influenced by prey edibility and stoichiometry, sub-pycnocline water-column metabolism that is influenced by sinking fecal pellets and algal cells, and multi-element sediment diagenesis. This model formulation depicts four areas of increasing salinity moving westward away from the Mississippi River point of discharge, where the surface mixed layer, four bottom layers and underlying sediments are represented in each area. The model supports the contention that a 40% decrease in river nutrient will substantially reduce the duration and areal extent of hypoxia on the shelf. But it also suggests that in low and middle salinity areas the hypoxia response is saturated with respect to nutrients, and that in high salinity regions small increases in nutrient and river flow will have disproportionally large effects on GOM hypoxia. The model simulations also suggest that river discharge is a stronger factor influencing hypoxia than river nutrients in the Mississippi River plume. Finally, the model simulations suggest that primary production in the low salinity regions is light limited while primary production in the higher salinity zones is phosphate limited during the May to October period when hypoxia is prevalent in the Mississippi River plume.     

A Global Conservation System for Climate-Change Adaptation

Abstract:  Climate change has created the need for a new strategic framework for conservation. This framework needs to include new protected areas that account for species range shifts and management that addresses large-scale change across international borders. Actions within the framework must be effective in international waters and across political frontiers and have the ability to accommodate large income and ability-to-pay discrepancies between countries. A global protected-area system responds to these needs. A fully implemented global system of protected areas will help in the transition to a new conservation paradigm robust to climate change and will ensure the integrity of the climate services provided by carbon sequestration from the world's natural habitats. The internationally coordinated response to climate change afforded by such a system could have significant cost savings relative to a system of climate adaptation that unfolds solely at a country level. Implementation of a global system is needed very soon because the effects of climate change on species and ecosystems are already well underway .