Increasing food production at the expense of tropical forests

An attempt is made to estimate to what extent it is possible to increase food production by conversion of forest land to agricultural land. To accomplish this two different approaches have been explored. The first one represents the possibility of developing a comprehensive model capable of taking into account the various processes influencing the food production. It is judged that this approach cannot provide a realistic result due to insufficient knowledge of the processes involved, and lack of reliable data. Instead a simple, heuristic method has been applied. The main sources of information used include data representing the soil of the deforested land, the decline of the productivity of the land gained, and the length of time it can be used for agricultural production. Although this method also has its obvious limitations, there are reasons to believe it permits certain conclusions can be safely drawn: (a) even if each year the area of agricultural land is increased by a given amount through removal of forest, there will be no gain of the agricultural production after a few years; and (b) to achieve a constant annual increase of the food production will require that each year the area of forest removal is increased. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Temporal and spatial change detecting (1998–2003) and predicting of land use and land cover in Core corridor of Pearl River Delta (China) by using TM and ETM+ images

Land use/land cover (LULC) has a profound impact on economy, society and environment, especially in rapid developing areas. Rapid and prompt monitoring and predicting of LULC’s change are crucial and significant. Currently, integration of Geographical Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) methods is one of the most important methods for detecting LULC’s change, which includes image processing (such as geometrical-rectifying, supervised-classification, etc.), change detection (post-classification), GIS-based spatial analysis, Markov chain and a Cellular Automata (CA) models, etc. The core corridor of Pearl River Delta was selected for studying LULC’s change in this paper by using the above methods for the reason that the area contributed 78.31% (1998)–81.4% (2003) of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to the whole Pearl River Delta (PRD). The temporal and spatial LULC’s changes from 1998 to 2003 were detected by RS data. At the same time, urban expansion levels in the next 5 and 10 years were predicted temporally and spatially by using Markov chain and a simple Cellular Automata model respectively. Finally, urban expansion and farmland loss were discussed against the background of China’s urban expansion and cropland loss during 1990–2000. The result showed: (1) the rate of urban expansion was up to 8.91% during 1998–2003 from 169,078.32 to 184,146.48 ha; (2) the rate of farmland loss was 5.94% from 312,069.06 to 293,539.95 ha; (3) a lot of farmland converted to urban or development area, and more forest and grass field converted to farmland accordingly; (4) the spatial predicting result of urban expansion showed that urban area was enlarged ulteriorly compared with the previous results, and the directions of expansion is along the existing urban area and transportation lines.     

植物性食品中拟除虫菊酯类农药测定方法的改进

基于色素和含水率两方面的考虑,选用了大米、荼叶和西红柿作为实验介质,在植物性食品中拟除虫菊酯类农药提取条件和净化条件等方面均进行了改进和优化.结果发现,采用正己烷/丙酮混合液(97.5∶2.5,V/V)提取植物性食品中菊酯类农药,40～50℃下超声萃取40min;选用弗罗里硅土和活性炭混合填充物制作层析柱;选用石油醚/乙酸乙酯(9∶1,V/V)作为洗脱溶剂,实验回收率达70%以上,结果令人满意.     

Exploring changes in Ecuadorian land use for food production and their effects on natural resources

A model is used for the dynamic and spatially explicit exploration of near future agricultural land-use changes. In a case study for Ecuador, different plausible scenarios are formulated, taking into account possible developments in national food demand until the year 2010. The protection of nature parks and restrictions due to land degradation are evaluated with respect to their possible spatial impacts on the land-use change dynamics within the country. Under the assumptions of the demand scenarios, agricultural land-use expands significantly, resulting in more use of land in existing agricultural areas and frontier-type expansion into relatively undisturbed natural areas. The patterns of change depend on the increase in demand, competition between land-use types, changes in driving factors of land use, and the area and characteristics of land that is excluded from agricultural use. The modelled land-use dynamics are related to their possible impacts on the natural resource base, specifically soil fertility. The results indicate potential negative effects of land-use changes on the soil nutrient balance and biodiversity. It is argued that spatial and temporal quantification of land-use dynamics at the landscape level can support research and policies aimed at understanding the driving factors of land-use change and the behaviour of complex agro-ecosystems under changing conditions at different scales. In this way, issues dealing with sustainable food production and the management of the natural resource base can be addressed in a more integrated and quantitative manner.     

华北及邻近地区的巨灾链

对华北及其邻近地区自清代以来特大地震和水灾构成的4次巨灾链进行了介绍,并初步探讨了它们的形成机制、预测指标及减灾对策。     

Fish consumption reduces transfer of BDE47 from dam to murine offspring

Fish and seafood are important contributions to a healthy diet, but also contain persistent organic pollutants (POPs) like polybrominated diphenylethers (PBDEs) and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Discrepancies have been found between intake and accumulated levels of POPs, where fish consumers have had similar levels of POPs to the general population. Similarly fish oil consumption has been found to reduce accumulation of POPs. This study examined the accumulation of BDE47 or PCB153 in mice fed diets with different nutritional composition, using female mice with pre-weanling pups exposed through gestation and lactation. A fish-based diet was compared to a standard casein-based rodent diet. All diets had low background levels of environmental contaminants and were spiked with BDE47 or PCB153 to levels representing a realistic (∼0.004 μmol kgbw⁻¹ d) or a high dietary exposure (∼1.3 μmol kgbw⁻¹ d). Accumulation of BDE47 or PCB153 in offspring tissues after 18 d lactation reflected the maternal exposure levels. However, the pups of dams fed a fish-based diet had consistently lower BDE47 accumulation in liver, fat and stomach than pups from casein-fed dams. Similarly the pups of dams fed a high dose of PCB153 in a fish diet also accumulated less PCB153 than pups of the dams fed a casein diet, although not significant. In conclusion, the fish based diets seemed to reduce transfer of BDE47 and PCB153 from dams to pups. The study highlights that in-depth knowledge about nutritional impact on toxicokinetics is of great interest to vulnerable consumers.     

Interactive effects of cadmium and hypoxia on metabolic responses and bacterial loads of eastern oysters Crassostrea virginica Gmelin

Pollution by toxic metals including cadmium (Cd) and hypoxia are important stressors in estuaries and coastal waters which may interactively affect sessile benthic organisms, such as oysters. We studied metabolic responses to prolonged hypoxic acclimation (2 weeks at 5% O₂) in control and Cd-exposed (30 d at 50 μg L⁻¹ Cd) oysters Crassostrea virginica, and analyzed the effects of these stressors on abundance of Vibrio spp. in oysters. Hypoxia-acclimated oysters retained normal standard metabolic rates (SMR) at 5% O₂, in contrast to a decline of SMR observed during acute hypoxia. However, oysters spent more time actively ventilating in hypoxia than normoxia resulting in enhanced Cd uptake and 2.7-fold higher tissue Cd burdens in hypoxia. Cd exposure led to a significant decrease in tissue glycogen stores, increase in free glucose levels and elevated activity of glycolytic enzymes (hexokinase and aldolase) indicating a greater dependence on carbohydrate catabolism. A compensatory increase in activities of two key mitochondrial enzymes (citrate synthase and cytochrome c oxidase) was found during prolonged hypoxia in control oysters but suppressed in Cd-exposed ones. Cd exposure also resulted in a significant increase in abundance of Vibrio parahaemolyticus and Vibrio vulnificus levels during normoxia and hypoxia, respectively. Overall, Cd- and hypoxia-induced changes in metabolic profile, Cd accumulation and bacterial flora of oysters indicate that these stressors can synergistically impact energy homeostasis, performance and survival of oysters in polluted estuaries and have significant consequences for transfer of Cd and bacterial pathogens to the higher levels of the food chain.     

基于Stackelberg博弈的循环经济闭环产业链研究

为揭示循环经济产业链的内在发展机制,本文基于循环经济产业链的特征建立了闭环产业链模型,利用企业间的Stackelberg博弈分析了消费者、企业和政府间的利益关联以及三大主体最优决策对闭环产业链的影响方式.研究结论表明,消费者的环境偏好越低,政府的环境税标准越低,且环境税的制定空间越小,企业收益越难实现从传统产业链到循环产业链的转移,消费者以新产品的消费弥补环境效用的损失;在政府的全局最优税收情况下,传统产业链的企业在横向企业竞争中仍具有先动优势,并不随环境税增加而改变;政府经济最优废弃物循环率能够保证循环产业链的回收资源供给,但只是在消费者容忍的范围内实现了消费者效用最大化和生产总收益最大化.经济的可持续发展要求废弃物循环率达到生态最优,这需要政府舍弃部分经济利益,实施更严厉的环境税政策约束传统产业链的发展规模,同时结合参与性政策提高公众的环境偏好,以保证循环经济闭环产业链的顺利运行.     

两段式热解厨余垃圾实验研究

通过厨余垃圾的工业分析,发现其挥发分比例较高,适合热解利用;采用热重分析方法分析了不同条件下厨余垃圾的热解特性,提出了厨余垃圾两段式热解转化利用的思路,得出了厨余垃圾热解的合适工艺条件。在自行设计建造的一段回转炉、二段焦化罐中对厨余垃圾热解,并分析了产物的组成和性质。