It’s All in the Numbers: Acreage Tallies and Environmental Program Evaluation

Increasingly, performance measurement is being used to hold federal agencies accountable, represent environmental progress, and evaluate the effectiveness of environmental programs. The need to track measurable outputs has created a tendency to present programmatic progress solely by quantifiable data, despite the inherent complexity of natural resource management. Wetlands and fire management programs are two specific environmental arenas that have come to overemphasize the tracking of acreage numbers to validate existing policy direction. In both of these arenas, we find the definition and categorization of "countable" acres to be inconsistent and unreliable. We explore this systemic flaw for both wetlands and fire programs and describe its implications for environmental policy and natural resource management more broadly. We conclude with recommendations for improved performance measurement in these arenas.     

车用高分子材料不同地区户外曝晒试验相关性研究

目的将3种高分子材料以及3种车用外饰材料分别投放在中国海南琼海和美国佛罗里达州2种典型湿热环境中进行户外曝晒试验,研究气候相似的2种地区的试验相关性。方法通过测试相同时间间隔下不同材料在2处试验场曝晒过程中的黄变程度,表征材料的老化现象。采用斯皮尔曼等级相关系数的统计方法,研究材料在2个地区相同时间节点的试验结果的相关性,并利用时间同轴的作图方法比较2个地区严酷度的差异。结果琼海与佛罗里达州2个地区在各个时间节点的相关系数接近于1,且在材料黄变方面呈现一定比例关系。结论琼海和佛罗里达州2个地区的试验结果呈现出较好的相关性,且严酷度比值约为琼海︰佛罗里达=1︰1.19。     

自然因素对环境空气质量的影响——以新疆昌吉市为例

本文以昌吉市为例,研究并分析了温度、风、气压三种自然因素对环境空气质量的影响.结果表明,影响环境空气质量的因素非常复杂,污染天气的形成与不利的自然气象因素密切相关.     

离心式机械振动台基本参数设计计算方法的探讨

该文叙述了离心式机械振动台的工作原理,提出了计算思路和方法;推导了其计算公式;并根据工程的实际情况,把复杂的计算公式,简化成代数运算式。     

北京兰天热能系统工程探讨

文章通过综合分析、计算 ,提出用天然气代替煤作主要能源 ,走燃机热电联供道路 ,解决北京市大气环境恶化的问题 ,并对这一工程方案实施的可能性和优越性作了阐述 ,最后提出了多项实施建议。     

自然通风排热量的近似计算法

采用“假设密闭绝热空间法”,计算工业厂房的自然通风排热量。实践证明,此方法是可行的。     

Environmental Damage,Abandoned Treaties,and Fossil-Fuel Dependence: The Coming Costs of Oil-and-Gas Exploration in the “1002 Area” of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Contrary to claims from American politicians, lobbyists, and oil and gas executives, allowing energy development in the Alaskan Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) will harm the environment, compromise international law, erode the social significance of wilderness protection, and ultimately fail to␣increase the energy security of the United States. After exploring a brief history of the ANWR controversy, this piece argues that the operation of oil and gas refineries in ANWR will release discharged solids, drilling waste, and dirty diesel fuel into the ecosystem’s food-chain, as they have from oil operations in Prudhoe Bay. Less obvious but equally important, oil and gas exploration in ANWR will violate a number of international treaties on biodiversity protection. In the end, development in ANWR will threaten the concept of wilderness protection, and will do little to end US dependence on foreign sources of energy. About the Author: Benjamin K. Sovacool is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University in Blacksburg, Virginia. He works as a research analyst for the Consortium on Energy Restructuring and is a Senior Research Fellow for the Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research. He also just completed a Graduate Fellowship in Energy Policy at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.     

自然资源二元价值论及其稀缺价格研究

本文提出了自然资源二元价值论,即认为自然资源物质无价值,自然资源资本具有虚假的社会价值,并据此提出了自然资源稀缺价格理论,同时对现行自然资源价格评估方法作了分析,认为影子价格法是目前最适合的自然资源价格评估方法。     

Social and environmental trade-offs in tree species selection: a methodology for identifying niche incompatibilities in agroforestry

Natural resource degradation in highland regions is of increasing concern to the global community due to its role in aggravating poverty and the loss of environmental services to local and downstream users. The integration of trees into smallholder farming systems has been promoted as a means to enhance rural livelihoods while reversing the degradation of soil, water, biodiversity and related environmental services. Yet in addition to these benefits, negative impacts of trees on certain stakeholders or system components have also accompanied such efforts—suggesting that important trade-offs accompany afforestation. This paper presents a methodology for diagnosing problems stemming from cultivation of certain tree species in specific landscape niches. Data derived from the application of this methodology in two sites in the eastern African highlands are presented. Participatory diagnoses of landscape-level problems suggest that the negative impact of trees on water resource availability and crop yield are of critical concern to smallholder farmers. Ethnoecological data highlight the properties of different tree species that determine their suitability to specific farm and landscape niches. These data point to important opportunities for more socially- and environmentally-optimal integration of indigenous and exotic tree species into agricultural landscapes, and highlight the critical importance of local knowledge in forging solutions appropriate to contemporary realities.     

Water Resource Management in Botswana: Balancing Sustainability and Economic Development*

Botswana is a rapidly developing country in southern Africa. Over the last three decades, diamond mining and tourism have provided double-digit rates of economic growth. Yet most of Botswana’s land is in the Kalahari desert where the climate is subject to sustained periods of severe drought. In this environment, water resources are the most crucial of all environmental resources. Water use directly affects economic development because water utilization impacts all the major national economic sectors. A sustainable water use resource management plan must stretch several decades into the future to assure the availability of adequate supplies of water to future generations while not compromising the ability of the current generation to reasonable rates of economic development. Yet thinking about sustainability is present in Botswana water policy mostly only in rhetoric. A series of cultural traditions and political constraints, coupled with bureaucratic managerial weaknesses, serve to maintain a system of water allocation that is unsustainable in the long run and inefficient in the short-term. Unless sustainable water use patterns are adopted, the results for the short-term, as well as the long-term, will be devastating. Drawing on data obtained through a series of interviews with government officials, leaders of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and water resource researchers, this paper explores water policy in Botswana within the larger context of sustainable natural resource management practice and the pressures of economic development. This research was partially funded under U.S. Department of State, College and University Affiliations Grant # ASCS-1095.