Maximizing Returns from Payments for Water‐Based Ecosystem Services: Incorporating Externality Effects of Land Management

Given the expansion of payments for water‐based ecosystem services (PWES) worldwide, two relevant issues are as follows: (1) determination of efficient allocations of payments among land managers, and (2) how this might change when paying one manager to implement a best management practice (BMP) to enhance an ecosystem service impacts the cost‐effectiveness of BMPs considered by other land managers not currently involved in PWES. Such externalities may be negative if diminishing returns dominate, or positive if mechanisms such as “social diffusion” dominate. We analyze how a planner should optimally allocate payments, depending on whether the expected externalities are negligible, negative, or positive. We employ (1) an optimal control model to gain insights on the problem’s dynamics, and (2) stochastic dynamic programming to determine optimal funding strategies using a specific application. The study contributes to the literature by identifying dynamically optimal PWES payment patterns, and illustrates how they should change when one accounts for externalities induced by the program. Because such impacts have not been addressed previously in a rigorous way, this treatment provides useful value added for PWES design and implementation.     

平交道口冗余控制系统的建模及成本收益分析

将成本收益的分析方法应用在控制系统设计中。采用随机Petri网基于控制过程及系统可靠性对道口控制系统进行建模。在可靠性建模中,基于冗余系统的冷备及热备原理对控制系统的各个部件分别进行描述。基于统计数据确定非冗余控制系统Petri网模型参数。针对冷备及热备的冗余控制系统各部件的系统模型,通过仿真确定冗余系统相对非冗余系统所降低的道口事故率,继而计算出冗余控制的收益。将收益与增加设备的成本进行对比分析,结果表明,控制系统中不同部件的冷备及热备冗余都具有不同的成本收益。     

Considering climate change and regional differences: An efficiency assessment of coal mine use and land restoration

China is the country with the largest coal mining production and consumption in the world, but due to a large amount of coal burning, air pollution and climate change are exasperating related problems. The previous literature mainly has discussed coal mine production and environmental pollution, but failed to take into account external factors such as climate change and seldom discussed the relationship between coal mine land use and land restoration. Therefore, this study uses the meta-Epsilon-Based Measure two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis under the exogenous model and incorporates coal mine land use and land restoration use into the model to explore the relationship between the two under climate change. The research results are as follows. (1) If the external climate factors are not considered, then the phenomenon of overestimation or underestimation of the technology gap arises. (2) The efficiency value of the coal mining stage in most provinces is generally higher than the land restoration efficiency value.     

Identifying robust strategies for assisted migration in a competitive stochastic metacommunity

Assisted migration (AM) is the translocation of species beyond their historical range to locations that are expected to be more suitable under future climate change. However, a relocated population may fail to establish in its donor community if there is high uncertainty in decision-making, climate, and interactions with the recipient ecological community. To quantify the benefit to persistence and risk of establishment failure of AM under different management scenarios (e.g., choosing target species, proportion of population to relocate, and optimal location to relocate), we built a stochastic metacommunity model to simulate several species reproducing, dispersing, and competing on a temperature gradient as temperature increases over time. Without AM, the species were vulnerable to climate change when they had low population sizes, short dispersal, and strong poleward competition. When relocating species that exemplified these traits, AM increased the long-term persistence of the species most when relocating a fraction of the donor population, even if the remaining population was very small or rapidly declining. This suggests that leaving behind a fraction of the population could be a robust approach, allowing managers to repeat AM in case they move the species to the wrong place and at the wrong time, especially when it is difficult to identify a species’ optimal climate. We found that AM most benefitted species with low dispersal ability and least benefited species with narrow thermal tolerances, for which AM increased extinction risk on average. Although relocation did not affect the persistence of nontarget species in our simple competitive model, researchers will need to consider a more complete set of community interactions to comprehensively understand invasion potential.     

面向粮食产量空间化的多元回归分析模型中的两个关键问题探讨

为比较不同区域尺度变量对模型拟合效果的影响,在全国不分区和分区两种情况下,分别基于县级和地市级两个区域尺度上的样本构建粮食产量与水田、水浇地、旱地面积之间的多元线性回归模型,结果显示,用地市级数据作分析样本比用县级数据作分析样本好,分区建模比不分区建模效果好。因此,将全国划分为7个区,以地市级数据作为区域尺度的变量,在区域、栅格、亚栅格三个尺度上探讨变量（因变量、自变量）尺度和常数项取值这两个因素对模型应用的影响。得到以下结论：1）基于区域尺度样本构建的多元回归模型,如果常数项不为0,则不能用于空间化计算;如果常数项为0,则可以用于空间化计算;2）基于栅格尺度样本构建的多元回归模型,不论常数项是否为0,均可应用于空间化计算;3）基于亚栅格尺度样本构建的多元回归模型,不论其常数项是否为0,也均可用于空间化计算,但需要将计算结果乘以一个系数,该系数等于栅格单元面积与亚栅格单元面积的比值。上述结论对其他类型的统计数据空间化具有指导和参考价值。     

Traditional management of lagoons for fishery can be inconsistent with restoration purposes: the Valli di Comacchio study case

We gathered water and macrobenthic data over a 5-year period in the Valli di Comacchio, the largest lagoons in the Po River Delta (northern Adriatic), to evaluate the response of ecological indices and to test their sensitivity against environmental variables. Of 84 sampling points, only 12 exhibited a good/high ecological quality status according to the BITS and 28 according to the M-AMBI. Environmental variables representative of eutrophication did not correlate with the indices. The impacts experienced by the Valli during the last 30 years seem to have led to disruption of the pelagic–benthic food web. Eel fisheries, whose management is traditionally characterised by long water residence time, thus seem inconsistent with restoration purposes.     

Simulation-based fault propagation analysis—Application on hydrogen production plant

Recently production of hydrogen from water through the Cu–Cl thermochemical cycle is developed as a new technology. The main advantages of this technology over existing ones are higher efficiency, lower costs, lower environmental impact and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Considering these advantages, the usage of this technology in new industries such as nuclear and oil is increasingly developed. Due to hazards involved in hydrogen production, design and implementation of hydrogen plants require provisions for safety, reliability and risk assessment. However, very little research is done from safety point of view. This paper introduces fault semantic network (FSN) as a novel method for fault diagnosis and fault propagation analysis by using evolutionary techniques like genetic programming (GP) and neural networks (NN), to uncover process variables’ interactions. The effectiveness, feasibility and robustness of the proposed method are demonstrated on simulated data obtained from the simulation of hydrogen production process in Aspen HYSYS^®. The proposed method has successfully achieved reasonable detection and prediction of non-linear interaction patterns among process variables.     

Source and Delivery of Nutrients to Receiving Waters in the Northeastern and Mid‐Atlantic Regions of the United States1

Moore, Richard B., Craig M. Johnston, Richard A. Smith, and Bryan Milstead, 2011. Source and Delivery of Nutrients to Receiving Waters in the Northeastern and Mid‐Atlantic Regions of the United States. Journal of the American Water Resources Association (JAWRA) 47(5):965‐990. DOI: 10.1111/j.1752‐1688.2011.00582.x Abstract: This study investigates nutrient sources and transport to receiving waters, in order to provide spatially detailed information to aid water‐resources managers concerned with eutrophication and nutrient management strategies. SPAtially Referenced Regressions On Watershed attributes (SPARROW) nutrient models were developed for the Northeastern and Mid‐Atlantic (NE US) regions of the United States to represent source conditions for the year 2002. The model developed to examine the source and delivery of nitrogen to the estuaries of nine large rivers along the NE US Seaboard indicated that agricultural sources contribute the largest percentage (37%) of the total nitrogen load delivered to the estuaries. Point sources account for 28% while atmospheric deposition accounts for 20%. A second SPARROW model was used to examine the sources and delivery of phosphorus to lakes and reservoirs throughout the NE US. The greatest attenuation of phosphorus occurred in lakes that were large relative to the size of their watershed. Model results show that, within the NE US, aquatic decay of nutrients is quite limited on an annual basis and that we especially cannot rely on natural attenuation to remove nutrients within the larger rivers nor within lakes with large watersheds relative to the size of the lake.     

堆积体边坡渐进性破坏的随机模型

为精确模拟堆积体边坡变形破坏过程,根据堆积体所固有的非连续性、非均质性、各向异性等特点,以及边坡变形破坏的渐进性特征,采用改进的有限单元法(FEM)对堆积体边坡进行模拟。考虑堆积体边坡从连续位移函数到不连续位移函数的突变。破裂发生前,用连续位移函数进行计算;破裂发生后,引入不连续位移函数。研究结果表明,破裂面上不同点的安全系数(FOS)是不同的,但都随着破坏过程而降低。同时,可以得出不同非均匀程度下安全系数的概率分布。     

隧道爆破振动影响因素的灰色关联分析

为优化隧道爆破方案,降低爆破振动危害,采用灰色关联分析法(GRA)对爆破振动的影响因素进行分析。首先确定振动速度、主振频率和振动持续时间作为系统特征变量,确定总药量、最大段药量、掏槽孔最大段药量、雷管段数、爆心距、最小延期间隔时间、临空面数等作为相关因素变量;再结合厦门某隧道爆破实测数据,进行灰色关联计算;然后对计算结果进行排序和优势分析,得到爆破振动影响因素的主次顺序,其中准优因素为爆心距,可控准优因素为雷管段数和掏槽眼最大段药量;最后对隧道爆破参数进行优化,测点爆破振速由1.2 cm/s减小到0.74 cm/s,降振率达38.3%。结果表明,采用GRA确定爆破振动主要影响因素,为有效控制爆破振动提供理论依据。