高频曝停下停曝时间对亚硝化颗粒污泥性能的影响

间歇曝气中停曝时间对于NOB的抑制是积累亚硝酸盐的关键,为探究曝气频次相同、停曝时间组合不同亚硝化颗粒污泥的稳定运行,在25～28℃,接种好氧颗粒污泥于SBR(R0)反应器中,通过间歇曝气与DO限制驯化为亚硝化颗粒污泥,采用3组规格相同的SBR反应器(R1、R2和R3)分析停曝时间组合(3 min∶3 min、4 min∶2 min和2 min∶4 min)对亚硝化颗粒污泥性能的影响.实验表明,R1、R2亚硝酸盐积累率较高,平均亚硝酸盐积累率分别为89%和95%,R3亚硝化性能较差,运行周期末期亚硝酸盐积累率仅为57%.结果表明,在停曝时间为2～4 min下,停曝时间越长,越有利于颗粒污泥结构的稳定,同时可保持良好的亚硝化性能;停曝时间小于2 min时,厌氧好氧交替的环境不能完全实现,致使其运行效果倾向于连续曝气,失去了间歇曝气的环境优势,NOB菌得不到抑制,颗粒污泥呈现解体的趋势,导致亚硝化性能恶化;此外,较长曝气时间会有助于不规则形状颗粒的发展,停曝时间越长,PN/PS值越高,有利于颗粒表面疏水性的增强,污泥沉降性能越好.     

构建流域水质综合监测体系的初探

流域水质监测是流域水环境改善与污染防治的重要前提,为流域水环境管理提供了必要的技术支撑。目前环保、水利、流域管理等众多部门均承担了一定范围内的流域水质监测工作,但由于监测方法、取样断面等方面的差异,各监测机构的数据往往存在较大差异,不利于流域水质现状评价、预警预报和水环境的综合管理。本文以长江流域的跨省界断面为研究对象,对构建流域水质综合监测体系进行初探研究,对于确保流域水质安全具有重要意义。     

甘肃省自然灾害及其防治对策

本文就甘肃省自然灾害的类型、分布、成因及其对社会经济的影响进行了分析研究,并提出了防治对策。     

Improving collaboration in the implementation of global biodiversity conventions

Eight conventions make up the biodiversity cluster of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) that provide the critical international legal framework for the conservation and sustainable use of nature. However, concerns about the rate of implementation of the conventions at the national level have triggered discussions about the effectiveness of these MEAs in halting the loss of biodiversity. Two main concerns have emerged: lack of capacity and resources and lack of coherence in implementing multiple conventions. We focused on the latter and considered the mechanisms by which international conventions are translated into national policy. Specifically, we examined how the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020 and the associated Aichi Biodiversity Targets have functioned as a unifying grand plan for biodiversity conservation. This strategic plan has been used to coordinate and align targets to promote and enable more effective implementation across all biodiversity-related conventions. Results of a survey of 139 key stakeholders from 88 countries suggests streamlining across ministries and agencies, improved coordination mechanisms with all relevant stakeholders, and better knowledge sharing between conventions could improve cooperation among biodiversity-related conventions. The roadmap for improving synergies among conventions agreed to at the 13th Convention on Biological Diversity's Conference of Parties in 2016 includes actions such as mechanisms to avoid duplication in national reporting and monitoring on conventions and capacity building related to information and knowledge sharing. We suggest the scientific community can actively engage and contribute to the policy process by establishing a science-policy platform to address knowledge gaps; improving data gathering, reporting, and monitoring; developing indicators that adequately support implementation of national plans and strategies; and providing evidence-based recommendations to policy makers. The latter will be particularly important as 2020 approaches and work to develop a new biodiversity agenda for the next decade is beginning.     

关于再生资源产业软环境建设的思考

区域性再生资源产业跨越式发展的首要条件是鼓励项目招商、引资、引智的政策措施必须切实可行。硬环境主要是指该地区的地理位置以及可能提供给外商所需要的物质条件,如自然资源、基础设施等;软环境建设包括5个方面:营造安全文明的法制环境,诚实守信的人文环境,相对稳定的政策环境,高效快捷的办事环境,安逸舒适的人居环境。     

The effects of pricing waste generation: A synthetic control approach

To internalize pollution externalities into household waste generation, Unit Pricing Systems (UPS) have been adopted worldwide. This paper evaluates the causal effects of a UPS on the disposal of municipal solid waste in Trento, Italy. Using a unique panel dataset of monthly waste generation in Italian municipalities, we employ the synthetic control method, which allows us to account for possible time-varying effects of unobservables. Our results show that the policy was effective, with a significant decrease of the priced waste stream, unsorted waste, by 37.5%. This effect seems to be largely driven by behavioral changes towards waste avoidance (−8.6%) and possibly by a smaller increase in recycling (+6.1%). By comparing these results to those obtained by a difference-in-differences approach, we show that failing to account for time-varying effects of unobservables may lead to a mismeasurement of policy effects.     

Importance of timely metadata curation to the global surveillance of genetic diversity

Genetic diversity within species represents a fundamental yet underappreciated level of biodiversity. Because genetic diversity can indicate species resilience to changing climate, its measurement is relevant to many national and global conservation policy targets. Many studies produce large amounts of genome-scale genetic diversity data for wild populations, but most (87%) do not include the associated spatial and temporal metadata necessary for them to be reused in monitoring programs or for acknowledging the sovereignty of nations or Indigenous peoples. We undertook a distributed datathon to quantify the availability of these missing metadata and to test the hypothesis that their availability decays with time. We also worked to remediate missing metadata by extracting them from associated published papers, online repositories, and direct communication with authors. Starting with 848 candidate genomic data sets (reduced representation and whole genome) from the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration, we determined that 561 contained mostly samples from wild populations. We successfully restored spatiotemporal metadata for 78% of these 561 data sets (n = 440 data sets with data on 45,105 individuals from 762 species in 17 phyla). Examining papers and online repositories was much more fruitful than contacting 351 authors, who replied to our email requests 45% of the time. Overall, 23% of our email queries to authors unearthed useful metadata. The probability of retrieving spatiotemporal metadata declined significantly as age of the data set increased. There was a 13.5% yearly decrease in metadata associated with published papers or online repositories and up to a 22% yearly decrease in metadata that were only available from authors. This rapid decay in metadata availability, mirrored in studies of other types of biological data, should motivate swift updates to data-sharing policies and researcher practices to ensure that the valuable context provided by metadata is not lost to conservation science forever.     

Bias in protected‐area location and its effects on long‐term aspirations of biodiversity conventions

To contribute to the aspirations of recent international biodiversity conventions, protected areas (PAs) must be strategically located and not simply established on economically marginal lands as they have in the past. With refined international commitments under the Convention on Biological Diversity to target protected areas in places of “importance to biodiversity,” perhaps they may now be. We analyzed location biases in PAs globally over historic (pre‐2004) and recent periods. Specifically, we examined whether the location of protected areas are more closely associated with high concentrations of threatened vertebrate species or with areas of low agricultural opportunity costs. We found that both old and new protected areas did not target places with high concentrations of threatened vertebrate species. Instead, they appeared to be established in locations that minimize conflict with agriculturally suitable lands. This entrenchment of past trends has substantial implications for the contributions these protected areas are making to international commitments to conserve biodiversity. If protected‐area growth from 2004 to 2014 had strategically targeted unrepresented threatened vertebrates, >30 times more species (3086 or 2553 potential vs. 85 actual new species represented) would have been protected for the same area or the same cost as the actual expansion. With the land available for conservation declining, nations must urgently focus new protection on places that provide for the conservation outcomes outlined in international treaties.     

Standardized reporting of the costs of management interventions for biodiversity conservation

Effective conservation management interventions must combat threats and deliver benefits at costs that can be achieved within limited budgets. Considerable effort has focused on measuring the potential benefits of conservation interventions, but explicit quantification of the financial costs of implementation is rare. Even when costs have been quantified, haphazard and inconsistent reporting means published values are difficult to interpret. This reporting deficiency hinders progress toward a collective understanding of the financial costs of management interventions across projects and thus limits the ability to identify efficient solutions to conservation problems or attract adequate funding. We devised a standardized approach to describing financial costs reported for conservation interventions. The standards call for researchers and practitioners to describe the objective and outcome, context and methods, and scale of costed interventions, and to state which categories of costs are included and the currency and date for reported costs. These standards aim to provide enough contextual information that readers and future users can interpret the cost data appropriately. We suggest these standards be adopted by major conservation organizations, conservation science institutions, and journals so that cost reporting is comparable among studies. This would support shared learning and enhance the ability to identify and perform cost‐effective conservation.     

How to Build an Efficient Conservation Fence

Abstract:  Barriers are used to achieve diverse objectives in conservation and biosecurity. In conservation management, fences are often erected to exclude introduced predators and to contain diseased animals or invasive species. Planning an efficient conservation fence involves a number of decisions, including the size and design of the enclosure. We formulated the first general framework for building a fence that minimizes long-term management costs by balancing the expense of constructing a more secure barrier against the costs of coping with more frequent failures. The approach systematically considers the range of potential solutions to a well-defined fencing problem and results in a solution that maximizes conservation return on investment. We illustrated this method by designing efficient fences to address two different conservation goals: exclusion of invasive predators from populations of threatened eastern barred bandicoots ( Perameles gunnii ) and maintenance of isolated populations of healthy Tasmanian devils ( Sarcophilus harrisii ). A systematic approach to conservation fencing allows the best fence design to be chosen quantitatively and defensibly. It also facilitates conservation decisions at a strategic level by allowing fencing to be compared transparently with alternative conservation management actions.