A Rapid Method for Assessing the Environmental Performance of Commercial Farms in the Pampas of Argentina

The generation of reliable updated information is critical to support the harmonization of socio-economic and environmental issues in a context of sustainable development. The agro-environmental assessment and management of agricultural systems often relies on indicators that are necessary to make sound decisions. This work aims to provide an approach to (a) assess the environmental performance of commercial farms in the Pampas of Argentina, and (b) propose a methodological framework to calculate environmental indicators that can rapidly be applied to practical farming. 120 commercial farms scattered across the Pampas were analyzed in this study during 2002 and 2003. Eleven basic indicators were identified and calculation methods described. Such indicators were fossil energy (FE) use, FE use efficiency, nitrogen (N) balance, phosphorus (P) balance, N contamination risk, P contamination risk, pesticide contamination risk, soil erosion risk, habitat intervention, changes in soil carbon stock, and balance of greenhouse gases. A model named Agro-Eco-Index was developed on a Microsoft-Excel support to incorporate on-farm collected data and facilitate the calculation of indicators by users. Different procedures were applied to validate the model and present the results to the users. Regression models (based on linear and non-linear models) were used to validate the comparative performance of the study farms across the Pampas. An environmental dashboard was provided to represent in a graphical way the behavior of farms. The method provides a tool to discriminate environmentally friendly farms from those that do not pay enough attention to environmental issues. Our procedure might be useful for implementing an ecological certification system to reward a good environmental behavior in society (e.g., through tax benefits) and generate a commercial advantage (e.g., through the allocation of green labels) for committed farmers.     

城市环境地球化学调查研究方法综述

总结了城市环境地球化学调查的技术路线,论述了城市环境地球化学解释的思路和方法,提出了城市环境地球化学调查研究的重点问题及研究方向,为开展城市环境调查和评价工作提供了有参考价值的研究线索。     

Interaction Between the Environment and Animals in Urban Settings: Integrated and Participatory Planning

In urban ecosystems, the ecological system has become completely unbalanced; this, in turn, has led to an increase in well-known problems such as air pollution, ground pollution, and water pollution. This imbalance has also led to the growth and spread of pathogens harmful to man, animals, and plants. Urban sustainability indicators, both global and local, also “indicate” the percentage of population, but these refer only to the human population, not the animal population. Cities need good waste, water, and air management, effective traffic planning, and good zoning of businesses, crafts, and services; over and above these activities, cities also need for planning to take into account the existence of pets (dogs, cats, and etc.) and nonpet animals (insects, birds, mice, etc.). Cities tend to be designed around humans and “on a human scale,” without taking into account the fact that a huge animal population is living side by side with people. That explains why overcrowding tends to go hand in hand with urbanization; all these populations, including humans, need to adapt to new spaces and often need to drastically change their behavior. This is a fact that must be included when drafting sustainable city plans. The supposed strategy is that of “integrated-participatory” control of the interactions between the environment and animals in the cities. Strategy will focus on the development of integrated approaches and tools for environment and animal management in the context of urban settings. This will require such specific methods as ecological balance sheets and ecoplans for the planning, management, and control of the interrelation among environment, animal, and public health. The objective is to develop a better understanding of urban biodiversity and of urban ecosystem functioning, in order to understand and minimize the negative impacts of human activities on them. The research will focus on assessing and forecasting changes in urban biodiversity, structure, function, and dynamics of urban ecosystems, with relationships among society, economy, biodiversity, and habitats.     

The Interactive Effects of Fire and Diversity on Short-Term Responses of Ecosystem Processes in Experimental Mediterranean Grasslands

We conducted a field experiment using constructed communities to test whether species richness contributed to the maintenance of ecosystem processes under fire disturbance. We studied the effects of diversity components (i.e., species richness and species composition) upon productivity, structural traits of vegetation, decomposition rates, and soil nutrients between burnt and unburnt experimental Mediterranean grassland communities. Our results demonstrated that fire and species richness had interactive effects on aboveground biomass production and canopy structure components. Fire increased biomass production of the highest-richness communities. The effects of fire on aboveground biomass production at different levels of species richness were derived from changes in both vertical and horizontal canopy structure of the communities. The most species-rich communities appeared to be more resistant to fire in relation to species-poor ones, due to both compositional and richness effects. Interactive effects of fire and species richness were not important for belowground processes. Decomposition rates increased with species richness, related in part to increased levels of canopy structure traits. Fire increased soil nutrients and long-term decomposition rate. Our results provide evidence that composition within richness levels had often larger effects on the stability of aboveground ecosystem processes in the face of fire disturbance than species richness per se.     

Bottom up and top down: analysis of participatory processes for sustainability indicator identification as a pathway to community empowerment and sustainable environmental management

The modern environmental management literature stresses the need for community involvement to identify indicators to monitor progress towards sustainable development and environmental management goals. The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of participatory processes on sustainability indicator identification and environmental management in three disparate case studies. The first is a process of developing partnerships between First Nations communities, environmental groups, and forestry companies to resolve conflicts over forest management in Western Canada. The second describes a situation in Botswana where local pastoral communities worked with development researchers to reduce desertification. The third case study details an on-going government led process of developing sustainability indicators in Guernsey, UK, that was designed to monitor the environmental, social, and economic impacts of changes in the economy. The comparative assessment between case studies allows us to draw three primary conclusions. (1) The identification and collection of sustainability indicators not only provide valuable databases for making management decisions, but the process of engaging people to select indicators also provides an opportunity for community empowerment that conventional development approaches have failed to provide. (2) Multi-stakeholder processes must formally feed into decision-making forums or they risk being viewed as irrelevant by policy-makers and stakeholders. (3) Since ecological boundaries rarely meet up with political jurisdictions, it is necessary to be flexible when choosing the scale at which monitoring and decision-making occurs. This requires an awareness of major environmental pathways that run through landscapes to understand how seemingly remote areas may be connected in ways that are not immediately apparent.     

填埋垃圾腐殖质组成在填埋场稳定度表征中的应用

通过对上海老港生活垃圾填埋场1991-2004年封场单元填埋垃圾腐殖质组成的分析,考察了填埋垃圾中腐殖质组成随填埋龄的变化规律.研究结果表明,填埋垃圾腐殖质的总可提取率和胡敏酸(HA)与富里酸(FA)比值(HA/FA)分别随填埋龄呈线性下降和上升趋势.因此,填埋垃圾总可提取率和HA/FA可用来有效表征填埋场和填埋垃圾稳定度.     

层次分析法的改进及在安全决策中应用的研究

本文根据化工行业的特点及调研资料,建立了影响安全的层次结构模型即安全指标体系。并利用改进式层次分析法（IAHP）对该体系进行分析,得出了各个因素对安全的影响系数（权重）。     

基于模糊层次分析法的应急能力评估方法探讨

对危险行业的安全生产事故应急能力进行安全评估,可以持续改进应急管理工作,提高事故应急能力的总体水平。作为综合性的安全评估方法,层次分析法在安全研究的多个领域中得到了应用。通过介绍安全生产事故应急管理能力及其评估要求,分析国内外应急能力评估的现状,提出了应急能力评估体系建立的总体思路。论述了事故应急能力评估指标集的建立方法和基于模糊层次综合评价法的评估模型构建方案,初步建立起事故应急管理能力评估方法。     

长江三角洲地区耕地质量变化的初步研究——以锡山市为例

长江三角洲地区耕地质量变化的监测是区土地可持续利用研究的重点领域。锡山市位于太湖平原北部，其耕地质量变化过程反映了长江三角洲腹地经济发展水平较高地区的耕地现状和发展趋势。本研究以锡山市为典型区，依据第二次土壤普查资料，多年土壤监测数据和有关耕地系统状态的统计数据，结合研究区耕地状况的调查分析，提出了支持压力－状态－响应模型的耕地质量评价指标体系，并据此指标体系分析了该区耕地质量变化趋势。结果表明，该区耕地系统的发展总体上是可控的、有序的、但是耕地系统产出能力的稳定性呈下降趋势，系统高水平投入的维持面临较大的压力。鉴于人口增加和耕地持续减少的态势在很长一段时间内难以逆转，耕地占补的质量差异因素，是该区能否实现耕地总量动态平衡的关键所在。     

Regime shifts and resilience in China’s coastal ecosystems

Regime shift often results in large, abrupt, and persistent changes in the provision of ecosystem services and can therefore have significant impacts on human wellbeing. Understanding regime shifts has profound implications for ecosystem recovery and management. China’s coastal ecosystems have experienced substantial deterioration within the past decades, at a scale and speed the world has never seen before. Yet, information about this coastal ecosystem change from a dynamics perspective is quite limited. In this review, I synthesize existing information on coastal ecosystem regime shifts in China and discuss their interactions and cascading effects. The accumulation of regime shifts in China’s coastal ecosystems suggests that the desired system resilience has been profoundly eroded, increasing the potential of abrupt shifts to undesirable states at a larger scale, especially given multiple escalating pressures. Policy and management strategies need to incorporate resilience approaches in order to cope with future challenges and avoid major losses in China’s coastal ecosystem services.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13280-015-0692-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.