The Power of Bioenergy‐Related Standards to Protect Biodiversity

Abstract: The sustainable production of bioenergy is vital to avoiding negative impacts on environmental goods such as climate, soil, water, and especially biodiversity. We propose three key issues that should be addressed in any biodiversity risk‐mitigation strategy: conservation of areas of significant biodiversity value; mitigation of negative effects related to indirect land‐use change; and promotion of agricultural practices with few negative impacts on biodiversity. Focusing on biodiversity concerns, we compared principles and criteria set to address biodiversity and other environmental and social issues in seven standards (defined here as commodity‐based standards or roundtables, or relevant European legislation): five voluntary initiatives related to bioenergy feedstocks, the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (United Kingdom), and the European Renewable Energy Source Directive. Conservation of areas of significant biodiversity value was fairly well covered by these standards. Nevertheless, mitigation of negative impacts related to indirect land‐use change was underrepresented. Although the EU directive, with its bonus system for the use of degraded land and a subquota system for noncrop biofuels, offered the most robust standards to mitigate potential negative effects, all of the standards fell short in promoting agricultural practices with low negative impacts on biodiversity. We strongly recommend that each standard be benchmarked against related standards, as we have done here, and that efforts should be made to strengthen the elements that are weak or missing. This would be a significant step toward achieving a bioenergy industry that safeguards Earth's living heritage.     

WIND DRIVEN RAIN DISTRIBUTIONS AROUND STREET CANOPIES1

ABSTRACT: Wind driven raindrop tracking is used to investigate the microscale redistribution of wind driven rainfalls in street canopies by combining a Eulerian wind flow model and a Lagrangian raindrop tracking model. The former conducts large eddy simulations of the turbulent flows in street canopies, and the latter performs raindrop trajectory calculations by releasing a large number of raindrops into the computational domain. The wind speed model is verified with available wind tunnel measurement. Twenty sets of simulations are carried out for various building configurations and driving rain angles. The simulated results show that the trajectories of smaller raindrops are more slanting and more influenced by the multibuilding perturbed flow field. Impingement of raindrops on the building envelope increases from bottom to top. The height of the front building is a significant factor affecting wind driven rain redistribution. Distinct nonuniform spatial rainfall distributions are found for scenarios with high building configurations and low driving rain angles. The simulated results are further integrated to assess the effect of real raindrop size distributions by weighing the volumetric fraction of a range of drop sizes. There is about 10 percent variation in spatial extent of street canopies. An overall 5 to 17.4 percent increase of the rainfall amount in the upwind zone is observed.     

Effects of life history and reproduction on recruitment time lags in reintroductions of rare plants

Reintroductions are important components of conservation and recovery programs for rare plant species, but their long-term success rates are poorly understood. Previous reviews of plant reintroductions focused on short-term (e.g., ≤3 years) survival and flowering of founder individuals rather than on benchmarks of intergenerational persistence, such as seedling recruitment. However, short-term metrics may obscure outcomes because the unique demographic properties of reintroductions, including small size and unstable stage structure, could create lags in population growth. We used time-to-event analysis on a database of unusually well-monitored and long-term (4–28 years) reintroductions of 27 rare plant species to test whether life-history traits and population characteristics of reintroductions create time-lagged responses in seedling recruitment (i.e., recruitment time lags [RTLs]), an important benchmark of success and indicator of persistence in reintroduced populations. Recruitment time lags were highly variable among reintroductions, ranging from <1 to 17 years after installation. Recruitment patterns matched predictions from life-history theory with short-lived species (fast species) exhibiting consistently shorter and less variable RTLs than long-lived species (slow species). Long RTLs occurred in long-lived herbs, especially in grasslands, whereas short RTLs occurred in short-lived subtropical woody plants and annual herbs. Across plant life histories, as reproductive adult abundance increased, RTLs decreased. Highly variable RTLs were observed in species with multiple reintroduction events, suggesting local processes are just as important as life-history strategy in determining reintroduction outcomes. Time lags in restoration outcomes highlight the need to scale success benchmarks in reintroduction monitoring programs with plant life-history strategies and the unique demographic properties of restored populations. Drawing conclusions on the long-term success of plant reintroduction programs is premature given that demographic processes in species with slow life-histories take decades to unfold.     

啶虫脒在甘蓝和土壤中的残留消解动态研究

采用田间试验及气相色谱检测方法,研究了啶虫脒在甘蓝(Brassica oleracea L.var.capitata L.)和土壤中的残留消解动态.结果表明,啶虫脒在甘蓝和土壤中消解较快.在甘蓝中半衰期为1.4～1.6 d,药后3d消解90%以上;在土壤中的半衰期为1.8～1.9 d,药后7 d消解90%以上.3%啶虫脒可湿性粉剂,45、22.5 g·hm-2,施药2次,药后3、5、7 d苹果和土壤中残留量均小于2 mg·kg-1.     

Emission Inventories of Carbon-containing Greenhouse Gases in and Technological Measures for Their Abatement

The report summarizes surveys on carbon inventories and initiatives on sustainable carbon cycling taken by the Research Center for EcoEnvironmental Sciences, where the authors work/worked. The first part of the report, which appeared in the preceding issue of this journal, deals with the concept of sustainable carbon cycling, the historic evolution of carbon cycling processes in China, carbon pool enhancement, value addition,carbon sequestration and carbon balance. This very paper, as the second part of the report, covers the results of carbon dynamics modeling, emission inventories of various carbon-containing greenhouse gases and their potential abatement measures.     

Hormonal response to conspecific chemical signals as an indicator of seasonal reproduction dynamics in the desert hamster, Phodopus roborovskii

Changes in male blood plasma testosterone and cortisol in response to exposure to scent marks (urine and midventral gland secretion, MVGS) of conspecific males and diestrous females in different seasons have been studied in the desert hamster (Phodopus roborovskii), a species whose ecological features are poorly known. The results show that a significant increase in the plasma testosterone level is observed in winter (only to female MVGS), spring (to female MVGS and urine), and summer (to female urine), but not in autumn. The level of plasma cortisol significantly increases only in response to female urine in spring and male MVGS in summer.