The theory behind,and the challenges of,conserving nature's stage in a time of rapid change

Most conservation planning to date has focused on protecting today's biodiversity with the assumption that it will be tomorrow's biodiversity. However, modern climate change has already resulted in distributional shifts of some species and is projected to result in many more shifts in the coming decades. As species redistribute and biotic communities reorganize, conservation plans based on current patterns of biodiversity may fail to adequately protect species in the future. One approach for addressing this issue is to focus on conserving a range of abiotic conditions in the conservation‐planning process. By doing so, it may be possible to conserve an abiotically diverse “stage” upon which evolution will play out and support many actors (biodiversity). We reviewed the fundamental underpinnings of the concept of conserving the abiotic stage, starting with the early observations of von Humboldt, who mapped the concordance of abiotic conditions and vegetation, and progressing to the concept of the ecological niche. We discuss challenges posed by issues of spatial and temporal scale, the role of biotic drivers of species distributions, and latitudinal and topographic variation in relationships between climate and landform. For example, abiotic conditions are not static, but change through time—albeit at different and often relatively slow rates. In some places, biotic interactions play a substantial role in structuring patterns of biodiversity, meaning that patterns of biodiversity may be less tightly linked to the abiotic stage. Furthermore, abiotic drivers of biodiversity can change with latitude and topographic position, meaning that the abiotic stage may need to be defined differently in different places. We conclude that protecting a diversity of abiotic conditions will likely best conserve biodiversity into the future in places where abiotic drivers of species distributions are strong relative to biotic drivers, where the diversity of abiotic settings will be conserved through time, and where connectivity allows for movement among areas providing different abiotic conditions.     

植物促生菌在重金属生物修复中的作用机制及应用

重金属污染是导致生态和环境退化的主要因素之一.土壤重金属污染会降低土壤质量、农作物产量和品质,甚至威胁人类健康.因此,优化土壤重金属污染治理措施,对于农业高产优质可持续具有重要意义.诸多国内外学者在重金属污染植物修复方面开展了大量研究,但由于受土壤和气候环境条件的影响,其修复效率受到制约.微生物与植物的协同修复被认为是环境胁迫条件下提高重金属污染修复效率的一种有效手段.耐重金属的植物促生细菌（PGPB）不仅可以促进植物生长,提高对生物胁迫（如病原菌）和非生物胁迫（如干旱、高盐、极端温度和重金属等）的抗性,还可以改变土壤中重金属的生物利用度和毒性,从而提高植物对重金属的修复效率.系统地梳理了耐重金属的PGPB在促进植物生长,增强植物抗逆性和影响重金属生物利用度方面的作用机制,并进一步综述了近年来国内外关于PGPB在生态修复中的应用和研究进展.     

LCA of local strategies for energy recovery from waste in England, applied to a large municipal flow

An intense waste management (WM) planning activity is currently undergoing in England to build the infrastructure necessary to treat residual wastes, increase recycling levels and the recovery of energy from waste. From the analyses of local WM strategic and planning documents we have identified the emerging of three different energy recovery strategies: established combustion of residual waste; pre-treatment of residual waste and energy recovery from Solid Recovered Fuel in a dedicated plant, usually assumed to be a gasifier; pre-treatment of residual waste and reliance on the market to accept the ‘fuel from waste’ so produced. Each energy recovery strategy will result in a different solution in terms of the technology selected; moreover, on the basis of the favoured solution, the total number, scale and location of thermal treatment plants built in England will dramatically change. To support the evaluation and comparison of these three WM strategy in terms of global environmental impacts, energy recovery possibilities and performance with respect to changing ‘fuel from waste’ market conditions, the LCA comparison of eight alternative WM scenarios for a real case study dealing with a large flow of municipal wastes was performed with the modelling tool WRATE. The large flow of waste modelled allowed to formulate and assess realistic alternative WM scenarios and to design infrastructural systems which are likely to correspond to those submitted for approval to the local authorities. The results show that all alternative scenarios contribute to saving abiotic resources and reducing global warming potential. Particularly relevant to the current English debate, the performance of a scenario was shown to depend not from the thermal treatment technology but from a combination of parameters, among which most relevant are the efficiency of energy recovery processes (both electricity and heat) and the calorific value of residual waste and pre-treated material. The contribution and relative importance of recycling and treatment/recovery processes change with the impact category. The lack of reprocessing plants in the area of the case study has shown the relevance of transport distances for recyclate material in reducing the efficiency of a WM system. Highly relevant to the current English WM infrastructural debate, these results for the first time highlight the risk of a significant reduction in the energy that could be recovered by local WM strategies relying only on the market to dispose of the ‘fuel from waste’ in a non dedicated plant in the case that the SRF had to be sent to landfill for lack of treatment capacity.     

Why geodiversity matters in valuing nature's stage

Geodiversity—the variability of Earth's surface materials, forms, and physical processes—is an integral part of nature and crucial for sustaining ecosystems and their services. It provides the substrates, landform mosaics, and dynamic physical processes for habitat development and maintenance. By determining the heterogeneity of the physical environment in conjunction with climate interactions, geodiversity has a crucial influence on biodiversity across a wide range of scales. From a literature review, we identified the diverse values of geodiversity; examined examples of the dependencies of biodiversity on geodiversity at a site‐specific scale (for geosites <1 km² in area); and evaluated various human‐induced threats to geosites and geodiversity. We found that geosites are important to biodiversity because they often support rare or unique biota adapted to distinctive environmental conditions or create a diversity of microenvironments that enhance species richness. Conservation of geodiversity in the face of a range of threats is critical both for effective management of nature's stage and for its own particular values. This requires approaches to nature conservation that integrate climate, biodiversity, and geodiversity at all spatial scales.     

车用钛酸锂电池生命周期评价

为评估车用钛酸锂（LTO）电池对能源、环境与资源的影响,构建了包括重制与二次使用阶段在内的车用锂电池全生命周期评价模型,以某款国产纯电动客车用钛酸锂电池包为评价对象,计算得出每kW·h钛酸锂电池全生命周期的总能量消耗（CED）、全球变暖潜值（GWP）和不可再生矿产资源耗竭潜值（ADP（e））分别为2.80×10⁴MJ、1.86×10³kg CO₂eq.以及4.77×10^-3kg Sbeq.其全生命周期CED与GWP主要与两个使用阶段中由电池充放电效率引起的能量损耗相关,生产阶段GWP主要来源于正负极材料、铝制材料和N-甲基吡咯烷酮.基于全生命周期存储-释放每MJ能量的视角,发现二次使用可显著降低电池全生命周期GWP;与已有研究中其他锂电池对比可知LTO电池生产阶段GWP最低.     

红壤胶体铁氧化物界面有机氯的非生物转化研究进展

综述了红壤胶体铁氧化物的结构、形态及其转化;铁氧化物界面有机氯的非生物转化过程及其影响因素;异化铁还原作用下的有机氯转化过程。有机氯的非生物转化主要包括氧化转化与脱氯转化过程。氧化转化包括暗态下的化学氧化与光化学氧化过程;脱氯转化包括脱氢卤化、加氢脱氯、脱双卤、二聚脱氯与亲核置换脱氯等反应过程。有机氯的非生物转化主要受胶体界面pH、Eh、水溶性有机物、金属离子、铁氧化物形态与铁还原细菌等的显著影响。有机氯非生物转化的化学-微生物耦合机制、复合污染条件下重金属对界面有机氯非生物转化过程的影响机制、红壤胶体界面有机氯污染的综合调控技术方法等三个方面值得关注,有助于推动土壤胶体界面环境化学的发展。     

Analysis of monitoring data on the Russian desman (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Desmana moschata</Emphasis>) in the Oka state biosphere reserve in relation to the problem of species’ population decline

Data on the effect of environmental factors on the Russian desman population of the Oka Reserve (Ryazan oblast) have been analyzed over the period from 1938 to 2004. Against the background of global climate warming, the number of desmans has decreased by a factor of 2.75 as a consequence of hydrotechnical amelioration in the early 1960s. Prior to amelioration, relatively dry, low-water, and cool years were more favorable for these animals; after amelioration, their demand for more abundant moistening has increased.     

Abiotic association of phthalic acid esters with humic acid of a sludge landfill

The abiotic association between phthalic acid esters (PAEs) and humic substances (HS) in sludge landfill plays an important role in the fate and stability of PAEs. An equilibrium dialysis combined with ¹⁴C-labeling was used to study the abiotic association of two abundant PAEs (diethyl phthalate and di-n-butyl phthalate) with humic acid (HA) isolated from a sludge landfill with different stabilization times and different molecular weights. Elemental analysis and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrophotometer (FTIR) suggested that high K _A value of HA was related to the high aromatic content and large molecular weight of HA. The results indicated that the association strength of PAEs with HA depended on both the properties of the PAEs and the characteristics of HA. The K _A values of the association were strongly dependent on solution pH, and decreased dramatically as the pH was increased from 3.0 to 9.0. The results suggested that nonspecific hydrophobic interaction between PAEs and HA was the main contributor to the association of the PAEs with HA. The interactive hydrogen-bonds between the HA and the PAEs molecules may also be involved in the association.     

Incorporating geodiversity into conservation decisions

In a rapidly changing climate, conservation practitioners could better use geodiversity in a broad range of conservation decisions. We explored selected avenues through which this integration might improve decision making and organized them within the adaptive management cycle of assessment, planning, implementation, and monitoring. Geodiversity is seldom referenced in predominant environmental law and policy. With most natural resource agencies mandated to conserve certain categories of species, agency personnel are challenged to find ways to practically implement new directives aimed at coping with climate change while retaining their species‐centered mandate. Ecoregions and ecological classifications provide clear mechanisms to consider geodiversity in plans or decisions, the inclusion of which will help foster the resilience of conservation to climate change. Methods for biodiversity assessment, such as gap analysis, climate change vulnerability analysis, and ecological process modeling, can readily accommodate inclusion of a geophysical component. We adapted others’ approaches for characterizing landscapes along a continuum of climate change vulnerability for the biota they support from resistant, to resilient, to susceptible, and to sensitive and then summarized options for integrating geodiversity into planning in each landscape type. In landscapes that are relatively resistant to climate change, options exist to fully represent geodiversity while ensuring that dynamic ecological processes can change over time. In more susceptible landscapes, strategies aiming to maintain or restore ecosystem resilience and connectivity are paramount. Implementing actions on the ground requires understanding of geophysical constraints on species and an increasingly nimble approach to establishing management and restoration goals. Because decisions that are implemented today will be revisited and amended into the future, increasingly sophisticated forms of monitoring and adaptation will be required to ensure that conservation efforts fully consider the value of geodiversity for supporting biodiversity in the face of a changing climate.     

人为扰动背景下城郊溪流底质磷的生物-非生物吸收潜力分析

为揭示土地利用变化对城郊溪流底质磷吸收的影响,2016年6~11月在合肥市城市边缘某一源头溪流逐月采集溪流底质样,利用实验培养法分析人为扰动背景下溪流底质磷的生物与非生物吸收潜力及其变化特征.结果表明:底质磷的总吸收潜力和非生物吸收潜力都表现为夏季高于秋季;毗邻排污口的3号采样点沉积物磷的总吸收潜力和非生物吸收潜力明显高于其它各采样点;无论是夏季还是秋季,6个采样点位底质磷的生物吸收贡献率都低于相应的非生物吸收贡献率,而且彼此之间差异十分明显;各采样点底质磷的吸收潜力、吸收贡献率的逐月变化态势,表明土地利用变化引发的强烈人为扰动对溪流底质磷的生物吸收影响很大.