基于生命周期的轨道交通能耗与碳排放分析

轨道交通的高效低污染特征备受关注,以广佛二期地铁为研究对象,测算广佛二期地铁的能源消费量,以及CO2、CH4、N2O等温室气体(Greenhouse Gases,GHGs)排放量;再基于生命周期理论,采用量化方法对比广佛二期地铁与出租车、私人载客汽车、公交车、私人摩托车4种客运交通工具的能源利用效率、能源强度、碳排放强度;最后,分析广佛二期地铁对佛山市交通行业能耗和GHGs排放的影响.结果表明,广佛二期地铁近期能源消费量为4 562.95 t标准煤,CO2排放量为12 651.57 t,CH4排放量为0.152 t,N2O排放量为0.201 t.与燃油机动车相比,广佛二期地铁具有更高的能源利用效率,同时具有较高的节能减排潜力.研究表明,广佛二期地铁的开通不但是缓解佛山市机动车辆增长的重要方式,而且对城市交通节能减排具有重要意义.     

北京夏季典型PM2.5与O3相继重污染事件分析

根据北京市环境保护监测中心发布的PM2.5和O3小时质量浓度及气象、卫星遥感数据,分析了2013年7月2日至10日北京典型PM2.5及O3重污染过程的质量浓度特征及在大气边界层过程各个阶段的质量浓度演变.结果表明,北京夏季O3质量浓度先于PM2.5达到峰值,而天气型演变是导致这一现象的主要原因.具体过程为:1)重污染初始阶段,高压天气型利于前体物积累,PM2.5及O3质量浓度升高;2)在反气旋中部,由于各种污染物质量浓度较低,对大气紫外波段辐射的吸收较弱,导致该阶段紫外辐射强,因而加快了O3生成的光化学反应,O3质量浓度最先达到峰值;3)在反气旋后部,随PM2.5质量浓度增加,辐射变弱,因此O3质量浓度增加速度下降,而受高压后部影响,区域内PM2.5经东南风输送通道进入北京,导致北京PM2.5质量浓度相继达到峰值;4)在重污染清除阶段,在北方反气旋前部的冷锋清除作用下,PM2.5及O3质量浓度同时降低至谷值.     

Implementing SDG 15: Can large‐scale public programs help deliver biodiversity conservation,restoration and management,while assisting human development?

Among the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the proposed SDG 15 promotes activities that, inter alia, “Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems”. An important potential contribution in achieving SDG 15 is through public programmes designed to jointly promote human development through poverty alleviation and improvement of human livelihoods and biodiversity conservation/management/restoration. An analysis of twenty public programmes with such joint objectives yielded twelve lessons learned. In addition to financial commitments, government and intergovernmental agency input for such public programmes includes ensuring political will and appropriate legal frameworks. Local communities and civil society provide input through traditional and indigenous ecological knowledge and stewardship. Appropriate shared inputs in development and the implementation of such public programmes, with communication between local community, broader civil society, the scientific community and governments will result in: better use and management of biodiversity; alleviation of poverty; security of livelihoods and better governance systems. The Ecosystem Approach of the Convention on Biological Diversity provides an ideal framework when planning and implementing new programmes. Application of the lessons learned to new public programmes will ensure that the answer to the question posed in the title is an emphatic “Yes”, and assist with the achievement of SDG 15.     

Compromising sustainable mobility? The case of the Gothenburg congestion tax

Congestion charging is widely considered an effective policy measure to regulate and reduce car traffic demand and associated environmental and health problems in cities. However, introducing restrictive measures to constrain individual choice and behaviour for the common good has often proven difficult. Using a specific case, the Gothenburg congestion tax introduced in 2013, we study the policy process behind the introduction of the tax and assess to what extent green values were compromised along the way. The tax was made possible by co-financing infrastructure investments, including roads, which seemingly contradicts stated goals of reducing car traffic and emissions. We show how the tax was ‘muddled through’ in a top-down political compromise by a grand coalition where different interests could legitimate their support in relation to the achievement of partially conflicting objectives and projects. However, to declare the regulatory goals fully neutralised would be to underestimate the scheme's direct environmental effects and restrictive potential. Finding a compromise with powerful political and economic interests was necessary to get it off the ground. Once launched, however, it can over time regain its restrictive properties and lead to more profound long-term effects.     

The Aging of America's Reservoirs: In‐Reservoir and Downstream Physical Changes and Habitat Implications

Reservoirs are important for various purposes including flood control, water supply, power generation, and recreation. The aging of America's reservoirs and progressive loss of water storage capacity resulting from ongoing sedimentation, coupled with increasing societal needs, will cause the social, economic, environmental, and political importance of reservoirs to continually increase. The short‐ and medium‐term (<50 years) environmental consequences of reservoir construction and operation are well known and include an altered flow regime, lost connectivity (longitudinal, floodplain), an altered sediment regime, substrate compositional change, and downstream channel degradation. In general, reservoir‐related changes have had adverse consequences for the natural ecosystem. Longer term (>50 years) environmental changes as reservoirs enter “old” age are less understood. Additional research is needed to help guide the future management of aging reservoir systems and support the difficult decisions that will have to be made. Important research directions include assessment of climate change effects on aging and determination of ecosystem response to ongoing aging and various management actions that may be taken with the intent of minimizing or reversing the physical effects of aging.     

Are we counting what counts? A closer look at environmental concern,pro-environmental behaviour,and carbon footprint

Three parallel lines of inquiry regarding individuals' support for the environment have developed within the environmental social sciences. These include individuals' concern for the environment, research on private sphere pro-environmental behaviour (PEB), i.e. household actions seeking to improve the environment (e.g. buying better light bulbs), and more recently, ecological and carbon footprints. Researchers have noted that the correlates of this third form of support for the environment are not necessarily the same as the predictors of the first two forms. Using Canadian survey data, this study examines the relationships among, and predictors of, all three forms. Evidence that there is not a link between private sphere PEB and household carbon footprints, and that measures of socio-economic status (education and income) have different effects on different types of support for the environment, invites a discussion of whether environmental social scientists are really counting what counts.     

Resolution and Analysis of Spatial Variations and Patterns in an Urban Lake with Rapid Profiling Instrumentation

Rapid response vertical profiling instrumentation was used to document spatial variability and patterns in a small urban lake, Onondaga Lake, associated with multiple drivers. Paired profiles of temperature, specific conductance (SC), turbidity (T_n), fluorometric chlorophyll a (Chl_f), and nitrate nitrogen (NO₃^?) were collected at >30 fixed locations (a “gridding”) weekly, over the spring to fall interval of several years. These gridding data are analyzed (1) to characterize phytoplankton (Chl_f) patchiness in the lake's upper waters, (2) to establish the representativeness of a single long‐term site for monitoring lake‐wide conditions, and (3) to resolve spatial patterns of multiple tracers imparted by buoyancy effects of inflows. Multiple buoyancy signatures were resolved, including overflows from less dense inflows, and interflows to metalimnetic depths and underflows to the bottom from the plunging of more dense inputs. Three different metrics had utility as tracers in depicting the buoyancy signatures as follows: (1) SC, for salinity‐enriched tributaries and the more dilute river that receives the lake's outflow, (2) T_n, for the tributaries during runoff events, and (3) NO₃^?, for the effluent of a domestic waste treatment facility and from the addition of NO₃^? solution to control methyl mercury. The plunging inflow phenomenon, which frequently prevailed, has important management implications.     

New York City Environmental Justice Alliance Waterfront Justice Project

This paper reviews key challenges and opportunities addressed by the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance's (NYC-EJA) Waterfront Justice Project, a citywide campaign to promote climate resilience and sustainability in urban industrial waterfront communities of New York City. NYC-EJA is a non-profit membership-driven network linking grassroots organisations from low-income neighbourhoods and communities of colour in their struggle for environmental justice. The Waterfront Justice Project is documenting community vulnerability in the context of climate change impacts, sources of industrial pollution, and demographic and socio-economic trends. This campaign is enabling community-based organisations, environmental justice communities, city planners, local and state government agencies, local business-owners, and other stakeholders to work in partnership to achieve community resilience while advocating for local jobs and promoting best practices in pollution prevention. New York City's waterfront policies ease the siting and clustering of public infrastructure, water pollution control plants, waste transfer stations, energy facilities, and heavy manufacturing uses in six areas designated as Significant Maritime and Industrial Areas (SMIAs). The SMIAs are located in environmental justice communities, largely low-income communities and communities of colour, in the South Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. New York City's local waterfront land use and zoning policies create cumulative risk exposure not only to residents and workers in the host waterfront communities, but also, in the event of storm surge or sea-level rise, to neighbouring, upland communities.     

新形势下我国环境管理与改革取向

在"十三五"我国经济新常态的大逻辑下,环境管理机遇和挑战并存。污染欠账多、污染随着产业转移、政策执行走样、排污收费覆盖面窄、收取率低等,制约环境管理和环保产业的发展。对环境污染的严重性和复杂性、生态环境形势的十分严峻性,以及对污染治理的艰巨性和长期性,应当有一个清醒认识。扭转环境保护与经济发展不协调、不可持续状况,满足城乡居民日益高涨的环境诉求,必须调整环境管理思路,加快改革步伐,扭转环境保护"弱势"格局,厘清环境管理、环境事业和环境市场之间的关系,形成以排污许可证为依据的管理主线、以环境标准为准绳的倒逼机制,以环境司法裁定为常态的终身责任追究制度,创造一个人人守法、企业自觉治理污染和保护环境的社会氛围。     

广东某铀废石堆周边土壤中铀污染特征及其环境有效性

铀（U）矿冶过程中产生了大量铀废石。通常认为其放射性核素含量低,大多沿山谷露天自然堆放,一般不对堆场做防渗漏处置,对铀废石可能产生的潜在环境影响尚未引起重视。以广东某花岗岩型铀矿山的一个废石堆周边土壤为研究对象,在废石堆上、下游方向分别采集了2条（即BP1和BP2,视作背景土壤,距离废石堆的距离分别为10和20 m）和3条土壤剖面（即WP1、WP2和WP3,视作潜在U污染土壤,距离废石堆的距离分别为50、100和180 m）。通过对剖面间U分布特征的对比,定量估算了受污染土壤中外源U的输入通量;结合逐级化学提取技术,分析了U在土壤剖面的赋存形态及其环境有效性。结果表明：1）铀废石堆对周边土壤产生了显著的放射性污染,废石堆下游方向由近及远的3条U污染剖面（WP1、WP2和WP3）中U平均质量分数比背景剖面分别富集了634.6、10和3.7倍,其外源U的平均输入通量分别为4840.36、86.72和20.46μg·g-1。距污染源（废石堆）愈近,土壤中外源U的输入通量愈大;2）在近源区,大量的外源U优先在土壤表层聚集,随着远离污染源,逐渐转变为优先在剖面的深部淀积;3）与U 污染剖面相比,背景剖面（BP2）的惰性态 U（晶质铁锰氧化物/氢氧化物结合态+残渣态）所占比例最大,活性态 U（可交换态（包括水溶态）+碳酸盐结合态）所占比例最小,说明U污染土壤的外源U输入更倾向于对活性态U的贡献,这是对植物影响最直接的部分。另外,距污染源由近及远,U污染土壤中活性态U所占比例增大,潜在活性态U（有机质结合态+无定形铁锰氧化物/氢氧化物结合态）所占比例降低;4）3条U污染剖面中,平均90%以上的U（活性态和潜在活性态）对生态系统构成了威胁。因此,铀废石堆对周边环境产生的风险应得到充分重视。本研究为开展铀矿冶地域的放射性环境影响评价和土壤修复提供了有益的参考。