Human Population Numbers as a Function of Food Supply

Human population growth has typically been seen as the primary causative factor of other ecologically destructive phenomena. Current human disease epidemics are explored as a function of population size. That human population growth is itself a phenomenon with clearly identifiable ecological/biological causes has been overlooked. Here, human population growth is discussed as being subject to the same dynamic processes as the population growth of other species. Contrary to the widely held belief that food production must be increased to feed the growing population, experimental and correlational data indicate that human population growth varies as a function of food availability. By increasing food production for humans, at the expense of other species, the biologically determined effect has been, and continues to be, an increase in the human population. Understanding the relationship between food increases and population increases is proposed as a necessary first step in addressing this global problem. Resistance to this perspective is briefly discussed in terms of cultural bias in science.     

中国环保产业市场定价策略探索

本文运用成本定律来分析环保产业的定价策略,提出有利于我国环保产业发展的合理价格机制。     

城市适度人口规模研究

一个城市的适度人口规模既与经济发展水平密切相关,它是由所在地区的资源、环境等因素决定的。秦皇岛市是中国北方极度缺水的城市一,水资源构成了限制城市发展的短板因素。通过调整用水结构和采用节水技术,虽可使城市居民的用水份额适度增加,但总量约束决定了该城市的人口规模要保持在与水资源相适应的限度内。     

我国城市污水处理技术剖析及对策研究

以我国近10年城市污水处理情况为基础,并参照国外情况,对排污系统建设、废水治理设施以及污水处理效果等方面的多项技术指标逐一进行了剖析,定量地分析评价了我国废水处理技术状况,并提出相应的对策建议,以求为提高我国的污水处理总体水平提供技术参考.      

前置反硝化工艺外碳源投加串级控制策略研究

反硝化反应需要以有机碳源为电子受体.由于污水厂的进水负荷时刻在变化,当进水碳氮比较低时,需要外投加碳源.为了有效地控制外碳源投加量,提出了由两个PI控制器组成的外碳源投加串级控制策略,可以控制出水硝酸氮浓度以及缺氧区末端硝酸氮浓度.由Matlab/Simulink模拟表明,该控制器具有良好的动态品质、抗冲击负荷强,可快速响应进水负荷的变化,能在降低出水硝酸氮和总氮浓度的同时,大大降低外碳源投量.     

浙江省资源安全策略初探

随着浙江省城市化、工业化进程的加快,自然资源特别是水土资源的紧缺,已对全省经济和社会的可持续发展构成严重威胁。基于这样一个背景,文章以浙江省为研究对象,从区域资源安全的内涵出发,在分析了省域资源条件及供给现状的基础上,提出了构建区域资源安全体系的总体思路。根据浙江省的省情特点,构建区域资源安全体系的途径主要从建立集约型的区域资源利用体系、建立开放型的自然资源供给体系、建立综合型的资源安全保育体系、建立适用型的资源技术体系、建立预警型的资源管理体系等5个方面入手。     

Selecting parameters for calibration via sensitivity analysis: An individual-based model of mosquitofish population dynamics

A stochastic individual-based model (IBM) of mosquitofish population dynamics in experimental ponds was constructed in order to increase, virtually, the number of replicates of control populations in an ecotoxicology trial, and thus to increase the statistical power of the experiments. In this context, great importance had to be paid to model calibration as this conditions the use of the model as a reference for statistical comparisons. Accordingly, model calibration required that both mean behaviour and variability behaviour of the model were in accordance with real data. Currently, identifying parameter values from observed data is still an open issue for IBMs, especially when the parameter space is large. Our model included 41 parameters: 30 driving the model expectancy and 11 driving the model variability. Under these conditions, the use of “Latin hypercube” sampling would most probably have “missed” some important combinations of parameter values. Therefore, complete factorial design was preferred. Unfortunately, due to the constraints of the computational capacity, cost-acceptable “complete designs” were limited to no more than nine parameters, the calibration question becoming a parameter selection question. In this study, successive “complete designs” were conducted with different sets of parameters and different parameter values, in order to progressively narrow the parameter space. For each “complete design”, the selection of a maximum of nine parameters and their respective n values was carefully guided by sensitivity analysis. Sensitivity analysis was decisive in selecting parameters that were both influential and likely to have strong interactions. According to this strategy, the model of mosquitofish population dynamics was calibrated on real data from two different years of experiments, and validated on real data from another independent year. This model includes two categories of agents; fish and their living environment. Fish agents have four main processes: growth, survival, puberty and reproduction. The outputs of the model are the length frequency distribution of the population and the 16 scalar variables describing the fish populations. In this study, the length frequency distribution was parameterized by 10 scalars in order to be able to perform calibration. The recently suggested notion of “probabilistic distribution of the distributions” was also applied to our case study, and was shown to be very promising for comparing length frequency distributions (as such).     

江苏沿海地区转Bt基因抗虫棉对棉田昆虫种群的影响

2004-2005年,在江苏沿海地区采用系统调查与面上普查相结合的方法,比较分析转Bt基因抗虫棉(中棉所44)与常规棉(中棉所17)2类棉田昆虫种群的差异.结果表明,与常规棉田相比,Bt棉田棉铃虫、玉米螟、金刚钻、棉小造桥虫等鳞翅目害虫种群数量显著降低,而盲蝽象、红蜘蛛、棉蚜、烟粉虱等非靶标刺吸式害虫种群数量显著增加;蜘蛛、瓢虫等捕食性天敌种群数量显著增加,而棉铃虫的寄生性天敌种群数量则显著下降.转Bt基因抗虫棉对棉田昆虫种群的影响在数年间保持相对稳定的状态.     

曝气生物滤池的生物膜及其微生物种群特征

研究了曝气生物滤池处理模拟生活污水稳态运行时反应器内生物膜的形态特征、生物量和微生物的活性变化特征,分析了生物膜及微生物种群的空间变化规律.结果表明,曝气生物滤池的生物膜形态、颜色和厚度具有沿水流方向渐变的特点,而生物膜密度则在垂直方向上分布不均匀,靠近载体表面部分空隙较大;生物量沿水流方向出现逐步递减的趋势,生物膜活性变化呈现明显的倒“V”型特点;微生物种群组成多样,食物链长且相互交叉,系统营养结构复杂,高端营养级微生物种群所占比例较高,底物利用范围大,沿水流方向可形成不同代谢类型微生物的优势群落.     

Detecting Extinction Risk from Climate Change by IUCN Red List Criteria

Anthropogenic climate change is a key threat to global biodiversity. To inform strategic actions aimed at conserving biodiversity as climate changes, conservation planners need early warning of the risks faced by different species. The IUCN Red List criteria for threatened species are widely acknowledged as useful risk assessment tools for informing conservation under constraints imposed by limited data. However, doubts have been expressed about the ability of the criteria to detect risks imposed by potentially slow‐acting threats such as climate change, particularly because criteria addressing rates of population decline are assessed over time scales as short as 10 years. We used spatially explicit stochastic population models and dynamic species distribution models projected to future climates to determine how long before extinction a species would become eligible for listing as threatened based on the IUCN Red List criteria. We focused on a short‐lived frog species (Assa darlingtoni) chosen specifically to represent potential weaknesses in the criteria to allow detailed consideration of the analytical issues and to develop an approach for wider application. The criteria were more sensitive to climate change than previously anticipated; lead times between initial listing in a threatened category and predicted extinction varied from 40 to 80 years, depending on data availability. We attributed this sensitivity primarily to the ensemble properties of the criteria that assess contrasting symptoms of extinction risk. Nevertheless, we recommend the robustness of the criteria warrants further investigation across species with contrasting life histories and patterns of decline. The adequacy of these lead times for early warning depends on practicalities of environmental policy and management, bureaucratic or political inertia, and the anticipated species response times to management actions. Detección del Riesgo de Extinción a partir del Cambio Climático por medio del Criterio de la Lista Roja de la UICNKeith et al.