Quantifying progress toward a conservation assessment for all plants

The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC) set an ambitious target to achieve a conservation assessment for all known plant species by 2020. We consolidated digitally available plant conservation assessments and reconciled their scientific names and assessment status to predefined standards to provide a quantitative measure of progress toward this target. The 241,919 plant conservation assessments generated represent 111,824 accepted land plant species (vascular plants and bryophytes, not algae). At least 73,081 and up to 90,321 species have been assessed at the global scale, representing 21–26% of known plant species. Of these plant species, at least 27,148 and up to 32,542 are threatened. Eighty plant families, including some of the largest, such as Asteraceae, Orchidaceae, and Rubiaceae, are underassessed and should be the focus of assessment effort if the GSPC target is to be met by 2020. Our data set is accessible online (ThreatSearch) and is a baseline that can be used to directly support other GSPC targets and plant conservation action. Although around one‐quarter of a million plant assessments have been compiled, the majority of plants are still unassessed. The challenge now is to build on this progress and redouble efforts to document conservation status of unassessed plants to better inform conservation decisions and conserve the most threatened species.     

Providing the Spark: Impact of financial incentives on battery electric vehicle adoption

To overcome adoption barriers and promote battery electric vehicles (BEVs) as an energy efficient consumer transportation option, a number of states offer subsidies to consumers for BEVs. We use a national data set of vehicle registrations and state-level financial incentives to assess the impact of vehicle purchase subsidies on adoption using both difference-in-differences and synthetic controls methods. We find that incentives offered as direct purchase rebates generate increased levels of new BEV registrations at a rate of approximately 8 percent per thousand dollars of incentive offered. Between 2011 and 2015, vehicle rebate incentives are associated with an increase in overall BEV registrations of approximately 11 percent. Our findings indicate incentives offered as state income tax credits do not have a statistically significant effect on BEV adoptions, though we caution this may be a result of limited temporal variation in BEV incentives across our sample. Responses to rebate incentives do not differ significantly by the make of the vehicle purchased (i.e., Tesla and non-Tesla vehicles). We combine our results with recent assessments of marginal environmental costs of electric vehicle charging and measure net welfare effects of BEV subsidy programs. Our analysis indicates these programs are not welfare-improving if only considering benefits associated with avoided emissions. Additional benefits associated with long-term market growth, production cost savings, network externalities, or accelerated innovation could substantially impact the net welfare outcomes.     

Scaling range sizes to threats for robust predictions of risks to biodiversity

Assessments of risk to biodiversity often rely on spatial distributions of species and ecosystems. Range‐size metrics used extensively in these assessments, such as area of occupancy (AOO), are sensitive to measurement scale, prompting proposals to measure them at finer scales or at different scales based on the shape of the distribution or ecological characteristics of the biota. Despite its dominant role in red‐list assessments for decades, appropriate spatial scales of AOO for predicting risks of species’ extinction or ecosystem collapse remain untested and contentious. There are no quantitative evaluations of the scale‐sensitivity of AOO as a predictor of risks, the relationship between optimal AOO scale and threat scale, or the effect of grid uncertainty. We used stochastic simulation models to explore risks to ecosystems and species with clustered, dispersed, and linear distribution patterns subject to regimes of threat events with different frequency and spatial extent. Area of occupancy was an accurate predictor of risk (0.81<|r|<0.98) and performed optimally when measured with grid cells 0.1–1.0 times the largest plausible area threatened by an event. Contrary to previous assertions, estimates of AOO at these relatively coarse scales were better predictors of risk than finer‐scale estimates of AOO (e.g., when measurement cells are <1% of the area of the largest threat). The optimal scale depended on the spatial scales of threats more than the shape or size of biotic distributions. Although we found appreciable potential for grid‐measurement errors, current IUCN guidelines for estimating AOO neutralize geometric uncertainty and incorporate effective scaling procedures for assessing risks posed by landscape‐scale threats to species and ecosystems.     

The review programme in the European Union for existing biocidal active substances—outcome of the notification process

The European Commission Biocidal Products Directive 98/8/EC lays down rules and procedures concerning the placing of biocidal products on the EU market. Based on the Directive, a First Review Regulation was adopted for the review of existing biocidal active substances. These substances had to be either identified or notified (two different processes) to the European Chemicals Bureau (ECB) by 28 March 2002. More than 1000 companies took part in the review programme. In total 953 different existing active substances were identified and 372 different substances were notified. This article presents an analysis of the notified substances regarding the number of notifications per substance, notifiers per substance and per Member State and number of notified substances per product type. The results are compared with data from former statistics.     

中文Windows环境下的海上溢油预报系统

本文以辽东湾为示范海区，建立了中文Ｗｉｎｄｏｗｓ环境下的海上溢油预报系统。采用已经验证的环境动力和溢油行为模型，可提供海面油膜的位置和覆盖面积，水体中油的浓度分布以及溢油的比重、粘度、蒸发量、残留量、平均厚度等物化参数的实时预报信息，或用于溢油的环境风险评价。系统界面友好，输入方便，操作简单，反应快捷、后处理功能完备，并具有可扩充性。     

五氯酚(PCP)高效降解菌Psendomonas sp.CS5的研究

从曾受五氯酚(pentachlorophenol,简称PCP,下同)污染废水的活性污泥中,经驯化富集和分离筛选获得一株PCP降解菌,菌号为CS-W-98-5.在24h内该菌降解w(PCP)=400×10     

基于Windows DEA模型的我国自然灾害应急公共投入绩效研究

为提升自然灾害应急公共投入绩效评价的精准性、科学性,运用动态绩效评价Windows DEA模型,结合应急处置结果,对我国近年来自然灾害领域的应急公共投入绩效进行全面系统评价,研究结果表明:我国应急公共投入效率不高且有较大改善空间;应急公共投入效率较高的省（区、市）未能产生辐射效应;我国应急公共投入效率呈现“滞后性”,即当年投入的应急公共投入在当年未得到相应产出。     

Effects of uncertainty and variability on population declines and IUCN Red List classifications

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List Categories and Criteria is a quantitative framework for classifying species according to extinction risk. Population models may be used to estimate extinction risk or population declines. Uncertainty and variability arise in threat classifications through measurement and process error in empirical data and uncertainty in the models used to estimate extinction risk and population declines. Furthermore, species traits are known to affect extinction risk. We investigated the effects of measurement and process error, model type, population growth rate, and age at first reproduction on the reliability of risk classifications based on projected population declines on IUCN Red List classifications. We used an age‐structured population model to simulate true population trajectories with different growth rates, reproductive ages and levels of variation, and subjected them to measurement error. We evaluated the ability of scalar and matrix models parameterized with these simulated time series to accurately capture the IUCN Red List classification generated with true population declines. Under all levels of measurement error tested and low process error, classifications were reasonably accurate; scalar and matrix models yielded roughly the same rate of misclassifications, but the distribution of errors differed; matrix models led to greater overestimation of extinction risk than underestimations; process error tended to contribute to misclassifications to a greater extent than measurement error; and more misclassifications occurred for fast, rather than slow, life histories. These results indicate that classifications of highly threatened taxa (i.e., taxa with low growth rates) under criterion A are more likely to be reliable than for less threatened taxa when assessed with population models. Greater scrutiny needs to be placed on data used to parameterize population models for species with high growth rates, particularly when available evidence indicates a potential transition to higher risk categories.     

Ecological consequences of forest elephant declines for Afrotropical forests

Poaching is rapidly extirpating African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) from most of their historical range, leaving vast areas of elephant‐free tropical forest. Elephants are ecological engineers that create and maintain forest habitat; thus, their loss will have large consequences for the composition and structure of Afrotropical forests. Through a comprehensive literature review, we evaluated the roles of forest elephants in seed dispersal, nutrient recycling, and herbivory and physical damage to predict the cascading ecological effects of their population declines. Loss of seed dispersal by elephants will favor tree species dispersed abiotically and by smaller dispersal agents, and tree species composition will depend on the downstream effects of changes in elephant nutrient cycling and browsing. Loss of trampling and herbivory of seedlings and saplings will result in high tree density with release from browsing pressures. Diminished seed dispersal by elephants and high stem density are likely to reduce the recruitment of large trees and thus increase homogeneity of forest structure and decrease carbon stocks. The loss of ecological services by forest elephants likely means Central African forests will be more like Neotropical forests, from which megafauna were extirpated thousands of years ago. Without intervention, as much as 96% of Central African forests will have modified species composition and structure as elephants are compressed into remaining protected areas. Stopping elephant poaching is an urgent first step to mitigating these effects, but long‐term conservation will require land‐use planning that incorporates elephant habitat into forested landscapes that are being rapidly transformed by industrial agriculture and logging.     

校准曲线制备及应用中的一些问题

阐述了校准曲线的制备和应用，标准加入法，空白值参与回归，工作曲线和标准曲线的一些应注意的问题。