关于环境自动监测的系统设计和方案探讨

根据上海市环境监测的现状，分别从大气环境、污染源排放、水和废水监测等方面提出了进一步开展自动监测的设想和网络优化设计，并探讨了有关管理措施。     

Solar energy for electricity and fuels

Solar energy conversion into electricity by photovoltaic modules is now a mature technology. We discuss the need for materials and device developments using conventional silicon and other materials, pointing to the need to use scalable materials and to reduce the energy payback time. Storage of solar energy can be achieved using the energy of light to produce a fuel. We discuss how this can be achieved in a direct process mimicking the photosynthetic processes, using synthetic organic, inorganic, or hybrid materials for light collection and catalysis. We also briefly discuss challenges and needs for large-scale implementation of direct solar fuel technologies.     

长江流域重要保护物种分布格局与优先区评价

开展大尺度重要物种的保护优先区研究对于提高生物多样性保护效率十分重要. 选取1 020个物种(包括植物568种、哺乳动物142种、鸟类168种、两栖动物57种、爬行动物85种)为长江流域重要保护物种. 在分析重要保护物种类群分布格局的基础上,利用系统保护规划与专家参与的方法,提出了长江流域物种保护的27个保护优先区.保护优先区总面积占流域面积的41.8%,涵盖了重要保护物种973种,占全部重要保护物种数目的95.4%.建议以保护优先区为基本单元,开展有关生物多样性保护研究及保护区群的建设.      

Identifying priority areas for ecosystem service management in South African grasslands

Grasslands provide many ecosystem services required to support human well-being and are home to a diverse fauna and flora. Degradation of grasslands due to agriculture and other forms of land use threaten biodiversity and ecosystem services. Various efforts are underway around the world to stem these declines. The Grassland Programme in South Africa is one such initiative and is aimed at safeguarding both biodiversity and ecosystem services. As part of this developing programme, we identified spatial priority areas for ecosystem services, tested the effect of different target levels of ecosystem services used to identify priority areas, and evaluated whether biodiversity priority areas can be aligned with those for ecosystem services. We mapped five ecosystem services (below ground carbon storage, surface water supply, water flow regulation, soil accumulation and soil retention) and identified priority areas for individual ecosystem services and for all five services at the scale of quaternary catchments. Planning for individual ecosystem services showed that, depending on the ecosystem service of interest, between 4% and 13% of the grassland biome was required to conserve at least 40% of the soil and water services. Thirty-four percent of the biome was needed to conserve 40% of the carbon service in the grassland. Priority areas identified for five ecosystem services under three target levels (20%, 40%, 60% of the total amount) showed that between 17% and 56% of the grassland biome was needed to conserve these ecosystem services. There was moderate to high overlap between priority areas selected for ecosystem services and already-identified terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity priority areas. This level of overlap coupled with low irreplaceability values obtained when planning for individual ecosystem services makes it possible to combine biodiversity and ecosystem services in one plan using systematic conservation planning.     

Effectiveness of Management Interventions to Control Invasion by Rhododendron ponticum

Rhododendron ponticum is an invasive species in many countries, including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Belgium, and France. It poses a serious threat to native flora and fauna, as it is capable of altering entire seminatural communities through its vigorous spread. Control is essential if the conservation value of some communities, such as oak woodland and lowland heath, are to be successfully maintained. Commonly used interventions are herbicide application, herbicide application postcut, and cutting (manual or mechanical) alone. Various techniques have been developed to apply these interventions, but often retreatment of the area is required, increasing the cost of control. Here, we evaluate the effectiveness of some commonly used interventions for R. ponticum control using a systematic review methodology. Eleven studies provided data for statistical analysis. Meta-analyses of captured data show that postcut application of the herbicide Glyphosate or applying the herbicides Metsulfuron-methyl or Imazapyr (no cut) can effectively reduce a R. ponticum stand. There is insufficient available experimental evidence for effectiveness of any other intervention. The systematic review process has demonstrated the lack of replicated studies with controls or long-term monitoring and increases the call for more rigorous monitoring of all conservation management interventions. The quality of experimental evidence of the effectiveness of some interventions contrasts with the acceptance of their use through dissemination of experience. The collection and objective review of experience will require active collaboration of organizations concerned with R. ponticum control.     

Air pollution and liver cancer: A systematic review

Air pollution has previously been linked to several adverse health outcomes, but the potential association between air pollution and liver cancer remains unclear. We searched PubMed, EMBASE, and Web of Science from inception to 10 October 2021, and manually reviewed the references of relevant papers to further identify any related literature investigating possible associations between air pollution and liver cancer. Risk estimates values were represented by statistical associations based on quantitative analyses. A total of 13 cohort studies obtained from 11 articles were included, with 10,961,717 participants. PM_2.5 was the most frequently examined pollutant (included in 11 studies), followed by NO₂ and NO_x (included in 6 studies), and fewer studies focused on other pollutants (PM_{2.5 absorbance}, PM₁₀, PM_2.5–10, O₃, and BC). In all the 16 associations for liver cancer mortality, 14 associations reported the effect of PM_2.5 on liver cancer mortality. Eight associations on PM_2.5 were significant, showing a suggestive association between PM_2.5 and liver cancer mortality. Among 24 associations shown by risk estimates for liver cancer incidence, most associations were not statistically significant. For other air pollutants, no positive associations were presented in these studies. PM_2.5 was the most frequently examined pollutant, followed by NO₂ and NO_x, and fewer studies focused on other pollutants. PM_2.5 was associated with liver cancer mortality, but there was no association for other air pollutants. Future research should use advanced statistical methods to further assess the impact of multiple air pollutants on liver cancer in the changing socio-environmental context.     

Climate change adaptation planning in large cities: A systematic global assessment

Cities globally face significant risks from climate change, and are taking an increasingly active role in formulating and implementing climate change adaptation policy. However, there are few, if any, global assessments of adaptation taking place across cities. This study develops and applies a framework to track urban climate change adaptation policy using municipal adaptation reporting. From 401 local governments globally in urban areas with >1 m people, we find that only 61 cities (15%) report any adaptation initiatives, and 73 cities (18%) report on planning towards adaptation policy. We classified cities based on their adaptation reporting as extensive adaptors, moderate adaptors, early stage adaptors, and non-reporting. With few exceptions, extensive adaptors are large cities located in high-income countries in North America, Europe, and Oceania, and are adapting to a variety of expected impacts. Moderate adaptors usually address general disaster risk reduction rather than specific impacts, and are located in a mix of developed and developing countries. Early stage adaptors exhibit evidence of planning for adaptation, but do not report any initiatives. Our findings suggest that urban adaptation is in the early stages, but there are still substantive examples of governments taking leadership regardless of wealth levels and institutional barriers.     

Learning about climate change solutions in the IPCC and beyond

There has been much debate about the assessment process of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Yet two of the most fundamental challenges that directly threaten the ability of the IPCC to fulfill its mandate have been largely neglected so far. Firstly, the magnitude and rapid expansion of the climate change literature makes it increasingly impossible for the IPCC to conduct comprehensive and transparent assessments without major innovations in assessment practices and tools. Secondly, the structure, organization and scientific practices across the social sciences and humanities prohibit systematic learning on climate change solutions and increasingly limit the policy-relevance of IPCC assessments. We highlight the need for responses along three avenues to prepare the IPCC for continued success in the future: 1) IPCC assessments must make better use of big-data methods and available computational power to assess the growing body of literature and ensure comprehensiveness; 2) systematic review practices need to be enshrined into IPCC procedures to ensure adequate focus and transparency in its assessments; 3) a synthetic research culture needs to be established in the social sciences and humanities in order to foster knowledge accumulation and learning on climate solutions in the future. As policymakers become more interested in understanding solutions, the future prospects of global environmental assessment enterprises will depend heavily on a successful transformation within the social sciences and humanities towards systematic knowledge generation. This article is part of a special issue on solution-oriented Global Environmental Assessments.     

On the use of systematic reviews to inform environmental policies

Environmental research varies in its methodological quality, degree of bias, and relevance to policy questions. Using this heterogeneous, and sometimes polarised, research to inform environmental policies can be challenging. Policy-making in the healthcare field sometimes uses systematic reviews (SRs) to tackle these issues and present a comprehensive, policy-neutral, transparent and reproducible synthesis of the evidence. However, there is less familiarity with SRs in the environmental field. The aim of this article is to: (1) summarise the process of conducting SRs, using best practice methods from the healthcare field as an example, (2) explain the rationale behind each stage of conducting a SR, and (3) examine the prospects and challenges of using SRs to inform environmental policy. We conclude that existing SR protocols from healthcare can be, and have been, applied successfully to environmental research but some adaptations could improve the process. The literature search stage could be expedited by standardising the reporting and indexing of environmental studies, equivalent to that in the healthcare field. The consistency of the study appraisal stage of SRs could be augmented by refining the existing quality assessment tools used in the healthcare field, enhancing their ability to discriminate quality and risk of bias in non-randomised studies. Ultimately, the strength of evidence within SRs on environmental topics could be improved through more widespread use of randomised controlled trials as a research method, owing to their inherently lower risk of bias when conducted according to best practice.     

Making literature reviews more reliable through application of lessons from systematic reviews

Review articles can provide valuable summaries of the ever‐increasing volume of primary research in conservation biology. Where findings may influence important resource‐allocation decisions in policy or practice, there is a need for a high degree of reliability when reviewing evidence. However, traditional literature reviews are susceptible to a number of biases during the identification, selection, and synthesis of included studies (e.g., publication bias, selection bias, and vote counting). Systematic reviews, pioneered in medicine and translated into conservation in 2006, address these issues through a strict methodology that aims to maximize transparency, objectivity, and repeatability. Systematic reviews will always be the gold standard for reliable synthesis of evidence. However, traditional literature reviews remain popular and will continue to be valuable where systematic reviews are not feasible. Where traditional reviews are used, lessons can be taken from systematic reviews and applied to traditional reviews in order to increase their reliability. Certain key aspects of systematic review methods that can be used in a context‐specific manner in traditional reviews include focusing on mitigating bias; increasing transparency, consistency, and objectivity, and critically appraising the evidence and avoiding vote counting. In situations where conducting a full systematic review is not feasible, the proposed approach to reviewing evidence in a more systematic way can substantially improve the reliability of review findings, providing a time‐ and resource‐efficient means of maximizing the value of traditional reviews. These methods are aimed particularly at those conducting literature reviews where systematic review is not feasible, for example, for graduate students, single reviewers, or small organizations.