Environmental Change Research Research Articles

Nucleation and Growth of Nanoparticles in the Atmosphere

Nucleation and Growth of Nanoparticles in the Atmosphere Renyi Zhang,* Alexei Khalizov, Lin Wang, Min Hu, and Wen Xu Department of Atmospheric Sciences andDepartment of Chemistry, Center for Atmospheric Chemistry and Environment, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843, United States Department of Environmental Science & Engineering and Institute of Global Environment Change Research, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China State Key Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control, College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

Dynamic Analysis of Land Use / Cover Change in Dangshan County

The paper,mainly using 3 scenery TM remote sensing images of Landsat satellite and 1 scenery ETM+ remote sensing image, carried out monitoring and analyzing of the land use / cover change of Dangshan County, including Dangshan County from 1987 to 2009 a total of 23 years of land use / cover change features, land-use conversion relations between types, and discussed the main reason for change. This provided the theory and basis for the Dangshan County urban environment change research, the urban planning, and the urbanized prospect forecast. Conclusions: With the rapid economic development of Dangshan County, and the level of urbanization constantly improved, Dangshan County land use had changed greatly, from 1987 to 2009, construction land and cultivated land had always been dominant position in the 23 years, the stability type area was 367.38 km2, accounted for 30.79%, the changed area accounted for 69.21%, the changed area ratio to 3.01% per year, the comprehensive land-use dynamic degree was 1.50%.

Phenological Informationalizing and Phenological Spatio-temporal Change Analysis

Phenological Information is strongly characterized by its Locality and Temporality. It is one of the typical spatio-temporal data, which plays an important role in global environmental change research. Strengthing the Informationalizing process and spatio-temporal change analysis of phenological information are needed to exert its role in the global environmental change to the best. The article points out the necessarity of phenological informationalizing. Then with plant phenological information about 30 years, and by using GIS Method, we have carried out the studies on spatio-temporal query, saptio-temporal change analysis on phenological information.

The role of policies in land use/cover change since the 1970s in ecologically fragile karst areas of Southwest China: A case study on the Maotiaohe watershed

Study of land use/cover change and its driving forces is one of the most significant fields in global environmental change research. Karst land is a type of important and unique terrain on the Earth's surface because of its extensive distribution, impressive landforms, and high ecological fragility. Recently, more and more researchers have realized that irrational land use practices are leading to a series of alarming environmental issues including rocky desertification in karst areas. Studies on land use/cover change and its driving forces in karst areas are significant in achieving regional ecological construction and sustainable development. Policy has long been considered as one of the major driving forces at national level for land use/cover change. In mainland China, designated and in-depth study on the interaction between land use/cover change and relevant policies is still very limited. Through an integrated technique of geographic information system (GIS), remote sensing (RS), and global positioning system (GPS), the authors attempted to address this issue by using the Maotiaohe watershed in Guizhou province in southwestern China as a case to examine its land use/cover change patterns, and the roles of policies in land use, agriculture, forestry, and eco-environmental protection from 1973 to 2007. The study indicated that land policies contributed largely to the increase of arable land in the 1980s, and helped prevent it from decreasing at the fringe of cities and towns since the 1990s; agricultural policies played active roles in the change of water area and indirectly contributed to the change of construction land. The forestry and eco-environmental policies were found to be the main reasons for the consistent increase of forest land since the 1980s and for the decrease of arable land and rocky desertification land since the 1990s.

Climatic and anthropogenic drivers of land use/cover change in fragile karst areas of southwest China since the early 1970s: a case study on the Maotiaohe watershed

Land use/cover change and its driving forces has been one of the most important fields in global environmental change research since the 1990s. Karst areas are distributed extensively on the Earth’s surface and are usually characterized by a fragile eco-environment. In southwest China, karst landforms are fully developed and their eco-environment is highly fragile. Over the past decades, irrational land use practice has caused a series of alarming eco-environmental issues including forest clearing, soil erosion, and karst rocky desertification. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to study land use/cover change in this area and its driving forces in order to re-build the damaged eco-environment and achieve sustainable land use. In this paper, the authors conduct a case study on land use/cover change and its natural and human driving forces since the early 1970s in southwest China’s Maotiaohe watershed. The results indicate that the land use/cover pattern in the study area has undergone a very complex change, which is a result of combined action of both natural and anthropological factors. In the 1970s and 1980s, climate change and fast population increase played dominating roles in the change of arable land, shrub land, grassland, and rocky desertification land. Since the early 1990s, economic development has gradually taken the place of population change to become the overwhelming human factor to go along with climate change in driving the land use/cover change, particularly the change in arable land, construction land, and rocky desertification land.

Comparative analysis of microwave brightness temperature data in Northeast China using AMSR-E and MWRI products

With such significant advantages as all-day observation, penetrability and all-weather coverage, passive microwave remote sensing technique has been widely applied in the research of global environmental change. As the satellite-based passive microwave remote sensor, the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) loaded on NASA’s (National Aeronautics and Space Administration of USA) Aqua satellite has been popularly used in the field of microwave observation. The Microwave Radiation Imager (MWRI) loaded on the Chinese FengYun-3A (FY-3A) satellite is an AMSR-E-like conical scanning microwave sensor, but there are few reports about MWRI data. This paper firstly proposed an optimal spatial position matching algorithm from rough to exact for the position matching between AMSR-E and MWRI data, then taking Northeast China as an example, comparatively analyzed the microwave brightness temperature data derived from AMSR-E and MWRI. The results show that when the antenna footprints of the two sensors are filled with either full water, or full land, or mixed land and water with approximate proportion, the errors of brightness temperature between AMSR-E and MWRI are usually in the range from −10 K to +10 K. In general, the residual values of brightness temperature between the two microwave sensors with the same spatial resolution are in the range of ±3 K. Because the spatial resolution of AMSR-E is three times as high as that of MWRI, the results indicate that the quality of MWRI data is better. The research can provide useful information for the MWRI data application and microwave unmixing method in the future.

Moving Beyond Widdowson and Howard

Traditional Indigenous knowledge is increasingly recognised and incorporated both in and beyond the university. In Canada's Northwest Territories, this recognition has been manifest as policy mandating that scientists incorporate the knowledge of elders and hunters into their environmental and climate change research. However, the recognition of traditional knowledge has not always been met with acceptance and understanding. This article analyses the book Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry by Francis Widdowson and Albert Howard (2008), which is highly critical of traditional knowledge. Widdowson and Howard advocate for cultural assimilation by arguing that traditional knowledge is incompatible with, and inferior to, modern Western science. In their line of reasoning, the current application of traditional knowledge transplants ‗neolithic‘ culture into modernity and stunts the ability of Aboriginal peoples to participate in modern Canadian (and dominant Western) culture. While other critics argue against the racialised and inflammatory discourse, I try to salvage insight from the authors' misunderstandings; Widdowson and Howard's failed grasp on traditional knowledge actually illuminates a fundamental problem. The problem is not in meshing Indigenous and scientific knowledge; rather, the problem is in bridging the gap between Indigenous and scientific ways of knowing. I engage the work of A. Irving Halowell, Tim Ingold and scholars of Dene knowledge and traditional lifeways to discuss how Indigenous religion and worldview create a unique approach to knowledge.

Sustainability challenges and opportunities in Africa

In much of international development literature, thesub-Saharan African region represents a prolonged devel-opment crisis (Stiglitz 2007; Sachs 2005; Easterly 2006;Collier 2007; Moyo 2009). Despite the recent remarkabledevelopment gains by some sub-Saharan African countriesdriven by a combination of factors—increasing democra-tization and transparency, strengthening and reform ofgovernance institutions, surge in commodity prices, andthe adoption and implementation of more effectivemacro-economic policies—the region still faces dauntingsustainable development challenges. With 48 countries, apopulation of over 700 million, and an average per capitaincome of roughly US$1 a day, sub-Saharan Africaremains, in economic terms, the poorest region in theworld. Put in the context of global development trends,Africa’s development travails are complicated by a starkparadox—whereas extreme poverty levels have declinedglobally in various regions of the world since 1980, theproportion of people living in abject poverty in Africa haveincreased. To paraphrase Moyo (2009), the number ofAfricans living in abject poverty nearly doubled in 2 dec-ades (1991–2002). Notwithstanding Africa’s developmentcrisis, the continent is endowed with abundant renewableand non-renewable natural resources (African Develop-ment Bank 2007). In the context of sustainability, espe-cially the often complex links between environment anddevelopment, how best could Africa’s natural resources beharnessed to advance sustainable development of the con-tinent? How can Africa’s governance and institutionalframeworks and policies be strengthened to respond to theemerging and re-emerging sustainability challenges facingthe continent and its people?While the twenty-first century has witnessed sustaineddemand for Africa’s natural resources—oil, minerals,and other raw materials—the continent continues to lackeffective institutional capacity to manage these resourcessustainably. Added to the continent’s vulnerabilities toclimate change, Africa’s ongoing sustainable developmentefforts must, as of necessity, link the environment (nature),economic growth (wealth) and governance (power) as theessential elements in poverty reduction strategies (AfricanDevelopment Bank 2007). Although the linkages betweenAfrica’s socioeconomic development and the continent’snatural, ecological, and climatic factors have been thesubject of relevant development literature (Sachs 2005;Collier 2007), this discourse has also identified the need forthe continent to develop effective, accountable, and trans-parent governance institutions to manage these complexdevelopment-environment-climate linkages. Economic andinvestment policies in Africa that recognize and integratethese approaches will likely yield positive developmentoutcomes towards achieving the Millennium Develop-ment Goals (Kates and Dasgupta 2007; World Bank2002; United Nations Development Programme 2006;UNMillennium Project 2005).This Special Issue—focusing on African Regional Per-spectives—offers an overlapping theme that spans fourbroad categories of local and continent-wide sustainabilitychallenges in Africa: evaluation and assessment; integrat-ing indigenous knowledge; climate change; and policy andgovernance. The selection process, to the greatest extentpossible, prioritized inter-disciplinary and multi-institu-tional research. The African research priorities set out inthe Strategy for Global Environmental Change Research inAfrica: Science plan and implementation strategy (Odada

Responding to environmental change: A new age for human geography?

This progress report discusses the role that human geography can potentially play in a paradigm shift in global environmental change research. As the global discourse shifts from understanding and explaining environmental problems to addressing them quickly and effectively, there is a need to integrate insights from the social sciences and humanities into a new science of global change — a science that recognizes subjectivity and emphasizes the notion of change, including transformational social change. Four themes are presented as examples of why and how human geographers might lead in the development of this new science.

Problems with making and governing global kinds of knowledge

During its 20 years of publication, the journal Global Environmental Change has given visibility and coherence to the eponymous research paradigm. Global environmental research has brought forth new kinds of knowledge about the multi-scale interactions between physical and social dimensions of the environment. This essay reflects on some of the problems with making and governing these global kinds of knowledge, as suggested through the perspectives of a nascent geography of science. I use climate change – an emblematic theme of global environmental change research over the last 20 years – to examine three facets of the global environmental change paradigm: making global kinds of knowledge, globalising environmental values and the governance of knowledge-making. New global kinds of knowledge have gained power and visibility in contemporary scientific, public and political fora and yet such knowledge can be ‘brittle’, easily cracked and broken. A geography of global environmental change knowledge therefore demands we turn our attention away from the globalising instincts that so easily erase difference and collapse meaning, and instead concern ourselves with understanding the relationships between knowledge-making and human culture in evolving places. Only then will we recognise the ambiguities, voids and blind spots in our understanding of the world's complexity.

Downscaling socioeconomic and emissions scenarios for global environmental change research: a review

AbstractGlobal change research encompasses various scales from global to local. Impacts analysis in particular often requires spatial downscaling, whereby socioeconomic and emission variables specified at relatively large spatial scales are translated to values at a country or grid level. In this article, the methods used for spatial downscaling are reviewed, classified, and current applications discussed. It is shown that in recent years, improved methods for downscaling have been developed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.This article is categorized under: Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Scale Issues

Environmental and spatial factors influencing the distribution of cladocerans in lakes across the central Canadian Arctic treeline region

We examine the role of local environmental and spatial factors in explaining variation in the composition of cladoceran assemblages from surface sediments within a set of 50 lakes spanning a broad southwest to northeast transect across the central Canadian Arctic treeline region from Yellowknife (Northwest Territories) to the northern boundary of the Thelon Game Sanctuary (Nunavut Territory). Within each lake, the cladoceran fauna was identified based on the subfossil exoskeletal remains preserved in recently deposited lake sediments. Physical and chemical limnological data were measured in August of 1996 and 1998. Spatial data were generated based on latitude and longitude using Principal Coordinates of Neighbors Matrices analysis (PCNM). The relationships between cladocerans and the measured environmental and spatial variables were examined using both unconstrained (Principal Components Analysis, PCA) and constrained (Redundancy Analysis, RDA) ordination techniques. Variance partitioning, based on partial RDAs, was used to identify the relative importance of significant environmental and spatial explanatory variables. Three environmental variables were identified as significantly influencing cladoceran community structure: surface water temperature, dissolved organic carbon (DOC), and total phosphorus (TP). Five PCNM-generated spatial variables were also significant in explaining cladoceran distributions. Variance partitioning attributed 14% of the variance in the distribution of Cladocera to spatial factors, an additional 10% to spatially-structured environmental variables, and 8% to environmental factors that were not spatially-structured. Within the central Canadian Arctic treeline region, spatial and other environmental processes had an important influence on the distribution of cladoceran communities. The strong influence of spatial factors was related to the large ecoclimatic gradient across treeline. The distribution patterns of cladocerans suggest that they have potential for use in paleoenvironmental assessments of northern ecosystems, a region of considerable interest for environmental change research.

Tracking Long-Term Environmental Changes in Arctic Lakes and Ponds: A Paleolimnological Perspective

Rock Basin Lake, Baird Inlet (east-central Ellesmere Island, Nunavut, Canadian High Arctic) was the site of the first detailed paleolimnological study from the circumpolar region, which used diatom and chrysophyte microfossils to track past climatic change. Photo: John P. Smol, August 1987. H IGH-LATITUDE REGIONS have repeatedly been identified as important reference areas for environmental change research, as they are especially sensitive to even small climatic changes and are often the first to show signs of environmental shifts. Moreover, climatic changes occurring at high latitudes have profound effects on other regions. Unfortunately, long-term monitoring data are generally lacking for most regions, and this is especially true for the Arctic. Without these data, it is difficult to determine whether environmental conditions are changing, and if so, to specify the magnitude and direction of change. Fortunately, a variety of natural archives of environmental change (e.g., ice cores) can be used to reconstruct these missing data sets. One rapidly emerging area of research in the Arctic is paleolimnology, which is the science of reconstructing past lake and pond histories from the proxy data contained in sediment profiles (Smol, 2002). As lakes represent a common feature of most Arctic regions, paleolimnological techniques have now been applied to a wide variety of research questions (Pienitz et al., 2004). Dated sediment cores typically archive a very rich history of past limnological conditions, based on indicators such as fossil algae (especially diatoms and chrysophytes) and invertebrates (such as Cladocera and aquatic insect remains), as well as a suite of physical and chemical indicators, such as metals and contaminants (Smol, 2002). My Arctic limnology and paleolimnology research program began in 1983, when Dr. Weston Blake Jr., now an emeritus scientist at the Geological Survey of Canada, invited me to join his field crew at Cape Herschel on eastern Ellesmere Island. I published an early paper (part of my PhD dissertation) arguing that fluctuating lake-ice conditions (which are closely related to climatic variables) exerted a strong control on lake biota, and hence on the bioindicators preserved in lake sediments. The 1983 field season was the start of a lifelong interest in the limnology and paleoecology of Arctic lakes. In September 1984, I was hired as an assistant professor at Queen’s University, where Marianne Douglas, now a professor in the Department of Geology at the University of Toronto and holder of a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Global Change, was among my first cohort of students. We have been collaborating on polar research ever since. For over 20 years, we have been using both limnological and paleolimnological techniques to track a variety of environmental trends throughout the Arctic. I co-direct the

Analysis on lake changes since ancient and modern ages using remote sensing in Dagze Co,Tibetan Plateau

青藏高原湖泊受人类活动干扰较少,主要受气候变化导致的冰川融化和蒸发的影响,是气候变化直观敏感的反映区。因此,研究青藏高原湖泊变化对区域以至全球气候、环境变化的研究具有深远意义。本文在遥感影像的基础上发展了综合指数计算与空间分异的现存湖迭代提取方法,对影像数据上的湖泊进行动态监测;并结合DEM数据发展了半自动化的古岸线提取方法,进而分析古湖泊的变化,二者相结合直观全面地反映出了青藏高原湖泊的古今变化情况。并以达则错湖为例进行提取,分析了其近25年以来以及大湖期以来的缩减情况.;Lakes on the Tibetan Plateau, which are rarely influenced by disturbance of human activities and mainly controlled byglacier melting and evaporation caused by climate change, are a typical study area of global climate and environment change. Re-mote sensing technology to monitor lake changes across the plateau has important significance to global climate and environmentchange research. This paper developed an iterative modern lake extraction method on remote sensing images using index calculationand spatial difference comprehensively, to detect lake changes dynamically; and developed a semi-automatic paleo-shoreline extrac-lion method combined with DEM, so as to analyze paleo-lake change. Combining the two methods, we can clearly and completely getthe lake changes across the Tibetan Plateau since the ancient and modern ages. Finally, we task Dagze Co as an example to proceedwith the methods, and analyzed its shrinkage conditions since the latest 25 years and since the Great Lake Period.

Barriers in the science-policy-practice interface: Toward a knowledge-action-system in global environmental change research

This paper presents the results of a case study analysis from the knowledge domains of vulnerability and resilience. We analyzed 20 scientific assessments to provide empirical evidence for successes and failures in collaborative knowledge production, i.e., the joint creation of assessments reports by researchers and decision makers in policy and practice. It became clear that the latter typically use insufficiently the research-based knowledge available and researchers typically produce insufficiently knowledge that is directly usable. We found a number of functional, structural, and social factors inhibiting a joint problem identification and framing of knowledge producers and potential users: divergent objectives, needs, scope, and priorities; different institutional settings and standards, as well as differing cultural values, understanding, and mistrust. Combining understanding from multiple sources and providing mechanisms for linking solutions proposed by research with articulated needs and problems of practitioners would reduce the discrepancies in activities of different actors and result in more timely and context-appropriate solutions. In the concluding section we argue for a more locally embedded and socially contingent production of actionable knowledge and make suggestions about ways to enhance effectiveness of research-based knowledge.

An integrative approach to modeling land-use changes: multiple facets of agriculture in the Upper Yangtze basin

Land change science has emerged as a fundamental component of global environmental change and sustainability research. Still, much remains to be learned before scientists can fully assess future roles of land-use/cover changes (LUCC) in the functioning of the Earth system and identifying conditions for sustainable land use. The objective of this paper is to gain a better understanding of the complex interactions of human and natural drivers underlying LUCC. We do so by developing and estimating a novel structural model of land use and using spatially explicit longitudinal observations from the Upper Yangtze basin of China. Our analysis focuses on the multiple dimensions of agriculture—not only cropland use itself, but also grain production, soil erosion, and related technical change—and our data cover 31 counties over four time periods from 1975 to 2000. Our results show that technical change plays an important role in supplying food on a limited cropland; limiting cropland expansion in turn reduces soil erosion, which then benefits grain production in the longer term. It is also found that policies and institutions have significant impacts on land use and the status of soil erosion. Together, these results carry some great implications to sustainable land use and ecosystem management.

A Metabolic Model for the Ocean QuahogArctica islandica—Effects of Animal Mass and Age, Temperature, Salinity, and Geography on Respiration Rate

Owing to its extraordinary lifespan and wide geographical distribution along the continental margins of the North Atlantic Ocean, the ocean quahog Arctica islandica may become an important indicator species in environmental change research. To test for applicability and ''calibrate'' the Arctica-indicator, metabolic properties of A. islandica specimens were compared across different climatic and oceanographic regions. Fully saline populations from Iceland to the North Sea as well as animals from polyhaline and low salinity, environments, the White Sea and the Baltic were included in the study. This calibration centrally includes recordings of growth-age relationships in different populations. Shells were used as age recorders by counting annual growth bands. As a result of this study, we propose a general respiration model that links individual metabolic rates of A. islandica from five populations: Norwegian coast, Kattegat, Kiel Bay (Baltic Sea), White Sea and German Bight (North Sea), to body mass, water temperature and site. Temperature exerts distinct site specific effects on respiration rate, which is indicated by Q10 values ranging from 4.48 for German Bight to 1.15 for Kiel Bay animals. Individual age, occurrence of apneal respiratory gaps, parasite infestation and salinity do not affect respiration rate. Respiration of Arctica islandica is significantly below the average of 59 bivalve species when compared at the same temperature and animal mass. This respiration model principally enables the coupling of A. islandica life history and population dynamics to regional oceanographic temperature models.

Earth System Research Priorities

Human-induced climate change was unknown outside of limited scientific circles just 25 years ago, but it has now become the focus of intense national discussions and international negotiations. One chapter in the story of how this issue moved from lab benches to national capitals was recognized by the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, which was co-awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for its influential assessments of the state of scientific knowledge. But the story also involves the research itself; in particular, that catalyzed by the Global Environmental Change Research Programmes * and the Earth System Science Partnership. These programs, sponsored by the International Council for Science (ICSU) in partnerships with other international science organizations ( www.icsu.org ), have helped to catalyze and guide global environmental research for several decades. But it's time to propose new research priorities, and ICSU seeks input through a Web consultation process now under way.

International collaboration in global environmental research: a comparison of the International Geosphere Biosphere Program and the International Hydrological Program

This paper investigates the factors that support building capacity in global environmental change research. We compare two major international collaboration programs in Earth and environmental sciences, the International Geosphere Biosphere Program (IGBP) and the International Hydrological Program (IHP). High mutual dependence, a positive international scientific reputation, and bottom-up funding structure explain the IGBP's capability to effectively organize international collaboration; low mutual dependence, intergovernmental decision structures, and organizational barriers to growth hinder effective capacity building by the IHP. We conclude that future collaboration programs focusing on cumulative global change research should consider the relative strengths of both collaboration models. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

The Potential use of Silicon Isotope Composition of Biogenic Silica as a Proxy for Environmental Change

Silicon isotope geochemistry is a relatively new branch of environmental change research. Here we review the recent developments in the preparation of materials, analytical methods and applications of stable silicon isotope geochemistry in the most common types of biogenic silica currently being analysed. These materials are: diatom, radiolarian and siliceous sponges in lake and ocean sediments and plant phytoliths which are preserved in soils. Despite analyses of Si isotopes being carried out on rocks and minerals since the 1950's and the increasingly widespread use of Si isotopes since the 1990's, to date only a relatively small number of studies have applied Si isotope ratios to environmental change. In lake and ocean sediments the analysis of Si isotope ratios from biogenic materials has the potential to provide an important source of palaeoenvironmental information, especially where carbonates are not preserved. In plants and soils few studies have used Si isotopes, but important advances have recently been made in the understanding within plant fractionations. These may be useful in the application of Si isotopes in phytoliths to archaeological and palaeoenvironmental contexts.