A land-use-based modelling chain to assess the impacts of Natural Water Retention Measures on Europe’s Green Infrastructure     

Sarah Mubareka  Christine Estreguil  Claudia Baranzelli  Carla Rocha Gomes  Carlo Lavalle  Barbara Hofer 《International journal of geographical information science》2013,27(9):1740-1763

This article details the process of integrating models to answer a specific policy-driven question: ‘What could be the impact of proposed Natural Water Retention Measures (NWRMs) on Europe’s Green Infrastructure (GI)?’ It describes the new Land Use Modelling Platform (LUMP), now enabling a high spatial scale (100-m) and large coverage (pan-European), whereby several sector-specific models contribute to assessing the impact of regional-level policy on a given spatial topic of concern. The configuration (land claims and land allocations modules) and calibration (accessibility and biophysical suitability) of the LUMP are explained. Four NWRM scenarios (riparian areas, afforestation, grassland and baseline scenario) are configured to run the simulations. For the reference: year 2006, the spatial representation of GI is based on land-use features of a refined version of the CORINE Land Cover (CLC), and resumed as connected components made of nodes and links.

Mathematical morphological image processing and network graph theory model, available from the free software package GUIDOS (the Joint Research Center of the European Commission), enabled the measurement of the GI connectivity and identified most critical links. Results show that the competition for land claimed by different economic sectors, combined with policy-driven rule-sets for the implementation of different NWRMs, yields very different results for the 2030 land-use projections, and subsequently for the morphology of GI. Three indicators associated with the morphology of GI are computed in order to assess the model outputs for 2030. The indicators are computed to answer the following questions: (1) How is the quantity of GI affected by each of the NWRM, and what proportion of that GI is most valuable? (2) What is the location of the most critical nodes and connectors of GI, and what land-use conversions occur under these? (3) Are the average components getting larger or smaller?

Whereas the grassland measure results in the largest net increase of GI, the afforestation measure results in the overall largest number of hectares of key nodes and links within the network. Land conversions occur under the critical GI nodes and links, with a large increase in agricultural areas, especially for the riparian measure under critical nodes and the grassland measure under critical links. Also predominant is the swapping of land from pasture to forest under critical links with the afforestation measure. The riparian measure most increases the average size of GI components, and all three measures contribute to bridging two large components which were divided in the 2006 land-use map, thus increasing the size of the largest component by more than 50%.  相似文献   

Assessing future risk: quantifying the effects of sea level rise on storm surge risk for the southern shores of Long Island, New York   总被引：2，自引：1，他引：1  

Christine C. Shepard  Vera N. Agostini  Ben Gilmer  Tashya Allen  Jeff Stone  William Brooks  Michael W. Beck 《Natural Hazards》2012,60(2):727-745

Sea level rise threatens to increase the impacts of future storms and hurricanes on coastal communities. However, many coastal hazard mitigation plans do not consider sea level rise when assessing storm surge risk. Here we apply a GIS-based approach to quantify potential changes in storm surge risk due to sea level rise on Long Island, New York. We demonstrate a method for combining hazard exposure and community vulnerability to spatially characterize risk for both present and future sea level conditions using commonly available national data sets. Our results show that sea level rise will likely increase risk in many coastal areas and will potentially create risk where it was not before. We find that even modest and probable sea level rise (.5 m by 2080) vastly increases the numbers of people (47% increase) and property loss (73% increase) impacted by storm surge. In addition, the resulting maps of hazard exposure and community vulnerability provide a clear and useful example of the visual representation of the spatial distribution of the components of risk that can be helpful for developing targeted hazard mitigation and climate change adaptation strategies. Our results suggest that coastal agencies tasked with managing storm surge risk must consider the effects of sea level rise if they are to ensure safe and sustainable coastal communities in the future.  相似文献   

Spatial scan statistics in vulnerability assessment: an application to mountain hazards   总被引：4，自引：2，他引：2  

Sven Fuchs  Christine Ornetsmüller  Reinhold Totschnig 《Natural Hazards》2012,64(3):2129-2151

In the European Alps, the concept of risk has increasingly been applied in order to reduce the susceptibility of society to mountain hazards. Risk is defined as a function of the magnitude and frequency of a hazard process times consequences; the latter being quantified by the value of elements at risk exposed and their vulnerability. Vulnerability is defined by the degree of loss to a given element at risk resulting from the impact of a natural hazard. Recent empirical studies suggested a dependency of the degree of loss on the hazard impact, and respective vulnerability (or damage-loss) functions were developed. However, until now, only little information is available on the spatial characteristics of vulnerability on a local scale; considerable ranges in the loss ratio for medium process intensities only provide a hint that there might be mutual reasons for lower or higher loss rates. In this paper, we therefore focus on the spatial dimension of vulnerability by searching for spatial clusters in the damage ratio of elements at risk exposed. By using the software SaTScan, we applied an ordinal data model and a normal data model in order to detect spatial distribution patterns of five individual torrent events in Austria. For both models, we detected some significant clusters of high damage ratios, and consequently high vulnerability. Moreover, secondary clusters of high and low values were found. Based on our results, the assumption that lower process intensities result in lower damage ratios, and therefore in lower vulnerability, and vice versa, has to be partly rejected. The spatial distribution of vulnerability is not only dependent on the process intensities but also on the overall land use pattern and the individual constructive characteristics of the buildings exposed. Generally, we suggest the use of a normal data model for test sites exceeding a minimum of 30 elements at risk exposed. As such, the study enhanced our understanding of spatial vulnerability patterns on a local scale.  相似文献   

Specific effects of background electrolytes on the kinetics of step propagation during calcite growth     

Encarnación Ruiz-Agudo  Christine V. Putnis  Andrew Putnis 《Geochimica et cosmochimica acta》2011,75(13):3803-3814

The mechanisms by which background electrolytes modify the kinetics of non-equivalent step propagation during calcite growth were investigated using Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), at constant driving force and solution stoichiometry. Our results suggest that the acute step spreading rate is controlled by kink-site nucleation and, ultimately, by the dehydration of surface sites, while the velocity of obtuse step advancement is mainly determined by hydration of calcium ions in solution. According to our results, kink nucleation at acute steps could be promoted by carbonate-assisted calcium attachment. The different sensitivity of obtuse and acute step propagation kinetics to cation and surface hydration could be the origin of the reversed geometries of calcite growth hillocks (i.e., rate of obtuse step spreading < rate of acute step spreading) observed in concentrated (ionic strength, IS = 0.1) KCl and CsCl solutions. At low IS (0.02), ion-specific effects seem to be mainly associated with changes in the solvation environment of calcium ions in solution. With increasing electrolyte concentration, the stabilization of surface water by weakly paired salts appears to become increasingly important in determining step spreading rate. At high ionic strength (IS = 0.1), overall calcite growth rates increased with increasing hydration of calcium in solution (i.e., decreasing ion pairing of background electrolytes for sodium-bearing salts) and with decreasing hydration of the carbonate surface site (i.e., increasing ion pairing for chloride-bearing salts). Changes in growth hillock morphology were observed in the presence of Li⁺, F⁻ and , and can be interpreted as the result of the stabilization of polar surfaces due to increased ion hydration. These results increase our ability to predict crystal reactivity in natural fluids which contain significant amounts of solutes.  相似文献   

Evidence of microbially mediated arsenic mobilization from sediments of the Aquia aquifer, Maryland, USA     

Christine A. PearcyDarren A. Chevis  T. Jade HaugHolly A. Jeffries  Ningfang YangJianwu Tang  Deborah A. GrimmKaren H. Johannesson 《Applied Geochemistry》2011,26(4):575-586

Sediments from the Aquia aquifer in coastal Maryland were collected as part of a larger study of As in the Aquia groundwater flow system where As concentration are reported to reach levels as high as 1072 nmol kg⁻¹, (i.e., ∼80 μg/L). To test whether As release is microbially mediated by reductive dissolution of Fe(III) oxides/oxyhydroxides within the aquifer sediments, the Aquia aquifer sediment samples were employed in a series of microcosm experiments. The microcosm experiments consisted of sterilized serum bottles prepared with aquifer sediments and sterilized (i.e., autoclaved), artificial groundwater using four experimental conditions and one control condition. The four experimental conditions included the following scenarios: (1) aerobic; (2) anaerobic; (3) anaerobic + acetate; and (4) anaerobic + acetate + AQDS (anthraquinone-2,6-disulfonic acid). AQDS acts as an electron shuttle. The control condition contained sterilized aquifer sediments kept under anaerobic conditions with an addition of AQDS. Over the course of the 27 day microcosm experiments, dissolved As in the unamended (aerobic and anaerobic) microcosms remained constant at around ∼28 nmol kg⁻¹ (2 μg/L). With the addition of acetate, the amount of As released to the solution approximately doubled reaching ∼51 nmol kg⁻¹ (3.8 μg/L). For microcosm experiments amended with acetate and AQDS, the dissolved As concentrations exceeded 75 nmol kg⁻¹ (5.6 μg/L). The As concentrations in the acetate and acetate + AQDS amended microcosms are of similar orders of magnitude to As concentrations in groundwaters from the aquifer sediment sampling site (127-170 nmol kg⁻¹). Arsenic concentrations in the sterilized control experiments were generally less than 15 nmol kg⁻¹ (1.1 μg/L), which is interpreted to be the amount of As released from Aquia aquifer sediments owing to abiotic, surface exchange processes. Iron concentrations released to solution in each of the microcosm experiments were higher and more variable than the As concentrations, but generally exhibited similar trends to the As concentrations. Specifically, the acetate and acetate + AQDS amended microcosm typically exhibited the highest Fe concentrations (up to 1725 and 6566 nmol kg⁻¹, respectively). The increase in both As and Fe in the artificial groundwater solutions in these amended microcosm experiments strongly suggests that microbes within the Aquia aquifer sediments mobilize As from the sediment substrate to the groundwaters via Fe(III) reduction.  相似文献   

Eutrophication and salinization of urban and rural kettle lakes in Kalamazoo and Barry Counties,Michigan, USA     

Andrew MacLeod  Ryan Sibert  Christine Snyder  Carla M. Koretsky 《Applied Geochemistry》2011

Salinization and eutrophication caused by runoff of road salt and nutrients was assessed in three kettle lakes, two (Woods and Asylum Lakes) located in urban Kalamazoo, MI, and one (Brewster Lake) in rural Hastings, MI. Profiles of dissolved O₂, conductivity, pH, and temperature were measured in situ, at half meter intervals. Water samples were collected at discrete depth intervals of 1 m and analyzed for Fe(II), Mn(II), ammonium, alkalinity, Cl^?, Na, Mg, K and Ca. Results of this study indicate that all three lakes are eutrophic with anoxic bottom waters. Conductivity was much greater, and Cl^? levels were more than 100 times greater, in the two urban lakes compared to the rural lake, demonstrating the significant impact of road salt deicers on urban lake water chemistry.  相似文献   

Biogenic carbon flows through the planktonic food web of the Amundsen Gulf (Arctic Ocean): A synthesis of field measurements and inverse modeling analyses   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Alexandre Forest  Jean-Éric Tremblay  Yves Gratton  Johannie Martin  Jonathan Gagnon  Gérald Darnis  Makoto Sampei  Louis Fortier  Mathieu Ardyna  Michel Gosselin  Hiroshi Hattori  Dan Nguyen  Roxane Maranger  Dolors Vaqué  Cèlia Marrasé  Carlos Pedrós-Alió  Amélie Sallon  Christine Michel  Colleen Kellogg  Jody Deming  Elizabeth Shadwick  Helmuth Thomas  Heike Link  Philippe Archambault  Dieter Piepenburg 《Progress in Oceanography》2011,91(4):410-436

Major pathways of biogenic carbon (C) flow are resolved for the planktonic food web of the flaw lead polynya system of the Amundsen Gulf (southeast Beaufort Sea, Arctic Ocean) in spring-summer 2008. This period was relevant to study the effect of climate change on Arctic marine ecosystems as it was characterized by unusually low ice cover and warm sea surface temperature. Our synthesis relied on a mass balance estimate of gross primary production (GPP) of 52.5 ± 12.5 g C m⁻² calculated using the drawdown of nitrate and dissolved inorganic C, and a seasonal f-ratio of 0.64. Based on chlorophyll a biomass, we estimated that GPP was dominated by phytoplankton (93.6%) over ice algae (6.4%) and by large cells (>5 μm, 67.6%) over small cells (<5 μm, 32.4%). Ancillary in situ data on bacterial production, zooplankton biomass and respiration, herbivory, bacterivory, vertical particle fluxes, pools of particulate and dissolved organic carbon (POC, DOC), net community production (NCP), as well as selected variables from the literature were used to evaluate the fate of size-fractionated GPP in the ecosystem. The structure and functioning of the planktonic food web was elucidated through inverse analysis using the mean GPP and the 95% confidence limits of every other field measurement as lower and upper constraints. The model computed a net primary production of 49.2 g C m⁻², which was directly channeled toward dominant calanoid copepods (i.e. Calanus hyperboreus 20%, Calanus glacialis 10%, and Metridia longa 10%), other mesozooplankton (12%), microzooplankton (14%), detrital POC (18%), and DOC (16%). Bacteria required 29.9 g C m⁻², a demand met entirely by the DOC derived from local biological activities. The ultimate C outflow comprised respiration fluxes (82% of the initial GPP), a small sedimentation (3%), and a modest residual C flow (15%) resulting from NCP, dilution and accumulation. The sinking C flux at the model limit depth (395 m) supplied 60% of the estimated benthic C demand (2.8 g C m⁻²), suggesting that the benthos relied partly on other C sources within the bottom boundary layer to fuel its activity. In summary, our results illustrate that the ongoing decline in Arctic sea ice promotes the growth of pelagic communities in the Amundsen Gulf, which benefited from a ∼80% increase in GPP in spring-summer 2008 when compared to 2004 – a year of average ice conditions and relatively low GPP. However, 53% of the secondary production was generated within the microbial food web, the net ecological efficiency of zooplankton populations was not particularly high (13.4%), and the quantity of biogenic C available for trophic export remained low (6.6 g C m⁻²). Hence it is unlikely that the increase in lower food web productivity, such as the one observed in our study, could support new harvestable fishery resources in the offshore Beaufort Sea domain.  相似文献   

Seasonal variation and tidal influences on estuarine use by bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus)     

Christine A. Fury  Peter L. Harrison 《Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science》2011

In order to show that dolphins use estuary habitats differently depending on the season and tidal state, possibly in response to prey distribution, temperature, risk of stranding and accessibility, Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops aduncus) were observed year-round during a 3-year study in the Clarence River estuary (CR) and Richmond River estuary (RR) in northern New South Wales, Australia. Peak dolphin sightings occurred during the spring season and one or 2 h prior to high tide. The spatial distribution of the dolphins in each estuary was analysed using the distance in kilometres that the dolphins travelled upstream with seasons and tidal phase as determinants. A General Linear Model showed that in the CR the dolphin spatial distribution in the estuary was not determined by season (F = 0.434, df = 3, P = 0.729) but was by tidal phase (F = 9.943, df = 3, P < 0.001) and the interaction between season and tidal phase (F = 3.398, df = 9, P < 0.002). However, in the RR the spatial distribution of the dolphin use of the estuary was not determined by either season (F = 1.647, df = 3, P = 0.194) or tidal phase (F = 0.302, df = 3, P = 0.824). In the CR, the spatial distribution of the dolphins was largest on high and flood tides. This pattern of spatial distribution may occur because the CR is a relatively shallow estuary and this increased spatial distribution may reflect a lower stranding risk and an increase in accessibility of shallow areas during periods of higher tide. These areas could also provide access to their preferred prey items of sea mullet (Mugil cephalus) and sand whiting (Sillago ciliata).  相似文献   

Understanding the effect of single-fracture heterogeneity from single-well injection-withdrawal (SWIW) tests     

Martin Larsson  Christine Doughty  Chin-Fu Tsang  Auli Niemi 《Hydrogeology Journal》2013,21(8):1691-1700

The single-well injection-withdrawal (SWIW) tracer test is a method used to estimate the tracer retardation properties of a fracture or fracture zone. The effects of single-fracture aperture heterogeneity on SWIW-test tracer breakthrough curves are examined by numerical modelling. The effects of the matrix diffusion and sorption are accounted for by using a particle tracking method through the addition of a time delay added to the advective transport time. For a given diffusion and sorption property (P _m) value and for a heterogeneous fracture, the peak concentration is larger compared to a homogeneous fracture. The cumulative breakthrough curve for a heterogeneous fracture is similar to that for a homogeneous fracture and a less sorptive/diffusive tracer. It is demonstrated that the fracture area that meets the flowing water, the specific flow-wetted surface (sFWS) of the fracture, can be determined by matching the observed breakthrough curve for a heterogeneous fracture to that for a homogeneous fracture with an equivalent property parameter. SWIW tests are also simulated with a regional pressure gradient present. The results point to the possibility of distinguishing the effect of the regional pressure gradient from that of diffusion through the use of multiple tracers with different P _m values.  相似文献   

Environmental Determinants of Emergent Macrophyte Vegetation in Pacific Northwest Estuarine Tidal Wetlands     

Christine L. Weilhoefer  Walter G. Nelson  Patrick Clinton  David M. Beugli 《Estuaries and Coasts》2013,36(2):377-389

We investigated whether within wetland environmental conditions or surrounding land cover measured at multiple scales were more influential in structuring regional vegetation patterns in estuarine tidal wetlands in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Surrounding land cover was characterized at the 100, 250, and 1,000 m, and watershed buffer scales. Vegetation communities were characterized by high species richness, lack of monotypic zonation, and paucity of invasive species. The number of species per site ranged between 4 and 20 (mean?±?standard deviation?=?10.2?±?3.1). Sites supported a high richness (mean richness of native species 8.7?±?2.8) and abundance of native macrophytes (mean relative abundance 85 %?±?19 %). Vegetation assemblages were dominated by a mix of grasses, sedges, and herbs with Sarcocornia pacifica and Distichlis spicata being common at sites in the oceanic zone of the estuary and Carex lyngbyei and Agrostis stolonifera being common at the fresher sites throughout the study area. The vegetation community was most strongly correlated with salinity and land cover within close proximity to the study site and less so with land cover variables at the watershed scale. Total species richness and richness of native species were negatively correlated with the amount of wetland in the buffer at all scales, while abundance of invasive species was significantly correlated to within wetland factors, including salinity and dissolved phosphorus concentrations. Landscape factors related to anthropogenic disturbances were only important at the 100-m buffer scale, with anthropogenic disturbances further from the wetland not being influential in shaping the vegetation assemblage. Our research suggests that the traditional paradigms of tidal wetland vegetation structure and environmental determinants developed in east coast US tidal wetlands might not hold true for Pacific Northwest wetlands due to their unique chemical and physical factors, necessitating further detailed study of these systems.  相似文献