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The development of solar energy is one of the most effective means to deal with the environmental and energy crisis. The floating photovoltaic (PV) system is an attractive type because of its multiple advantages and has been well developed based on fresh water areas on land. This paper focuses on the expansion of this sector towards the ocean, offshore floating PV plants, which is the new growth point with huge potential for the future PV sector. For this new field, the technology readiness level is really low and research to understand the interaction between offshore floating PV plants and marine environment are proceeding. In this paper, we aim to discuss the technological feasibility of offshore floating PV plants as well as analyze potential impacts on the marine environment during the life cycle of PV from manufacturing until disposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydro-climatic extremes, such as floods and droughts, are influenced by climate change and climate variability, significantly affecting natural ecosystems, human lives, and livelihood. It is crucial to advance the understanding of long-term trends of hydro-climatic extremes for effective water resource planning and management. We analyzed 25 climatic extremes-related indices and 33 hydrologic extremes-related indices in a medium-range river basin in western Nepal, the Babai River Basin. We used RClimDex and Indicators for Hydrologic Alterations to analyze extreme climatic and hydrologic parameters. We computed monotonic trends to evaluate temporal changes in extreme events. The results show a positive trend of total precipitation at Kusum (+ 2.2 mm/year) and Bargadaha (+ 17.7 mm/year) stations and a negative trend at Gulariya (− 5.7 mm/year), Nayabasti (− 7.0 mm/year), Luwamjula (− 5.9 mm/year), and Ghorai (− 18.5 mm/year) stations. Similarly, we observe that almost all temperature extreme indices have a rising trend except the percentage of the days when the maximum temperature is less than the 10th percentile index at Rani Jaruwa station, located at a low elevation. Notably, the cold day temperature index falls at 0.13 days per year. Overall, the hydrologic alteration value shows moderate variability and reduction in the median flow for the second half. The findings of this study indicate that the study area is subjected to a reduced flow regime with a medium degree of variability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predictions of changes in coastal habitat boundaries due to expected relative Sea Level Rise (SLR) allow advanced preparation for particular parts of the coastline to mitigate and offset anticipated losses and reduce risks to coastal growth and human safety. Thus, a better understanding of SLR and its impacts are essential to anticipate risks associated with SLR. The first move in such direction will be to project SLR at the local level at various time scales and scenarios formulated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This research aims to project SLR using IPCC Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios and identify coastal natural resources and their dependent human communities along Chilika-Puri coast in Odisha, India, those in the risk of impacts and vulnerable to projected SLR. This study also aims at exploring suitable adaptation choices for informed decision making. IPCC criteria for assessing the SLR were followed in this research work. Future SLR projections were developed as per IPCC's RCP scenarios using the SimCLIM tool. The observed relative sea level trend is 1.94 ± 0.96 mm/yr. The projected SLR for the Chilika-Puri coast indicated 38.88 to 74.81 cm under high emission scenarios for the year 2100. To combat the potential impacts of SLR in the study area, a comprehensive adaptation strategy framework (both planned and anticipatory adaptation) is proposed, with relevance to the study zone, which will also have global implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informing prioritization For SANParks, it may be important to prioritize adaptation efforts considering not only the relative vulnerability of PAs to climate change but also their relative contribution to biodiversity conservation and revenue generation within the PA network. Keywords: adaptive capacity; biodiversity; infrastructure; potential impacts; tourism; biodiversidad; capacidad de adaptación; impactos potenciales; infraestructura; turismo; ; ; ; EN adaptive capacity biodiversity infrastructure potential impacts tourism biodiversidad capacidad de adaptación impactos potenciales infraestructura turismo 1 14 14 10/04/22 20221001 NES 221001 INTRODUCTION The nature and extent to which climate change will challenge the effectiveness of protected areas (PAs) is one of the most important conservation questions today (Beale et al., 2013; Hannah et al., 2005). From vulnerability assessment to conservation action Tingley et al. (2013) argue that assigning too much weight to climate change in conservation priorities should be avoided due to uncertainties in climate change projections and how ecological systems may respond. [Extracted from the article]

Increasing demand for food and environmental stressors are some of the most challenging problems that human societies face today and these have encouraged new studies to examine drought impacts on food production. Seeking to discuss these important issues in the South African context, this study analyzed the impacts of drought on food security in one of the country's largest commercial agricultural land (Free State Province). Earth observation and crop data were acquired from Application for Extracting and Exploring Analysis Ready Samples (AppEEARS) and GrainSA databases, respectively for years 2011/2012–2020/2021 over Free State Province. Two crops namely, maize and sorghum were obtained from the database and analyzed accordingly to quantify drought impacts on the two crops. The result reveals that the years 2015 and 2018 were affected by extreme drought events (30%) and impacted the agricultural sector in the study area. Findings further revealed that maize production observed the lowest recorded in the year 2014 and 2015 with about 223,600 and 119,050 tons, respectively. More so, results further showed that sorghum production recorded the lowest production in years 2019, 2016, and 2015 with about 23,600, 24,640, and 24,150 tons, in that order during the period of study. The results confirm the impacts of drought on maize and sorghum productions in the year 2015 and other years that recorded the lowest productions during drought years. This development might have impacted food security in the study area, and this outcome will enable decision-making bodies on food security to enhance improved strategy in vulnerable areas.

This paper seeks to contribute to existing literature by exploring the potential impacts of Peer-to-Peer (p2p) accommodation on a rural mountain area in the Pyrenees in Catalonia (Spain). The results indicate how widely p2p accommodation can penetrate areas of this kind. The findings suggest that this phenomenon has brought few benefits for local development and has created severe competition for conventional tourism accommodation, despite having a smaller economic impact in terms of job creation and tourist spending. In addition, the relative ease with which it avoids administrative and fiscal controls has negative repercussions for the tax revenues of local authorities. The growth in tourist rental properties is also having harmful effects on the study area in terms of its tourist load capacity, and the high pressure it puts on housing stock is causing shortages in residential housing and sharp price increases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flood is one of the severest natural disasters in the world and has caused enormous causalities and property losses. Previous studies usually focus on flood magnitude and occurrence time at event scale, which are insufficient to contain entire behavior characteristics of flood events. In our study, nine behavior metrics in five categories (e.g., magnitude, duration, timing, rates of changes and variability) are adopted to fully describe a flood event. Regional and interannual variations of representative flood classes are investigated based on behavior similarity classification of numerous events. Contributions of geography, land use, hydrometeorology and human regulation on these variations are explored by rank analysis method. Results show that: five representative classes are identified, namely, conventional events (Class 1, 61.7% of the total), low discharge events with multiple peaks (Class 2, 5.3%), low discharge events with low rates of changes (Class 3, 18.1%), low discharge events with high rates of changes (Class 4, 10.8%) and high discharge events with long durations (Class 5, 4.1%). Classes 1 and 3 are the major flood events and distributed across the whole region. Class 4 is mainly distributed in river sources, while Classes 2 and 5 are in the middle and down streams. Moreover, the flood class is most diverse in normal precipitation years (2006, 2008–2010 and 2015), followed by wet years (2007, 2013–2014), and dry years (2011 and 2012). All the impact factor categories explain 34.0%–84.1% of individual flood class variations. The hydrometeorological category (7.2%–56.9%) is the most important, followed by geographical (1.0%–6.3%), regulation (1.7%–5.1%) and land use (0.9%–2.2%) categories. This study could provide new insights into flood event variations in a comprehensive manner, and provide decision-making basis for flood control and resource utilization at basin scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foot-and mouth disease (FMD) is an animal disease that generates many economic impacts and sanctions on the international market. In 2018, Brazil, the world's largest beef exporter, had the recognition by World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) as a country free of FMD with vaccination and proposed to withdraw FMD vaccination throughout the country, based on a 10-year schedule, beginning in 2019. Therefore, Brazil needs studies to help the decision-making process, particularly regarding the availability of resources for strengthening of official animal health services. The state of Mato Grosso do Sul (MS) was chosen to be analyzed for three reasons: the size of its herd, the economic importance of its livestock and its location—which lies on the border with Paraguay and Bolivia. The current study adopted the Social Network Analysis and performed an exploratory analysis of cattle movement in MS. The most central municipalities in the networks were identified and they can be seen as crucial in strategies to monitor animal movement and to control outbreaks. The cattle movement networks demonstrated to be strongly connected, implying a high-speed potential FMD diffusion, in case of reintroduction. In a second stage, we performed an exploratory analysis of animal movement within the state, assuming distinct points in time for the identification of animal origin. The results of the analysis underlined the need and relevance of investing in animal control, sanitary education for producers and equipment and technologies to assist in the early detection, diagnosis, and eradication of outbreaks in a fast and efficient manner, preventing a possible outbreak from spreading to other regions.

Environmental conditions strained the existing transportation network to replace its conventional gasoline-based engines by electric vehicles (EVs) to reduce its share in pollution. EVs promise a potential solution, but they fail to motivate end users because of their inherent drawbacks. Utilisation of EVs in vehicle-to-grid (V2G) environment is expected to boost EVs penetration but will burden the conventional power generations for their energy demand. For improvement of the environmental conditions, it is likely that the authorities will come up with a strict emission control policy. This study demonstrates the effects of emission policy on the V2G environment. The proposed problem is modelled as a multi-objective optimisation problem. Non-dominated-sorting-based genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) is used to solve this problem. This study also demonstrates a long-term impact analysis of a system consisting of a V2G market, end users and EVs by considering time variance in EVs penetration and vehicles' performance degradation. This analysis can help in planning and formulating the future V2G market.

Climate change is expected to substantially affect forest site productivity. However, its effects may vary depending on the climate scenario, region and tree species. We chose Larix olgensis in northeast China to investigate the responses of forest site productivity to regional climate change using a generalized additive model (GAM). Based on site index data and climate variables from 335 townships across the Jilin Province, we developed a climate-sensitive forest site index model, which accounted for 72.9% of the variation in the site index at the referred age of 20 (SI20). Our results indicated that climatic and geographic factors significantly affect forest site productivity. The geographic location, mean annual temperature, mean annual precipitation and mean temperature differential were found to be statistically significant explanatory variables. We predict that the change of mean SI20 would vary from 0.3 m to -0.8 m (2.2% to -5.9%) by 2050 and from 0.5 m to -1.6 m (3.7% to -11.8%) by 2070 under three BC-RCP scenarios with rising temperature and increasing precipitation. Our study suggests that climate is an important factor affecting forest site productivity. Future climate changes could affect the forest site productivity both positively and negatively for Larix olgensis in northeast China. The relationship between climate and forest site productivity has strong implications for adaptive forest management and needs to be considered in forest management planning under future climate change.

Climate change has been consistently observed over the past decades to be associated with changes and/or modifications of components of the hydrological systems. Observational records and global and regional climate projections indicate that both surface-water and groundwater resources are vulnerable to climate change and variability. Thus, understanding the impacts of climate change and variability on groundwater systems is integral to better planning and efficient management of groundwater resources. However, assessing and predicting the effects of climate change on groundwater systems is relatively difficult due to the uncertainties associated with the spatial and temporal prediction of future climates. This review provides an overview of the key components of groundwater hydrology in relation to climate change. The effects of changes in climate on groundwater in soil, deep vadose and saturated zones are assessed. The responses of groundwater recharge, discharge, quality and changes in storage to climate change are assessed on inter-annual to multi-decadal or longer geologic time scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of non-native fish in the Southeast Iberian’s freshwaters as target in environmental management is continuously growing, although their introduction and dispersion rates have accelerated greatly in the last time. The risk management of non-native fishes requires acknowledgement that species differ in their invasiveness which can vary geographically for a given species according to the vulnerability of the communities in the receiving ecosystems. Several types of ecological impacts have been associated with non-native fishes, however, their impacts are poorly understood for the managers at regional scales, and we think that their explicitly definition should promote progress toward a better understanding of their negative implications and help the implementation and enforcement of EU policy and legislation on invasive species. The objectives were to establish the black list of freshwater fishes of the Southeast Iberian and to review their ecological effects operating across multiple levels of biological organization. We review our regional state of knowledge by updating the information and by providing case studies using references (the most recent literature) of the cited species according to the Carta Piscícola Española (SIBIC 2015). At least, sixteen species had been introduced the Southeast Iberian by the beginning of the 20th century, but the rate of introduction is highly elevated in the last two decades, with the majority of introductions since 2000. Most studies reviewed reported only potential impacts. Failed introductions are poorly documented and existing information is scattered in regional publications, reports and other grey literature. Due to the interbasin water transfers (Tajo-Segura channel), the number of translocated species is high, however, information about these fishes is not regarded by researchers and their potential impacts are neglected. We established a black list with sixteen cited species and nineteen potential invasive species. Additionally, research needs and management priority measures are evaluated.

Climate change is expected to substantially affect forest site productivity. However, its effects may vary depending on the climate scenario, region and tree species. We chose Larix olgensis in northeast China to investigate the responses of forest site productivity to regional climate change using a generalized additive model (GAM). Based on site index data and climate variables from 335 townships across the Jilin Province, we developed a climate-sensitive forest site index model, which accounted for 72.9% of the variation in the site index at the referred age of 20 (SI20). Our results indicated that climatic and geographic factors significantly affect forest site productivity. The geographic location, mean annual temperature, mean annual precipitation and mean temperature differential were found to be statistically significant explanatory variables. We predict that the change of mean SI20 would vary from 0.3 m to -0.8 m (2.2% to -5.9%) by 2050 and from 0.5 m to -1.6 m (3.7% to -11.8%) by 2070 under three BC-RCP scenarios with rising temperature and increasing precipitation. Our study suggests that climate is an important factor affecting forest site productivity. Future climate changes could affect the forest site productivity both positively and negatively for Larix olgensis in northeast China. The relationship between climate and forest site productivity has strong implications for adaptive forest management and needs to be considered in forest management planning under future climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Balsam fir (Abies balsamea[L.] Mill.), which is widely used for floral greenery, is an important source of nontimber forest products (NTFP) from the northern forests of North America. Nonetheless, additional information is needed to refine and revise commercial tip-harvesting management guidelines to promote sustainable forest management. Therefore, a study was initiated to: (a) examine the socioeconomic impacts of and anticipate the potential biological responses to four contrasting harvesting practices; (b) discuss the implications of the results for the relevance and applicability of some specifications of management guidelines; and (c) assess the compatibility of tip harvesting while pursuing an objective of timber production. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: China is now the third largest bioethanol producer in the world after the United State and Brazil. The overall goals of this paper are to provide an overview of China’s current bioethanol program, its future trend, and the likely impacts on its agricultural economy in the future. The analysis shows that China has developed an ambitious long-run biofuel program with a series of financial and institutional supports. While there are several potential feedstock crops available for bioethanol production, lack of land for feedstock production is one of major constraints in China’s bioethanol expansion. The results show that although China’s bioethanol expansion will have little impacts on overall agricultural prices in international markets, it will have significant impacts on the prices, productions, and trade of those energy crops being used for bioethanol production in China. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We evaluate the areas with potential negative impacts in a golden eagle population derived of the development of wind farms. At present, the entire golden eagle Galician population (5-6 pairs) is located within an area of about 2,000 km². Grid squares of 10 × 10 km UTM in the province were scored for current and future wind turbine density and probability of occurrence of golden eagle. This probability was obtained using cartographic models of habitat selection for two different historic periods. Potential risk index (PRI) was calculated for each grid square by multiplying the wind turbine density score by the probability of occurrence score. With the PRIs obtained a cartographic model of potential impact of wind farms on the golden eagle population was constructed. No significant correlation was observed between current wind turbine density and the probability of occurrence of golden eagle. A significant positive correlation was observed between current and future wind turbine density and the probability of occurrence of golden eagle. The areas with highest potential risk are eastern and the central mountains of Ourense where the species breeds. The risk model presented could be applied to future wind farm proposals and monitor potential interactions of golden eagles with wind farms in the Province of Ourense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combustion of fossil fuels and the resultant impacts on climate may now represent one of the largest environmental threats. In the Mediterranean Sea, changes in bio-chemical and physical seawater properties resulting from global warming are likely to alter marine biodiversity and productivity, trigger trophic web mismatches and encourage diseases, toxic algal bloom and propagation of thermophilic species. This review highlights the current and potential threats of climate change to the Mediterranean marine ecosystems, including cetaceans, and stresses the emergent necessity for more integrated regulations and policies for the protection of marine biodiversity. For instance, in the Mediterranean Sea, the distribution and abundance of the small euphausid species Meganyctiphanes norvegica is correlated with specific hydrobiological parameters including seawater temperature, salinity and current patterns. Situated at the northern limit of its ecological tolerance, this species, which constitutes the only known food supply of the fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus) in this region, might be affected by climate change-induced alteration of ocean circulation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Potential impacts of climate change on ecosystems and the environment are generally assessed by summarizing climate change scenarios for broad regions (for example countries), or by specific modelling exercises. This paper presents an alternative approach for summarizing climate change impacts on the European environment, by linking climate change scenarios to recognized environmental divisions. Sixteen climate scenarios from four general circulation models were therefore linked to 84 statistically derived strata sharing common environmental features. In this way, the future distribution of the strata, as defined by their climate characteristics, were quantified and mapped. The results show that Europe is likely to experience major environmental shifts, with pronounced regional variations. As expected, environmental strata shift northwards. In particular the southern Mediterranean strata are projected to expand, whereas Atlantic environments remain much more stable. Alpine and Mediterranean mountain environments decline dramatically. However, the Scandinavian zones show no consistent pattern of change. More detailed analysis of four sample regions shows that the impacts of the projected shifts will largely depend on regional characteristics. Environmental conservation, regional assessments and scenario development could therefore be facilitated by combining relevant regional datasets (for example for vegetation, land cover and species distribution) with the shifting environmental strata. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reports the results of an interview programme designed to investigate the processes involved in the production of narrative accounting statements, and specifically the Operating and Financial Review, with a view to identifying the effect such processes might have on the content and character of such statements. A range of features of the production process is identified with the potential to affect the content and character of statements, and thus to influence the relationship between the content and character of statements and the characteristics of the companies producing them, such as size, performance, risk and sector. The pattern of potential impacts is likely to be a complex one. It is suggested that preparers face a range of choices in the preparation of narrative financial statements that may be wider than some realise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years many workers have examined the implications of various sources of uncertainty for the reliability of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Indeed, the International Standardization Organization (ISO) has recognised the relevance of this work by including several cautionary statements in the ISO 14040 series of standards. However, in practice, there is a risk that the significance of these uncertainties for the results of an LCA could be overlooked as practitioners strive to complete studies on time and within budget. This paper presents the findings of a survey of LCA studies we made to determine the extent to which the problem of uncertainty had been dealt with in practice. This survey revealed that the significance of the limitations on the reliability of LCA results given in the standards has not been fully appreciated by practitioners. We conclude that the standards need to be revised to ensure that LCA studies include at least a qualitative discussion on all relevant aspects of uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]