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Regional analyses assessing the vulnerabilities of forest ecosystems and the forest sector to climate change are key to considering the heterogeneity of climate change impacts as well as the fact that risks, opportunities, and adaptation capacities might differ regionally. Here we provide the Regional Integrated Assessment of climate change on Quebec's forests, a work that involved several research teams and focused on climate change impacts on Quebec's commercial forests and on potential adaptation solutions. Our work showed that climate change will alter several ecological processes within Quebec's forests. These changes will result in important modifications in forest landscapes. Harvest will cumulate with climate change effects to further alter future forest landscapes, which will also have consequences on wildlife habitats (including woodland caribou habitat), avian biodiversity, carbon budget, and a variety of forest landscape values for Indigenous peoples. The adaptation of the forest sector will be crucial to mitigate the impacts of climate change on forest ecosystem goods and services and improve their resilience. Moving forward, a broad range of adaptation measures, notably through reducing harvest levels, should be explored to help strike a balance among social, ecological, and economic values. We conclude that without climate adaptation, strong negative economic and ecological impacts will likely affect Quebec's forests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study discusses the effect of spatial factors, understood as distances between counties (Pl. 'powiat'), on the increase in unemployment rates in Eastern Poland, and also aims to determine the effect of business cycles on unemployment by gender. The research project was based on the methods of spatial econometrics used to analyse panel data collected in the period 2010-2020 in 101 counties in Eastern Poland (NUTS 4). The study led to the conclusion that women needed a longer time to get a job than men in the phase of economic expansion. In times of rising unemployment in the local labour markets of Eastern Poland, women left the workforce at a greater rate than men, and when unemployment in those markets fell, women remained out of work for a longer time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studies in Law & Economics / Studia Prawno-Ekonomiczne is the property of Lodz Scientific Society / Lodzkie Towarzystwo Naukowe and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Analyses regarding socio-economic development and quality of life are an important aspect of research and discussion for many international organisations, states and local authorities. Due to the complexity and multidimensionality of these issues, conducting research can be problematic. The conclusions of various analytical centres indicate that there are many paths towards establishing a set of factors which affect quality of life and ways of assessing socio-economic development levels. Depending on the criteria considered, the most common methods for determining the degree of the advancement of life quality or socio-economic development include taxonomical techniques and analyses of potential, which are based mainly on objective data sourced from official registers. The main purpose of the paper is to investigate the level of socio-economic development and quality of life in the European Union in the years 2004 and 2018. The analyses were conducted for a rarely used level of spatial data aggregation, i.e. for NUTS-2 units. The analysis covers only those European regions that were EU members in 2004. As the primary research tool, the two-dimensional development matrix was adopted, which enabled the verification of the hypothesis regarding the convergence of synthetic measures that indicate the levels of socio-economic development and quality of life in the EU regions. For these indices, the development matrix is also used to identify the strengths and weaknesses as well as the opportunities and threats for selected spatial units, and, at the same time, to estimate the rates of change of the socio-economic development and quality of life levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A joint comparative regional analysis of different resistance combinations across human and veterinary medicine has not been previously conducted in Germany. This study analyses 16 resistance combinations from four antibiotics in E. coli from different human and food-producing animal populations in three German regions: East, North West and South West. The E. coli data were collected from the three national surveillance and monitoring systems for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) bacteria in humans (ARS), food-safety (Zoonosis Monitoring) and animal pathogens (GERM-Vet) from January 2014 to December 2017. Analyses were performed using cluster analysis (hierarchical clustering, average linkage) in R. We included data from 537,215 E. coli isolates from human clinical isolates, from clinical as well as non-clinical isolates from food-producing animals and from food. The majority of the data originated from the North West region. There were two main clusters built on 54 different human and animal populations. We observed close similarities of resistance combinations in human isolates from the different regions within the same human populations from outpatient cares, general wards and ICUs. These resistance combinations clustered separately from non-clinical isolates from broilers, turkeys, cattle and pigs; except for some of clinical isolates from these populations which clustered closely to isolates from human populations. Frequently, the resistance combinations in E. coli isolates from farms clustered closely to the resistance combinations in isolates from slaughterhouses from broilers and turkeys over all regions. However, the resistance combinations in E. coli isolates from retail meat populations tended to cluster separately within their respective populations in between all regions.

Research background: Water is a scarce natural resource essential for life and also many economic activities. Scarcity of drinking water is a problem that is ad-dressed at national and international levels. Global water demand continues to rise, but the quantity and quality of water resources is declining in many regions. Recent surveys of the population of the Czech Republic show that the most serious global problems are waste accumulation, water pollution, lack of drinking water and air pollution. Average temperatures continue to rise across Europe due to climate change and water is expected to become increasingly scarce in many areas. An adequate supply of good-quality water is a pre-requisite for economic and social development, and thus it is necessary to learn to save water and better manage our available resources in this area. Purpose of the article: The purpose of this study was to investigate to what degree environmental problems — especially the issue of drinking water scarcity — have been evaluated in the Czech Republic from 2014 to 2018 and whether the fear of a lack of drinking water has motivated water conservation. Methods: A regional analysis of water availability in the Czech Republic and the possible causes of water scarcity has been carried out. Subsequently, selected socio-economic factors that could have an impact on the assessment of drinking water scarcity are analyzed using Gamma and Kendall's Tau and logistic regression. The analyzed time period is from 2014 to 2018. Microdata was taken from the Centre for Research of Public Opinion, and selected regional-level statistics from the Czech Statistical Office have been added to this data to supplement it. Findings & Value added: The perception of drinking water shortages is not only influenced by indicators representing the volume and price of water in each region, but can also be determined by other socio-economic factors such as income, gender, age and education.

Copyright of Studies in Law & Economics / Studia Prawno-Ekonomiczne is the property of Lodz Scientific Society / Lodzkie Towarzystwo Naukowe and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The importance of population-based scaling of the socioeconomic characteristics of cities has been regularly demonstrated over the past decade. Disproportionate population-based agglomeration of socioeconomic properties relative to one another are, therefore, common characteristics of cities. In other words, socioeconomic characteristic increase or decrease non-linearly and disproportionately as the population of cities increase or decrease. Whether this is also the case in regions with urban and rural populations has not yet been examined. This contribution uses small Alabama counties (fewer than 120,000 residents) in a case study to examine the orderliness of eleven different demographic, socioeconomic and entrepreneurial characteristics: (i) the numbers of residents, enterprises, employees, highly educated people, poor people and households, and, (ii) the magnitudes of enterprise richness, gross domestic products, payrolls, total incomes and a community poverty index. Pair-wise comparisons by means of power law analyses demonstrated extraordinary orderliness in the demographic-socioeconomic-entrepreneurial domains. Disproportionate agglomerations enabled identification of super-linear, sub-linear or linear scaling impacts. Non-linear scaling in the demographic-socioeconomic-entrepreneurial nexus of regions with urban and rural populations should be considered in regional studies.

Copyright of Zeitschrift fur Wirtschaftspolitik is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The importance of population-based scaling of the socioeconomic characteristics of cities has been regularly demonstrated over the past decade. Disproportionate population-based agglomeration of socioeconomic properties relative to one another are, therefore, common characteristics of cities. In other words, socioeconomic characteristic increase or decrease non-linearly and disproportionately as the population of cities increase or decrease. Whether this is also the case in regions with urban and rural populations has not yet been examined. This contribution uses small Alabama counties (fewer than 120,000 residents) in a case study to examine the orderliness of eleven different demographic, socioeconomic and entrepreneurial characteristics: (i) the numbers of residents, enterprises, employees, highly educated people, poor people and households, and, (ii) the magnitudes of enterprise richness, gross domestic products, payrolls, total incomes and a community poverty index. Pair-wise comparisons by means of power law analyses demonstrated extraordinary orderliness in the demographic-socioeconomic-entrepreneurial domains. Disproportionate agglomerations enabled identification of super-linear, sub-linear or linear scaling impacts. Non-linear scaling in the demographic-socioeconomic-entrepreneurial nexus of regions with urban and rural populations should be considered in regional studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research background: Water is a scarce natural resource essential for life and also many economic activities. Scarcity of drinking water is a problem that is ad-dressed at national and international levels. Global water demand continues to rise, but the quantity and quality of water resources is declining in many regions. Recent surveys of the population of the Czech Republic show that the most serious global problems are waste accumulation, water pollution, lack of drinking water and air pollution. Average temperatures continue to rise across Europe due to climate change and water is expected to become increasingly scarce in many areas. An adequate supply of good-quality water is a pre-requisite for economic and social development, and thus it is necessary to learn to save water and better manage our available resources in this area. Purpose of the article: The purpose of this study was to investigate to what degree environmental problems -- especially the issue of drinking water scarcity -- have been evaluated in the Czech Republic from 2014 to 2018 and whether the fear of a lack of drinking water has motivated water conservation. Methods: A regional analysis of water availability in the Czech Republic and the possible causes of water scarcity has been carried out. Subsequently, selected socio-economic factors that could have an impact on the assessment of drinking water scarcity are analyzed using Gamma and Kendall's Tau and logistic regression. The analyzed time period is from 2014 to 2018. Microdata was taken from the Centre for Research of Public Opinion, and selected regional-level statistics from the Czech Statistical Office have been added to this data to supplement it. Findings & Value added: The perception of drinking water shortages is not only influenced by indicators representing the volume and price of water in each region, but can also be determined by other socio-economic factors such as income, gender, age and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To determine whether there are rural/urban differences in e‐cigarette use and reasons for use that vary across the 10 Health & Human Services (HHS) regions. Methods: Age‐adjusted bivariate and multivariable analyses were conducted for n = 225,413 respondents to the 2014–2015 Tobacco Use Supplement‐Current Population Survey to estimate the prevalence of e‐cigarette use. Reasons for e‐cigarette use were collected from n = 16,023 self‐respondents who reported ever using e‐cigarettes. Findings: While nationally rural residents appeared more likely to use e‐cigarettes, adjusted results indicated that current e‐cigarette use was significantly less likely across the northern and western regions (New England, East North Central, Heartland, North Central Mountain, Northwest, and Southwest Pacific regions). Reasons for e‐cigarette use differed by urban/rural status and region; for example, the rationale to use e‐cigarettes as a smoking cessation aid was significantly more common among rural compared to urban adults in the New England and New York/New Jersey regions, but less common in the Southeast. Conclusions: For several regions, there were no significant rural/urban differences in e‐cigarette use and reasons for use. Yet those regions that present differences face the need to develop public health approaches to minimize urban/rural disparities in health education, services, and outcomes related to tobacco use, particularly where access to health care is limited. Public health campaigns and guidance for clinical care within HHS regions should be tailored to reflect regional differences in beliefs about e‐cigarettes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studies in Law & Economics / Studia Prawno-Ekonomiczne is the property of Lodz Scientific Society / Lodzkie Towarzystwo Naukowe and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The purpose of our paper is to analyse the relation between the inequalities of the healthcare system and economic growth. With respect to methodology, we focus on the eight development regions of Romania which group counties with different development levels and complementary economies. By using descriptive and comparative analyses, we aim at highlighting the discrepancies of the Romanian system considering the following indicators: life expectancy at birth (years), standardised death rate, all causes of death per 100 000 inhabitants, infant mortality, physicians or doctors (per 100000 inhabitants), dentists (per 100000 inhabitants), number of nurses (per 100000 inhabitants), available beds in hospitals, number of hospitals available in the regions and family care units.

The variability of coastal marine resources has been linked to environmental variability but the impacts of artisanal nearshore fishing activity and environmental factors interact in different ways. Time series, Min/Max Autocorrelation Factor, Generalised Least Squares and Dynamic Factor Analyses models were applied to examine the role of environmental factors (SST, NAO Index, Upwelling Index, Wind Magnitude, Easterly Wind Component, Northerly Wind Component, Coastal River Discharges) and fisheries effort on commercial catch rates of Diplodus vulgaris in the Northwest, Southwest and South Portuguese coast. Environmental factors were found to affect short-term variations of catch rates with a time lag of 2 years, according to the regions and seasons. In the Northwest, autumn wind magnitude and summer river discharges were positively correlated with D. vulgaris catch rates. In the Southwest, D. vulgaris catch rates were negatively associated with variations in winter sea surface temperature. In the South, catch rates were positively associated with yearly westerly wind component and yearly, winter and autumn river discharges whilst negatively associated with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) Index. These results indicate that both large-scale climatic patterns and local hydrological factors can have an influential role in determining the abundance of D. vulgaris stocks. Fishery assessment should therefore incorporate information on ecosystem and environmental effects to help managers to make informed decisions on how to best regulate coastal fisheries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evaluating the effects of fishing and environmental factors on fish populations are fundamental tenets of fisheries science. In this study, we assess associations between environmental variables (sea surface temperature; North Atlantic Oscillation index; upwelling; wind magnitude; westerly winds; northerly winds; river discharge) and fishing variables (fishing effort) in Diplodus sagus catch rates accounting for regional analyses (northwest coast; southwest coast and Algarve-Algarve south coast). Different time series models for data fitting (multi-model approach) were used. The models were lagged, according to species fishing recruitment age based on the hypothesis that fisheries catches depend on larvae recruitment and survivorship. D. sargus catch rates across areas were unrelated to fishing effort but correlated to environmental variables, with seasonal events explaining much of the variability in trends. On the northwestern coast, the catch rates were mainly set by sea surface temperature (SST) and wind magnitude; however, southwestern coast catch rates were set by NAO winter. On the south coast, only one statistical model (SST, upwelling and westerly winds) associated spring conditions with D. sargus catch rates. The multi-model approach revealed autumn, winter and spring seasonal effects to be related with northwest, southwest and Algarve coastal catch rates, respectively, indicating a possible coastal longitudinal gradient related with given periods of spawning and larval availability. The metadata analysis yielded different results from the regional analyses. In summary, marine resource management should take regional environment characteristics and variability into account when determining sustainable catch rates in given areas for species with high habitat site fidelity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of our paper is to analyse the relation between the inequalities of the healthcare system and economic growth. With respect to methodology, we focus on the eight development regions of Romania which group counties with different development levels and complementary economies. By using descriptive and comparative analyses, we aim at highlighting the discrepancies of the Romanian system considering the following indicators: life expectancy at birth (years), standardised death rate, all causes of death per 100 000 inhabitants, infant mortality, physicians or doctors (per 100000 inhabitants), dentists (per 100000 inhabitants), number of nurses (per 100000 inhabitants), available beds in hospitals, number of hospitals available in the regions and family care units. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bundesgesundheitsblatt - Gesundheitsforschung - Gesundheitsschutz is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract: A large amount of geomorphic work is caused by a small number of extreme events that are mainly responsible for the time compression of geomorphic processes. The classic approach defines extreme events by their magnitude and they are quantified by certain deviation from a central value. Alternatively, we define extreme events as the largest events sorted by rank, whatever their absolute magnitude. In this case, events with equal rank from two different sites can be responsible for different magnitudes of geomorphic work, e.g., the amount of erosion. The new approach applied to soil erosion is that, whatever the magnitude of soil eroded, erosion is a time compressed process and the percentage contribution to total soil erosion by the few largest events (regardless of their magnitude) is negatively related to the total number of daily soil erosion events recorded. To verify and generalize this approach, we used the most extensive daily soil erosion dataset available (USLE database). In this paper, we present a geographical analysis of the effects of largest daily event on soil erosion by comparing 594 erosion plots located in agricultural fields under various climatic temperate conditions across the central-east of the USA. Plots differ in cover, soil types and length of records. Results indicate that: i) soil erosion in agricultural fields is a highly time compressed process and soil erosion mean values calculated over short time periods are biased, regardless of the magnitude of daily events recorded; ii) the relative effects of the n-largest daily events (whatever their magnitude) on total soil erosion depends on the length of records and, particularly, on the total number of events recorded; iii) the derived relationship of the required time length for records is generalized on a semi-continental scale; and iv) thus seems to be independent of climate conditions. This new approach can help us to define the minimum number of recorded soil events needed to avoid bias in soil erosion evaluation, in other words: the minimum period of field research on erosion should be evaluated not in years, but by the total number of daily erosive events. Thus, the number of daily erosive events is the key parameter for characterizing soil erosion processes at each measuring location. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The use of partial probability weighted moments (PPWM) for estimating hydrological extremes is compared to that of probability weighted moments (PWM). Firstly, estimates from at-site data are considered. Two Monte Carlo analyses, conducted using continuous and empirical parent distributions (of peak discharge and daily rainfall annual maxima) and applying four different distributions (Gumbel, Fréchet, GEV and generalized Pareto), show that the estimates obtained from PPWMs are better than those obtained from PWMs if the parent distribution is unknown, as happens in practice. Secondly, the use of partial L-moments (obtained from PPWMs) as diagnostic tools is considered. The theoretical partial L-diagrams are compared with the experimental data. Five different distributions (exponential Pareto, Gumbel, GEV and generalized Pareto) and 297 samples of peak discharge annual maxima are considered. Finally, the use of PPWMs with regional data is investigated. Three different kinds of regional analyses are considered. The first kind is the regression of quantile estimates on basin area. The study is conducted applying the GEV distribution to peak discharge annual maxima. The regressions obtained with PPWMs are slightly better than those obtained with PWMs. The second kind of regional analysis is the parametric one, of which four different models are considered. The congruence between local and regional estimates is examined, using peak discharge annual maxima. The congruence degree is sometimes higher for PPWMs, sometimes for PWMs. The third kind of regional analysis uses the index flood method. The study, conducted applying the GEV distribution to synthetic data from a lognormal joint distribution, shows that better estimates are obtained sometimes from PPWMs, sometimes from PWMs. All the results seem to indicate that using PPWMs can constitute a valid tool, provided that the influence of ouliers, of course higher with censored samples, is kept under control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A joint comparative regional analysis of different resistance combinations across human and veterinary medicine has not been previously conducted in Germany. This study analyses 16 resistance combinations from four antibiotics in E. coli from different human and food-producing animal populations in three German regions: East, North West and South West. The E. coli data were collected from the three national surveillance and monitoring systems for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) bacteria in humans (ARS), food-safety (Zoonosis Monitoring) and animal pathogens (GE RM -Vet) from January 2014 to December 2017. Analyses were performed using cluster analysis (hierarchical clustering, average linkage) in R. We included data from 537,215 E. coli isolates from human clinical isolates, from clinical as well as non-clinical isolates from food-producing animals and from food. The majority of the data originated from the North West region. There were two main clusters built on 54 different human and animal populations. We observed close similarities of resistance combinations in human isolates from the different regions within the same human populations from outpatient cares, general wards and ICUs. These resistance combinations clustered separately from non-clinical isolates from broilers, turkeys, cattle and pigs; except for some of clinical isolates from these populations which clustered closely to isolates from human populations. Frequently, the resistance combinations in E. coli isolates from farms clustered closely to the resistance combinations in isolates from slaughterhouses from broilers and turkeys over all regions. However, the resistance combinations in E. coli isolates from retail meat populations tended to cluster separately within their respective populations in between all regions., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Suwono, Eckmanns, Kaspar and Tenhagen.)