220 research outputs found

    Natural and Technological Hazards in Urban Areas

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    Natural hazard events and technological accidents are separate causes of environmental impacts. Natural hazards are physical phenomena active in geological times, whereas technological hazards result from actions or facilities created by humans. In our time, combined natural and man-made hazards have been induced. Overpopulation and urban development in areas prone to natural hazards increase the impact of natural disasters worldwide. Additionally, urban areas are frequently characterized by intense industrial activity and rapid, poorly planned growth that threatens the environment and degrades the quality of life. Therefore, proper urban planning is crucial to minimize fatalities and reduce the environmental and economic impacts that accompany both natural and technological hazardous events

    Exploring Animal Behavior Through Sound: Volume 1

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    This open-access book empowers its readers to explore the acoustic world of animals. By listening to the sounds of nature, we can study animal behavior, distribution, and demographics; their habitat characteristics and needs; and the effects of noise. Sound recording is an efficient and affordable tool, independent of daylight and weather; and recorders may be left in place for many months at a time, continuously collecting data on animals and their environment. This book builds the skills and knowledge necessary to collect and interpret acoustic data from terrestrial and marine environments. Beginning with a history of sound recording, the chapters provide an overview of off-the-shelf recording equipment and analysis tools (including automated signal detectors and statistical methods); audiometric methods; acoustic terminology, quantities, and units; sound propagation in air and under water; soundscapes of terrestrial and marine habitats; animal acoustic and vibrational communication; echolocation; and the effects of noise. This book will be useful to students and researchers of animal ecology who wish to add acoustics to their toolbox, as well as to environmental managers in industry and government

    Going to the Zoo: Using Tags to Create Measures for Animal Health, Well-being and Welfare in a Managed Care Setting

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    This PhD investigates how animal-attached motion-sensitive electronic tags might create behavioural biomarkers for animal ‘state’. Such biomarkers could indicate good health, disease, and injuries as well as positive and negative affective states. Success could have widespread implications for the well-being of numerous species in managed care by optimising welfare practices. This work primarily involved loggerhead sea turtles, Caretta caretta, in different states of health at the Arca del Mar rehabilitation centre, Oceanogràfic, Valencia, Spain, however the potential of tags for various aquatic, aerial and terrestrial species is also considered. Initially, the concept of tag-derived behavioural biomarkers for health (TDBBs) was established, examining data from ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ rehabilitating sea turtles to identify potentially useful metrics for specific injuries and/or diseases. Then, potential TDBBs for ‘healthy’ turtles and those with gas emboli were created, with variance in body attitude, number of 45° turns per hour and mean angular velocity per hour showing the most promise to differentiate the two groups. TDBBs were also explored for welfare, giving ‘healthy’ turtles nutritional enrichment, demonstrating that enrichment procedures do not always affect captive animal behaviour. To consider welfare implications of captivity, the movement behaviour of free-living and managed-care loggerheads was compared to determine wild-type and captive behaviour overlap. Findings revealed significant differences in the variance in pitch, heading and absolute angular velocity as well as the number of turns per hour. The final research topic considered trajectory step length data (the distances travelled in between turns), derived from tags deployed on nine wild species, for informing enclosure size for captive animals. The findings revealed that existing enclosure size guidelines regularly only permitted animals to undertake a very small percentage (often less than 3 %) of the step lengths recorded from free-living conspecifics. Last, the potential of TDBBs is reviewed, with limitations and future research discussed

    A review of commercialisation mechanisms for carbon dioxide removal

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    The deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) needs to be scaled up to achieve net zero emission pledges. In this paper we survey the policy mechanisms currently in place globally to incentivise CDR, together with an estimate of what different mechanisms are paying per tonne of CDR, and how those costs are currently distributed. Incentive structures are grouped into three structures, market-based, public procurement, and fiscal mechanisms. We find the majority of mechanisms currently in operation are underresourced and pay too little to enable a portfolio of CDR that could support achievement of net zero. The majority of mechanisms are concentrated in market-based and fiscal structures, specifically carbon markets and subsidies. While not primarily motivated by CDR, mechanisms tend to support established afforestation and soil carbon sequestration methods. Mechanisms for geological CDR remain largely underdeveloped relative to the requirements of modelled net zero scenarios. Commercialisation pathways for CDR require suitable policies and markets throughout the projects development cycle. Discussion and investment in CDR has tended to focus on technology development. Our findings suggest that an equal or greater emphasis on policy innovation may be required if future requirements for CDR are to be met. This study can further support research and policy on the identification of incentive gaps and realistic potential for CDR globally

    CITIES: Energetic Efficiency, Sustainability; Infrastructures, Energy and the Environment; Mobility and IoT; Governance and Citizenship

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    This book collects important contributions on smart cities. This book was created in collaboration with the ICSC-CITIES2020, held in San José (Costa Rica) in 2020. This book collects articles on: energetic efficiency and sustainability; infrastructures, energy and the environment; mobility and IoT; governance and citizenship

    Social convergence in times of spatial distancing: The rRole of music during the COVID-19 Pandemic

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    The Adirondack Chronology

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    The Adirondack Chronology is intended to be a useful resource for researchers and others interested in the Adirondacks and Adirondack history.https://digitalworks.union.edu/arlpublications/1000/thumbnail.jp

    Realising catastrophe: the financial ontology of the Anthropocene

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    This dissertation investigates how the financial risk management practice of catastrophe modelling is redefining the ontology of natural catastrophe. Drawing from and developing the concept of the ‘Anthropocene’, referring to co-production of the ‘social’ and the ‘natural’ on a planetary scale, the dissertation argues that simulation-based risk modelling of future ‘natural’ disasters in insurance and reinsurance markets is not just affecting how catastrophe is interpreted by economic agents, economised and financialised, but is also driving changes in the realisation of actual disasters. The thesis calls this recursive dynamic the ‘financial ontology of Anthropocene catastrophe’. In developing the argument, the thesis extends actor-network theoretical perspectives on the Anthropocene to take fuller account of market devices, performativity and calculative practices in finance. Documentary research, 62 interviews and 14 participant observation episodes serve to reconstruct current practices of catastrophe modelling and its history since it emerged as a boutique risk management practice in the 1980s. Ultimately, it has become embedded in the calculative practices of some of the largest insurance and financial companies in the world and underpinning a specialist disaster securities market. Adding conceptual depth and fine-grained empirical detail to literature on the financialisation-Anthropocene nexus, the dissertation asks us to reconsider the boundaries between economic representations of the world and the meaning and occurrence of catastrophes in market societies. In an age of anthropogenic climate change, the thesis also serves as an analytical and historical underpinning of epistemic practices in climate finance in the emerging, even more encompassing, ‘financial ontology of the Anthropocene’
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