The Azorean Biodiversity Portal: an internet database for regional biodiversity outreach

Copyright © 2010 The Natural History Museum.There is a growing interest in academia to provide biodiversity data to both the scientific community and the public. We present an internet database of the terrestrial lichens, bryophytes, vascular plants, molluscs, arthropods, vertebrates and coastal invertebrates of the Azores archipelago (Portugal, North Atlantic): the Azorean Biodiversity Portal (ABP, http://www.azoresbioportal.angra.uac.pt/). This is a unique resource for fundamental research in systematics, biodiversity, education and conservation management. The ABP was based on a regional species database (ATLANTIS), comprised of grid-based spatial incidence information for c. 5000 species. Most of the data rely on a comprehensive literature survey (dating back to the 19th century) as well as unpublished records from recent field surveys in the Azores. The ABP disseminates the ATLANTIS database to the public, allowing universal, unrestricted access to much of its data. Complementarily, the ABP includes additional information of interest to the general public (e.g. literature on Macaronesian biodiversity) together with images from collections and/or live specimens for many species. In this contribution we explain the implementation of a regional biodiversity database, its architecture, achievements and outcomes, strengths and limitations; we further include a number of suggestions in order to implement similar initiatives

Resources of Near-Earth Space: Abstracts

The objectives are by theory, experiment, and bench-level testing of small systems, to develop scientifically-sound engineering processes and facility specifications for producing propellants and fuels, construction and shielding materials, and life support substances from the lithospheres and atmospheres of lunar, planetary, and asteroidal bodies. Current emphasis is on the production of oxygen, other usefull gases, metallic, ceramic/composite, and related byproducts from lunar regolith, carbonaceous chrondritic asteroids, and the carbon dioxide rich Martian atmosphere

8. Impact of the resource boom in the 2000s on Asian-Pacific energy exporting countries, Akihisa Mori and Le Dong (Part III International impacts of China-induced resource boom and climate-energy policy)

Edited by Akihisa Mor

Life-cycle assessment of buildings: a Review

Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of various management tools for evaluating environmental concerns. This paper reviews LCA from a buildings perspective. It highlights the need for its use within the building sector, and the importance of LCA as a decision making support tool. It discusses LCA methodologies and applications within the building sector, reviewing some of the life-cycle studies applied to buildings or building materials and component combinations within the last fifteen years in Europe and the United States. It highlights the problems of a lack of an internationally comparable and agreed data inventory and assessment methodology which hinder the application of LCA within the building industry. It identifies key areas for future research as (i) the whole process of construction, (ii) the relative weighting of different environmental impacts and (iii) applications in developing countries

Predicting soil water and mineral nitrogen contents with the STICS model for estimating nitrate leaching under agricultural fields

The performance of the STICS soil-crop model for the dynamic prediction of soil water content (SWC) and soil mineral nitrogen (SMN) in the root zone (120 cm) of seven agricultural fields was evaluated using field measurements in a coarse-grained alluvial aquifer of the Garonne River floodplain (southwestern France) from 2005 to 2007. The STICS model was used to simulate drainage and nitrate concentration in drainage water in all the agricultural fields of the study area, in order to quantify and assess the temporal and spatial variability of nitrate leaching into groundwater. Simulations of SWC and SMN in the seven monitored fields were found to be satisfactory as indicated by root mean square error (RMSE) and model efficiency being 6.8 and 0.84% for SWC and 22.8 and 0.92% for SMN, respectively. On average, SWC was slightly overestimated by a mean difference of 10 mm (3%) and there was almost no bias in SMN estimations (<0.5%). These satisfactory results demonstrate the potential for using the STICS model to accurately simulate nitrate leaching. Across the study area, simulated drainage and nitrate concentration were extremely variable from one field to another. For some fields, simulated mean annual nitrate concentration in drainage water exceeded 300 mg NO3 − L−1 and predicted nitrate leaching was close to 100 kg N ha−1, while other fields had very low nitrate losses. About 15% of the farmers’ fields were responsible for 60–70% of nitrate leaching. The SMN in late autumn, before winter drainage, was found the main determining factor explaining this variability. This situation may be attributed to unsatisfactory cumulative nitrogen management over the medium term. Ineffective nitrogen management was found to be more detrimental than a single annual incident of overfertilization, particularly in situations of deep soils and in cases of low or highly variable drainage between years