Warm glow and embedding in contingent valuation

This paper reports the results from a contingent valuation study designed to investigate the influence of warm glow in willingness-to-pay responses. Interindividual differences in warm glow motivation are measured through a factor analysis, performed on a list of attitudinal items. The reported willingness to pay measures fail to pass the scope test. Both socioeconomic variables and motivational factor scores are significant in the explanation of the individual WTP measures. We compute dry WTP measures by taking out the effect of the warm glow motivation. These dry measures satisfy both the scope test and Hausman's adding-up property and could therefore be interpreted as reflecting true economic preferences

Modeling the Links between Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services and Human Wellbeing in the Context of Climate Change: Results from an Econometric Analysis on the European Forest Ecosystems

25 p.The paper conducts an empirical investigation on the complex relationship between biodiversity and the values of ecosystem goods and services that are supported by biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, aiming to produce an econometric quantification of the magnitudes involved. Furthermore, we operate this study at a in the context of global climate change, which is considered one of the major drivers today that alter the pattern of biodiversity distribution, affect the ecosystem functioning and change the flows of ecosystem goods and services to be provided by a healthy ecosystem. In the paper, we first built a composite biodiversity indicator on the concept of Natural Capital Index so as to integrate information regarding the quantitative and qualitative changes of ecosystems driven by warming climate conditions. Furthermore, the composite indicator is integrated into the econometric specification so as to capture the marginal impacts of changes in biodiversity on the value of ecosystem goods and services due to climate change. The econometric problem is solved in a structural simultaneous system using three-stage-least-squares (3SLS) to analyze climate change impacts on forest ecosystems and the respective ecosystem service values across 17 European countries

Policy instruments for creating markets for biodiversity: Certification and ecolabing

This paper provides an economic evaluation of certification and ecolabeling as an important policy instrument for creating markets for biodiversity. In the paper we conclude that the success of a policy instrument for creating markets for biodiversity depends on the nature crucial factors, including the ability of the policy instrument to deal with (a) the public good nature of most of the nonmarket biodiversity benefits; (b) the asymmetric informational characteristics related to the biodiversity (and environmental friendly) market supply and demand mechanisms; (c) the impact of certification practices in the producer's costs, and (d) the cross price elasticity between regular and market certified products. Indeed, in some cases certification and ecolabeling policy instruments alone are not sufficient to guarantee a successful creation of markets for biodiversity. Finally, the certification schemes need to be sufficiently flexible to allow mutual recognition among the countries involved, as well as to meet the demand of weak sensitive markets. By mutual understanding, and learning with the past experiences, certification and ecolabeling will positively contribute to the creation of markets for biodiversity and thus expected to assist to the development of an effective and broadly accepted sustainable management of such a scarce natural resource

Mechanical detection of carbon nanotube resonator vibrations

Bending-mode vibrations of carbon nanotube resonator devices were mechanically detected in air at atmospheric pressure by means of a novel scanning force microscopy method. The fundamental and higher order bending eigenmodes were imaged at up to 3.1GHz with sub-nanometer resolution in vibration amplitude. The resonance frequency and the eigenmode shape of multi-wall nanotubes are consistent with the elastic beam theory for a doubly clamped beam. For single-wall nanotubes, however, resonance frequencies are significantly shifted, which is attributed to fabrication generating, for example, slack. The effect of slack is studied by pulling down the tube with the tip, which drastically reduces the resonance frequency

Marine ecosystem services: Linking indicators to their classification

© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. There is a multitude of ecosystem service classifications available within the literature, each with its own advantages and drawbacks. Elements of them have been used to tailor a generic ecosystem service classification for the marine environment and then for a case study site within the North Sea: the Dogger Bank. Indicators for each of the ecosystem services, deemed relevant to the case study site, were identified. Each indicator was then assessed against a set of agreed criteria to ensure its relevance and applicability to environmental management. This paper identifies the need to distinguish between indicators of ecosystem services that are entirely ecological in nature (and largely reveal the potential of an ecosystem to provide ecosystem services), indicators for the ecological processes contributing to the delivery of these services, and indicators of benefits that reveal the realized human use or enjoyment of an ecosystem service. It highlights some of the difficulties faced in selecting meaningful indicators, such as problems of specificity, spatial disconnect and the considerable uncertainty about marine species, habitats and the processes, functions and services they contribute to

The Economic Impacts of Biodiversity Policy for Improving the Climate Regulating Services Provided by EU Natura 2000 Habitats

22 p.We adopted the state-of-the-art methodologies to quantify the total carbon stocked by Natura 2000 habitats as well as to project the future changes of carbon stocks influenced by alternative policy options for the management of Natura 2000 habitats by 2020. Our results show that the N2K network currently stores around 9.6 billion tonnes of Carbon, equivalent to 35 billion tonnes of CO2, which is estimated to be worth between €607 billion and €1,130 billion (stock value in 2010), depending on the price attached to a ton of carbon. Of the different ecosystems the forest habitats contain the highest carbon value in the network, ranging between €318 and €610 billion in 2010. Furthermore, our results also show that in the future these carbon values can be increased. A policy scenario (Policy ON), where full Protected Area coverage (terrestrial PAs + fuller MPAs) with a move to full favourable conservation status is estimated to generate a gain of at least a total of 1.71-2.86% by 2020 compared to a policy inaction scenario (Policy OFF), where no additional action is taken to conserve the current Natura 2000 sites over the next decade

Spatial and temporal variability of precipitation and drought in Portugal

The spatial variability of precipitation and drought are investigated for Portugal using monthly precipitation from 74 stations and minimum and maximum temperature from 27 stations, covering the common period of 1941–2006. Seasonal precipitation and the corresponding percentages in the year, as well as the precipitation concentration index (PCI), was computed for all 74 stations and then used as an input matrix for an R-mode principal component analysis to identify the precipitation patterns. The standardized precipitation index at 3 and 12 month time scales were computed for all stations, whereas the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) and the modified PDSI for Mediterranean conditions (MedPDSI) were computed for the stations with temperature data. The spatial patterns of drought over Portugal were identified by applying the S-mode principal component analysis coupled with varimax rotation to the drought indices matrices. The result revealed two distinct sub-regions in the country relative to both precipitation regimes and drought variability. The analysis of time variability of the PC scores of all drought indices allowed verifying that there is no linear trend indicating drought aggravation or decrease. In addition, the analysis shows that results for SPI-3, SPI-12, PDSI and MedPDSI are coherent among them

Splash control of drop impacts with geometric targets

Drop impacts on solid and liquid surfaces exhibit complex dynamics due to the competition of inertial, viscous, and capillary forces. After impact, a liquid lamella develops and expands radially, and under certain conditions, the outer rim breaks up into an irregular arrangement of filaments and secondary droplets. We show experimentally that the lamella expansion and subsequent break up of the outer rim can be controlled by length scales that are of comparable dimension to the impacting drop diameter. Under identical impact parameters, ie. fluid properties and impact velocity, we observe unique splashing dynamics by varying the target cross-sectional geometry. These behaviors include: (i) geometrically-shaped lamellae and (ii) a transition in splashing stability, from regular to irregular splashing. We propose that regular splashes are controlled by the azimuthal perturbations imposed by the target cross-sectional geometry and that irregular splashes are governed by the fastest-growing unstable Plateau-Rayleigh mode

Quantum corrections to gravity and their implications for cosmology and astrophysics

The quantum contributions to the gravitational action are relatively easy to calculate in the higher derivative sector of the theory. However, the applications to the post-inflationary cosmology and astrophysics require the corrections to the Einstein-Hilbert action and to the cosmological constant, and those we can not derive yet in a consistent and safe way. At the same time, if we assume that these quantum terms are covariant and that they have relevant magnitude, their functional form can be defined up to a single free parameter, which can be defined on the phenomenological basis. It turns out that the quantum correction may lead, in principle, to surprisingly strong and interesting effects in astrophysics and cosmology.Comment: 15 pages, LaTeX, WS style, contribution to the Proceedings of the QFEXT-2011 conference in the Centro de Ciencias de Benasque Pedro Pasqual, Spai