Environmental Sustainability Assessment of Bioeconomy Products and Processes – Progress Report 1

The present document compiles the main outputs of the environmental sustainability assessment in the framework of the Bioeconomy Observatory as at the end of 2014, for the purposes of the EU Bioeconomy Investment Summit 2015. The selection includes fourteen environmental sustainability factsheets and a brief explanatory document that provides an overview of the structure and content of the factsheets.All these documents were already approved in PUBSY (PUBSY Ref. JRC93246).JRC.H.8-Sustainability Assessmen

An assessment of the benefits of yellow Sigatoka (Mycosphaerella musicola) control in the Queensland Northern Banana Pest Quarantine Area

The banana leaf spotting disease yellow Sigatoka is established and actively controlled in Australia through intensive chemical treatments and diseased leaf removal. In the State of Queensland, the State government imposes standards for de-leafing to minimise the risk of the disease spreading in 6 banana pest quarantine areas. Of these, the Northern Banana Pest Quarantine Area is the most significant in terms of banana production. Previous regulations imposed obligations on owners of banana plants within this area to remove leaves from plants with visible spotting on more than 15 per cent of any leaf during the wet season. Recently, this leaf disease threshold has been lowered to 5 per cent. In this paper we examine the likely impact this more-costly regulation will have on the spread of the disease. We estimate that the average net benefit of reducing the diseased leaf threshold is only likely to be $1.4 million per year over the next 30 years, expressed as the annualised present value of tightened regulation. This result varies substantially when the timeframe of the analysis is changed, with shorter time frames indicating poorer net returns from the change in protocols. Overall, the benefit of the regulation change is likely to be minor

European landscape changes between 2010 and 2050 under the EU Reference Scenario: EU Reference Scenario 2013 LUISA platform – Updated Configuration 2014

The ‘Land-Use-based Integrated Sustainability Assessment’ modelling platform (LUISA) is primarily used for the ex-ante evaluation of EC policies that have a direct or indirect territorial impact. It is based on the concept of ‘land function’ for cross-sector integration and for the representation of complex system dynamics. Beyond a traditional land use model, LUISA adopts a new approach towards activity-based modelling based upon the endogenous dynamic allocation of population, services and activities. LUISA has been applied to address the competition for land arising from the energy, transport and climate dimensions of EU policies and configured according to the EU Energy Reference scenario 2013 (updated configuration 2014) to produce high-resolution land use/cover projections up to 2050 and a related series of thematic indicators. This report describes the stocks and the main land cover/use flows (LCF) taking place in Europe in the period 2010-2050 and the processes that cause those flows, thus providing insight on how the European landscape might change if the future happens according to a reference scenario consistent with settings (economic and demographic in particular) and policies in place in 2013 (hence including in particular the 2020 renewable energy targets). Main findings: • The extent of the land for housing and leisure (urban) and industrial/commercial and services (ICS) increases, while the area of agriculture, forest and natural land decreases; • Urban and industrial land are expected to represent the highest share of net formation as % of the initial year (2010); • Energy crops appear in the model as of 2020 and are expected to reach 135,479 km2 across Europe in 2050; • Energy crops become the second most important land transformation in Europe (17%); approximately 90 % of the land consumed for energy purposes comes from land for food and feed, followed by forest and natural land; • While a large proportion of land dedicated to food and feed crops is expected to be converted into dedicated energy crops, the net land losses are very small as a results of the conversion from forest land into food and feed production; • New forest and natural land compensate in some way for quantity of losses or consumption by other uses; however the high value of the turnover indicator, reveal that those land-uses are unstable and vulnerable to the fast changes driven by economic development and climate changes, thus compromising the biodiversity and habitat conservation status; • The conversion between farming types represent 35% over the total land changes between 2010 and 2050; The results show the loss of natural and agricultural land because of ever-ongoing urbanisation and industrialization processes. The loss of natural and agricultural land for food production is even larger because of the advent of energy crops production incited by shifts in the European Energy supply system.JRC.H.8-Sustainability Assessmen

European Territorial Trends - Facts and Prospects for Cities and Regions Ed. 2017

This report analyses a set of territorial trends at continental and sub-national scale, looking at patterns and determinants of regional growth, while considering pan-European and national characteristics. Past and prospective demographic and economic trends are analysed to provide a picture of ‘what, where, when and how’ things happen in European cities and regions. Specific emphasis is placed on urban areas since acknowledged sources of both opportunities and challenges. The indicators used in the analysis herein presented are freely and openly accessible in the Territorial Dashboard of the Knowledge Centre for Territorial Policies at: http://urban.jrc.ec.europa.eu/t-board/index.htmlJRC.B.3-Territorial Developmen

The future of road transport

A perfect storm of new technologies and new business models is transforming not only our vehicles, but everything about how we get around, and how we live our lives. The JRC report “The future of road transport - Implications of automated, connected, low-carbon and shared mobility” looks at some main enablers of the transformation of road transport, such as data governance, infrastructures, communication technologies and cybersecurity, and legislation. It discusses the potential impacts on the economy, employment and skills, energy use and emissions, the sustainability of raw materials, democracy, privacy and social fairness, as well as on the urban context. It shows how the massive changes on the horizon represent an opportunity to move towards a transport system that is more efficient, safer, less polluting and more accessible to larger parts of society than the current one centred on car ownership. However, new transport technologies, on their own, won't spontaneously make our lives better without upgrading our transport systems and policies to the 21st century. The improvement of governance and the development of innovative mobility solutions will be crucial to ensure that the future of transport is cleaner and more equitable than its car-centred present.JRC.C.4-Sustainable Transpor

Predicting the Repercussions of Anthropogenic Landscape Modifications on the Biota Using Species Focused Adaptable GIS and Spatial Dynamic Models

254 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2005.Habitat fragmentation and species invasions are increasingly threatening the survival of native species worldwide. In this context, a set of tools and approaches was developed to help (1) improve our understanding of species relationships to the landscape and predict their habitat usage, population variations and patterns of spread in fragmented landscapes and (2) identify and address potential environmental risks associated with land-use planning. The approach consisted in the development of computer-based spatial dynamic models and GIS methods to (1) identify, for an habitat specialist, suitable habitat patches within landscapes and determine habitat connectivity and metapopulation sizes; (2) model long-term population variations and detailed movement behaviors of habitat-specialist species in heterogeneous landscapes; (3) identify, for an adaptable species, potentially usable territories and estimate how adaptations might shape and modify species habitat occupancy; and (4) determine the potential spreading pattern of an invasive plant species and test potential management strategies. Each of these approaches was designed to be adaptable for various species and incorporates user-defined life history characteristics, habitat needs or movement behaviors. We showed, through the development and testing of these tools, that: (1) considerations of the spatial arrangement and structure of habitat patches combined with species life history characteristics may provide a better tool than considerations of altered areas alone, to estimate the consequences of habitat loss and fragmentation on animal populations; (2) changes in land-use resulting in limited habitat losses could nonetheless lead to significant reductions in population sizes of a species within a landscape; (3) minor changes in species habitat requirements or movement behaviors have important repercussions on the amount of suitable habitat it can access; and (4) modifications in plant species life history characteristics (occurrence of sexual reproduction) could drastically increase their capacity to spread across fragmented landscapes. The application of these tools to fictitious species over different landscapes also illustrated their capacity to be used to identify and map species-suitable habitat and determine potential movement or spreading patterns between patches. Finally the potential use of these tools for the testing of hypotheses to improve the understanding of species landscape interactions was stressed.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD