Ecosystem Good and Service Co-Effects of Terrestrial Carbon Sequestration: Implications for the U.S. Geological Survey’s LandCarbon Methodology

This paper describes specific ways in which the analysis of ecosystem goods and services can be included in terrestrial carbon sequestration assessments and planning. It specifically reviews the U.S. Geological Survey’s LandCarbon assessment methodology for ecosystem services. The report assumes that the biophysical analysis of co-effects should be designed to facilitate social evaluation. Accordingly, emphasis is placed on natural science strategies and outputs that complement subsequent economic and distributional analysis.ecosystem services, carbon sequestration, land use planning

Towards a Water Leasing/Banking System on the Middle Rio Grande: Progress to Date

A recent report details the limited nature of water leasing/banking in the Western U.S. (West Water Research, 2004). The report provides an analysis of water banking legislation policies and programs in 12 Western states. There are 23 active water banks of which seven are market based pricing, meaning that the price is negotiated between the buyer and the seller with one bank having online negotiations. The other 16 banks are fixed pricing or administrative pricing schemes that are set annually. Length of transaction varies and the number of transactions is limited annually. Here we explore the role of water leasing/banking in allocating resources among competing demands. In particular, we develop a stylized template for temporary voluntary transfers amongst competing uses (agriculture, Native American farming, environmental interests, urban interests) on the Middle Rio Grande. There are many issues (engineering, physical, legal, and institutional) to be addressed in allowing for water transfers within a basin. Central to our effort is linking of a hydrological/engineering/institutional model that allows for water transfers to be evaluated within the various frameworks

EVOLVING ENTITLEMENTS: INTERVENING TO PREVENT A COLLECTIVE HARM

When market transactions generate negative externalities, the injured party may initiate court action to prevent harm or to obtain compensation. The political response, in some cases, has been to broaden the set of agents who can intervene through the court, often by admitting entirely new categories of potential intervenors. We employ an experimental market setting to investigate the effect of an increase in the number of potential intervenors (introduced as admitting an additional class of persons having the necessary standing in law). The results suggest that there will be a substantial increase in the number of actual interventions. The increase means that social resources expended on interventions will increase and there may be a consequent reduction in trading activity in the affected markets.Public Economics,

Automatic Calibration of Multiple Coplanar Sensors

This paper describes an algorithm for recovering the rigid 3-DOF transformation (offset and rotation) between pairs of sensors mounted rigidly in a common plane on a mobile robot. The algorithm requires only a set of sensor observations made as the robot moves along a suitable path. Our method does not require synchronized sensors; nor does it require complete metrical reconstruction of the environment or the sensor path. We show that incremental pose measurements alone are sufficient to recover sensor calibration through nonlinear least squares estimation. We use the Fisher Information Matrix to compute a Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) for the resulting calibration. Applying the algorithm in practice requires a non-degenerate motion path, a principled procedure for estimating per-sensopose displacements and their covariances, a way to temporally resample asynchronous sensor data, and a way to assess the quality of the recovered calibration. We give constructive methods for each step. We demonstrate and validate the end-to-end calibration procedure for both simulated and real LIDAR and inertial data, achieving CRLBs, and corresponding calibrations, accurate to millimeters and milliradians. Source code is available from http://rvsn.csail.mit.edu/calibration

Percy Bysshe Shelley and the Gothic

My dissertation participates in a developing body of Romantic criticism that seeks to trace the crucial, yet uncertain, relationship between Romanticism and the Gothic. Recent studies argue persuasively for the influence of gothic aesthetics on the major poets of the Romantic era, yet surprisingly little attention has been given to Percy Bysshe Shelley, for whom, more than any other Romantic, the gothic sensibility arguably provided the most powerful and lasting influence during the course of his career. Shelley's earliest publications, including his two gothic novels--Zastrozzi, a Romance and St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian--have received scant critical attention and demand an analysis that approaches these early works with the same theoretical rigor that his mature poetry receives. I employ the insights of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to interrogate my distinction between the Shelleyan subject of Romanticism and the Shelleyesque subject of Gothicism. Where the Shelleyan gaze finds synthesis, desire, pleasure, sublimity, benevolence, and being; the Shelleyesque gaze finds antagonism, drive, jouissance, monstrosity, perversion, and lack. Rather than an undisciplined juvenile phase of Shelley's development, the Shelleyesque continues to operate throughout his mature poetry in unsettling and provocative ways, particularly in works such as Prometheus Unbound--generally considered to be Shelley's most idealistic attempt to transcend the political, sexual, and psychological antagonisms associated with the gothic tradition--further complicating the uncanny relationship between Romanticism and the Gothic

The Economic Value of Water: Results of a Workshop in Caracas, Venezuela, November 2000

In November 2000 a small workshop of 14 people met in Caracas, Venezuela, to discuss the value\u27 of water. The meeting was sponsored by the International Water Resources Network (IWRN), the Organization of American States (OAS), The Nature Conservancy, the University of New Mexico, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The meeting was hosted by Jose Ochoa-Iturbe, Director of the School of Civil Engineering at the Universidad Catolica Andres Bello. The participants represented a mix of academics, water administrators, government officials and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) from around the Americas. Although many of the participants are economists, multiple disciplines and perspectives were represented. The meeting occurred as part of a process for stimulating discussion about water issues in the Americas. During and after IWRN\u27s Dialog III in Panama, the participants at a session on water valuation discussed the need for an intermediate meeting that would keep the discussion moving forward. The feeling was that the time interval between Dialogs was too long and significant time was spent at each Dialog repeating conversations that had occurred before. An intermediate conference was organized in Caracas to fill that need. This document was produced as a result of the Caracas meeting and is meant to serve as an input to IWRN\u27s Dialog IV in Brazil. The document should not be looked on as the final word but as an intermediate step meant to stimulate additional discussion

Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems Acoustic Analysis for Noninvasive Marine Mammal Response: An Exploratory Field Study

As in countless other fields of human endeavor, small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) have the potential to benefit pinniped (Pinnipedia; e.g., Phocidae [seals], Otariidae [sea lions], and Odobenidae [walruses]) response efforts. The employment of sUAS could give responders a close-up look at animals in distress in order to determine their condition as well as develop a response strategy. However, unlike other subjects that are regularly inspected by sUAS (e.g., croplands and civil infrastructure) pinnipeds may respond to the distinctive sound generated by small, multirotor sUAS. This reaction may include retreating into the water en masse, which could put the target individual out of reach of the response team. To potentially prevent this outcome, this exploratory field study established sUAS acoustic profiles through quantitative and qualitative measures for multiple aircraft across a range of distance and altitude. These data were collected in both a secluded rural environment and a coastal environment. The results indicate that sUAS sound pressure levels at least 20 dBA (re 20 µPa) below the ambient noise floor are required to completely mask the distinctive sound of the aircraft to human hearing. The results were used to create aircraft operational envelopes to potentially mitigate disturbance while optimizing visual information. To reflect the type of sUAS that would likely be available to small, non-profit marine mammal response groups working in remote locations, the aircraft studied were limited to compact models $3,000 or less