Integral analysis of environmental and economic performance of combined agricultural intensification & bioenergy production in the Orinoquia region

Agricultural intensification is a key strategy to help meet increasing demand for food and bioenergy. It has the potential to reduce direct and indirect land use change (LUC) and associated environmental impacts while contributing to a favorable economic performance of the agriculture sector. We conduct an integral analysis of environmental and economic impacts of LUC from projected agricultural intensification and bioenergy production in the Orinoquia region in 2030. We compare three agricultural intensification scenarios (low, medium, high) and a reference scenario, which assumes a business-as-usual development of agricultural production. The results show that with current inefficient management or with only very little intensification between 26% and 93% of the existing natural vegetation areas will be converted to agricultural land to meet increasing food demand. This results in the loss of biodiversity by 53% and increased water consumption by 111%. In the medium and high scenarios, the intensification allows meeting increased food demand within current agricultural lands and even generating surplus land which can be used to produce bioenergy crops. This results in the reduction of biodiversity loss by 8-13% with medium and high levels of intensification compared to the situation in 2018. Also, a positive economic performance is observed, stemming primarily from intensification of cattle production and additional energy crop production. Despite increasing irrigation efficiency in more intensive production systems, the water demand for perennial crops and cattle production over the dry season increases significantly, thus sustainable management practices that target efficient water use are needed. Agricultural productivity improvements, particularly for cattle production, are crucial for reducing the pressure on natural areas from increasing demand for both food products and bioenergy. This implies targeted investments in the agricultural sector and integrated planning of land use. Our results showed that production intensification in the Orinoquia region is a mechanism that could reduce the pressure on natural land and its associated environmental and economic impacts

Obtención de un índice de sustentabilidad aplicado a materiales de construcción

Este artículo aplica dos conceptos con la finalidad de obtener un índice de sustentabilidad para edificaciones. El primero se refiere al análisis del ciclo de vida de materiales de construcción, evaluado con parámetros como el calentamiento global, partículas cancerígenas y no cancerígenas, contaminantes del aire, eutrofización, ecotoxicidad, smog, el agotamiento de los recursos naturales, calidad del aire interior, y el agotamiento de la capa de ozono. El segundo concepto es la aplicación de Sistemas de Inferencia Borrosa (Fuzzy Inference Systems, FIS) el cual es un modelo que intenta emular el proceso de razonamiento de un experto en el área de construcciones y medio ambiente, a través del cual se calcula un índice sobre la sustentabilidad de los materiales utilizados en un edificio, que toma en cuenta el ciclo de vida de los mismos. Dichos materiales han sido previamente analizados mediante el programa computacional SimaPro, un software de evaluación de ciclo de vida que considera variables consensadas internacionalmente

Configuración del servicio de TVIP sobre simulador grafico GNS3

El presente trabajo tiene como finalidad describir la implementación de un sistema IPTV con protocolo Multicast, basados en un escenario planteado de una entidad educativa a nivel nacional, cuya sede principal se encuentra en la ciudad de Bogotá, está a su vez esta interconectada con unas subsedes en las ciudades de Medellín y Barranquilla, las cuales requiere de un sistema avanzado de datos que soporte una infraestructura de red de nueva generación tipo NGN. Se hace mención de cada uno de los pasos, requerimientos, comandos y conceptos involucrados para el desarrollo y configuración del servicio IPTV sobre una red MPLS; de igual manera, se describen los pasos para definir un plan QoS con los respectivos anchos de banda correspondientes, que permitan su aplicación, apoyados en máquinas virtuales que permiten la simulación y verificación del funcionamiento correcto del sistema en cada una de las sedes en tiempo real, garantizando la viabilidad de la implementación del sistema IPTV. Palabras clave: Direccionamiento IP, Redes LAN, WAN, GNS3, protocolo OSPF, Multicast, QoS, IPTV, trafico, ancho de banda, RTP, (S, G), (*, G).The purpose of this paper is to describe the implementation of an IPTV system with Multicast protocol, based on a scenario of an educational entity at the national level, whose main office is located in the city of Bogotá, Colombia. At the same time, it is interconnected with sub-offices in the cities of Medellín and Barranquilla which require an advanced data system that supports a new generation network infrastructure type NGN. Mention is made of each one of the steps, requirements, commands, and concepts involved in the development and configuration of the IPTV service over an MPLS network. In the same way, the steps are described to define a QoS plan with the respective corresponding bandwidths that will allow its application, supported by virtual machines that allow the simulation and verification of the correct operation of the system in each of the venues in real-time, guaranteeing the viability of the implementation of the IPTV system. Keywords: IP addressing, LAN networks, WAN, GNS3, OSPF protocol, Multicast, QoS, IPTV, traffic, bandwidth, RTP, (S, G), (*, G)

Surface indicators are correlated with soil multifunctionality in global drylands

1. Multiple ecosystem functions need to be considered simultaneously to manage and protect the several ecosystem services that are essential to people and their environments. Despite this, cost effective, tangible, relatively simple and globally relevant methodologies to monitor in situ soil multifunctionality, that is, the provision of multiple ecosystem functions by soils, have not been tested at the global scale. 2. We combined correlation analysis and structural equation modelling to explore whether we could find easily measured, field‐based indicators of soil multifunctionality (measured using functions linked to the cycling and storage of soil carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus). To do this, we gathered soil data from 120 dryland ecosystems from five continents. 3. Two soil surface attributes measured in situ (litter incorporation and surface aggregate stability) were the most strongly associated with soil multifunctionality, even after accounting for geographic location and other drivers such as climate, woody cover, soil pH and soil electric conductivity. The positive relationships between surface stability and litter incorporation on soil multifunctionality were greater beneath the canopy of perennial vegetation than in adjacent, open areas devoid of vascular plants. The positive associations between surface aggregate stability and soil functions increased with increasing mean annual temperature. 4. Synthesis and applications. Our findings demonstrate that a reduced suite of easily measured in situ soil surface attributes can be used as potential indicators of soil multifunctionality in drylands world‐wide. These attributes, which relate to plant litter (origin, incorporation, cover), and surface stability, are relatively cheap and easy to assess with minimal training, allowing operators to sample many sites across widely varying climatic areas and soil types. The correlations of these variables are comparable to the influence of climate or soil, and would allow cost‐effective monitoring of soil multifunctionality under changing land‐use and environmental conditions. This would provide important information for evaluating the ecological impacts of land degradation, desertification and climate change in drylands world‐wide.This work was funded by the European Research Council ERC Grant agreement 242658 (BIOCOM). CYTED funded networking activities (EPES, Acción 407AC0323). D.J.E. acknowledges support from the Australian Research Council (DP150104199) and F.T.M. support from the European Research Council (BIODESERT project, ERC Grant agreement no 647038), from the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (BIOMOD project, ref. CGL2013-44661-R) and from a Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. M.D.-B. was supported by REA grant agreement no 702057 from the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions of the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme H2020-MSCA-IF-2016), J.R.G. acknowledges support from CONICYT/FONDECYT no 1160026

Preliminary assessment of the knowledge gaps to improve nature conservation of soil biodiversity

20 páginas.- 2 tablas.- referencias.-In the past decades, there has been an increasing awareness of the importance of Nature Conservation of Soil Biodiversity. Approximately 59% of all biodiversity on the planet is comprised of soil living organisms (Anthony et al. 2023), ranging from microorganisms to vertebrate species (FAO et al. 2020, Anthony et al. 2023). Soil biodiversity plays a central role in soil health and ecosystem services, as the activities of soil biota support the delivery of various ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling, prevention of soil erosion, pest control, and cleaning of air and water (Banerjee and van der Heijden 2023, Creamer et al. 2022, Pulleman et al. 2012). However, soil biodiversity is currently threatened by intensive agriculture and forestry as well as soil sealing in urban environments. Protecting soil biodiversity and thus its ecosystem functions and services will have positive effects on a number of sustainability development goals (SDGs), including water quality and food security, among others (FAO et al. 2020, Köninger et al. 2022). Nevertheless, recent work did not find positive effects of current conservation practices on soil biodiversity and its ecosystem functions (Zeiss et al. 2022). The authors suggest this is predominantly because the priorities and the decision-making paradigms used for selection of sites for conservation do not take into account soil biodiversity, its associated ecosystem functions, or the value of belowground ecosystems to human well-being and economic development (Bardgett and van der Putten 2014, FAO et al. 2020, Zeiss et al. 2022). While biodiversity-friendly management approaches, such as ecological intensification (Kleijn et al. 2019), regenerative agriculture and agroecology (Barrios et al. 2023, FAO 2023, Grilli et al. 2023) are receiving increasing attention, studies focused on conservation of soil biodiversity and its ecosystem functions are still limited (Bardgett and van der Putten 2014, FAO et al. 2020, Zeiss et al. 2022). Thus, there is a stark need for identifying knowledge gaps and new research and innovation to help protect and conserve soil biodiversity, the ecosystem services they provide, and their impact on human health and economics.Peer reviewe

Constraints on the χ_(c1) versus χ_(c2) polarizations in proton-proton collisions at √s = 8 TeV

The polarizations of promptly produced χ_(c1) and χ_(c2) mesons are studied using data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC, in proton-proton collisions at √s=8  TeV. The χ_c states are reconstructed via their radiative decays χ_c → J/ψγ, with the photons being measured through conversions to e⁺e⁻, which allows the two states to be well resolved. The polarizations are measured in the helicity frame, through the analysis of the χ_(c2) to χ_(c1) yield ratio as a function of the polar or azimuthal angle of the positive muon emitted in the J/ψ → μ⁺μ⁻ decay, in three bins of J/ψ transverse momentum. While no differences are seen between the two states in terms of azimuthal decay angle distributions, they are observed to have significantly different polar anisotropies. The measurement favors a scenario where at least one of the two states is strongly polarized along the helicity quantization axis, in agreement with nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics predictions. This is the first measurement of significantly polarized quarkonia produced at high transverse momentum