Evaluating the Influence of the Forestry Reclamation Approach on the Hydrology of Appalachian Coal Mined Lands

The Appalachian Region is a rich and diverse forest ecosystem impacted by present and past mining activities. The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) of 1977 was enacted to resolve many of the environmental problems caused by surfacing mining, such as landslides, erosion, flooding, and poor water quality. As with many solutions, this one came with its own set of environmental problems due to compaction and the introduction of aggressive non-native grasses and shrubs altering hydrologic processes and ecosystem function. The Forestry Reclamation Approach (FRA) is a method for re-establishing forested ecosystems on mined lands. This project evaluated the effect of FRA on throughfall by comparing 10-, 20-, and 100-year old tree plots consisting of coniferous or deciduous trees. Throughfall rates were significantly impacted by tree type and age. Coniferous trees intercepted more rainfall than deciduous ones and the older trees tended to intercept the least. Presence/absence of leaves impacted throughfall depths for deciduous trees. Throughfall was significantly impacted by storm event characteristics. Results may help guide management of forested watersheds regarding strategies to reduce water yields on mined lands

Where\u27s the water? Using geospatial tools to facilitate water wheeling for the Central Arizona Project

Long-term drought and changing demands on the Lower Colorado River Basin are driving the development of agricultural water markets. Initiating new markets, for improved efficiency and water resource management flexibility, may require the identification of good information sources, and building of relationships. The objective of the research was to focus on these initial aspects of creating functioning water markets through the use of decision-support tools for attaining basic location, agricultural production and price information for immediate use. Alternative water transfer markets for Colorado River surface water are emerging from a policy proposal called wheeling. In this Arizona case study, potential applications of the wheeling policy could include the transfer of agricultural surface water from places like Yuma and La Paz Counties in Arizona to municipal and industrial uses in Arizona\u27s urban areas. Geospatial tools such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture\u27s CropScape and the Water Governance Relationship Geodatabase provided the necessary geographic information to target agricultural users, like irrigation districts and tribal lands, for wheeling. Consumptive irrigation requirement (CIR) (feet/year) and the water use value ($/acre foot) characteristics for specific crops allowed identification of a set of target crops within individual agricultural areas for possible transfers. Areas with the highest percentage of target crops were considered the preferred target for making social capital investments in relationship building for possible wheeling policy applications

Estimation of spatial high resolution temperature fields for the Tibetan Plateau and the adjacent lowlands based on an elevation and bias corrected ERA-Interim Data Set

Abstract HKT-ISTP 2013 B

The Challenges of Researching Algorithms

In the debate on algorithmic accountability, and platform responsibility more specifically, the contribution of the social researcher is immense. In this set of posts, researchers reflect upon broad themes of control and agency — not only that which is faced by the data subject, but also by the researcher who relies on proprietary platforms to understand how these systems operate and interact with users. This research bears relevance to policy debates, because it provides evidence of ways in which automated systems shape consumer and citizens and look beyond conventional recommendations of transparency or openness

Tweets Are Not Created Equal:investigating Twitter's client ecosystem

This article offers an investigation into the developer ecosystem of platforms drawing on the specific case of Twitter and explores how third-party clients enable different “ways of being” on Twitter. It suggests that researchers need to consider digital data as traces of distributed accomplishments between platforms, users, interfaces, and developers. The argument follows three main steps: We discuss how Twitter’s bounded openness enables and structures distributed data production through grammatization of action. We then suggest ways to explore and qualify sources by drawing on a weeklong data set of nearly 32 million tweets, retrieved from Twitter’s 1% random sample. We explore how clients show considerable differences in tweet characteristics and degrees of automation, and outline methodological steps to deploy the source variable to further investigate the heterogeneous practices common metrics risk flattening into singular counts. We conclude by returning to the question about the measures of the medium, suggesting how they might be revisited in the context of increasingly distributed platform ecosystems, and how platform data challenge key ideas of digital methods research

Sustainable Electrification and Digitalisation for Greening Small and Medium-Sized Ports along the TEN-T Corridors

Despite the highest competition among the big EU seaports – gateways and hubs, such as Rotterdam, Antwerp, Hamburg or Valencia, etc., which stand for the Core Ports in the European Union (EU) Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) Core and Comprehensive Network, the present paper addresses challenges and raises potentials immanent in Small and Medium-Sized Ports (SMSPs) in the EU. Environmental responsibility and digital efficiency – Europe’s twin to a green and digital economy paves the way for SMSPs to improve innovation capacity, upgrade demanded future skills and competencies, accelerate EU policies compliant operational, environmental, digital, social, and market performance. The paper deploys a multi-case study approach. Using an ecosystem approach, the paper reveals potentials and pinpoints to key short- and long-term challenges pursuant to SMSPs in the three different EU macro-regions – Baltic Sea Region, AdriaticIonian Sea Region and Mediterranean Sea Region along the four TEN-T Core Network Corridors – Baltic-Adriatic, Orient-East Med, North Sea-Baltic and Scandinavian-Mediterranean. Departing from the role model – Baltic Sea Region – ports of Klaipeda, Wismar, Stralsund and 10 Estonian SPSMs are connected via TEN-T corridors with ports of Bari, la Spezia in Italy and Corfu and Igoumenitsa in Greece. In this vein, knowledge, skills and best practices are transferred from the North Europe to the South and vice versa using the concepts of co-creation and servitisation. Illustrated case studies reveal how all SMSPs are capable to kick-start environmental and digital transition with solutions on Onshore Power Supply (OPS), electrification and digitalisation of port operations through Internet of Things (IoT) and Blockchain solutions used for transport and monitoring operations

Whatsapp und Snapchat

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Partizipative Zahlen. Vom Wert der Likes

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