5,608 research outputs found
Water and energy footprint of irrigated agriculture in the Mediterranean region
Irrigated agriculture constitutes the largest consumer of freshwater in the Mediterranean region and provides a major source of income and employment for rural livelihoods. However, increasing droughts and water scarcity have highlighted concerns regarding the environmental sustainability of agriculture in the region. An integrated assessment combining a gridded water balance model with a geodatabase and GIS has been developed and used to assess the water demand and energy footprint of irrigated production in the region. Modelled outputs were linked with crop yield and water resources data to estimate water (m3 kg−1) and energy (CO2 kg−1) productivity and identify vulnerable areas or 'hotspots'. For a selected key crops in the region, irrigation accounts for 61 km3 yr−1 of water abstraction and 1.78 Gt CO2 emissions yr−1, with most emissions from sunflower (73 kg CO2/t) and cotton (60 kg CO2/t) production. Wheat is a major strategic crop in the region and was estimated to have a water productivity of 1000 t Mm−3 and emissions of 31 kg CO2/t. Irrigation modernization would save around 8 km3 of water but would correspondingly increase CO2 emissions by around +135%. Shifting from rain-fed to irrigated production would increase irrigation demand to 166 km3 yr−1 (+137%) whilst CO2 emissions would rise by +270%. The study has major policy implications for understanding the water–energy–food nexus in the region and the trade-offs between strategies to save water, reduce CO2 emissions and/or intensify food production
Climate change impacts on water for irrigated horticulture in the Vale of Evesham. Final Report
This project has undertaken a scoping review and assessment of the impacts of climate change on
irrigated horticulture in the Vale of Evesham, an area of intense irrigated production located within the
Environment Agency’s Warwickshire Avon CAMS Catchment. The research was based on a
combination of methodologies including desk-based review of published and grey literature, computer
agroclimatic and water balance modelling, GIS mapping, meetings with key informants and a
stakeholder workshop.
Future climate datasets were derived from the latest UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKICIP02)
climatology, using selected emission scenarios for the 2020s, 2050s and 2080s. These scenarios were
then used to model and map the future agroclimatic conditions under which agriculture might operate
and the consequent impacts on irrigation need (depths of water applied) and volumetric demand. This
was complimented by a postal survey to abstractors and a stakeholder workshop, to identify, review
and assess farmer adaptation options and responses. The key findings arising from the research,
implications for water resource management and recommendations for further work are summarised
below.
Using a geographical information system (GIS), a series of agroclimate maps have been produced, for
the baseline and selected UKCIP02 scenario. The maps show major changes in agroclimate within the
catchment over the next 50 years. The driest agroclimate zones are currently located around
Worcester, Evesham, Tewkesbury and Gloucester, corresponding to areas where horticultural
production and irrigation demand are most concentrated. By the 2020s, all agroclimate zones are
predicted to increase in aridity. By the 2050s the entire catchment is predicted to have a drier
agroclimate than is currently experienced anywhere in the driest parts of the catchment. This will have
major impacts on the pattern of land use and irrigation water demand. Cont/d
Evaluation of materials proposed for use in space flight Final report
Irritant and allergic potentials of fireproof paper for space flight use evaluated on human and animal skin
A limit on the detectability of the energy scale of inflation
We show that the polarization of the cosmic microwave background can be used
to detect gravity waves from inflation if the energy scale of inflation is
above 3.2 times 10^15 GeV. These gravity waves generate polarization patterns
with a curl, whereas (to first order in perturbation theory) density
perturbations do not. The limiting ``noise'' arises from the second--order
generation of curl from density perturbations, or rather residuals from its
subtraction. We calculate optimal sky coverage and detectability limits as a
function of detector sensitivity and observing time.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to PR
Interplay of the exciton and electron-hole plasma recombination on the photoluminescence dynamics in bulk GaAs
We present a systematic study of the exciton/electron-hole plasma
photoluminescence dynamics in bulk GaAs for various lattice temperatures and
excitation densities. The competition between the exciton and electron-hole
pair recombination dominates the onset of the luminescence. We show that the
metal-to-insulator transition, induced by temperature and/or excitation
density, can be directly monitored by the carrier dynamics and the
time-resolved spectral characteristics of the light emission. The dependence on
carrier density of the photoluminescence rise time is strongly modified around
a lattice temperature of 49 K, corresponding to the exciton binding energy (4.2
meV). In a similar way, the rise-time dependence on lattice temperature
undergoes a relatively abrupt change at an excitation density of 120-180x10^15
cm^-3, which is about five times greater than the calculated Mott density in
GaAs taking into account many body corrections.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
CMB Lensing Reconstruction on the Full Sky
Gravitational lensing of the microwave background by the intervening dark
matter mainly arises from large-angle fluctuations in the projected
gravitational potential and hence offers a unique opportunity to study the
physics of the dark sector at large scales. Studies with surveys that cover
greater than a percent of the sky will require techniques that incorporate the
curvature of the sky. We lay the groundwork for these studies by deriving the
full sky minimum variance quadratic estimators of the lensing potential from
the CMB temperature and polarization fields. We also present a general
technique for constructing these estimators, with harmonic space convolutions
replaced by real space products, that is appropriate for both the full sky
limit and the flat sky approximation. This also extends previous treatments to
include estimators involving the temperature-polarization cross-correlation and
should be useful for next generation experiments in which most of the
additional information from polarization comes from this channel due to
sensitivity limitations.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D; typos correcte
Spectral signatures of the BCS-BEC crossover in the excitonic insulator phase of the extended Falicov-Kimball model
We explore the spontaneous formation of an excitonic insulator state at the
semimetal-semiconductor transition of mixed-valence materials in the framework
of the spinless Falicov-Kimball model with direct - electron hopping.
Adapting the projector-based renormalization method, we obtain a set of
renormalization differential equations for the extended Falicov-Kimball model
parameters and finally derive analytical expressions for the order parameter,
as well as for the renormalized - and -electron dispersions, momentum
distributions, and wave-vector resolved single-particle spectral functions. Our
numerical results proved the valence transition picture, related to the
appearance of the excitonic insulator phase, in the case of overlapping and
bands. Thereby the photoemission spectra show significant differences
between the weak-to-intermediate and intermediate-to-strong Coulomb attraction
regimes, indicating a BCS-BEC transition of the excitonic condensate.Comment: final version, minor corrections in the text, references update
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