Climate Change Risks, Ecosystem Feedback, Vulnerability and Resilience In Urbanized Coastal Zones

Global climate change is one of the most critical issues of our time, and its ramifications are far reaching. Most global cities are located near the coasts (de Sherbinin et al. 2007) with many inhabiting low-lying coastal zones (de Sherbinin et al. 2007; McGranahan et al. 2007). This puts these cities at heightened risk of climate change hazards, but physical hazards alone will not predict the impacts of climate change. While many models have been put forward to help predict the nature and extent of climate change impacts, most have focused on the physical and environmental processes at play and have done less to understand how physical hazards interact with social dynamics to create risks. Vulnerability and resilience research has recognized that social forces interact with exposure to hazards to create impacts but, in general, this work has focused narrowly on particular localities. Some papers have examined patterns that emerge within a broad selection of literature from different schools on climate change, disaster risk management, adaptation and response; they draw conclusions from these reviews that can point towards a more unified view to help make predictions that can be applied within wide ranging local contexts. This paper reviews the literature of climate change, disaster risk management, adaptation, response and capacity, broadly, across research perspectives, but will focus mainly on the urbanized coastal zones (UCZ) for analysis of local case studies. Research of this type can point to some general conclusions that may guide policy formulation and create better adaptation interventions (Berrang-Ford et al. 2010)

Urban Sustainability and Resilience: From Theory to Practice

Urbanization and urban areas are profoundly altering the relationship between society and the environment, and affecting cities’ sustainability and resilience in complex ways at alarming rates. Over the last decades, sustainability and resilience have become key concepts aimed at understanding existing urban dynamics and responding to the challenges of creating livable urban futures. Sustainability and resilience have also moved and are now core analytic and normative concepts for many scholars, transnational networks and urban communities of practice. Yet, even with this elevated scholarly attention, strategies for bridging between research and practice remain elusive, and efforts to understand and affect change towards more sustainable and resilient urban centers have often fallen short. This paper seeks to synthesize, from this issue’s papers and other strands of literature, the knowledge, theory and practice of urban sustainability and resilience. Specifically, we focus on what capacities urban actors draw on to create sustainability and resilience and how different definitions of these concepts intersect, complement, or contradict each other. We then examine the implications of those intersections and differences in the efforts by urban actors to enhance the capacity to change unsustainable trajectories and transform themselves, their communities, and their cities toward sustainable and resilient relationships with the environment

Effects of Ozone, Acid Mist and Soil Characteristics on Clonal Norway Spruce (Picea abies (L.) Kast.) - An Introduction to the Joint 14 Month Tree Exposure Experiment in Closed Chambers.

This paper introduces a series of publications referring to a single 14-month laboratory study testing the hypothesis that the recent decline of Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) at higher elevations of the Bavarian Forest and comparable forests in medium-range mountains and in the calcareous Alps is caused by an interaction of elevated ozone concentrations, acid mist and site-specific soil (nutritional) characteristics. The effect of climatic extremes, a further important factor, was not included as an experimental variable but was considered by testing of the frost resistance of the experimental plants. Results of these individual studies are presented and discussed in the following 14 papers. Plants from six pre-selected clones of 3-year-old Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) Karst.) were planted in April 1985 in an acidic soil from the Bavarian Forest, or a calcareous soil from the Bavarian Alps. After a transition period, plants were transferred, in July 1986, into four large environmental chambers and exposed for 14 months to an artificial climate and air pollutant regime based on long-term monitoring in the Inner Bavarian Forest. The climatic exposure protocol followed realistic seasonal and diurnal cycles (summer maximum temperature, 26°C; total mean temperature, 9·8°C; winter minimum, −14°C; mean relative humidity, 70%; maximum irradiance, 500 W m−2; daylength summer maximum, 17 h; winter minimum, 8 h). Plants were fumigated with ozone, generated from pure oxygen (control: annual mean of 50 μg m−3; pollution treatment: annual mean of 100 μg m−3 with 68 episodes of 130–360 μg m−3 lasting 4–24 h), and background concentrations of SO2 (22 μg m−3) and NO2 (20 μg m−3); windspeed was set at a constant 0·6 m s−1. Plants were additionally exposed to prolonged episodes of misting at pH 5·6 (control) and pH 3·0 (treatment). Simulation of the target climatic and fumigation conditions was highly reliable and reproducible (temperature ± 0·5°C; rh±10%; ozone ±10 μg m−3; SO2 and NO2 ± 15 μg m−3). &nbsp