International Journal of Water Gouvernance

A tool to measure the potential ecological impact (footprint) of developments outside of protected areas is novel and long overdue. Whilst there are numerous methods currently available for mapping important regions for conservation within protected areas, there are few suitable tools available for assessing the ecological value of landscapes that are 'beyond the reserves'. Given that this accounts for over 88% of the world's terrestrial surface, a systematic tool for determining the ecological value of these landscapes could be relevant to any industrial development that results in a parcel of land being transformed from 'natural' to 'industrial'. Results are presented of a joint project between Statoil and University of Oxford, UK to develop an automatic web-based tool that can assess the ecological value of land outside of protected areas. Ecological factors currently considered within this tool include i) biodiversity, ii) vulnerability, iii) fragmentation, iv) connectivity and v) resilience. The tool has the capability to provide ecological valuations for parcels of land at 300m resolution and uses data that are publicly available and have mostly global coverage. We present results for three case study areas in Canada, Algeria and the Russian Federation to demonstrate its potential and how it can be used to plan development within a concession area in order that damage to local ecosystems and ecosystem functioning is minimized. Copyright 2011, Society of Petroleum Engineers

Determining the ecological value of landscapes beyond protected areas

Whilst there are a number of mapping methods available for determining important areas for conservation within protected areas, there are few tools available for assessing the ecological value of landscapes that are 'beyond the reserves'. A systematic tool for determining the ecological value of landscapes outside of protected areas could be relevant to any development that results in a parcel of land being transformed from its 'natural' state to an alternative state (e.g., industrial, agricultural). Specifically what is needed is a method to determine which landscapes beyond protected areas are important for the ecological processes that they support and the threatened and vulnerable species that they contain. This paper presents the results of a project to develop a method for mapping ecologically important landscapes beyond protected areas; a Local Ecological Footprinting Tool (LEFT). The method uses existing globally available web-based databases and models to provide an ecological score based on five key ecological features (biodiversity, vulnerability, fragmentation, connectivity and resilience) for every 300. m parcel within a given region. The end product is a map indicating ecological value across the landscape. We demonstrate the potential of this method through its application to three study regions in Canada, Algeria and the Russian Federation. The primary audience of this tool are those practitioners involved in planning the location of any landscape scale industrial/business or urban (e.g., new town) facility outside of protected areas. It provides a pre-planning tool, for use before undertaking a more costly field-based environmental impact assessment, and quickly highlights areas of high ecological value to avoid in the location of facilities. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd

Energy consistency in homogenisation-based upscaling scheme for localisation in masonry shells

This paper presents an enhanced multi-scale framework for the failure of quasi-brittle thin shells as an improvement of the one proposed in Mercatoris and Massart (Int J Numer Methods Eng 85:1177-1206, 2011). The computational homogenisation-based multi-scale methodology is an attractive solution for heterogeneous materials when their characterisation becomes difficult because of complex evolving behaviour such as damage-induced anisotropy and localisation of degradation. An enhanced upscaling scheme for damage localisation in shell structures is proposed using a periodic computational homogenisation procedure and an energy equivalence between mesostructural material instabilities and aggregate macroscopic cracks. The structural cracking is treated by using embedded strong discontinuities incorporated in the shell formulation, the behaviour of which is deduced by an energetically consistent upscaling scheme. The effects of this energy equivalence are discussed based on results of multi-scale simulations of out-of-plane loaded masonry walls including flexural stair-case failure and compared to the results of direct numerical simulations. A good agreement is observed in terms of the load-bearing capacity and of associated energy dissipation. Based on the homogenisation procedure, the orientation of the structural-scale cracking is detected by means of an acoustic tensor-based failure detection adapted to shell kinematics. A multi-scale bifurcation analysis on a simple loading case is performed in order to discuss the selection of the cracking orientation based on energetic considerations. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V

Impact of pollution on rivers in Montenegro: Ecotoxicological perspective

Montenegrin surface water and groundwater are important for the Balkan Peninsula since they are connected by the transboundary Dinaric Karst Aquifer System with the waters of additional five countries. The pollution from the surface water can rapidly infiltrate in aquifer and endanger this sensible ecosystem and the health of humans through drinking water supply. This chapter gives insights in the pressures of pollution on Montenegrin waters and in a limited literature data regarding freshwater ecotoxicological studies in Montenegro. Also, this chapter provides new ecotoxicological data obtained during survey in 2019, with a focus on the sites which are identified as hotspots of fecal pollution. The highest responses of biomarkers which indicate embryotoxic, genotoxic, and phytotoxic effects in zebrafish embryo test and in roots of Allium cepa were obtained at Ćehotina – downstream of Pljevlja. Similar results were detected at the site downstream Mojkovac at Tara, yet this site is affected by different type of pollution. Genotoxic endpoints in zebrafish stressed out sites on Morača and Lim rivers which are under pressures of fecal pollution. The data in this chapter provides an insight into current status obtained by the ex situ bioassays and indicates need for more comprehensive in situ assessment