The Design of Integrated Monitoring Systems to Provide Early Indications of Environmental/Ecological Changes

One of the important goals of the next two decades is to achieve and maintain ecologically sustainable development of the biosphere. However, the management of ecological systems is rather difficult, largely because of uncertainties in long-term predictions of environmental and ecological behaviour. Thus, one of the objectives for integrated monitoring should be to provide early indications of impending changes so that mitigative actions can be taken. Also it may be important to be able to estimate in advance the detectability of the environmental changes that would ensue if a particular management strategy (e.g., a 30% reduction in sulphur emissions) were to be adopted. Monitoring systems have not traditionally been set up for these purposes. This paper includes a discussion of the factors to be considered in the design of early-warning monitoring systems, and gives some examples. One approach that appears to be particularly promising is that of identifying, quantifying and monitoring the stresses, feedbacks and component lags in the environmental-ecological system being studied

The Micrometeorological Tower at Resolute, N.W.T.

Describes this tower in the Canadian Arctic Islands, and summarizes data, obtained Aug. 1957-Feb. 1961, on vertical profiles of temperature. Average hourly and monthly differences in temperature at 100 and 6.4 ft are presented. These show a temperature drop with increased height in daylight, and a rise with height during darkness, also an unexplained inversion in mid-afternoons, Apr.-June

Conceptual Trends and Implications for Risk Research. Report of the Task Force Meeting: Risk and Policy Analysis Under Conditions of Uncertainty, November 25-27,1985

The Task Force focused on the uncertainties in decision systems for choosing or modifying technologies intended to improve human well-being. The challenge was to delineate an international research agenda to assist communities to venture into the future with greater confidence in technological innovation. The Task Force recommended research in three interrelated areas: (1) Protocols -- Development of procedural advice for the integrated assessment of the contribution of technologies to environmental and economic achievements, and the associated uncertainties. (2) Case Studies -- Integrated assessments involving local or regional clusters of technologies and decision-making bodies, and investigation of ecosystem effects, economic effects, and effects on human well-being, as well as the structure and performance of institutions. (3) Educational Materials -- Development of educational materials to support integrated assessments

An Assessment of Environmental Impacts of Industrial Development. With Special Reference to the Doon Valley, India. Volume 1: The Environmental Assessment. Volume 2: Software and Data. Volume 3: Reports by Collaborators

The present report (Phase I) contains three parts. Volume I covers a conceptual framework for environmental impact assessment of the Doon Valley, a description of present environmental conditions and past trends in the region, and a comprehensive work program and recommendations for Phase II of the project. To a great extent, Volume I summarizes the main findings of Phase I of the Project, reserving the presentation of details for the two other volumes. Volume II is devoted to computer-oriented results of Phase I, including a data bank. The potential users should be equipped with elementary computer knowledge: this volume contains tools (more accurately, the instructions on how to use them) but not any final results. Volume III contains a collection of contributed papers which were presented at the Advisory Committee Meeting (March 1986, IIASA) and some proposals on future activities made by participants of this meeting. Some of the papers are rather general but the majority of them are devoted to specific aspects of the environmental assessment of the Doon Valley and supplement Volume I

Sustainable Development of the Biosphere

The future management of the world's resources depends upon reconciling the needs of socio-economic development with the conservation of the world's environment. This book provides a strategic framework for understanding and managing the long-term and large-scale interactions between these two requirements, based upon the sustainable development of the natural resources of the biosphere. It represents the first results of an on-going collaborative study organized by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and involving some of the world's leading historians, natural scientists, development specialists and policy advisors. It provides an authoritative introduction to some of the most complex contemporary environmental issues, and is written in an easily comprehensible style to make the information accessible to a wide range of professional disciplines, to policy makers and analysts, and to the concerned layman

The Biosphere and Humanity. Paper Presented on IIASA's 20th Anniversary

IIASA celebrated its twentieth anniversary on May 12-13 with its fourth general conference, IIASA '92: An International Conference on the Challenges to Systems Analysis in the Nineties and Beyond. The conference focused on the relations between environment and development and on studies that integrate the methods and findings of several disciplines. The role of systems analysis, a method especially suited to taking account of the linkages between phenomena and of the hierarchical organization of the natural and social world, was also assessed, taking account of the implications this has for IIASA's research approach and activities. This paper is one of six IIASA Collaborative Papers published as part of the report on the conference, an earlier instalment of which was Science and Sustainability, published in 1992. In his paper Dr. Chadwick provides a summary of the principal global models to attract attention over the last few years. What may be called the "global modeling movement" reached its peak in the 1970s -- ten are listed in Chadwick's summary -- and then declined down to two in the 1980s, but apparently the movement has by no means lost its force in the 1990s. To this reader the interest of the models is in the varied and often mutually contradicting results that they produced, all working from similar data and using computer programs with about the same features. Thus the World 2 model, attributed to Jay Forrester, and World 3, developed by Meadows et al., both showed that the world has already, or on present trends will soon, pass its sustainable limit and then collapse. The Rariloche model, originating in Argentina that has had financial difficulties, considers that if the developed countries can pass down two percent of GNP as aid all will be well - the environmental problem is less urgent than the financial. The Japanese model, FUGI, would attain harmonious growth by shifting investment to developing countries, provided there is coordination among the investing countries. Dr. Chadwick's group is preparing its own model, POLESTAR, that should be released soon. Much of the paper is concerned with the new model, that will have some novel and potentially valuable features. What are the criteria of success of a model? In the past the main criterion has been to arouse the interest of a wide public. POLESTAR seeks to meet more exacting requirements than this. We will have to wait for the results before its success can be judged. Meanwhile the reader will be interested in the plan on which it is being created

L'environnement futur en Europe de l'ést et de l'ouest: Consequences de divers scénarios de développement

This study analyzes eleven European environmental policy "dilemmas" for four alternative socioeconomic development pathways to the year 2030. The dilemmas include problems associated with: water management, soil acidification, forestry wood supply, marginalized land, sea level rise, coastal problems, chemical "time bombs", non-point source toxic materials, transport growth, urbanization, and summer oxidant episodes

Future Environments for Europe: Some Implications of Alternative Development Paths

This study analyzes eleven European environmental policy "dilemmas" for four alternative socioeconomic development pathways to the year 2030. The dilemmas include problems associated with: water management, soil acidification, forestry wood supply, marginalized land, sea level rise, coastal problems, chemical "time bombs", non-point source toxic materials, transport growth, urbanization, and summer oxidant episodes

Environmental Prospects for the Next Century: Implications for Long-Term Policy and Research Strategies

This report examines environmental prospects for the twenty-first century, and then suggests some appropriate long-term management strategies and research priorities. A few current global trends (e.g., increasing concentrations of atmospheric trace gases, population, agricultural production) are practically irreversible over the next couple of decades due to inertias in the systems involved. However, there are bound to be nonlinearities, discontinuities, and surprises in the behavior of many environmental and socioeconomic systems. In fact, the main challenge for managers, policy analysts, and politicians is to develop strategies that are robust in response to these surprises, exploiting the opportunities as well as softening the shocks that may arise. The main characteristics of such strategies are that they be adaptive, interdisciplinary, and cross-sectoral. As pointed out by Harvey Brooks (1986), we must avoid partial solutions that may be optimal for a particular sector or decade, but which are far from optimal for the biosphere as a whole over the long term

Cosmological parameters from SDSS and WMAP

We measure cosmological parameters using the three-dimensional power spectrum P(k) from over 200,000 galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) in combination with WMAP and other data. Our results are consistent with a ``vanilla'' flat adiabatic Lambda-CDM model without tilt (n=1), running tilt, tensor modes or massive neutrinos. Adding SDSS information more than halves the WMAP-only error bars on some parameters, tightening 1 sigma constraints on the Hubble parameter from h~0.74+0.18-0.07 to h~0.70+0.04-0.03, on the matter density from Omega_m~0.25+/-0.10 to Omega_m~0.30+/-0.04 (1 sigma) and on neutrino masses from <11 eV to <0.6 eV (95%). SDSS helps even more when dropping prior assumptions about curvature, neutrinos, tensor modes and the equation of state. Our results are in substantial agreement with the joint analysis of WMAP and the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey, which is an impressive consistency check with independent redshift survey data and analysis techniques. In this paper, we place particular emphasis on clarifying the physical origin of the constraints, i.e., what we do and do not know when using different data sets and prior assumptions. For instance, dropping the assumption that space is perfectly flat, the WMAP-only constraint on the measured age of the Universe tightens from t0~16.3+2.3-1.8 Gyr to t0~14.1+1.0-0.9 Gyr by adding SDSS and SN Ia data. Including tensors, running tilt, neutrino mass and equation of state in the list of free parameters, many constraints are still quite weak, but future cosmological measurements from SDSS and other sources should allow these to be substantially tightened.Comment: Minor revisions to match accepted PRD version. SDSS data and ppt figures available at http://www.hep.upenn.edu/~max/sdsspars.htm