A review of climate change and the implementation of marine biodiversity legislation in the United Kingdom

1. Marine legislation, the key means by which the conservation of marine biodiversity is achieved, has been developing since the 1960s. In recent decades, an increasing focus on ‘holistic’ policy development is evident, compared with earlier ‘piecemeal’ sectoral approaches. Important marine legislative tools being used in the United Kingdom, and internationally, include the designation of marine protected areas and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) with its aim of meeting ‘Good Environmental Status’ (GES) for European seas by 2020. 2. There is growing evidence of climate change impacts on marine biodiversity, which may compromise the effectiveness of any legislation intended to promote sustainable marine resource management. 3. A review of key marine biodiversity legislation relevant to the UK shows climate change was not considered in the drafting of much early legislation. Despite the huge increase in knowledge of climate change impacts in recent decades, legislation is still limited in how it takes these impacts into account. There is scope, however, to account for climate change in implementing much of the legislation through (a) existing references to environmental variability; (b) review cycles; and (c) secondary legislation and complementary policy development. 4. For legislation relating to marine protected areas (e.g. the EC Habitats and Birds Directives), climate change has generally not been considered in the site-designation process, or for ongoing management, with the exception of the Marine (Scotland) Act. Given that changing environmental conditions (e.g. rising temperatures and ocean acidification) directly affect the habitats and species that sites are designated for, how this legislation is used to protect marine biodiversity in a changing climate requires further consideration. 5. Accounting for climate change impacts on marine biodiversity in the development and implementation of legislation is vital to enable timely, adaptive management responses. Marine modelling can play an important role in informing management decisions

Source apportionment of groundwater pollutants in Apulian agricultural sites using multivariate statistical analyses: case study of Foggia province

<p>Abstract</p> <p>The electric grid in the United States has been suffering from underinvestment for years, and now faces pressing challenges from rising demand and deteriorating infrastructure. High congestion levels in transmission lines are greatly reducing the efficiency of electricity generation and distribution. In this paper, we assess the faults of the current electric grid and quantify the costs of maintaining the current system into the future. While the proposed “smart grid” contains many proposals to upgrade the ailing infrastructure of the electric grid, we argue that smart meter installation in each U.S. household will offer a significant reduction in peak demand on the current system. A smart meter is a device which monitors a household’s electricity consumption in real-time, and has the ability to display real-time pricing in each household. We conclude that these devices will provide short-term and long-term benefits to utilities and consumers. The smart meter will enable utilities to closely monitor electricity consumption in real-time, while also allowing households to adjust electricity consumption in response to real-time price adjustments.</p

Strength and ductility demands on wind turbine towers due to earthquake and wind load

In earthquake prone areas, wind and earthquake loads are assumed to be statistically uncorrelated, therefore their interaction is ignored by existing design guidelines. However, the fact that strong earthquake events are commonly followed by aftershocks and that wind is constantly flowing at high speeds around wind farms increase the probability of their joint occurrence, thus making current design assumptions questionable. This investigation shows that multi-hazard scenarios magnify strength demands of wind turbine towers designed against isolated load conditions, hence modifying their performance level. It is also shown that, under certain conditions, the probabilities associated to the joint occurrence of earthquake and low to strong wind events match or exceed those related to the original design, thus rendering wind energy infrastructure susceptible to unforeseen damage

Combination schemes for turning point prediction

We propose new forecast combination schemes for predicting turning points of business cycles. The combination schemes deal with the forecasting performance of a given set of models and possibly providing better turning point predictions. We consider turning point predictions generated by autoregressive (AR) and Markov-Switching AR models, which are commonly used for business cycle analysis. In order to account for parameter uncertainty we consider a Bayesian approach to both estimation and prediction and compare, in terms of statistical accuracy, the individual models and the combined turning point predictions for the United States and Euro area business cycles

The effect of depth‐duration‐frequency model recalibration on rainfall return period estimates

In November 2009 and December 2015, two record‐breaking 24‐hr rainfalls occurred in Cumbria, UK, significantly changing the perception of flood risk for local communities. FEH13, the current UK rainfall depth‐duration‐frequency (DDF) model, estimated return periods of around 1,000 years for both events. The previous model, FEH99, received criticism from panel engineers responsible for making technical safety decisions relating to reservoirs for appearing to estimate relatively short return periods for extreme events. Although FEH13 is more consistent with current probable maximum precipitation (PMP) estimates, there is high uncertainty in both models due to the limited number of extremes captured by UK rain gauges. Furthermore, neither model included the 2009 or 2015 event in its calibration. Here, we re‐calibrate FEH13 using additional gauged rainfall data collected in Cumbria during 2006–2016, including the record‐breaking 2009 and 2015 storms. Using the updated calibration data set reduces the estimated return periods of the 2009 and 2015 events to approximately 140 years each. This case study illustrates the considerable uncertainty in short‐sample records, demonstrates the importance of maximising the quantity of relevant calibration data, shows that perception of risk depends upon the method and data used, and illustrates the difficulty of separating trends and natural variability