Addressing the wicked problem of water resource management: An ecosystem services approach

This paper develops a systematic assessment of the sustainability of ecosystem services provided by rivers impacted by water storage projects. Given the conflicting preferences amongst stakeholders and the incomplete, uncertain and contradictory understanding about river ecology it is recognized that managing water resources sustainably is a wicked problem. In order to address this wicked problem, the methods of multi-criteria analysis and graph analysis are applied, in accordance with integrated water resource management, to assess the potential of investing in water storage projects and explore for sustainable solutions through the construction of an ecosystem services index.Ecosystem services, ecosystem services index, graph analysis, integrated water resource management, multi-criteria analysis, sustainability, wicked problems, Environmental Economics and Policy, Q15, Q25, Q27, Q51, Q58, Q57,

Evaluating the sustainability of impounded river systems and the cost-effectiveness of dam projects: An ecosystem services approach

In recent times, there has been increasing demand in the Canterbury region of New Zealand for the abstraction of water from rivers. The impact of this demand has lead to unacceptable minimum river flows and has adversely affected river ecology. In an effort to resolve these issues dams have been constructed. To evaluate the impact of these dam projects on all river values, an ecosystem services approach is developed. This ecosystem services approach coupled with various evaluation methods are applied for the purposes of assessing the cost-effectiveness of the Opuha Dam and the sustainability of the Opihi river system now modified by the Opuha Dam. To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of this dam project cost utility analysis is applied through the development of an ecosystem services index (ESI). The index is constructed from the aggregation of normalized indicators that represent each ecosystem service and preferential weights of each ecosystem service. The evaluation of sustainability is considered both according to weak and strong criteria. Weak sustainability is evaluated by a non-declining ecosystem services index over time. Strong sustainability is evaluated by the thresholds or safe minimum standards where an ecosystem service, as represented by an indicator, should not pass below. Fifteen ecosystem services provided by the Opihi river were identified and data for forty-two indicators was compiled to assess the provision of these services pre- and post-dam. Fifteen regional and six local stakeholder representatives were interviewed to elicit preferential weights for each ecosystem service. Assessment of both the ESI and safe minimum standards indicates that since dam construction the river has progressed towards both weak and strong sustainability in its provision of ecosystem services. The cost-effectiveness of the dam however was poor. While further work remains to refine the approach, namely to develop more effective indicators of river ecosystem services, the work does present a novel method to evaluate the impacts of dams on river systems.Cost utility analysis, dam projects, ecosystem services, impounded river systems, indicators and sustainability., Environmental Economics and Policy, Q15, Q25, Q27, Q51, Q58, Q57,

ILC Vertex Tracker R&D

This document summarizes past achievements, current activities and future goals of the R&D program aimed at the design, prototyping and characterization of a full detector module, equipped with monolithic pixel sensors, matching the requirements for the Vertex Tracker at the ILC. We provide a plan of activities to obtain a demonstrator multi-layered vertex tracker equipped with sensors matching the ILC requirements and realistic lightweight ladders in FY11, under the assumption that ILC detector proto-collaborations will be choosing technologies and designs for the Vertex Tracker by that time. The R&D program discussed here started at LBNL in 2004, supported by a Laboratory Directed R&D (LDRD) grant and by funding allocated from the core budget of the LBNL Physics Division and from the Department of Physics at UC Berkeley. Subsequently additional funding has been awarded under the NSF-DOE LCRD program and also personnel have become available through collaborative research with other groups. The aim of the R&D program carried out by our collaboration is to provide a well-integrated, inclusive research effort starting from physics requirements for the ILC Vertex Tracker and addressing Si sensor design and characterization, engineered ladder design, module system issues, tracking and vertex performances and beam test validation. The broad scope of this program is made possible by important synergies with existing know-how and concurrent programs both at LBNL and at the other collaborating institutions. In particular, significant overlaps with LHC detector design, SLHC R&D as well as prototyping for the STAR upgrade have been exploited to optimize the cost per deliverable of our program. This activity is carried out as a collaborative effort together with Accelerator and Fusion Research, the Engineering and the Nuclear Science Divisions at LBNL, INFN and the Department of Physics in Padova, Italy, INFN and the Department of Physics in Torino, Italy and the Department of Physics of Purdue University

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements