User-driven design of decision support systems for polycentric environmental resources management

Open and decentralized technologies such as the Internet provide increasing opportunities to create knowledge and deliver computer-based decision support for multiple types of users across scales. However, environmental decision support systems/tools (henceforth EDSS) are often strongly science-driven and assuming single types of decision makers, and hence poorly suited for more decentralized and polycentric decision making contexts. In such contexts, EDSS need to be tailored to meet diverse user requirements to ensure that it provides useful (relevant), usable (intuitive), and exchangeable (institutionally unobstructed) information for decision support for different types of actors. To address these issues, we present a participatory framework for designing EDSS that emphasizes a more complete understanding of the decision making structures and iterative design of the user interface. We illustrate the application of the framework through a case study within the context of water-stressed upstream/downstream communities in Lima, Peru

Environmental Virtual Observatories (EVOs): Prospects for knowledge co-creation and resilience in the Information Age

Developments in technologies are shaping information access globally. This presents opportunities and challenges for understanding the role of new technologies in sustainability research. This article focuses on a suite of technologies termed Environmental Virtual Observatories (EVOs) developed for communicating observations and simulation of environmental processes. A strength of EVOs is that they are open and decentralised, thus democratising flow and ownership of information between multiple actors. However, EVOs are discussed rarely beyond their technical aspects. By evaluating the evolution of EVOs, we illustrate why it is timely to engage with policy and societal aspects as well. While first generation EVOs are primed for scientists, second generation EVOs can have broader implications for knowledge co-creation and resilience through their participatory design

A comparative analysis of ecosystem services valuation approaches for application at the local scale and in data scarce regions

Despite significant advances in the development of the ecosystem services concept across the science and policy arenas, the valuation of ecosystem services to guide sustainable development remains challenging, especially at a local scale and in data scarce regions. In this paper, we review and compare major past and current valuation approaches and discuss their key strengths and weaknesses for guiding policy decisions. To deal with the complexity of methods used in different valuation approaches, our review uses multiple entry points: data vs simulation, habitat vs system vs place-based, specific vs entire portfolio, local vs regional scale, and monetary vs non-monetary. We find that although most valuation approaches are useful to explain ecosystem services at a macro/system level, an application of locally relevant valuation approaches, which allows for a more integrated valuation relevant to decision making is still hindered by data-scarcity. The advent of spatially explicit policy support systems shows particular promise to make the best use of available data and simulations. Data collection remains crucial for the local scale and in data scarce regions. Leveraging citizen science-based data and knowledge co-generation may support the integrated valuation, while at the same time making the valuation process more inclusive, replicable and policy-oriented

Projected increases in the annual flood pulse of the Western Amazon

The impact of a changing climate on the Amazon basin is a subject of intensive research because of its rich biodiversity and the significant role of rainforests in carbon cycling. Climate change has also a direct hydrological impact, and increasing efforts have focused on understanding the hydrological dynamics at continental and subregional scales, such as the Western Amazon. New projections from the Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project Phase 5 ensemble indicate consistent climatic warming and increasing seasonality of precipitation in the Peruvian Amazon basin. Here we use a distributed land surface model to quantify the potential impact of this change in the climate on the hydrological regime of the upper Amazon river. Using extreme value analysis, historical and future projections of the annual minimum, mean, and maximum river flows are produced for a range of return periods between 1 and 100 yr. We show that the RCP 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios of climate change project an increased severity of the wet season flood pulse (7.5% and 12% increases respectively for the 100 yr return floods). These findings agree with previously projected increases in high extremes under the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios climate projections, and are important to highlight due to the potential consequences on reproductive processes of in-stream species, swamp forest ecology, and socio-economy in the floodplain, amidst a growing literature that more strongly emphasises future droughts and their impact on the viability of the rainforest system over greater Amazonia

A critical assessment of the JULES land surface model hydrology for humid tropical environments

Global land surface models (LSMs) such as the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES) are originally developed to provide surface boundary conditions for climate models. They are increasingly used for hydrological simulation, for instance to simulate the impacts of land use changes and other perturbations on the water cycle. This study investigates how well such models represent the major hydrological fluxes at the relevant spatial and temporal scales-an important question for reliable model applications in poorly understood, data-scarce environments. The JULES-LSM is implemented in a 360 000 km2 humid tropical mountain basin of the Peruvian Andes-Amazon at 12-km grid resolution, forced with daily satellite and climate reanalysis data. The simulations are evaluated using conventional discharge-based evaluation methods, and by further comparing the magnitude and internal variability of the basin surface fluxes such as evapotranspiration, throughfall, and surface and subsurface runoff of the model with those observed in similar environments elsewhere. We find reasonably positive model efficiencies and high correlations between the simulated and observed streamflows, but high root-mean-square errors affecting the performance in smaller, upper sub-basins. We attribute this to errors in the water balance and JULES-LSM's inability to model baseflow. We also found a tendency to under-represent the high evapotranspiration rates of the region. We conclude that strategies to improve the representation of tropical systems to be (1) addressing errors in the forcing and (2) incorporating local wetland and regional floodplain in the subsurface representation

High-resolution Satellite-Gauge Merged Precipitation Climatologies of the Tropical Andes

Satellite precipitation products are becoming increasingly useful to complement rain gauge networks in regions where these are too sparse to capture spatial precipitation patterns, such as in the Tropical Andes. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Precipitation Radar (TPR) was active for 17 years (1998–2014) and has generated one of the longest single-sensor, high-resolution, and high-accuracy rainfall records. In this study, high-resolution (5 km) gridded mean monthly climatological precipitation is derived from the raw orbital TPR data (TRMM 2A25) and merged with 723 rain gauges using multiple satellite-gauge (S-G) merging approaches. The resulting precipitation products are evaluated by cross validation and catchment water balances (runoff ratios) for 50 catchments across the Tropical Andes. Results show that the TPR captures major synoptic and seasonal precipitation patterns and also accurately defines orographic gradients but underestimates absolute monthly rainfall rates. The S-G merged products presented in this study constitute an improved source of climatological rainfall data, outperforming the gridded TPR product as well as a rain gauge-only product based on ordinary Kriging. Among the S-G merging methods, performance of inverse distance interpolation of satellite-gauge residuals was similar to that of geostatistical methods, which were more sensitive to gauge network density. High uncertainty and low performance of the merged precipitation products predominantly affected regions with low and intermittent precipitation regimes (e.g., Peruvian Pacific coast) and is likely linked to the low TPR sampling frequency. All S-G merged products presented in this study are available in the public domain

Failure analysis of natural gas pipeline

Incident involving failures of 6months old API 5L X42 (NPS8) and SDR 17, 125mm medium density polyethylene pipe (MDPE) supplying natural gas to an industrial customer has caused serious 7h supply disruption. Study was performed to identify the most probable cause of the pipes failures. The study conducted by reviewing the existing design and construction data, visual physical inspection, pipe material analysis, structural analysis using NASTRAN and Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis (CFD) using FLUENT. Investigations revealed that high pressure water jet from leaked water pipe had completely mixed with surrounding soil forming water soil slurry (high erosive properties) formed at a close vicinity of these pipes. Continuous impaction of this slurry upon the API 5L X42 pipe surface had caused losses of the pipe coating materials. Corrosion quickly ensued and material loss was rapid because of the continuous erosion of oxidised material that occurred simultaneously. This phenomenon explains the rapid thinning of the steel pipe body which later led to its failure. Metallurgical study using photomicrograph shows that the morphology of the steel material was consistent and did not show any evidence of internal corrosion or micro fractures. The structural and CFD simulation results proved that the location, rate and the extent of erosion failures on the pipe surfaces can be well predicted, as compared with actual instances

Investigation on the effect of THF on Nitrogen Hydrate formation under isobaric condition

In this paper, we studied nitrogen (N2) hydrate formation in the presence of tetrahydrofuran (THF) under 3 different conditions; different concentration of THF (0, 3 and 30 %(v/v), different temperature setting (room temperature and induced temperature) and different water content (15, 35 and 55 mL) in an isobaric condition. We found that in the presence of THF which acting as an enhancer, hydrate formation kinetic is highly influenced by these parameters. We observed a striking contrast in hydrate formation behaviour observed at room temperature (RT) and induced temperature (IT) with and without the presence of THF under similar operating conditions. At the presence of 30 %(v/v) of THF in 15 mL water, it can be seen that, hydrate tend to form faster than other samples. Visual observation of N2hydrates are also conducted at 30 %(v/v) of THF in 15 mL water