Which instruments to preserve forest biodiversity?

In general, neither the social norms nor market dynamics stimulate spontaneously activities and practices conducive to biodiversity. The nature of public good of biodiversity leads to its rapid erosion. Even if it can respond positively to social expectations and improve welfare in the long term2, taking into account biodiversity often leads to changes in the way we produce or how to exercise its property right. The consideration of biodiversity may determine production losses and income decreases.[...]

Integrability and Reduction of Hamiltonian Actions on Dirac Manifolds

For a Hamiltonian, proper and free action of a Lie group $G$ on a Dirac manifold $(M,L)$, with a regular moment map $\mu:M\to \mathfrak{g}^*$, the manifolds $M/G$, $\mu^{-1}(0)$ and $\mu^{-1}(0)/G$ all have natural induced Dirac structures. If $(M,L)$ is an integrable Dirac structure, we show that $M/G$ is always integrable, but $\mu^{-1}(0)$ and $\mu^{-1}(0)/G$ may fail to be integrable, and we describe the obstructions to their integrability

Long-term & large-scale viscous evolution of dense planetary rings

We investigate the long-term and large-scale viscous evolution of dense planetary rings using a simple 1D numerical code. We use a physically realistic viscosity model derived from N-body simulations (Daisaka et al., 2001), and dependent on the disk's local properties (surface mass density, particle size, distance to the planet). Particularly, we include the effects of gravitational instabilities (wakes) that importantly enhance the disk's viscosity. We show that common estimates of the disk's spreading time-scales with constant viscosity significantly underestimate the rings' lifetime. With a realistic viscosity model, an initially narrow ring undergoes two successive evolutionary stages: (1) a transient rapid spreading when the disk is self-gravitating, with the formation of a density peak inward and an outer region marginally gravitationally stable, and with an emptying time-scale proportional to 1/M_0^2 (where M_0 is the disk's initial mass) (2) an asymptotic regime where the spreading rate continuously slows down as larger parts of the disk become not-self-gravitating due to the decrease of the surface density, until the disk becomes completely not-self-gravitating. At this point its evolution dramatically slows down, with an emptying time-scale proportional to 1/M_0, which significantly increases the disk's lifetime compared to the case with constant viscosity. We show also that the disk's width scales like t^{1/4} with the realistic viscosity model, while it scales like t^{1/2} in the case of constant viscosity, resulting in much larger evolutionary time-scales in our model. We find however that the present shape of Saturn's rings looks like a 100 million-years old disk in our simulations. Concerning Jupiter's, Uranus' and Neptune's rings that are faint today, it is not likely that they were much more massive in the past and lost most of their mass due to viscous spreading alone.Comment: 18 pages, 18 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in Icaru