| 1. |
- Baresel, Christian, et al.
(författare)
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Uncertainty-Accounting Environmental Policy and Management of Water Systems
- 2007
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Ingår i: Environmental Science & Technology. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 0013-936X .- 1520-5851. ; 41:10, s. 3653–3659-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Environmental policies for water quality and ecosystemmanagement do not commonly require explicit stochasticaccounts of uncertainty and risk associated with thequantification and prediction of waterborne pollutant loadsand abatement effects. In this study, we formulate andinvestigate a possible environmental policy that does requirean explicit stochastic uncertainty account. We compareboth the environmental and economic resource allocationperformance of such an uncertainty-accounting environmentalpolicy with that of deterministic, risk-prone and riskaverseenvironmental policies under a range of differenthypothetical, yet still possible, scenarios. The comparisonindicates that a stochastic uncertainty-accountingpolicy may perform better than deterministic policies overa range of different scenarios. Even in the absence ofreliable site-specific data, reported literature values appearto be useful for such a stochastic account of uncertainty.
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| 2. |
- Ma, Yan, et al.
(författare)
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Linking climate and infectious disease trends in the Northern/Arctic Region
- 2021
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Ingår i: Scientific Reports. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2045-2322. ; 11:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recognition of climate-sensitive infectious diseases is crucial for mitigating health threats from climate change. Recent studies have reasoned about potential climate sensitivity of diseases in the Northern/Arctic Region, where climate change is particularly pronounced. By linking disease and climate data for this region, we here comprehensively quantify empirical climate-disease relationships. Results show significant relationships of borreliosis, leptospirosis, tick-borne encephalitis (TBE), Puumala virus infection, cryptosporidiosis, and Q fever with climate variables related to temperature and freshwater conditions. These data-driven results are consistent with previous reasoning-based propositions of climate-sensitive infections as increasing threats for humans, with notable exceptions for TBE and leptospirosis. For the latter, the data imply decrease with increasing temperature and precipitation experienced in, and projected for, the Northern/Arctic Region. This study provides significant data-based underpinning for simplified empirical assessments of the risks of several infectious diseases under future climate change.
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| 3. |
- Page, Jessica, et al.
(författare)
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A more complete accounting of greenhouse gas emissions and sequestration in urban landscapes
- 2021
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Ingår i: Anthropocene. - : Elsevier BV. - 2213-3054. ; 34
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Understanding interactions between complex human and natural systems involved in urban carbon cycling is important when balancing the dual goals of urban development to accommodate a growing population, while also achieving urban carbon neutrality. This study develops a systems breakdown accounting method to assess the urban carbon cycle. The method facilitates greater understanding of the complex interactions within and between systems involved in this cycle, in order to identify ways in which humans can adapt their interactions to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions from urban regions. Testing the systems breakdown accounting method in Stockholm County, Sweden, we find that it provides new insights into the carbon interactions with urban green-blue areas in the region. Results show how Stockholm County can reduce its emissions and achieve its goal of local carbon net-neutrality, if the green areas protect its carbon sequestration potential and maintain it to offset projected remaining active emissions. Results also show that the inland surface waters and inner archipelago waters within Stockholm County are a considerable source of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. A better understanding of these water emissions is necessary to formulate effective planning and policy measures that can reduce urban emissions. The insights gained from this study can also be applied in other regions. In particular, water bodies could play a significant role in the urban carbon cycle and using this knowledge for more complete carbon accounting, and a better understanding of green-blue interactions could help to reduce net urban emissions in many places.
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| 4. |
- Engström, Rebecka Ericsdotter, et al.
(författare)
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Succeeding at home and abroad: accounting for the international spillovers of cities’ SDG actions
- 2021
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Ingår i: npj Urban Sustainability. - : Springer Nature. - 2661-8001. ; 1:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Cities are vital for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), but different local strategies to advance on the same SDG may cause different ‘spillovers’ elsewhere. Research efforts that support governance of such spillovers are urgently needed to empower ambitious cities to ‘account globally’ when acting locally on SDG implementation strategies.
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| 5. |
- Engström, Rebecka Ericsdotter, 1984-
(författare)
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Exploring cross-resource impacts of urban sustainability measures : an urban climate-land-energy-water nexus analysis
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In an increasingly urban world, cities' global resource uses grow. Two fundamental resources for making cities liveable are water and energy. These resources are also closely interlinked – systems that convert and deliver energy to cities require water, and urban water systems use energy. In addition, these two resource systems affect and are affected by land use and climate change. This ‘nexus’ between climate, land use, energy and water (CLEW) systems has been extensively studied in the past decade, mainly with a focus on national and transboundary CLEW systems. This doctoral thesis develops the CLEW nexus research from an urban perspective.Two quantitative analyses examine how different types of sustainability measures in cities affect intended and unintended CLEW systems. First, the CLEW impacts of a set of sustainability measures in New York City are assessed - from water conservation to emission reductions. Results show that every measure affects (to varying degrees) all studied sustainability dimensions - water, energy and climate - and that the impacts can be quantified through a reference-resource-to-service-system (RRSS).The second quantitative study focuses on how CLEW impacts from a city's sustainability efforts spread beyond local and international borders. It investigates how global water and land use are affected in alternative scenarios to achieve climate neutrality in 2030 in the town of Oskarshamn, Sweden, using an energy systems simulation model. The study finds that both the magnitude and the geographical distribution of land and water requirements vary between scenarios. A strategy to achieve climate neutrality that invests in electrification leads to increased national water use, while a strategy that relies on biofuels has a greater impact on water and land use internationally. When results are translated to interactions between the UN's sustainable development goals (SDGs), they reveal that SDG synergies and trade-offs are 'strategy-dependent': different options for achieving SDGs on energy, sustainable cities and climate action have varying consequences for the advancement of SDGs on sustainable water, food production and biodiversity.To shed light on how data challenges affect quantitative urban nexus studies, uncertainty assessments of selected thesis’ results are conducted and complemented with a thematic analysis of a set of recently published urban nexus papers. Together, they indicate that analytical choices, uncertainties in results and - as a consequence - research foci are influenced by data limitations in both this thesis and in other urban nexus studies.Lastly, the finding from the Oskarshamn analysis – that SDG interactions are strategy-dependent – is deliberated with experts within sustainability sciences and SDG interaction research. From this, a research agenda is proposed with measures to make SDG 'spillovers' visible in local level decision-making.Taken together, the thesis contributes to filling several knowledge gaps on how urban sustainability measures within the CLEW systems interact within and beyond city limits, and proposes analytical approaches to quantify these interactions. It further points out how current data challenges constrain quantitative urban nexus analyses and highlights research needs to improve data management as well as other key efforts to enable consideration of nexus interactions, including SDG 'spillovers', in cities' sustainability work.
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| 6. |
- Blösch, Günter, et al.
(författare)
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Twenty-three unsolved problems in hydrology (UPH) - a community perspective
- 2019
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Ingår i: Hydrological Sciences Journal. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0262-6667 .- 2150-3435. ; 64:10, s. 1141-1158
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper is the outcome of a community initiative to identify major unsolved scientific problems in hydrology motivated by a need for stronger harmonisation of research efforts. The procedure involved a public consultation through online media, followed by two workshops through which a large number of potential science questions were collated, prioritised, and synthesised. In spite of the diversity of the participants (230 scientists in total), the process revealed much about community priorities and the state of our science: a preference for continuity in research questions rather than radical departures or redirections from past and current work. Questions remain focused on the process-based understanding of hydrological variability and causality at all space and time scales. Increased attention to environmental change drives a new emphasis on understanding how change propagates across interfaces within the hydrological system and across disciplinary boundaries. In particular, the expansion of the human footprint raises a new set of questions related to human interactions with nature and water cycle feedbacks in the context of complex water management problems. We hope that this reflection and synthesis of the 23 unsolved problems in hydrology will help guide research efforts for some years to come.
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| 7. |
- Gren, Ing-Marie, et al.
(författare)
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Does divergence of nutrient load measurements matter for successful mitigation of marine eutrophication?
- 2012
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Ingår i: Ambio. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0044-7447 .- 1654-7209. ; 41:2, s. 151-160
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Successful implementation of an international nutrient abatement agreement, such as the Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP), requires consistent understanding of the baseline nutrient loads, and a perception of acceptable costs and fairness in targeted reductions of these base line loads. This article presents a general framework for identifying the implications of divergence between different nutrient load quantification approaches, with regard to both cost and fairness criteria outcomes, for the international agreement to decrease nutrient loads into the Baltic Sea as presented in the BSAP. The results indicate that even relatively small divergence in the nutrient load quantification translates into relatively large differences in abatement cost for different Baltic Sea countries. A robust result, irrespective of differences in nutrient load assessments, is a conflict between abatement cost effectiveness and fairness, with relatively poor countries facing heavy abatement cost burdens for cost-effective international load abatement.
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| 8. |
- Chen, Yuanying, et al.
(författare)
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Nutrient source attribution : Quantitative typology distinction of active and legacy source contributions to waterborne loads
- 2021
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Ingår i: Hydrological Processes. - : Wiley. - 0885-6087 .- 1099-1085. ; 35:7
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Distinction between active and legacy sources of nutrients is needed for effective reduction of waterborne nutrient loads and associated eutrophication. This study quantifies main typological differences in nutrient load behaviour versus water discharge for active and legacy sources. This quantitative typology is used for source attribution based on monitoring data for water discharge and concentrations of total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorous (TP) from 37 catchments draining into the Baltic Sea along the coastline of Sweden over the period 2003-2013. Results indicate dominant legacy source contributions to the monitored loads of TN and TP in most (33 of the total 37) study catchments. Dominant active sources are indicated in 1 catchment for TN, and mixed sources are indicated in 3 catchments for TN, and 4 catchments for TP. The TN and TP concentration contributions are quantified to be overall higher from the legacy than the active sources. Legacy concentrations also correlate well with key indicators of human activity in the catchments, agricultural land share for TN (R-2 = 0.65) and population density for TP (R-2 = 0.56). Legacy-dominated nutrient concentrations also change more slowly than in catchments with dominant active or mixed sources. Various data-based results and indications converge in indicating legacy source contributions as largely dominant, mainly anthropogenic, and with near-zero average change trends in the present study of catchments draining into the Baltic Sea along the coastline of Sweden, as in other parts of the world. These convergent indications emphasize needs to identify and map the different types of sources in each catchment, and differentiate strategies and measures to target each source type for possible achievement of shorter- and longer-term goals of water quality improvement.
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| 9. |
- Hambäck, Peter A., et al.
(författare)
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Tradeoffs and synergies in wetland multifunctionality : A scaling issue
- 2023
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Ingår i: Science of the Total Environment. - Amsterdam : Elsevier BV. - 0048-9697 .- 1879-1026. ; 862
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Wetland area in agricultural landscapes has been heavily reduced to gain land for crop production, but in recent years there is increased societal recognition of the negative consequences from wetland loss on nutrient retention, biodiversity and a range of other benefits to humans. The current trend is therefore to re-establish wetlands, often with an aim to achieve the simultaneous delivery of multiple ecosystem services, i.e., multifunctionality. Here we review the literature on key objectives used to motivate wetland re-establishment in temperate agricultural landscapes (provision of flow regulation, nutrient retention, climate mitigation, biodiversity conservation and cultural ecosystem services), and their relationships to environmental properties, in order to identify potential for tradeoffs and synergies concerning the development of multifunctional wetlands. Through this process, we find that there is a need for a change in scale from a focus on single wetlands to wetlandscapes (multiple neighboring wetlands including their catchments and surrounding landscape features) if multiple societal and environmental goals are to be achieved. Finally, we discuss the key factors to be considered when planning for re-establishment of wetlands that can support achievement of a wide range of objectives at the landscape scale.
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| 10. |
- Cantoni, Jacopo, et al.
(författare)
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Legacy contributions to diffuse water pollution : Data-driven multi-catchment quantification for nutrients and carbon
- 2023
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Ingår i: Science of the Total Environment. - : Elsevier BV. - 0048-9697 .- 1879-1026. ; 879, s. 163092-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Legacy pollutants are increasingly proposed as possible reasons for widespread failures to improve water quality, de -spite the implementation of stricter regulations and mitigation measures. This study investigates this possibility, using multi-catchment data and relatively simple, yet mechanistically-based, source distinction relationships between water discharges and chemical concentrations and loads. The relationships are tested and supported by the available catch -ment data. They show dominant legacy contributions for total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP) and total organic carbon (TOC) across catchment locations and scales, from local to country-wide around Sweden. Consistently across the study catchments, close relationships are found between the legacy concentrations of TN and TOC and the land shares of agriculture and of the sum of agriculture and forests, respectively. The legacy distinction and quantification capabilities provided by the data-driven approach of this study could guide more effective pollution mitigation and should be tested in further research for other chemicals and various sites around the world.
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