| 1. |
- Barnes, Paul W., et al.
(författare)
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Ozone depletion, ultraviolet radiation, climate change and prospects for a sustainable future
- 2019
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Ingår i: Nature Sustainability. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2398-9629. ; 2:7, s. 569-579
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- © 2019, Springer Nature Limited. Changes in stratospheric ozone and climate over the past 40-plus years have altered the solar ultraviolet (UV) radiation conditions at the Earth’s surface. Ozone depletion has also contributed to climate change across the Southern Hemisphere. These changes are interacting in complex ways to affect human health, food and water security, and ecosystem services. Many adverse effects of high UV exposure have been avoided thanks to the Montreal Protocol with its Amendments and Adjustments, which have effectively controlled the production and use of ozone-depleting substances. This international treaty has also played an important role in mitigating climate change. Climate change is modifying UV exposure and affecting how people and ecosystems respond to UV; these effects will become more pronounced in the future. The interactions between stratospheric ozone, climate and UV radiation will therefore shift over time; however, the Montreal Protocol will continue to have far-reaching benefits for human well-being and environmental sustainability.
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| 2. |
- Andersson, Agneta, et al.
(författare)
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Projected future climate change and Baltic Sea ecosystem management
- 2015
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Ingår i: Ambio. - : Springer. - 0044-7447 .- 1654-7209. ; 44:Supplement 3, s. S345-S356
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Climate change is likely to have large effects on the Baltic Sea ecosystem. Simulations indicate 2-4 degrees C warming and 50-80 % decrease in ice cover by 2100. Precipitation may increase similar to 30 % in the north, causing increased land runoff of allochthonous organic matter (AOM) and organic pollutants and decreased salinity. Coupled physical-biogeochemical models indicate that, in the south, bottom-water anoxia may spread, reducing cod recruitment and increasing sediment phosphorus release, thus promoting cyanobacterial blooms. In the north, heterotrophic bacteria will be favored by AOM, while phytoplankton production may be reduced. Extra trophic levels in the food web may increase energy losses and consequently reduce fish production. Future management of the Baltic Sea must consider the effects of climate change on the ecosystem dynamics and functions, as well as the effects of anthropogenic nutrient and pollutant load. Monitoring should have a holistic approach, encompassing both autotrophic (phytoplankton) and heterotrophic (e.g., bacterial) processes.
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| 3. |
- Krzysztofik, Robert, et al.
(författare)
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Environmental hazards and urban abandonment: Case studies and typological issues
- 2015
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Ingår i: Geografiska Annaler. Series B. Human Geography. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0435-3684 .- 1468-0467. ; 97:4, s. 291-308
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The article discusses the phenomenon of urban abandonment as a result of environmental hazards. Seen as an outcome of environmental drivers, the underlying assumption is that a characteristic of environmental hazards is their spatial and temporal constancy of impact, whereby processes and phenomena having taken place in the past have their analogies in the present. In order to generate insights for future research and policy development, there is a need to pay greater attention to the precarious relationship between humans and the natural environment, not least by drawing lessons from the past through the study of historical cases. The article clarifies the dynamic interactions of drivers and their progression through various stages of urban abandonment. This is done by recourse to an analysis of some general trends and an in-depth examination of three selected case studies from Poland. It has two objectives. The first is to identify the historical role of environmental drivers in the process of urban abandonment, while the second one is to contribute to the typology of environmentally related processes of urban abandonment in order to better identify future calamities. With respect to the former, the findings reveal that the relation between environmental hazards and urban abandonment is pertinent in regions with specific geographic conditions and pertains only to certain categories of urban settlements. With respect to the latter, by drawing on these findings, we propose some alterations and amendments to McLeman’s comprehensive model of settlement abandonment in the context of global environmental change.
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| 4. |
- Dymitrow, Mirek, et al.
(författare)
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Nutrition, health and climate : What have we learned so far?
- 2019
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Ingår i: Conference on Food Science and Nutrition: “Forum for food science and nutrition for a better tomorrow”, 25–26 February 2019, Rome, Italy.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Food and meals are central elements in our lives: a source of pleasure, a social activity and a bearer of culture. Our eating habits are also very important to health, which implies that the organization and content of meals is a prerequisite for well-being and learning. Schools, in particular, have unique opportunities to promote healthy lifestyles, help develop good eating habits and raise environmental and climate awareness among children and youths by embedding food in a wider context. Unsurprisingly, there is also an increasing interest in school meals and food-related education among researchers, many of whom agree that the quality of school meals can be seen as one of the most accurate indicators of the cities’ sustainability potential. Systematic quality work, however, requires shared targets and ambitions, regular quality checks and discussions on development and improvement. In that vein, the City of Gothenburg has launched the project Urban Rural Gothenburg, which assembles, develops, tests and implements new solutions for the city’s public kitchens. This involves climate-smart and environmentally sound perspectives and programs regarding meal planning, food procurement, food preparation and food-related teaching and learning. One important approach deals with the normalization of increased vegetarian consumption and greater awareness of food’s origins and travel from farm to table. Another approach deals with conscious choices of raw materials that are beneficial for both the environment and health. A third notable approach focuses on new ways of handling food waste to reduce climate impact. In line with the third Sustainable Development Goal, this presentation captures and reaffirms the fundamental assumptions and methods involved in Gothenburg’s work with food sustainability in public kitchens, with an emphasis on health and climate as cross-cutting issues that matter to us all.
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| 5. |
- Arsovski, Slobodan, et al.
(författare)
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Can urban environmental problems be overcome? The case of Skopje—world’s most polluted city
- 2018
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Ingår i: Bulletin of Geography. Socio-economic Series. - : Uniwersytet Mikolaja Kopernika/Nicolaus Copernicus University. - 1732-4254 .- 2083-8298. ; 40:40, s. 17-39
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The condition of the environment is one of the most fundamental concerns of cities worldwide, especially when high levels of pollution and environmental destruction exert immense impact on people’s quality of life. This paper focuses on Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, which often tops the charts as the world’s most polluted city. Despite associated problems such as congestion, ill health, and premature death, Macedonia’s scarce resources are instead spent on controversial projects, such as ‘Skopje 2014’, involving creating a national identity through massive and extremely costly constructions of neo-classical government buildings, museums and monuments. The aim of this paper is to compare the situation of Skopje to environmentally oriented activities conducted in several Polish cities and to discuss the possibility of their implementation in Skopje. Considering the scale and scope of Skopje’s environmental problems, the paper offers some priorities for action, including solutions that emphasize institution building, technical input and self-governance. It also highlights a number of economic, ecological, and socio-cultural contradictions involved in the process of achieving sustainable development.
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| 6. |
- Eriksson, Ola, et al.
(författare)
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Climate change mitigation through increased wood use in the European construction sector - towards an integrated modelling framework
- 2012
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Ingår i: European Journal of Forest Research. - : Springer. - 1612-4669 .- 1612-4677. ; 131:1, s. 131-144
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Using wood as a building material affects the carbon balance through several mechanisms. This paper describes a modelling approach that integrates a wood product substitution model, a global partial equilibrium model, a regional forest model and a stand-level model. Three different scenarios were compared with a business-as-usual scenario over a 23-year period (2008-2030). Two scenarios assumed an additional one million apartment flats per year will be built of wood instead of non-wood materials by 2030. These scenarios had little effect on markets and forest management and reduced annual carbon emissions by 0.2-0.5% of the total 1990 European GHG emissions. However, the scenarios are associated with high specific CO2 emission reductions per unit of wood used. The third scenario, an extreme assumption that all European countries will consume 1-m3 sawn wood per capita by 2030, had large effects on carbon emission, volumes and trade flows. The price changes of this scenario, however, also affected forest management in ways that greatly deviated from the partial equilibrium model projections. Our results suggest that increased wood construction will have a minor impact on forest management and forest carbon stocks. To analyse larger perturbations on the demand side, a market equilibrium model seems crucial. However, for that analytical system to work properly, the market and forest regional models must be better synchronized than here, in particular regarding assumptions on timber supply behaviour. Also, bioenergy as a commodity in market and forest models needs to be considered to study new market developments; those modules are currently missing
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| 7. |
- Chen, Deliang, 1961, et al.
(författare)
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Summary of a workshop on extreme weather events in a warming world organized by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
- 2020
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Ingår i: Tellus Series B-Chemical and Physical Meteorology. - : Stockholm University Press. - 1600-0889 .- 0280-6509. ; 72:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Climate change is not only about changes in means of climatic variables such as temperature, precipitation and wind, but also their extreme values which are of critical importance to human society and ecosystems. To inspire the Swedish climate research community and to promote assessments of international research on past and future changes in extreme weather events against the global climate change background, the Earth Science Class of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences organized a workshop entitled 'Extreme weather events in a warming world' in 2019. This article summarizes and synthesizes the key points from the presentations and discussions of the workshop on changes in floods, droughts, heat waves, as well as on tropical cyclones and extratropical storms. In addition to reviewing past achievements in these research fields and identifying research gaps with a focus on Sweden, future challenges and opportunities for the Swedish climate research community are highlighted.
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| 8. |
- van Dam, Femke, et al.
(författare)
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Dissolved Microbial Methane in the Deep Crystalline Crust Fluids–Current Knowledge and Future Prospects
- 2022
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Ingår i: Geofluids. - : Hindawi Publishing Corporation. - 1468-8115 .- 1468-8123.
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, of which most is produced by microorganisms in a process called methanogenesis. One environment where methanogenic microorganisms occur is the deep biosphere. The deep biosphere environment comprises a variety of ecosystem settings; marine habitats such as subseafloor sediments, rock pore volumes within subseafloor basalts, and terrestrial settings such as sedimentary rocks and crystalline bedrock fracture networks. Microbial methane formed in these environments influence the biological, chemical, and geological cycles of the upper crust, and may seep out of the deep into the atmosphere. This review focuses on the process of microbial methanogenesis and methane oxidation in the relatively underexplored deep crystalline-bedrock hosted subsurface, as several works in recent years have shown that microbial production and consumption occur in this energy-poor rock-fracture-hosted environment. These recent findings are summarized along with techniques to study the source and origins of methane in the terrestrial crust. Future prospects for exploration of these processes are proposed to combine geochemical and microbial techniques to determine whether microbial methanogenesis is a ubiquitous phenomenon in the crystalline crust across space and time. This will aid in determining whether microbial methane in the globally vast deep rock-hosted biosphere environment is a significant contributor to the global methane reservoir.
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| 9. |
- Cowie, A. L., et al.
(författare)
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Applying a science-based systems perspective to dispel misconceptions about climate effects of forest bioenergy
- 2021
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology Bioenergy. - : John Wiley and Sons Inc. - 1757-1693 .- 1757-1707. ; 13:8, s. 1210-1231
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The scientific literature contains contrasting findings about the climate effects of forest bioenergy, partly due to the wide diversity of bioenergy systems and associated contexts, but also due to differences in assessment methods. The climate effects of bioenergy must be accurately assessed to inform policy-making, but the complexity of bioenergy systems and associated land, industry and energy systems raises challenges for assessment. We examine misconceptions about climate effects of forest bioenergy and discuss important considerations in assessing these effects and devising measures to incentivize sustainable bioenergy as a component of climate policy. The temporal and spatial system boundary and the reference (counterfactual) scenarios are key methodology choices that strongly influence results. Focussing on carbon balances of individual forest stands and comparing emissions at the point of combustion neglect system-level interactions that influence the climate effects of forest bioenergy. We highlight the need for a systems approach, in assessing options and developing policy for forest bioenergy that: (1) considers the whole life cycle of bioenergy systems, including effects of the associated forest management and harvesting on landscape carbon balances; (2) identifies how forest bioenergy can best be deployed to support energy system transformation required to achieve climate goals; and (3) incentivizes those forest bioenergy systems that augment the mitigation value of the forest sector as a whole. Emphasis on short-term emissions reduction targets can lead to decisions that make medium- to long-term climate goals more difficult to achieve. The most important climate change mitigation measure is the transformation of energy, industry and transport systems so that fossil carbon remains underground. Narrow perspectives obscure the significant role that bioenergy can play by displacing fossil fuels now, and supporting energy system transition. Greater transparency and consistency is needed in greenhouse gas reporting and accounting related to bioenergy.
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| 10. |
- Trondman, Anna-Kari, et al.
(författare)
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Pollen-based quantitative reconstructions of Holocene regional vegetation cover (plant-functional types and land-cover types) in Europe suitable for climate modelling
- 2015
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Ingår i: Global Change Biology. - : Wiley. - 1354-1013 .- 1365-2486. ; 21:2, s. 676-697
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We present quantitative reconstructions of regional vegetation cover in north-western Europe, western Europe north of the Alps, and eastern Europe for five time windows in the Holocene [around 6k, 3k, 0.5k, 0.2k, and 0.05k calendar years before present (bp)] at a 1 degrees x1 degrees spatial scale with the objective of producing vegetation descriptions suitable for climate modelling. The REVEALS model was applied on 636 pollen records from lakes and bogs to reconstruct the past cover of 25 plant taxa grouped into 10 plant-functional types and three land-cover types [evergreen trees, summer-green (deciduous) trees, and open land]. The model corrects for some of the biases in pollen percentages by using pollen productivity estimates and fall speeds of pollen, and by applying simple but robust models of pollen dispersal and deposition. The emerging patterns of tree migration and deforestation between 6k bp and modern time in the REVEALS estimates agree with our general understanding of the vegetation history of Europe based on pollen percentages. However, the degree of anthropogenic deforestation (i.e. cover of cultivated and grazing land) at 3k, 0.5k, and 0.2k bp is significantly higher than deduced from pollen percentages. This is also the case at 6k in some parts of Europe, in particular Britain and Ireland. Furthermore, the relationship between summer-green and evergreen trees, and between individual tree taxa, differs significantly when expressed as pollen percentages or as REVEALS estimates of tree cover. For instance, when Pinus is dominant over Picea as pollen percentages, Picea is dominant over Pinus as REVEALS estimates. These differences play a major role in the reconstruction of European landscapes and for the study of land cover-climate interactions, biodiversity and human resources.
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