| 1. |
- Vowles, Tage, et al.
(författare)
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Contrasting impacts of reindeer grazing in two tundra grasslands
- 2017
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9318 .- 1748-9326. ; 12:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Plant communities in Arctic and alpine areas are changing due to higher temperatures and longer vegetation periods and it is uncertain how this will affect plant-herbivore dynamics. For instance, relatively fast-growing, deciduous shrub species that are the most responsive to warming may also be the most targeted by herbivores such as reindeer, giving less palatable evergreen shrubs the chance to expand. Using herbivore exclosures, we have studied how two grasslands with contrasting nutrient and moisture regimes, a dry, nutrient-poor alpine grass heath and a wet, productive low herb meadow, changed between 1995 and 2012, in grazed and ungrazed conditions. At the grass heath, evergreen low shrub abundance had more than doubled, regardless of grazer treatment, whereas at the low herb meadow, evergreen shrubs had increased only outside exclosures while deciduous tall shrubs and forbs were significantly more abundant inside exclosures. Deciduous tall shrubs were also significantly taller in exclosures. These contrasting findings suggest that the impact of herbivores is to a great deal determined by their influence on competitive interactions between plant species, and therefore depends on the underlying composition of the plant community. Consequently, as the balance in these competitive interactions is shifting due to climate warming, we conclude that the potential of herbivory to influence this balance is considerable yet highly site dependent.
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| 2. |
- Bastos Lima, Mairon G., 1984, et al.
(författare)
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Leakage and boosting effects in environmental governance: a framework for analysis
- 2019
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9318 .- 1748-9326. ; 14:10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In an increasingly interconnected world, leakage-broadly understood as unintended displacement of impacts caused by an environmental policy intervention-has become a major governance concern. Yet, leakage remains both loosely conceptualized and poorly understood as a phenomenon in policy making. To fill this gap and broaden the leakage research agenda, we conduct a state-of-the-art review of scientific assessments on leakage (particularly on land use) and combine it with conceptual and analytical frameworks from the environmental governance literature. We then propose a rigorous definition of leakage, discuss frequently overlooked political dimensions, and develop a typology of leakage pathways. Our analysis of leakage through a governance lens yields five core insights: (1) Leakage is not simply a mechanistic phenomenon, but a complex governance issue involving questions of institutional fit, interactions, and political agency. (2) Although the land use literature traditionally focuses on leakage through markets or activity displacement, a governance lens shows that it also occurs through information, motivation, or institutional channels. (3) As policy-makers may act strategically, the unintentionally of leakage should not be assumed but rather become an object of research. (4) A phenomenon not initially regarded as leakage can come to be framed as such through the action of 'problem brokers' and changes in policy fields. (5) Policy-makers and researchers should broaden their focus from only avoiding leakage to seeking positive spillovers and institutional synergies. These insights are illustrated with examples from two cases relating to land use policy in Brazil and Southeast Asia.
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| 3. |
- Blennow, Kristina
(författare)
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Are forest disturbances amplifying or canceling out climate change-induced productivity changes in European forests?
- 2017
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9318 .- 1748-9326. ; 12
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recent studies projecting future climate change impacts on forests mainly consider either the effects of climate change on productivity or on disturbances. However, productivity and disturbances are intrinsically linked because 1) disturbances directly affect forest productivity (e.g. via a reduction in leaf area, growing stock or resource-use efficiency), and 2) disturbance susceptibility is often coupled to a certain development phase of the forest with productivity determining the time a forest is in this specific phase of susceptibility. The objective of this paper is to provide an overview of forest productivity changes in different forest regions in Europe under climate change, and partition these changes into effects induced by climate change alone and by climate change and disturbances. We present projections of climate change impacts on forest productivity from state-of-the-art forest models that dynamically simulate forest productivity and the effects of the main European disturbance agents (fire, storm, insects), driven by the same climate scenario in seven forest case studies along a large climatic gradient throughout Europe. Our study shows that, in most cases, including disturbances in the simulations exaggerate ongoing productivity declines or cancel out productivity gains in response to climate change. In fewer cases, disturbances also increase productivity or buffer climate-change induced productivity losses, e.g. because low severity fires can alleviate resource competition and increase fertilization. Even though our results cannot simply be extrapolated to other types of forests and disturbances, we argue that it is necessary to interpret climate change-induced productivity and disturbance changes jointly to capture the full range of climate change impacts on forests and to plan adaptation measures.
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| 4. |
- Jonson, J. E., et al.
(författare)
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Impact of excess NOx emissions from diesel cars on air quality, public health and eutrophication in Europe
- 2017
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9318 .- 1748-9326. ; 12:9
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Diesel cars have been emitting four to seven times more NOx in on-road driving than in type approval tests. These 'excess emissions' are a consequence of deliberate design of the vehicle's after-treatment system, as investigations during the 'Dieselgate' scandal have revealed. Here we calculate health and environmental impacts of these excess NOx emissions in all European countries for the year 2013. We use national emissions reported officially under the UNECE Convention for Long-range Transport of Atmospheric Pollutants and employ the EMEP MSC-W Chemistry Transport Model and the GAINS Integrated AssessmentModel to determine atmospheric concentrations and resulting impacts. We compare with impacts from hypothetical emissions where light duty diesel vehicles are assumed to emit only as much as their respective type approval limit value or as little as petrol cars of the same age. Excess NO2 concentrations can also have direct health impacts, but these overlap with the impacts from particulate matter ( PM) and are not included here. We estimate that almost 10 000 premature deaths from PM2.5 and ozone in the adult population (age>30 years) can be attributed to the NOx emissions from diesel cars and light commercial vehicles in EU28 plus Norway and Switzerland in 2013. About 50% of these could have been avoided if diesel limits had been achieved also in on-road driving; and had diesel cars emitted as little NOx as petrol cars, 80% of these premature deaths could have been avoided. Ecosystem eutrophication impacts (critical load exceedances) from the same diesel vehicles would also have been reduced at similar rates as for the health effects.
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| 5. |
- Ottelin, Juudit, et al.
(författare)
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Household carbon footprint patterns by the degree of urbanisation in Europe
- 2019
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9318 .- 1748-9326. ; 14:11
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Urbanisation increases household carbon footprints in developing economies. However, the results from developed countries have varied, particularly in Europe. This study provides a coherent comparison of the impact of the degree of urbanisation on income, expenditure and carbon footprints in Europe. On average, carbon footprints are 7% lower in cities than in rural areas when income and household characteristics are controlled. However, this is compensated by the 6% higher average income in cities. The patterns are not uniform in all countries. In Eastern Europe, the pattern is similar to other developing regions. In some Western European countries, both the income level and the carbon footprints are lower in urban areas than in rural areas. In the rest of Europe, the differences in income level between rural and urban areas are small, but they still largely compensate for the efficiency benefits of urban areas. We call for more systemic emissions accounting and climate strategies.
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| 6. |
- Pendrill, Florence, 1983, et al.
(författare)
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Deforestation displaced: trade in forest-risk commodities and the prospects for a global forest transition
- 2019
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9318 .- 1748-9326. ; 14:5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- While many developed countries are increasing their forest cover, deforestation is still rife in the tropics and subtropics. With international trade in forest-risk commodities on the rise, it is becoming increasingly important to consider between-country trade linkages in assessing the drivers of-and possible connections between-forest loss and gain across countries. Previous studies have shown that countries that have undergone a forest transition (and are now increasing their forest cover) tend to displace land use outside their borders. However, lack of comprehensive data on deforestation drivers imply that it has not been possible to ascertain whether this has accelerated forest loss in sourcing countries. To remedy this, we present a land-balance model that quantifies deforestation embodied in production of agricultural and forestry commodities at country level across the tropics and subtropics, subsequently tracing embodied deforestation to countries of apparent consumption using a physical, country-to-country trade model. We find that in the period 2005-2013,62% (5.5 Mha yr(-1)) of forest loss could be attributed to expanding commercial cropland, pastures and tree plantations. The commodity groups most commonly associated with deforestation were cattle meat, forestry products, oil palm, cereals and soybeans, though variation between countries and regions was large. Alarge (26%) and slightly increasing share of deforestation was attributed to international demand, the bulk of which (87%) was exported to countries that either exhibit decreasing deforestation rates or increasing forest cover (late-or post-forest transition countries), particularly in Europe and Asia (China, India, and Russia). About a third of the net forest gains in post-forest transition countries was in this way offset by imports of commodities causing deforestation elsewhere, suggesting that achieving a global forest transition will be substantially more challenging than achieving national or regional ones.
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| 7. |
- Sterner, Erik, 1984, et al.
(författare)
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The effect of climate-carbon cycle feedbacks on emission metrics
- 2017
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9318 .- 1748-9326. ; 12:3, s. 034019-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Climate-Carbon cycle Feedback (CCF) affects emission metric values. In the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change metric values for Global Warming Potentials (GWP) and Global Temperature Potentials (GTP) are reported both with and without CCF for non-CO2 climate forcers, while CCF is always included for CO2. The estimation of CCF for non-CO2 climate forcers in AR5 is based on a linear feedback analysis. This study compares that approach with an explicit approach that uses a temperature dependent carbon cycle model. The key difference in the CCF results for non-CO2 climate forcers is that, with the approach used in AR5, a fraction of the CO2 signal induced by non-CO2 forcers will persist in the atmosphere basically forever, while, with the approach based on an explicit carbon cycle model, the atmospheric CO2 signal induced by non-CO2 forcers eventually vanishes. The differences in metric values between the two model approaches are within +/- 10% for all well-mixed greenhouse gases when the time horizon is limited to 100 yr or less, for both GWP and GTP. However, for long time horizons, such as 500 yr, metric values are substantially lower with the explicit CCF model than with the linear feedback approach, up to 30% lower for GWP and up to 90% lower for GTP.
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| 8. |
- Taljegård, Maria, 1988, et al.
(författare)
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Impact of electric vehicles on the cost-competitiveness of generation and storage technologies in the electricity system
- 2019
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9318 .- 1748-9326. ; 14:12
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The increasing levels of variable renewable electricity (VRE) generation-such as wind and solar power-will create important opportunities for the charging of electric vehicle (EV) batteries during low-cost hours with a lot of VRE generation and for the discharge of EV batteries back to the grid (i.e. vehicle-to-grid; V2G) during high-cost hours. This study investigates how different EV charging strategies influence the cost-competitiveness of generation and storage technologies other than EV batteries in the electricity system, using a regional electricity system investment and dispatch model. The charging requirements of the EVs, which are used as an input to the optimisation model, are derived from the yearly driving patterns of 426 vehicles measured with global positioning system. The study is carried out for four regions in Europe with different conditions for wind, solar and hydro power generation. The results show that optimised EV charging with V2G can: (i) reduce investments in peak power capacity in all the regions investigated; (ii) reduce the need for short-term and long-term storage technologies other than EV batteries (i.e. stationary batteries and hydrogen storage); and (iii) stimulate increased shares of solar and wind power generation, as compared to direct charging in some regions (mainly Hungary). This study also shows that EV battery capacities as low as 30 kWh, which are connected to the grid only at their home location, can to a large extent contribute with flexibility to the electricity system in the way mentioned. The present study also investigates the influences of different shares of the fleet participating in V2G, and shows that the additional benefits for the electricity system level off when approximately 24% of the vehicle fleet participates in V2G.
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| 9. |
- Englund, Oskar, 1982, et al.
(författare)
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Oil palm for biodiesel in Brazil — risks and opportunities
- 2015
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9318 .- 1748-9326. ; 10:4, s. 044002-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Although mainly used for other purposes, and historically mainly established at the expense of tropical forests, oil palm can be the most land efficient feedstock for biodiesel. Large parts of Brazil are suitable for oil palm cultivation and a series of policy initiatives have recently been launched to promote oil palm production. These initiatives are however highly debated both in the parliament and in academia. Here we present results of a high resolution modelling study of opportunities and risks associated with oil palm production for biodiesel in Brazil, under different energy, policy, and infrastructure scenarios. Oil palm was found to be profitable on extensive areas, including areas under native vegetation where establishment would cause large land use change (LUC) emissions. However, some 40–60 Mha could support profitable biodiesel production corresponding to approximately 10% of the global diesel demand, without causing direct LUC emissions or impinging on protected areas. Pricing of LUC emissions could make oil palm production unprofitable on most lands where conversion would impact on native ecosystems and carbon stocks, if the carbon price is at the level $125/tC, or higher.
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| 10. |
- Henders, Sabine, et al.
(författare)
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Trading forests: land-use change and carbon emissions embodied in production and exports of forest-risk commodities
- 2015
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Ingår i: Environmental Research Letters. - : IOP Publishing. - 1748-9318 .- 1748-9326. ; 10:12, s. 125012-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Production of commercial agricultural commodities for domestic and foreign markets is increasingly driving land clearing in tropical regions, creating links and feedback effects between geographically separated consumption and production locations. Such teleconnections are commonly studied through calculating consumption footprints and quantifying environmental impacts embodied in trade flows, e.g., virtual water and land, biomass, or greenhouse gas emissions. The extent to which land-use change (LUC) and associated carbon emissions are embodied in the production and export of agricultural commodities has been less studied. Here we quantify tropical deforestation area and carbon emissions from LUC induced by the production and the export of four commodities (beef, soybeans, palm oil, and wood products) in seven countries with high deforestation rates (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea). We show that in the period 2000–2011, the production of the four analyzed commodities in our seven case countries was responsible for 40% of total tropical deforestation and resulting carbon losses. Over a third of these impacts was embodied in exports in 2011, up from a fifth in 2000. This trend highlights the growing influence of global markets in deforestation dynamics. Main flows of embodied LUC are Latin American beef and soybean exports to markets in Europe, China, the former Soviet bloc, the Middle East and Northern Africa, whereas embodied emission flows are dominated by Southeast Asian exports of palm oil and wood products to consumers in China, India and the rest of Asia, as well as to the European Union. Our findings illustrate the growing role that global consumers play in tropical LUC trajectories and highlight the need for demand-side policies covering whole supply chains. We also discuss the limitations of such demand-side measures and call for a combination of supply- and demand-side policies to effectively limit tropical deforestation, along with research into the interactions of different types of policy interventions.
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