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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Marine Invertebrates: Communities At Risk, Jennifer A. Mather Aug 2019

Marine Invertebrates: Communities At Risk, Jennifer A. Mather

Jennifer Mather, PhD

Our definition of the word ‘animal’ centers on vertebrates, yet 99% of the animals on the planet are invertebrates, about which we know little. In addition, although the Census of Marine Life (COML.org) has recently conducted an extensive audit of marine ecosystems, we still do not understand much about the animals of the seas. Surveys of the best-known ecosystems, in which invertebrate populations often play a key role, show that the invertebrate populations are affected by human impact. Coral animals are the foundation of coral reef systems, which are estimated to contain 30% of the species in the ocean. Physical …


Canada’S Regional Adaptation Collaboratives And Adaptation Platform: The Importance Of Scaling Up And Scaling Down Climate Change Governance Experiments, Adam Wellstead, Michael Howlett, Sreeja Nair, Jeremy Rayner Feb 2017

Canada’S Regional Adaptation Collaboratives And Adaptation Platform: The Importance Of Scaling Up And Scaling Down Climate Change Governance Experiments, Adam Wellstead, Michael Howlett, Sreeja Nair, Jeremy Rayner

Adam Wellstead

Policy experiments have often been touted as valuable mechanisms for ensuring sustainability transitions and climate change adaptation. However problems exist both in the definition of ‘experiments’, and in their design and realization. While valuable, most experiments examined in the literature to date have been small-scale micro-level deployments or evaluations of policy tools in which the most problematic element revolves around their “scaling-up” or diffusion. The literature on the subject has generally neglected the problems and issues related to another class of experiments in which macro or meso-level initiatives are ‘scaled-down’ to the micro-level. This paper examines a recent effort of …


Sequias En El Sur De La Peninsula De Yucatan: Analisis De La Variabilidad Anual Y Estacional De La Precipitacion (Droughts In The Southern Yucatan Peninsula: Analysis Of The Annual And Seasonal Precipitation Variability), Sofia Mardero, Elsa Nickl, Birgit Schmook, Laura Schneider, John Rogan, Zachary Christman, Deborah Lawrence Dec 2016

Sequias En El Sur De La Peninsula De Yucatan: Analisis De La Variabilidad Anual Y Estacional De La Precipitacion (Droughts In The Southern Yucatan Peninsula: Analysis Of The Annual And Seasonal Precipitation Variability), Sofia Mardero, Elsa Nickl, Birgit Schmook, Laura Schneider, John Rogan, Zachary Christman, Deborah Lawrence

Zachary Christman

Paper is in Spanish. English abstract: This study analyzes the spatial and temporal variability of precipitation across the Southern Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, addressing the anomalies and trends of annual and seasonal precipitation as well as the occurrence of meteorological droughts, using rainfall data from nine weather stations during the period 1953-2007. Linear regression in the annual and seasonal rainfall were used to analyze the increase or decrease in precipitation trends over this period. Precipitation anomalies enabled the evaluation of the stability, deficit, or surplus of precipitation for each year or season, and a quintile method was used to …


Interannual Variations And Trends In Global Land Surface Phenology Derived From Enhanced Vegetation Index During 1982–2010, Xiaoyang Zhang, Bin Tan, Yunyue Yu Sep 2016

Interannual Variations And Trends In Global Land Surface Phenology Derived From Enhanced Vegetation Index During 1982–2010, Xiaoyang Zhang, Bin Tan, Yunyue Yu

Xiaoyang Zhang

Land surface phenology is widely retrieved from satellite observations at regional and global scales, and its long-term record has been demonstrated to be a valuable tool for reconstructing past climate variations, monitoring the dynamics of terrestrial ecosystems in response to climate impacts, and predicting biological responses to future climate scenarios. This study detected global land surface phenology from the advanced very high resolution radiometer (AVHRR) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data from 1982 to 2010. Based on daily enhanced vegetation index at a spatial resolution of 0.05 degrees, we simulated the seasonal vegetative trajectory for each individual pixel …


Estimation Of Crop Gross Primary Production (Gpp): Ii. Do Scaled Modis Vegetation Indices Improve Performance?, Qingyuan Zhang, Yen-Ben Cheng, Alexei I. Lyapustin, Yujie Wang, Xiaoyang Zhang, Andrew Suyker, Shashi Verma, Yanmin Shuai, Elizabeth M. Middleton Sep 2016

Estimation Of Crop Gross Primary Production (Gpp): Ii. Do Scaled Modis Vegetation Indices Improve Performance?, Qingyuan Zhang, Yen-Ben Cheng, Alexei I. Lyapustin, Yujie Wang, Xiaoyang Zhang, Andrew Suyker, Shashi Verma, Yanmin Shuai, Elizabeth M. Middleton

Xiaoyang Zhang

Satellite remote sensing estimates of gross primary production (GPP) have routinely been made using spectral vegetation indices (VIs) over the past two decades. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI), the green band Wide Dynamic Range Vegetation Index (WDRVIgreen), and the green band Chlorophyll Index (CIgreen) have been employed to estimate GPP under the assumption that GPP is proportional to the product of VI and photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) (where VI is one of four VIs: NDVI, EVI, WDRVIgreen, or CIgreen). However, the empirical regressions between VI*PAR and …


A Comparison Of Tropical Rainforest Phenology Retrieved From Geostationary (Seviri) And Polar-Orbiting (Modis) Sensors Across The Congo Basin, Dong Yan, Xiaoyang Zhang, Yunyue Yu, Wei Guo Sep 2016

A Comparison Of Tropical Rainforest Phenology Retrieved From Geostationary (Seviri) And Polar-Orbiting (Modis) Sensors Across The Congo Basin, Dong Yan, Xiaoyang Zhang, Yunyue Yu, Wei Guo

Xiaoyang Zhang

The seasonal and interannual dynamics of tropical rainforests play a critical role in the global carbon cycle and climate change. This paper retrieved and compared land surface phenology from observations acquired by the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) onboard geostationary satellites and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on polar-orbiting satellites over the Congo Basin. To achieve this,we first retrieved canopy greenness cycles (CGCs) and their transition timing from two-band enhanced vegetation index (EVI2) derived from SEVIRI and MODIS data between 2006 and 2013.We then assessed the influences of SEVIRI and MODIS data quality on the reconstruction of …


A Cross Comparison Of Spatiotemporally Enhanced Springtime Phenological Measurements From Satellites And Ground In A Northern U.S. Mixed Forest, Liang Liang, Mark D. Schwartz, Zhuosen Wang, Feng Gao, Crystal B. Schaaf, Bin Tan, Jeffrey T. Morisette, Xiaoyang Zhang Sep 2016

A Cross Comparison Of Spatiotemporally Enhanced Springtime Phenological Measurements From Satellites And Ground In A Northern U.S. Mixed Forest, Liang Liang, Mark D. Schwartz, Zhuosen Wang, Feng Gao, Crystal B. Schaaf, Bin Tan, Jeffrey T. Morisette, Xiaoyang Zhang

Xiaoyang Zhang

Cross comparison of satellite-derived land surface phenology (LSP) and ground measurements is useful to ensure the relevance of detected seasonal vegetation change to the underlying biophysical processes. While standard 16-day and 250-m Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) vegetation index (VI)-based springtime LSP has been evaluated in previous studies, it remains unclear whether LSP with enhanced temporal and spatial resolutions can capture additional details of ground phenology. In this paper, we compared LSP derived from 500-m daily MODIS and 30-m MODIS-Landsat fused VI data with landscape phenology (LP) in a northern U.S. mixed forest. LP was previously developed from intensively observed …


Interannual Variation In Biomass Burning And Fire Seasonality Derived From Geostationary Satellite Data Across The Contiguous United States From 1995 To 2011, Xiaoyang Zhang, Shobha Kondragunta, David Roy Sep 2016

Interannual Variation In Biomass Burning And Fire Seasonality Derived From Geostationary Satellite Data Across The Contiguous United States From 1995 To 2011, Xiaoyang Zhang, Shobha Kondragunta, David Roy

Xiaoyang Zhang

Wildfires exhibit a strong seasonality that is driven by climatic factors and human activities. Although the fire seasonality is commonly determined using burned area and fire frequency, it could also be quantified using biomass consumption estimates that directly represent biomass loss (a combination of the area burned and the fuel loading). Therefore, in this study a data set of long-term biomass consumed was derived from geostationary satellite data to explore the interannual variation in the fire seasonality and the possible impacts of climate change and land management practices across the Contiguous United States (CONUS). Specifically, daily biomass consumed data were …


Deadly Waiting Game: An Environmental Justice Framework For Examining Natural And Man-Made Disasters Beyond Hurricane Katrina [Abstract], Robert D. Bullard Nov 2015

Deadly Waiting Game: An Environmental Justice Framework For Examining Natural And Man-Made Disasters Beyond Hurricane Katrina [Abstract], Robert D. Bullard

Robert D Bullard

Presenter: Robert D. Bullard, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology, Clark Atlanta University 1 page.


The Impacts Of Climate Change Mitigation Strategies On Animal Welfare, Sara Shields, Geoffrey Orme-Evans Jun 2015

The Impacts Of Climate Change Mitigation Strategies On Animal Welfare, Sara Shields, Geoffrey Orme-Evans

Sara Shields, PhD

The objective of this review is to point out that the global dialog on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in animal agriculture has, thus far, not adequately considered animal welfare in proposed climate change mitigation strategies. Many suggested approaches for reducing emissions, most of which could generally be described as calls for the intensification of production, can have substantial effects on the animals. Given the growing world-wide awareness and concern for animal welfare, many of these approaches are not socially sustainable. This review identifies the main emission abatement strategies in the climate change literature that would negatively affect animal welfare and …


Health Professionals’ Roles In Animal Agriculture, Climate Change, And Human Health, Aysha Z. Akhtar, Michael Greger, Hope Ferdowsian, Erica Frank Dec 2014

Health Professionals’ Roles In Animal Agriculture, Climate Change, And Human Health, Aysha Z. Akhtar, Michael Greger, Hope Ferdowsian, Erica Frank

Michael Greger, MD, FACLM

What we eat is rapidly becoming an issue of global concern. With food shortages, the rise in chronic disease, and global warming, the impact of our dietary choices seems more relevant today than ever. Globally, a transition is taking place toward greater consumption of foods of animal origin, in lieu of plantbased diets. With this transition comes intensification of animal agriculture that in turn is associated with the emergence of zoonotic infectious diseases, environmental degradation, and the epidemics of chronic disease and obesity. Health professionals should be aware of these trends and consider them as they promote healthier and more …


Book Review: The Great Warming: Climate Change And The Rise And Fall Of Civilizations, James Fleming Feb 2009

Book Review: The Great Warming: Climate Change And The Rise And Fall Of Civilizations, James Fleming

James R. Fleming

No abstract provided.


Dialogue Television: The Climate Engineers, James Fleming Apr 2007

Dialogue Television: The Climate Engineers, James Fleming

James R. Fleming

The problem of global warming is getting massive public attention. This comes forty years after the first major government report outlining the problem. But there is considerable disagreement over what steps should be taken to mitigate the problem and some scientist fear that politicians are not displaying sufficient urgency. James Fleming describes the technological quick fixes proposed by some scientists and the problems they might create.


The Climate Engineers: Playing God To Save The Planet, James Fleming Dec 2006

The Climate Engineers: Playing God To Save The Planet, James Fleming

James R. Fleming

As alarm over global warming spreads, a radical idea is gaining momentum. Forget cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions, some scientists argue. Find a technological fix. Bounce sunlight back into space by pumping reflective nanoparticles into the atmosphere. Launch mirrors into orbit around the earth. Create a “planetary thermostat.” But what sounds like science fiction is actually an old story. For more than a century, scientists, soldiers, and charlatans have hatched schemes to manipulate the weather and climate. Like them, today’s aspiring climate engineers wildly exaggerate what is possible, and they scarcely consider political, military, and ethical implications of attempting to manage …