Fast Carbon Footprinting for Large Product Portfolios

Publicly Available Specification 2050‐2011 (PAS 2050), the Green House Gas Product Protocol (GHGPP) standard and forthcoming guideline 14067 from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) have helped to propel carbon footprinting from a subdiscipline of life cycle assessment (LCA) to the mainstream. However, application of carbon footprinting to large portfolios of many distinct products and services is immensely resource intensive. Even if achieved, it often fails to inform company‐wide carbon reduction strategies because footprint data are disjointed or don't cover the whole portfolio. We introduce a novel approach to generate standard‐compliant product carbon footprints (CFs) for companies with large portfolios at a fraction of previously required time and expertise. The approach was developed and validated on an LCA dataset covering 1,137 individual products from a global packaged consumer goods company. Three novel techniques work in concert in a single approach that enables practitioners to calculate thousands of footprints virtually simultaneously: (i) a uniform data structure enables footprinting all products and services by looping the same algorithm; (ii) concurrent uncertainty analysis guides practitioners to gradually improve the accuracy of only those data that materially impact the results; and (iii) a predictive model generates estimated emission factors (EFs) for materials, thereby eliminating the manual mapping of a product or service's inventory to EF databases. These autogenerated EFs enable non‐LCA experts to calculate approximate CFs and alleviate resource constraints for companies embarking on large‐scale product carbon footprinting. We discuss implementation roadmaps for companies, including further road‐testing required to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach for other product portfolios, limitations, and future improvements of the fast footprinting methodology.     

Maximising return on conservation investment in the conterminous USA

Efficient conservation planning requires knowledge about conservation targets, threats to those targets, costs of conservation and the marginal return to additional conservation efforts. Systematic conservation planning typically only takes a small piece of this complex puzzle into account. Here, we use a return‐on‐investment (ROI) approach to prioritise lands for conservation at the county level in the conterminous USA. Our approach accounts for species richness, county area, the proportion of species' ranges already protected, the threat of land conversion and land costs. Areas selected by a complementarity‐based greedy heuristic using our full ROI approach provided greater averted species losses per dollar spent compared with areas selected by heuristics accounting for richness alone or richness and cost, and avoided acquiring lands not threatened with conversion. In contrast to traditional prioritisation approaches, our results highlight conservation bargains, opportunities to avert the threat of development and places where conservation efforts are currently lacking.     

Fauna habitat modelling and mapping: A review and case study in the Lower Hunter Central Coast region of NSW

Abstract Habitat models are now broadly used in conservation planning on public lands. If implemented correctly, habitat modelling is a transparent and repeatable technique for describing and mapping biodiversity values, and its application in peri‐urban and agricultural landscape planning is likely to expand rapidly. Conservation planning in such landscapes must be robust to the scrutiny that arises when biodiversity constraints are placed on developers and private landholders. A standardized modelling and model evaluation method based on widely accepted techniques will improve the robustness of conservation plans. We review current habitat modelling and model evaluation methods and provide a habitat modelling case study in the New South Wales central coast region that we hope will serve as a methodological template for conservation planners. We make recommendations on modelling methods that are appropriate when presence‐absence and presence‐only survey data are available and provide methodological details and a website with data and training material for modellers. Our aim is to provide practical guidelines that preserve methodological rigour and result in defendable habitat models and maps. The case study was undertaken in a rapidly developing area with substantial biodiversity values under urbanization pressure. Habitat maps for seven priority fauna species were developed using logistic regression models of species‐habitat relationships and a bootstrapping methodology was used to evaluate model predictions. The modelled species were the koala, tiger quoll, squirrel glider, yellow‐bellied glider, masked owl, powerful owl and sooty owl. Models ranked sites adequately in terms of habitat suitability and provided predictions of sufficient reliability for the purpose of identifying preliminary conservation priority areas. However, they are subject to multiple uncertainties and should not be viewed as a completely accurate representation of the distribution of species habitat. We recommend the use of model prediction in an adaptive framework whereby models are iteratively updated and refined as new data become available.     

生态城市指标体系与评价方法

生态城市是依据生态学原理提出的一类社会-经济-自然协调发展的城市。目前生态城市理论研究主要应用在城市的规划、设计和管理上。生态城市建设的评价是衡量生态城市规划、建设、管理成效的主要依据。在对生态城市理论和内涵详细分析的基础上,采用专家咨询的定性和定量信息构建了扬州生态城市评价指标体系,该指标体系包括了城市复合生态系统中社会、经济、自然3个子系统,反映生态城市的内涵和衡量生态城市各子系统的状态、动态和实力。为对各级指标进行综合,提出了全排列多边形图示指标评价方法,评价生态城市在各个规划时段的建设成效。评价结果表明,扬州生态城市的综合发展能力市在2005规划年将达到0.44,在2010规划年将达到0.64,在2020规划年将达到0.85。评价方法简单直观,代数计算结果考虑了各级指标临界值对综合指标的放大和紧缩效应,反映了整体大于或者小于部分之和的系统整合原理。     

城市景观功能的区域协调规划——以深圳市为例

城市景观功能的完善是城市可持续发展的重要保障之一,其与区域景观功能的相互协调是城市规划的重要组成部分,有利于城市和区域的整体持续发展。在分析城市景观基本特征的基础上,探讨了城市景观功能区域协调规划的基本思路,以城市景观为规划对象,以人类社会的功能需求为立足点,依据景观生态学理论,将城市景观的功能划分为生物生产功能、环境服务功能、文化支持功能和信息输运功能,对体现这些基本功能的景观类型进行区域协调规划。以深圳市为例,实证分析了其景观功能在珠江三角洲地区的协调规划。     

Place prioritization for biodiversity conservation using probabilistic surrogate distribution data

We analyse optimal and heuristic place prioritization algorithms for biodiversity conservation area network design which can use probabilistic data on the distribution of surrogates for biodiversity. We show how an Expected Surrogate Set Covering Problem (ESSCP) and a Maximal Expected Surrogate Covering Problem (MESCP) can be linearized for computationally efficient solution. For the ESSCP, we study the performance of two optimization software packages (XPRESS and CPLEX) and five heuristic algorithms based on traditional measures of complementarity and rarity as well as the Shannon and Simpson indices of α‐diversity which are being used in this context for the first time. On small artificial data sets the optimal place prioritization algorithms often produced more economical solutions than the heuristic algorithms, though not always ones guaranteed to be optimal. However, with large data sets, the optimal algorithms often required long computation times and produced no better results than heuristic ones. Thus there is generally little reason to prefer optimal to heuristic algorithms with probabilistic data sets.     

辽河三角洲湿地以丹顶鹤生境保护为核心的退耕预案研究

在遥感 (RS)和地理信息系统 (GIS)的支持下 ,结合野外实地调查 ,运用预案研究方法和景观生态决策与评价支持系统(L EDESS)的决策与规划评价思想 ,针对辽河三角洲大洼小三角洲部分的过度农业开发对野生动物生境的严重影响后果 ,对本区土地利用规划进行了以丹顶鹤生境保护为核心的退耕预案设计 ,并对其生态后果进行了空间模拟和评价。根据不同的经济和生态发展要求设计了 4个预案 ,分别为 1988年原状 (预案 1)、1998年原状 (预案 2 )、苇带设计 (预案 3)和生境恢复 (预案 4 ) ,通过对各预案进行生境适宜性、生态承载力及经济效益评价 ,可以得到以下结论 :预案 1尽管生态效益很高 ,但经济效益很低 ,在区域发展需求下由现状年恢复到预案 1具有不现实性 ;而预案 2为强烈经济需求下的典型发展模式 ,生态效益偏低 ,与经济效益的比例失调 ;预案 3和预案 4为生态与经济的协调发展模式及丹顶鹤生境恢复提供了有效参考 ,可将其视为近期和远期规划目标分步实施。这说明合理的土地开发利用方式和生境恢复措施不仅可以获得经济的高效发展 ,而且还可为稳定的生态环境提供有力保障 ,从而为区域经济与环境的协调发展提供参考性依据 ,具有一定的典型性     

区域生态安全格局:设计原则与方法

区域生态安全格局概念的提出为区域生态恢复和生物保护提供了整体性对策。基于这一概念及其理论基础 ,提出了区域生态安全格局设计的初步原则和方法。通过对景观生态规划原则的增补 ,确定了区域生态安全格局的设计原则。根据区域生态环境问题和人类干扰的特点 ,综合集成了基于格局优化、干扰分析 2种规划途径和地理信息系统、空间模拟和预案研究等多种方法 ,形成了区域生态安全格局设计的方法框架。该方法突出体现了区域生态安全格局注重针对性、区域性、系统性和主动性的特点 ,满足了适应性生态系统管理的需求 ,为实现区域生态安全提供技术支持