环境基因组学的研究进展

本文系统地介绍了环境基因组学的基本概念和主流技术平台,及其在环境污染控制、健康风险检测与评价等方面地应用．并阐释了环境基因组学与环境蛋白组学、生物信息学之间的关系。环境基因组学在生物基因组水平上揭示了环境污染物与生物之间的相互作用,为维护人体与环境健康,进行分子水平遗传物质的检测与调控。奠定了理论基础与技术支持,目前已经成为控制环境污染,提高人体与环境健康质量的重要议题。     

2019环境生物技术专刊序言

环境生物技术,作为一门由现代生物技术与环境工程相结合的新兴交叉学科,已经在环境污染治理、环境监测中得到了广泛的应用,环境友好、高效地处理有机及无机污染,同时变废为宝生产高值化合物为从根本上解决环境问题提供了希望与支持。本专刊报道了环境生物技术在多环芳烃、抗生素、石油基塑料等环境污染物降解领域的基础与应用研究,介绍了吲哚、微生物铁载体等分子在生物修复中的应用,为全面认识环境污染现状、深入开展环境生物技术研究并制定综合治理策略等提供参考。     

Environmental variation and population responses to global change

Species' responses to environmental changes such as global warming are affected not only by trends in mean conditions, but also by natural and human‐induced environmental fluctuations. Methods are needed to predict how such environmental variation affects ecological and evolutionary processes, in order to design effective strategies to conserve biodiversity under global change. Here, we review recent theoretical and empirical studies to assess: (1) how populations respond to changes in environmental variance, and (2) how environmental variance affects population responses to changes in mean conditions. Contrary to frequent claims, empirical studies show that increases in environmental variance can increase as well as decrease long‐term population growth rates. Moreover, environmental variance can alter and even reverse the effects of changes in the mean environment, such that even if environmental variance remains constant, omitting it from population models compromises their ability to predict species' responses to changes in mean conditions. Drawing on theory relating these effects of environmental variance to the curvatures of population growth responses to the environment, we outline how species' traits such as phylogenetic history and body mass could be used to predict their responses to global change under future environmental variability.     

Eco-efficiency and Its xsTerminology

Eco-efficiency has been defined as a general goal of creating value while decreasing environmental impact. Leaving out the normative part of this concept, the empirical part refers to a ratio between environmental impact and economic cost or value. Two basic choices must be made in defining practical eco-efficiency: which variable is in the denominator and which is in the numerator; and whether to specify environmental impact or improvement and value created or cost. Distinguishing between two situations, the general one of value creation and the specific one of environmental improvement efforts, and leaving the numerator-denominator choice to the user, as diverging practices have developed, four basic types of ecoefficiency result: environmental intensity and environmental productivity in the realm of value creation; and environmental improvement cost and environmental cost-effectiveness in the realm of environmental improvement measures.     

上海外高桥保税区可持续发展的生态环境规划研究

以可持续发展理论和生态规划理论为指导,应用环境监测、遥感分析和GIS等方法评价了上海外高桥保税区大气、水体、土壤、噪声、绿化等生态环境质量现状和发展趋势,从生态环境建设的指标体系、环境保护规划和管理、绿地系统规划等方面提出了对策措施。     

Environmental colour affects aspects of single-species population dynamics

Single-species populations of ciliates (Colpidium and Paramecium) experienced constant temperature or white or reddened temperature fluctuations in aquatic microcosms in order to test three hypotheses about how environmental colour influences population dynamics. (i) Models predict that the colour of population dynamics is tinged by the colour of the environmental variability. However, environmental colour had no effect on the colour of population dynamics. All population dynamics in this experiment were reddened, regardless of environmental colour. (ii) Models predict that populations will track reddened environmental variability more closely than white environmental variability and that populations with a higher intrinsic growth rate (r) will track environmental variability more closely than populations with a low r. The experimental populations behaved as predicted. (iii) Models predict that population variability is determined by interaction between r and the environmental variability. The experimental populations behaved as predicted. These results show that (i) reddened population dynamics may need no special explanation, such as reddened environments, spatial subdivision or interspecific interactions, and (ii) and (iii) that population dynamics are sensitive to environmental colour, in agreement with population models. Correct specification of the colour of the environmental variability in models is required for accurate predictions. Further work is needed to study the effects of environmental colour on communities and ecosystems.     

基于环境容量的汶川地震重建规划区环境适宜性评价

基于对四川汶川地震中受灾严重的51个县1271个乡镇的水环境容量估算,对不同地域的环境适宜性进行评价,旨在为震区恢复重建的人口、经济布局提供一定科学依据。水环境容量选择COD和NH3-N两个指标进行评价,首先利用降雨量、径流系数和径流深等参数评价单元的径流量,再根据水环境质量标准、水体自然背景值等参数估算环境容量;进而在水环境污染胁迫程度计算的基础上,进行了环境适宜性评价。结果显示：水环境容量区域性差异明显,北部三省交界区域的乡镇容量较高、东南部四川盆地边缘和内部区域的乡镇容量较高、西部的山区乡镇环境容量低;西南部污染胁迫程度较低,环境适宜性较高;西部自然保护区胁迫程度较大,环境适宜性较低;成都平原附近县域胁迫较大,环境适宜性较低;环境适宜性区域性明显,但也呈现出一定的分散性。     

"波特假说" ——生态创新与环境管制的关系研究述评

环境管制通常被视为生态创新的重要影响因素,两者之间的关系存在著名的波特假说,即环境管制可以激励企业进行生态创新,并进而建立竞争优势.从波特假说的起源和内涵阐释出发,从理论和实证两个方面对波特假说相关研究进行了文献梳理与评述,指出大部分实证研究证实了弱的波特假说,即环境管制会刺激生态创新的发生;对于强的波特假说,现有研究结论不尽统一,其矛盾的核心在于生态创新能否带来环境绩效与竞争绩效的统一.总之,环境政策对于生态创新的确具有正向或负向的作用,影响的作用方向和强度取决于环境政策的类型、生态创新的类型、生态创新的不同阶段以及管制对象本身的一些特性等.提出了环境管制与生态创新的研究展望,包括:进一步的理论深化研究,研究尺度的拓展,加强环境政策累积效应和叠加效应的研究和针对中国的实证研究与应用等.     

Does environmental management improve enterprise's value? – An empirical research based on Chinese listed companies

The company's environmental management behaviors can improve the relationship between the company stakeholders, help companies to sustainably develop. But it is more seen as an obligation and cost of the company's environmental protection in developing countries. So what kind of impact the environmental protection have on the value of the company? Taking Chinese listing Corporation as a sample. This paper analyzes the impact of enterprises’ environmental management and its disclosure on corporate value. We conclude that environmental management excluding independent environment report can improve corporate value. In specific environmental management measures, producing environmental friendly products can help environmental friendly products gain recognition and improve corporate value significantly.     

Perception of Environmental Threat in the Shadow of War: The Effect of Future Orientation

People may express high concern for global warming or environmental degradation, but when forced to evaluate the severity of environmental threats in relation to other threats, environmental threats are pushed to the bottom of the list. The present study was based on the premise that prioritizing threats involves, inter alia, hierarchizing the threats according to their perceived temporal proximity and since environmental threats are perceived, relative to other threats, as more temporally distant, they rank low. Future orientation (FO) is an individual-difference variable that describes the tendency to take into account temporally distant considerations. We predicted that environmental threats would be evaluated as more severe by individuals who were more future-oriented. The strongest effect of FO was found to be on concern about global warming and environmental degradation. This indicated that environmental threats were perceived as temporally farthest and, not surprisingly, received the lowest priority. External security threat was a top-priority; its severity evaluation was uncorrelated to FO, indicating that it was perceived as temporally closest. These evaluations significantly affected environmental attitudes and behavior. The implications on promoting environmental behavior in the presence of ever-existing shorter-term existential threats are discussed.     

Ecosystem engineering,environmental decay and environmental states of landscapes

Although environmental modification by ecosystem engineers influences species distributions and abundances and ecological process rates, general determinants of the environmental states of engineered landscapes are not well understood. Here we develop a general, spatially implicit model of engineered landscapes that includes parameters driving engineer populations (demographics, environmental modification) and environmental decay. We show that average environmental states and heterogeneities of landscapes are the result of a balance between parameters determining engineering rates and decay rates that can be expressed as a net engineering ratio (NER). This ratio highlights the need to include environmental decay in ecosystem engineering studies. Moreover, it defines a significant engineer as one that can alter the environment despite decay and generates expectations for different kinds of effects on the engineer, other species and ecological processes depending on ratio values. Finally, it suggests that, in general, decay places limits as to what can be inferred about engineer population dynamics from environmental dynamics and vice versa.     

Environmental benefits and sustainable land‐use options in the Jambi transect,Sumatra

Abstract. Loss of environmental services provided by forests is a non‐linear process in Jambi Province, Sumatra, Indonesia. Intermediate‐intensity land‐use types in the form of complex agroforests have maintained global environmental benefits under a sustainable and profitable land use regime. Conversion to tree crop monocultures, however, poses a challenge to the environmental stakeholders and an opportunity from to stakeholders in the private economy. We quantified environmental indicators, as well as profitability and sustainability of a range of existing and possible production systems. Criteria and indicators were used at plot to landscape scales, taking into account local, national and global perspectives. Agronomic sustainability and profitability were assessed at plot level as they are of primarily local concern, while environmental services of forests, such as plant species and functional type richness, carbon stocks, greenhouse gas emissions, and trans‐boundary haze, which are of national and global concern, were assessed at landscape level. Quantitative trade‐offs and complementarities were analysed between global environmental benefits and local profitability. The current trend towards simplification of the complex agro‐ecosystems and inherent loss of environmental services of forests is driven by profitability. The sequence in which environmental services of forests are lost is: standing carbon stocks, biodiversity, and low or negative greenhouse gas emissions.     

Cryptic Evolution: Does Environmental Deterioration Have a Genetic Basis?

Cryptic evolution has been defined as adaptive evolutionary change being masked by concurrent environmental change. Empirical studies of cryptic evolution have usually invoked a changing climate and/or increasing population density as the form of detrimental environmental change experienced by a population undergoing cryptic evolution. However, Fisher (1958) emphasized that evolutionary change in itself is likely to be an important component of "environmental deterioration," a point restated by Cooke et al. (1990) in the context of intraspecific competition. In this form, environmental deterioration arises because a winning lineage has to compete against more winners in successive generations as the population evolves. This "evolutionary environmental deterioration" has different implications for the selection and evolution of traits influenced by resource competition than general environmental change. We reformulate Cooke's model as a quantitative genetic model to show that it is identical in form to more recent developments proposed by quantitative geneticists. This provides a statistical framework for discriminating between the alternative hypotheses of environmental change and environmental deterioration caused by evolutionary change. We also demonstrate that in systems where no phenotypic change has occurred, there are many reasonable biological processes that will generate patterns in predicted breeding values that are consistent with what has been interpreted as cryptic evolution, and care needs to be taken when interpreting these patterns. These processes include mutation, sib competition, and invisible fractions.     

Environmental enrichment for laboratory rodents: animal welfare and the methods of science

Because of the difficulty of' establishing objective measures of laboratory rodents' psychological well-being, developing environmental enrichment programs that are actually beneficial to rodents destined to participate in laboratory research is particularly challenging. Many studies of effects of environmental complexity, social housing, and increases in cage size suggest that professional judgments as to the impact of diverse types of environmental enrichment on rodent welfare are not a reliable basis for evaluating the outcomes of enrichment programs for laboratory rodents. Successful enrichment programs will vary from one rodent species to another, between sexes, as well as between age classes. There is a need for objective, measurable goals for proposed environmental enrichment programs for rodents, as well a s for empirical investigations of the beneficial and detrimental consequences of proposed environmental manipulations.     

Combining datasets to predict the effects of regulation of environmental lead exposure in housing stock

A model for children's blood lead concentrations as a function of environmental lead exposures was developed by combining two nationally representative sources of data that characterize the marginal distributions of blood lead and environmental lead with a third regional dataset that contains joint measures of blood lead and environmental lead. The complicating factor addressed in this article was the fact that methods for assessing environmental lead were different in the national and regional datasets. Relying on an assumption of transportability (that although the marginal distributions of blood lead and environmental lead may be different between the regional dataset and the nation as a whole, the joint relationship between blood lead and environmental lead is the same), the model makes use of a latent variable approach to estimate the joint distribution of blood lead and environmental lead nationwide.     

Prediction of breeding values and selection responses with genetic heterogeneity of environmental variance

There is empirical evidence that genotypes differ not only in mean, but also in environmental variance of the traits they affect. Genetic heterogeneity of environmental variance may indicate genetic differences in environmental sensitivity. The aim of this study was to develop a general framework for prediction of breeding values and selection responses in mean and environmental variance with genetic heterogeneity of environmental variance. Both means and environmental variances were treated as heritable traits. Breeding values and selection responses were predicted with little bias using linear, quadratic, and cubic regression on individual phenotype or using linear regression on the mean and within-family variance of a group of relatives. A measure of heritability was proposed for environmental variance to standardize results in the literature and to facilitate comparisons to "conventional" traits. Genetic heterogeneity of environmental variance can be considered as a trait with a low heritability. Although a large amount of information is necessary to accurately estimate breeding values for environmental variance, response in environmental variance can be substantial, even with mass selection. The methods developed allow use of the well-known selection index framework to evaluate breeding strategies and effects of natural selection that simultaneously change the mean and the variance.     

Variation partitioning as a tool to distinguish between niche and neutral processes

We assess the potential of different forms of variation partitioning to distinguish between environmental control and dispersal limitation in communities structured by combinations of niche and neutral processes. Simulation data reveal interactions between dispersal limitation, environmental control, and the spatial structure of environmental factors in the detected levels of variance fractions. The degree of dispersal limitation contributes to both the pure environmental and pure spatial variance partitions. This undermines the common practice of interpreting these partitions as direct expressions of niche and neutral processes, respectively. Furthermore, the proportion of variation attributed to environmental variation depends not only on the strength of environmental control, but also on the specific spatial configuration of the environmental variable. This has important implications for the interpretation of empirical studies. In particular, use of these analytical techniques to compare processes governing community structure among different study systems is unwarranted, as the results will reflect not only differences in the strength of the processes of interest, but also the influence of the unique spatial arrangement of the environmental variables in each system.     

Finding Common Ground for Environmental Decisions: Public Health Principles as a Foundation for Better Choices

The history of environmental decision-making in the United States is primarily one of antagonism, conflict, and litigation. Four sectors of American society are typically at odds over why and how to solve environmental problems—government regulators, businesses proponents, environmental advocates, and members of affected communities. Dissimilar worldviews are at the heart of most environmental disputes, and people in the four sectors tend to have diverse perspectives and philosophies that affect how they interpret and respond to environmental issues. To promote integrated, cost-effective decisions, the public health paradigm (prevention first, intervention second, treatment third), as embodied in the Precautionary Principle and the concept of Sustainable Development, should be mutually adopted as a joint framework for prioritizing solutions to pressing environmental problems. The core public health principle of prevention first is a simple yet powerful tenet that can help foster better environmental choices that are more effective, efficient, and equitable.     

Supply Curves for Eco-efficient Environmental Improvements Using Different Weighting Methods

Eco-efficiency implies environmental improvement at the lowest possible cost. When several environmental measures are possible, these can be ranked according to their cost per unit of environmental improvement, after which an eco-efficient set of measures can be selected that yields a given level of environmental improvement at least cost. This procedure can be visualized as a supply curve for environmental improvement. Such a curve plots cumulative cost or cost per unit of environmental improvement against cumulative environmental improvement, with measures ordered according to increasing cost per unit of environmental improvement. This paper presents supply curves for environmental improvement on the basis of a set of possible environmental measures for a company in the Dutch oil and gas producing industry.
To measure aggregated potential environmental improvement for a given measure, different environmental impacts are lumped together using weighting factors. We compare five methods for weighting environmental impacts, covering a wide range of current practices.
The supply curves that were determined for each of the five weighting methods show relatively small differences, except for one (the distance-to-target method). The ranking of measures differs significantly, though, and as a result, so do the measures that are selected if total costs are restricted to a certain budget. Also, the consequent reduction in emissions of specific substances, in particular nitrogen oxides (NO x ), depends on the weighting method selected.     

Environmental Enrichment for Laboratory Rodents: Animal Welfare and the Methods of Science

Because of the difficulty of' establishing objective measures of laboratory rodents' psychological well-being, developing environmental enrichment programs that are actually beneficial to rodents destined to participate in laboratory research is particularly challenging. Many studies of effects of environmental complexity, social housing, and increases in cage size suggest that professional judgments as to the impact of diverse types of environmental enrichment on rodent welfare are not a reliable basis for evaluating the outcomes of enrichment programs for laboratory rodents. Successful enrichment programs will vary from one rodent species to another, between sexes, as well as between age classes. There is a need for objective, measurable goals for proposed environmental enrichment programs for rodents, as well a s for empirical investigations of the beneficial and detrimental consequences of proposed environmental manipulations.