Brazil beyond 2020: from deforestation to the energy challenge

The main assumptions and findings are presented on a comparative analysis of three GHG long-term emissions scenarios for Brazil. Since 1990, land-use change has been the most important source of GHG emissions in the country. The voluntary goals to limit Brazilian GHG emissions pledged a reduction in between 36.1% and 38.9% of GHG emissions projected to 2020, to be 6–10% lower than in 2005. Brazil is in a good position to meet the voluntary mitigation goals pledged to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) up to 2020: recent efforts to reduce deforestation have been successful and avoided deforestation will form the bulk of the emissions reduction commitment. In 2020, if governmental mitigation goals are met, then GHG emissions from the energy system would become the largest in the country. After 2020, if no additional mitigation actions are implemented, GHG emissions will increase again in the period 2020–2030, due to population and economic growth driving energy demand, supply and GHG emissions. However, Brazil is in a strong position to take a lead in low-carbon economic and social development due to its huge endowment of renewable energy resources allowing for additional mitigation actions to be adopted after 2020.

Policy relevance

The period beyond 2020 is now relevant in climate policy due to the Durban Platform agreeing a ‘protocol, legal instrument or agreed outcome with legal force’ that will have effect from 2020. After 2020, Brazil will be in a situation more similar to other industrialized countries, faced with a new challenge of economic development with low GHG energy-related emissions, requiring the adoption of mitigation policies and measures targeted at the energy system. Unlike the mitigation actions in the land-use change sector, where most of the funding will come from the national budgets due to sovereignty concerns, the huge financial resources needed to develop low-carbon transport and energy infrastructure could benefit from soft loans channelled to the country through nationally appropriate mitigation actions (NAMAs).     

Site response obtained from array techniques applied to the seismic noise: Two examples in Italy

The vertical component of the seismic noise has been recorded in two different sites near the towns of Mercato S. Severino and Benevento in Southern Italy by a small aperture array, in order to investigate the characteristics of the noise propagation and to study the site response. Three different array techniques have been applied in the two investigated sites: Beam Forming, High Resolution and Spatial Correlation methods. We used two simple array geometry for localising possible noise sources and estimating local shallow structure using ambient noise. The cross shaped array results effective for determining the phase velocity of waves in the case when the noise is from a single localised source; the circular array, on the other hand, is successfully used when the noise sources are distributed. The main results are: the analysis of a coherent component of the noise recorded in the two sites, interpreted as Rayleigh waves, results in reasonable velocity models; the noise recorded in the M.S.S. Plain is a space stationary signal, while the noise at the Benevento site is possibly produced by a stable noise source located close to the array. Due to this evidence, the correlation method does not yield satisfactory results when applied to the Benevento site. The 2–6 Hz spectral peaks of the noise recorded in the M.S.S. Plain can be interpreted as due to a site effect, considering the satisfactory agreement of the noise spectrum at those frequencies with the theoretical transfer function computed on the basis of the velocity model deduced from the Rayleigh waves dispersion analysis.     

西藏高原雨季开始和中断的气候特征及其环流分析

西藏高原降水主要集中在５￣９月,利用高原３４个站点逐日降水资料,依据降水相对系数Ｃ,客观地确定雨季的起始和中断标准,重点分析雅鲁藏布江流域河谷农区雨季开始、中断气候特征,并对高原雨季开始、中断的典型个例进行了环流分析。     

The contribution of faint active galactic nuclei to the hard X-ray background

Hard X-ray selection is the most efficient way to discriminate between accretion-powered sources, such as active galactic nuclei (AGN), and sources dominated by starlight. Hard X-rays are also less affected than other bands by obscuration. We have therefore carried out the BeppoSAX High Energy Large Area Survey (HELLAS) in the largely unexplored 5–10 keV band, finding 180 sources in ∼50 deg² of sky with flux≳5×10⁻¹⁴ erg cm⁻² s⁻¹. After correction for the non-uniform sky coverage this corresponds to resolving about 30 per cent of the hard cosmic X-ray background (XRB). Here we report on a first optical spectroscopic identification campaign, finding 12 AGN out of 14 X-ray error boxes studied. Seven AGN show evidence for obscuration in X-ray and optical bands, a fraction higher than in previous ROSAT or ASCA – ROSAT surveys (at 95–99 and 90 per cent confidence levels respectively), thus supporting the scenario in which a significant fraction of the XRB is created by obscured AGN.     

行为地理学的学科定位与前沿方向

始自行为革命,行为地理学逐渐走向多元化的发展方向,不断扩展自身的理论框架和实践外延,反思并重新认识自身的意义,成为了人文地理学的重要组成部分。伴随着社会经济转型的深入,世界越来越向着多样化、个体性、动态化发展,人们的空间行为决策、选择的差异与个性越来越明显,空间与行为的交互越来越强,为行为地理学带来了新的发展机遇。论文通过梳理行为地理学的学科基础,提出行为地理学的学科定位与内涵外延,并指出行为地理学已经呈现出面向动态人地关系、面向个体生活质量及面向社会可持续发展3个前沿发展方向。在此基础上,论文对行为地理学面临的方法论、研究方法与跨学科的挑战进行讨论,并展望行为地理学的未来发展,以期为中国行为地理学的理论创新与实践探索提供启示。     

The role of urban growth,climate change,and their interplay in altering runoff extremes

Changes in climate and urban growth are the most influential factors affecting hydrological characteristics in urban and extra‐urban contexts. The assessment of the impacts of these changes on the extreme rainfall–runoff events may have important implications on urban and extra‐urban management policies against severe events, such as floods, and on the design of hydraulic infrastructures. Understanding the effects of the interaction between climate change and urban growth on the generation of runoff extremes is the main aim of this paper. We carried out a synthetic experiment on a river catchment of 64 km² to generate hourly runoff time series under different hypothetical scenarios. We imposed a growth of the percentage of urban coverage within the basin (from 1.5% to 25%), a rise in mean temperature of 2.6 °C, and an alternatively increase/decrease in mean annual precipitation of 25%; changes in mean annual precipitation were imposed following different schemes, either changing rainstorm frequency or rainstorm intensity. The modelling framework consists of a physically based distributed hydrological model, which simulates fast and slow mechanisms of runoff generation directly connected with the impervious areas, a land‐use change model, and a weather generator. The results indicate that the peaks over threshold and the hourly annual peaks, used as hydrological indicators, are very sensitive to the rainstorm intensity. Moreover, the effects of climate changes dominate on those of urban growth determining an exacerbation of the fast runoff component in extreme events and a reduction of the slow and deep runoff component, thus limiting changes in the overall runoff.     

Aeolian sediment provenance and transport in the upper and middle reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River,Tibet Plateau

Frequent and serious aeolian disasters occur in the upper and middle reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River, which runs through the high-elevation Tibet Plateau. Sediment geochemical characteristics can be used as a proxy to identify the sediment's provenance. To determine the provenance of aeolian sediments in the river's basin, we analysed major and trace element contents from surface samples and local clastic rocks throughout the basin. We found that the major and trace elements differed between the middle reaches, upper reaches and regions south of the river. Major element contents were similar in the upper and middle reaches, but trace elements differed. Al₂O₃, MgO and Na₂O concentrations increased from the upper reaches to the lower reaches, and in the lower reaches, MgO and Na₂O were enriched compared with the crustal average. The similarities between samples in the lower part of the upper reaches and those in the middle reaches indicated that sediment transported by fluvial systems from the upper reaches were first deposited in the wide valleys near Xigaze, where they formed a large area of shifting sand. These deposits were then transported by the wind to the river's middle reaches, where they formed a large area of shifting sand. When we compared aeolian sediment in the middle reaches with the local clastic rocks, they appeared to be unrelated. The difference between sediments south of the river and those in the middle reaches means that the southern sediments were not transported to the middle reaches. Therefore, the aeolian sediment in the middle reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River mainly came from the lower part of the upper reaches, not from the local clastic rocks.