Differentiated payments for environmental services schemes: Amethodology proposal

Payment schemes for environmental services face serious budget constraints in Mexico. Payments are equally distributed among forest owners, and the governmental agencies that make payments to beneficiaries do not evaluate the amount of environmental services produced by forested areas. This lack of evaluation could lead to economic and environmental deficiencies that restrict the possible benefits of such programmes. In general, these programmes do not achieve their conservation objectives, and local beneficiaries are not involved in the design or application of these programmes. Similarly, the Payments for Hydrological Environmental Services (PHES) programme of the State of Mexico, Mexico, makes equal payments to beneficiaries of forested areas considering tree density. The objective of the present work was to create a methodology for determining differentiated payments schemes for hydrological environmental services, prioritising areas that contribute the most to groundwater recharge and promote the participation of society. In the Nevado de Toluca Natural Protected Area, the environmental criteria of forest type, tree density and aquifer overexploitation as well as social participation were considered in a multi-criteria analysis implemented in a Geographic Information System. A methodology was developed to determine differentiated payments based on specific forest characteristics that influence the potential capacity of forests to recharge groundwater reserves in addition to the level of social participation. In particular, social participation is key as it could ensure the viability of PHES programmes as conservation alternatives in forested areas with high groundwater recharge potential.     

Magnitude of latent heat in thermally loaded clays

Temperature changes are known to induce specific couplings in clay, in particular, an anomalously high thermal pressurization in undrained conditions or a thermal compaction in drained conditions, both of which are potential threats for the mechanical stability and sealing capacity of the geomaterials. Thermodynamical analysis of those peculiar thermomechanical couplings points to a potentially important latent energy, which in turn could limit the temperature change upon heating or cooling. The direct measurement of latent energy developed during a laboratory geomechanical test is challenging. Instead, proper identification of thermal hardening in conventional experiments with temperature changes provides an alternative route to estimate latent energy. In this work, existing laboratory thermomechanical tests of clays are analyzed with a rigorous thermodynamic framework to quantify the magnitude of latent energy in thermomechanically loaded clays. A thermodynamically consistent constitutive model for fully saturated clays that combines two key features, (a) the temperature dependence of the blocked energy and (b) the framework of bounding plasticity, is proposed. The performance of the model is validated by reproducing results obtained in laboratory tests for Boom and Opalinus clays. The thermomechanical loads considered to validate the model performance were then used to estimate the percentage of work that remains latent in the clayey material during plastic yielding. We find that the magnitude of latent energy is quite significant, typically a few tens of percent of the total dissipated energy, and increases significantly with temperature. Accordingly, it is expected to play an important role in the thermomechanical response of clays.     

An extreme wave event in eastern Yucatán,Mexico: Evidence of a palaeotsunami event during the Mayan times

The Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, has typically been considered a tectonically stable region with little significant seismic activity. The region though, is one that is regularly affected by hurricanes. A detailed survey of ca 100 km of the eastern Yucatán and Cozumel coast identified the presence of ridges containing individual boulders measuring >1 m in length. The boulder ridges reach 5 m in height and their origin is associated with extreme wave event activity. Previously modelled tsunami waves from known seismically active zones in the region (Muertos Thrust Belt and South Caribbean Deformed Belt) are not of sufficient scale in the area of the Yucatán Peninsula to have produced the boulder ridges recorded in this study. The occurrence of hurricanes in this region is more common, but two of the most destructive (Hurricane Gilbert 1988 and Hurricane Wilma 2005) produced coastal waves too small to have created the ridges recorded here. In this paper, a new tsunami model with a source area located on the Motagua/Swan Island Fault System has been generated that indicates a tsunami event may have caused the extreme wave events that resulted in the deposition of the boulder ridges.     

Shock deformation confirms the impact origin for the Cerro do Jarau,Rio Grande do Sul,Brazil, structure

Cerro do Jarau is a conspicuous, circular morpho‐structural feature in Rio Grande do Sul State (Brazil), with a central elevated core in the otherwise flat “Pampas” terrain typical for the border regions between Brazil and Uruguay. The structure has a diameter of approximately 13.5 km. It is centered at 30^o12′S and 56^o32′W and was formed on basaltic flows of the Cretaceous Serra Geral Formation, which is part of the Paraná‐Etendeka Large Igneous Province (LIP), and in sandstones of the Botucatu and Guará formations. The structure was first spotted on aerial photographs in the 1960s. Ever since, its origin has been debated, sometimes in terms of an endogenous (igneous) origin, sometimes as the result of an exogenous (meteorite impact) event. In recent years, a number of studies have been conducted in order to investigate its nature and origin. Although the results have indicated a possible impact origin, no conclusive evidence could be produced. The interpretation of an impact origin was mostly based on the morphological characteristics of the structure; geophysical data; as well as the occurrence of different breccia types; extensive deformation/silicification of the rocks within the structure, in particular the sandstones; and also on the widespread occurrence of low‐pressure deformation features, including some planar fractures (PFs). A detailed optical microscopic analysis of samples collected during a number of field campaigns since 2007 resulted in the disclosure of a large number of quartz grains from sandstone and monomict arenite breccia from the central part of the structure with PFs and feather features (FFs), as well as a number of quartz grains exhibiting planar deformation features (PDFs). While most of these latter grains only carry a single set of PDFs, we have observed several with two sets, and one grain with three sets of PDFs. Consequently, we here propose Cerro do Jarau as the seventh confirmed impact structure in Brazil. Cerro do Jarau, together with Vargeão Dome (Santa Catalina state) and Vista Alegre (Paraná State), is one of very few impact structures on Earth formed in basaltic rocks.     

Built environment and agricultural value at risk from Hurricane Irma flooding in Florida (USA)

Natural Hazards - Flooding is the most costly type of natural disaster, as well as the most frequent. To provide risk-based flood insurance, providers must be able to accurately determine an...     

Modelling size effect on rock aggregates strength using a DEM bonded-cell model

Empirical evidence has shown that particle breakage affects the mechanical behaviour of granular materials. The source of this mechanism takes place at the particle scale, and the main consequence on the macromechanical behaviour is increasing compressibility. Due to the inverse correlation between particle size and particle crushing strength, coarse rockfill materials are particularly vulnerable to mechanical degradation due to particle breakage. However, such coarse materials do not fit in standard laboratory devices, and the alternative of large sample testing is usually unavailable or too expensive. Alternatively, recent works have proposed multi-scale approaches using the discrete element method (DEM) to carry out numerical testing of coarse crushable materials, although few studies have focused on size effects. This article presents the application of a DEM bonded-cell model to study particle size-strength correlation on angular rock aggregates. Each particle is modelled by a cluster of perfectly rigid polyhedral cells with Mohr–Coulomb contact law. Constant cell density within particles implies that the presence of potential fragmentation planes increases with size. Therefore, particle strength decreases with size. A comprehensive sensitivity analysis was carried out through 1477 particle crushing simulations in a given particle size. Based on published experimental data on calcareous rock aggregates, part of the simulations were used for calibration, and 97 additional simulations of a coarser size fraction were performed for validation. The results show a good agreement with the empirical data in terms of size effect and data scatter through Weibull statistics.

     

The Effect of Sunspot Weighting

Although W. Brunner began to weight sunspot counts (from 1926), using a method whereby larger spots were counted more than once, he compensated for the weighting by not counting enough smaller spots in order to maintain the same reduction factor (0.6) as was used by his predecessor A. Wolfer to reduce the count to R. Wolf’s original scale, so that the weighting did not have any effect on the scale of the sunspot number. In 1947, M. Waldmeier formalized the weighting (on a scale from 1 to 5) of the sunspot count made at Zurich and its auxiliary station Locarno. This explicit counting method, when followed, inflates the relative sunspot number over that which corresponds to the scale set by Wolfer (and matched by Brunner). Recounting some 60,000 sunspots on drawings from the reference station Locarno shows that the number of sunspots reported was “over counted” by \({\approx}\,44~\%\) on average, leading to an inflation (measured by an effective weight factor) in excess of 1.2 for high solar activity. In a double-blind parallel counting by the Locarno observer M. Cagnotti, we determined that Svalgaard’s count closely matches that of Cagnotti, allowing us to determine from direct observation the daily weight factor for spots since 2003 (and sporadically before). The effective total inflation turns out to have two sources: a major one (15?–?18 %) caused by weighting of spots, and a minor source (4?–?5 %) caused by the introduction of the Zürich classification of sunspot groups which increases the group count by 7?–?8 % and the relative sunspot number by about half that. We find that a simple empirical equation (depending on the activity level) fits the observed factors well, and use that fit to estimate the weighting inflation factor for each month back to the introduction of effective inflation in 1947 and thus to be able to correct for the over-counts and to reduce sunspot counting to the Wolfer method in use from 1894 onwards.     

Effects of parasitism and environment on shell size of the South American intertidal mud snail Heleobia australis (Gastropoda)

The aim of this work was to evaluate the effects of parasitism and certain environmental factors on the shell size of Heleobia australis (Hydrobiidae, Cochliopinae). We report sporocysts and metacercariae of Microphallus simillimus (Microphallidae, Trematoda) parasitizing the gonad and digestive gland of H. australis specimens from two sites of Bahía Blanca estuary, Argentina. The prevalence of infection was significantly higher (34.17% in winter and 68.14% in late spring) in snails from the outer estuary at Site 2 than in those from the inner estuary at Site 1 (5.88% and 4.71% respectively). The only known definitive host for this digenean is the white-backed stilt Himantopus melanurus (Recurvirostridae, Aves), most abundant in the estuary during winter. Parasitism by M. simillimus causes variations in the shell dimensions of H. australis, the shells of infected snails being narrower than those of uninfected snails. Snails from Site 2 were found in general to be significantly smaller than those at Site 1, possibly as a result of differences in environmental factors such as the degree of exposure to wave energy, the allocation of energy to reproduction rather than growth (induced by predation and/or parasitic castrators) and anthropogenic stressors.