Air quality planning in California’s changing climate

California is home to some of the worst air quality in the nation and ninety percent of the state’s population lives in areas that are out of attainment with at least one of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards. Increasing temperatures associated with climate change will make meeting air quality standards more difficult. Under a changing climate, additional emission reductions will be needed to achieve clean air standards. These additional emission reductions and associated costs are called the “climate penalty.” Air quality planning is the process of assessing the emission reductions needed to meet air quality standards and outlining the programs and policies that will be implemented to achieve these emission reductions. This paper reviews the challenges that a changing climate will pose for air quality planning in California and identifies opportunities for adaptation. While state air quality regulators in California are taking enormous strides to address global warming, less work is happening at the regional, air district level. Air districts are the agencies responsible for developing air quality improvement plans. An important first step for regional air quality regulators will be to quantify the climate penalty and understand their region’s vulnerability to climate change. Limitations in regulatory authority could impede measures to improve preparedness. Regional agencies will likely need to look to state and federal agencies for additional emission reductions.     

Multidecadal biological monitoring and abatement program\ assessing human impacts on aquatic ecosystems within the Oak Ridge Reservation in eastern Tennessee,USA

Human activities can be powerful drivers of ecosystem change within catchments. While most long-term catchment studies have been conducted at pristine sites, such studies are less common from sites more impacted by human activity. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Biological Monitoring and Abatement Program (BMAP) was developed in the mid-1980s to (1) assess compliance with environmental regulations, (2) identify causes of adverse ecological impacts, (3) provide data for human and ecological risk assessments, and (4) evaluate the effectiveness of remedial actions taken to mitigate the impacts of contaminants in soils, groundwater, and surface water by documenting ecological recovery on the Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR), a federally owned 33 476-acre site in eastern Tennessee, managed by the US Department of Energy. The ORR is composed of multiple watersheds containing many small to mid-size streams. BMAP uses an integrated approach for determining stream health; its databases include long-term seasonal records of contaminant concentrations in water and biota, data from aquatic toxicity testing, and surveys of macroinvertebrate and fish assemblages from impacted and reference streams. These long-term data provide valuable records of degradation and recovery in catchment ecosystems. Our objective here is to describe our study system and data series in order to increase awareness of the availability of these long-term data to the catchment science community.     

Sedimentology of a wreck: the Rainbow Warrior revisited

The wreck of the Rainbow Warrior, a 40-m ship sunk on 12 December 1987 in Matauri Bay (34° 59′ S, 173° 56′ E), Cavalli Islands, northeastern New Zealand, offers an opportunity to investigate the impact of artificial substrate on temperate carbonate sedimentation. Surface sediment samples showed no significant textural or compositional difference between sediments near the wreck and those far from it. The large and diverse carbonate-producing community resident on the wreck (dominated by bryozoans, corals and sponges) has not had a measurable influence on adjacent bottom sediments (dominated by bivalves and barnacles), even after 21 years. It is likely that carbonate production on the Rainbow Warrior is insufficient to leave any sedimentary record over the potential lifetime of the wreck on the seafloor, which informs our understanding of the long-term impacts of shipwrecks (and other artificial substrata) on the local benthic environment in shallow temperate ecosystems.     

Calibration of a coupled biological-physical model for prediction in a coastal inlet

We describe a numerical forecast system designed for prediction of physical and biological dynamics of a coastal inlet. It is based on a coastal ocean observatory that was located at Lunenburg Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada. Biological, chemical, optical, and physical measurements were collected from instrumented moorings, weekly sampling and detailed surveys from 2002 through 2007. Here we present a framework for calibration and evaluation of an ecosystem model using data from the summer of 2007. A three-dimensional hydrodynamic model was coupled to a simple biological (Nutrients-Phytoplankton-Detritus) model; a simple model was used so results could be compared directly to observed biological and chemical variables using skill scores as a first step toward data-assimilation modeling. As a complement to this analysis, variability of model output, e.g., the nutrient limitation term, was examined to understand the modeled biological response to the simulated physical environment. Skill scores based on variances in observed and simulated time-series of biological components were also investigated. Coastal upwelling/downwelling simulated through this model has been found to increase modeled biological activity in the bay. Also model skill in reproducing the observed patterns in nutrients and phytoplankton has been increased due to the restoring conditions for biology set up at the open ocean boundaries of the bay.     

Rising to the challenge of environmental behaviour change: Developing a reflexive diary approach

The relationship between expressed attitudes and actual behaviour in the context of sustainable development is complex and difficult to apply in a policy-relevant manner. The household, however, represents a key ‘lens’ for understanding the environmental impact of consumption patterns and for instigating policy designed to change consumer behaviour. This paper assesses the use of a household diary approach as a means of framing and collecting household environmental data, and, critically, as an educational vehicle for bringing about behavioural change by encouraging reflexivity. Evaluating the success of the diary approach at instigating behavioural change, the paper concludes that the diary approach: (1) created awareness about pro-environmental behaviour where there was none; (2) extended existing awareness to a wider range of pro-environmental behaviours and range of household members, and; (3) induced change in pro-environmental behaviour. In particular, the paper argues that current research neglects the potential that participating in the research process may contribute to changing the outlook or behaviour of participants.     

A spectral optimally interpolated mean sea surface from satellite radar altimetry

 A technique is presented for the development of a high-precision and high-resolution mean sea surface model utilising radar altimetric sea surface heights extracted from the geodetic phase of the European Space Agency (ESA) ERS-1 mission. The methodology uses a cubic-spline fit of dual ERS-1 and TOPEX crossovers for the minimisation of radial orbit error. Fourier domain processing techniques are used for spectral optimal interpolation of the mean sea surface in order to reduce residual errors within the initial model. The EGM96 gravity field and sea surface topography models are used as reference fields as part of the determination of spectral components required for the optimal interpolation algorithm. A comparison between the final model and 10 cycles of TOPEX sea surface heights shows differences of between 12.3 and 13.8 cm root mean square (RMS). An un-optimally interpolated surface comparison with TOPEX data gave differences of between 15.7 and 16.2 cm RMS. The methodology results in an approximately 10-cm improvement in accuracy. Further improvement will be attained with the inclusion of stacked altimetry from both current and future missions. Received: 22 December 1999 / Accepted: 6 November 2000     

Chloride loading in the South Fork of the Shenandoah River,Virginia, U.S.A.

Loading trends and sources of CI^– in the South Fork of the Shenandoah River, Virginia were analyzed for the period 1929–1982. CI^– has increased from approximately 2 mg/L (2,776 tons/yr) to over 10 mg/L (14,256 tons/yr). Natural CI^– is estimated to be 1.01 mg/L (1,388 tons/yr) with precipitation providing 0.99 mg/L and rocks 0.02 mg/L. From 1929 to 1949 CI^– concentrations were relatively constant and independent of discharge, conforming to the Type II curve of Davis and Zobrist (1978), indicative of natural or relatively uncontaminated streams. Since 1952 CI^– concentrations increased exponentially as river discharge decreases conforming to the Type I curve of Davis and Zobrist for polluted streams. Since 1965 anthropogenic CI^– loading at 12,868 tons/yr has remained relatively constant. Four major sources contribute 92.2 percent (11,871 tons/yr) of the anthropogenic CI^–: (1) deicing salts—4,149 tons/yr, (2) domestic sewage—3,015 tons/yr, (3) livestock and poultry wastes—2,458 tons/yr, and (4) commercial fertilizers—2,249 tons/yr.