Flood insurance: the challenge of the uninsured

Increasing concern about flooding and its potentially socially-devastating effects has reinforced the need for an effective mechanism to deal with the recovery of losses from these events. This paper highlights the problem of uninsurance in the UK and the potentially growing number of people who do not have flood insurance. A dual challenge of uninsurance is emerging: those who have been traditionally excluded from insurance cover due to price and a new phenomenon, those who live in high-risk areas who may become cost-prohibited through the introduction of risk-related premiums.     

Linking Adaptation and Mitigation in Climate Change Policy

How people privately and collectively adapt to climate risk can affect the costs and benefits of public mitigation policy (e.g., Kyoto); an obvious point often neglected in actual policy making. Herein we use the economic theory of endogenous risk to address this optimal mix of mitigation and adaptation strategies, and examine how increased variability in climate change threats affects this mix. We stress that a better understanding of the cross-links between mitigation and adaptation would potentially make it possible to provide more risk reduction with less wealth. Policies that are formulated without considering the cross-links can unintentionally undermine the effectiveness of public sector policies and programs because of unaddressed conflicts between the strategies. We also discuss the cross-disciplinary lessons to be learned from this literature, and identify important research questions to spur discussion in the next round of inquiry.     

Well blowout rates and consequences in California Oil and Gas District 4 from 1991 to 2005: implications for geological storage of carbon dioxide

Well blowout rates in oil fields undergoing thermally enhanced recovery (via steam injection) in California Oil and Gas District 4 from 1991 to 2005 were on the order of 1 per 1,000 well construction operations, 1 per 10,000 active wells per year, and 1 per 100,000 shut-in/idle and plugged/abandoned wells per year. This allows some initial inferences about leakage of CO₂ via wells, which is considered perhaps the greatest leakage risk for geological storage of CO₂. During the study period, 9% of the oil produced in the United States was from District 4, and 59% of this production was via thermally enhanced recovery. There was only one possible blowout from an unknown or poorly located well, despite over a century of well drilling and production activities in the district. The blowout rate declined dramatically during the study period, most likely as a result of increasing experience, improved technology, and/or changes in safety culture. If so, this decline indicates the blowout rate in CO₂-storage fields can be significantly minimized both initially and with increasing experience over time. Comparable studies should be conducted in other areas. These studies would be particularly valuable in regions with CO₂-enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and natural gas storage. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Factors contributing to the removal of a marine grass invader (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Spartina anglica</Emphasis>) and subsequent potential for habitat restoration

Our goal is to understand how removal regime and habitat type interact to influence removal success of a marine plant invader and the subsequent potential for restoration. In particular, we investigate the management program designed to eradicate the English cordgrass,Spartina anglica C. E. Hubbard, in marine intertidal habitats of Puget Sound, Washington, United States. Observational and manipulative experiments were used to measure the regrowth (vegetative growth), reinvasion (seedling recruitment), and restoration potential (return to native condition) of invaded habitats. Removal regime (consistent: yearly removal; interrupted: yearly removal with the last year missed) and habitat type (low salinity marsh, mudflat, cobble beach, and high salinity marsh sites) were considered. The response to removal regime was dramatic. Under consistent removal, cordgrass slowly declined but under interrupted removal, there was substantial regrowth of the invader. This pattern results from the resiliency of belowground biomass and the subsequent high aboveground productivity and seedling growth ofS. anglica. We also found that removal success depended on differences among sites that represent different habitat types. Cordgrass regrowth and reinvasion were substantially higher in the low salinity marsh sites where soils have lower salinity. We also found that at the low salinity marsh sites, some restoration of native plants and soil conditions was evident. At mudflat, cobble beach, and high salinity marsh sites, colonization of native vascular plants and algae not normally present, in the absence of the invasion, occurred. Whether these habitats will eventually revert back to the pre-invasion conditions over a longer period of time is unknown.     

Mucky carrots and other proxies: Problematising the knowledge-fix for sustainable and ethical consumption

This paper uses evidence from focus groups in England to consider how consumers think about and, more importantly, distinguish foods by both primary and secondary qualities, using both their own judgement but also advice produced by various organisations acting as ‘knowledge intermediaries’, such as independent certification bodies. We thus consider the ‘sorting out’ that consumers do with food, particularly in developing typologies of ‘goodness’ and ‘badness’, and the cues on which they base these judgements, from the material immediacy of ‘mucky carrots’ to the abstract remoteness of organic certification. In particular, we problematise the ‘knowledge-fix’ that underlies attempts to provide knowledge to promote more sustainable and ethical consumption. This raises problems of how consumers give assurance schemes meaning, how ethical and sustainable schemes are subject to re-fetishization and how consumers tend towards increasing scepticism and distrust of such claims, thus making a ‘politics of reconnection’ far from easy.     

Reports from the Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Network, November 2009

Information included in this summary is based on more detailed reports published in the Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network, vol. 34, no. 11, November 2009 (on the Internet at ). Edited by scientists at the Smithsonian, this bulletin includes reports provided by a worldwide network of correspondents. The reports contain the names and contact information for all sources. Please note that these reports are preliminary and subject to change as events are studied in more detail. The Global Volcanism Program welcomes further reports of current volcanism, seismic unrest, monitoring data, and field observations.     

Reports from the Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Network, September 2009

Information included in this summary is based on more detailed reports published in the Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network, vol. 34, no. 9, September 2009 (on the Internet at ). Edited by scientists at the Smithsonian, this bulletin includes reports provided by a worldwide network of correspondents. The reports contain the names and contact information for all sources. Please note that these reports are preliminary and subject to change as events are studied in more detail. The Global Volcanism Program welcomes further reports of current volcanism, seismic unrest, monitoring data, and field observations.     

Hydrous pyrolysis of New Albany and Phosphoria Shales: production kinetics of carboxylic acids and light hydrocarbons and interactions between the inorganic and organic chemical systems

Hydrous pyrolysis in flexible gold-bag autoclaves was used to study the production of carboxylic acids and light hydrocarbons from two marine type IIb source rocks (New Albany and Phosphoria Shales). Kerogen pyrolysis produced significant amounts of the monocarboxylic acids (acetic > propionic > butyric). The gases were dominated by CO₂ and methane, in that order, and progressively smaller amounts of the alkanes (ethane > propane > butane > pentane). Kinetic analyses of production rates for the New Albany Shale suggest mean activation energies (E) of 51-54 kcal/mol for both the light hydrocarbons and acids. Pressure had little effect on measured production rates for either shale over the pressure range investigated. Chemical thermodynamic speciation modeling suggests that in these experiments metal-organic acid anion complexation had little impact on aluminum speciation/solubility, but was important with respect to the alkaline earths.     

New Zealand’s National Landslide Database

A New Zealand Landslide Database has been developed to hold all of New Zealand’s landslide data and provide factual data for use in landslide hazard and risk assessment, including a probabilistic landslide hazard model for New Zealand, which is currently being developed by GNS Science. Design of a national Landslide Database for New Zealand required consideration of existing landslide data stored in a variety of digital formats and future data yet to be collected. Pre-existing landslide datasets were developed and populated with data reflecting the needs of the landslide or hazard project, and the database structures of the time. Bringing these data into a single database required a new structure capable of containing landslide information at a variety of scales and accuracy, with many different attributes. A unified data model was developed to enable the landslide database to be a repository for New Zealand landslides, irrespective of scale and method of capture. Along with landslide locations, the database may contain information on the timing of landslide events, the type of landslide, the triggering event, volume and area data, and impacts (consequences) for each landslide when this information is available. Information from contributing datasets include a variety of sources including aerial photograph interpretation, field reconnaissance and media accounts. There are currently 22,575 landslide records in the database that include point locations, polygons of landslide source and deposit areas, and linear landslide features. Access to all landslide data is provided with a web application accessible via the Internet. This web application has been developed in-house and is based on open-source software such as the underlying relational database (PostGIS) and the map generating Web Map Server (GeoServer). Future work is to develop automated data-upload routines and mobile applications to allow people to report landslides, adopting a consistent framework.     

Calibrated, late Quaternary age indices using clast rubification and soil development on alluvial surfaces in Pilot Knob Valley, Mojave Desert, southeastern California

The orange coating (varnish) that forms on the undersides (ventral sides) of clasts in desert pavements constitutes a potential relative-age indicator. Using Munsell color notation, we semiquantified the color of the orange, ventral varnish on the undersides of clasts from 15 different alluvial fan and terrace surfaces of various ages ranging from less than 500 to about 25,000 yr. All of the surfaces studied are located along the central portion of the left-lateral Garlock fault, in the Mojave Desert of southern California. The amount of left-lateral offset may be used to determine the relative ages of the surfaces. The previously published slip rate of the fault may also be used to estimate the absolute age of each surface. The color of the ventral varnish is strongly correlated with surface age and appears to be a more reliable age-indicator than the percentage coverage of dorsal varnish. Soil development indices also were not as strongly correlated with age, as were the colors of the ventral varnish. In particular, rubification appears to be more useful than soils for distinguishing relative ages among Holocene surfaces. Humidity sensors indicated that the undersides of clasts condensed moisture nightly for a period of several days to over a week after each rain. These frequent wet-dry cycles may be responsible for the rapid development of clast rubification on Holocene surfaces.