Could baseline establishment be counterproductive for emissions reduction? Insights from Vietnam’s building sector

This article provides insights into the role of institutions involved in climate governance working towards a future low-carbon society at the national level, within the global climate change governance architecture. Specifically, it contributes to understanding the fragmented governance of energy efficiency policy in developing countries by focussing on Vietnam’s building sector, identifying key institutions related to underlying discourses, national and international power relations, resource distribution and coalitions. It uses the case of baseline setting in developing Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) to illustrate institutional dynamics, nationally and transnationally, as well as to question whether demands for baseline setting achieve the ideal trade-off between actual GHG emissions reduction and institutionalized demands for accountability. The analysis reveals that, in addition to domestic efforts and challenges, the international agenda greatly influences the energy efficiency policy arena. The article presents lessons to be learnt about policy processes from the specific Vietnamese case, reflecting on the role of international actors and discourses in it. Finally, it argues for the abolition of baselines in favour of adequate monitoring and evaluation, from the perspective that requirement for deviation from fictitious baselines is unproductive and only serves an international techno-managerial discourse.

POLICY RELEVANCE

Baseline establishment is commonly considered an initial step in developing NAMAs, in order to facilitate the demonstration of a deviation from such baselines. The requirement to produce baselines is traditionally not questioned by policy practitioners. Thus, significant development resources are allocated to the establishment of baselines and the bridging of data gaps, often without consideration as to whether baselines are a necessary instrument for NAMA implementation. We suggest omitting the lengthy and resource-consuming practice of establishing baselines and recommend proceeding forthwith to the planning and implementation of mitigation and energy efficiency policies. As conditions vary significantly in different contexts, it would be more appropriate to measure the initial situation, establishing the ‘base point’, and monitor development from that point. The present article might serve as motivation for policymakers to question traditional approaches to policy development and consider alternatives to maximize the cost efficacy of NAMA programmes and facilitate their implementation.     

Morphometric and geological conditions for sediment accumulation in the Udava River,Outer Carpathians,Slovakia

The accumulation of sediment in river channels is a phenomenon that is not only influenced by the channel morphology, but also by the physical and geographical characteristics and the endogenous and exogenous processes taking place in the catchment. This paper presents an analysis of the impact the changes in lithological conditions have on the morphological and morphometric parameters of the Udava River channel and their relation to the channel accumulation forms representative of the river’s longitudinal profile as well as of its planform. Results document when accumulation forms occur and what is their spatial distribution within the longitudinal and cross-sectional river profiles. More resistant structures created sections with a lower degree of sedimentation, while in depression segments the degree of sedimentation was higher. With the increase in longitudinal slope, the impact of channel width on the average channel bar size increased. Also a difference in the accumulation was observed between the left and right bank which could be possibly explained by the impact of Coriolis force.     

Divergent trends in ecosystem services under different climate-management futures in a fire-prone forest landscape

While ecosystem services and climate change are often examined independently, quantitative assessments integrating these fields are needed to inform future land management decisions. Using climate-informed state-and-transition simulations, we examined projected trends and tradeoffs for a suite of ecosystem services under four climate change scenarios and two management scenarios (active management emphasizing fuel treatments and no management other than fire suppression) in a fire-prone landscape of dry and moist mixed-conifer forests in central Oregon, USA. Focal ecosystem services included fire potential (regulating service), timber volume (provisioning service), and potential wildlife habitat (supporting service). Projections without climate change suggested active management in dry mixed-conifer forests would create more open forest structures, reduce crown fire potential, and maintain timber stocks, while in moist mixed-conifer forests, active management would reduce crown fire potential but at the expense of timber stocks. When climate change was considered, however, trends in most ecosystem services changed substantially, with large increases in wildfire area predominating broad-scale trends in outputs, regardless of management approach (e.g., strong declines in timber stocks and habitat for closed-forest wildlife species). Active management still had an influence under a changing climate, but as a moderator of the strong climate-driven trends rather than being a principal driver of ecosystem service outputs. These results suggest projections of future ecosystem services that do not consider climate change may result in unrealistic expectations of benefits.     

Depositional ice nucleation on NX illite and mixtures of NX illite with organic acids

Mineral dust particles are known to be efficient ice nuclei in the atmosphere. Previous work has probed heterogeneous ice nucleation on various laboratory dust samples including Arizona Test Dust, kaolinite, montmorillonite, and illite as atmospheric dust surrogates. However, it has recently been suggested that NX illite may be a better representation of atmospheric dust. Hiranuma et al. (2015) performed a laboratory comparison for immersion ice nucleation on NX illite, but here we focus on depositional ice nucleation because of its importance in low temperature cirrus cloud formation. A Raman microscope setup was used to examine the ice-nucleating efficiency of NX illite. Organic coatings on the NX illite particles were also investigated using a mixture of 5 dicarboxylic acids (M5). The ratio of NX illite to M5 was varied from 1:10 to 100:1. It was found that NX illite efficiently nucleates ice with S_ice = 1.07 ± 0.01 at ?47 °C, with S_ice slightly increasing at lower temperatures. In contrast, pure M5 is a poorer ice nucleus with S_ice = 1.30 ± 0.02 at ?40 °C, relatively independent of temperature. Further, it was found that M5 coatings on the order of several monolayers thick hindered the ice nucleating ability of NX illite. Optical images suggest that at colder temperatures (< ?50 °C) 1:1 NX illite:M5 particles and pure M5 particles nucleate ice depositionally, while at warmer temperatures (> ?50 °C) subsaturated immersion ice nucleation dominates. These experiments suggest that mineral dust particles may become less active towards ice nucleation as they age in the atmosphere.     

An Integrated Mapping Approach to Petroleum Exploration on the Pratt Anticline,Pratt County,Kansas

A quantitative map comparison/integration technique to aid in petroleum exploration was applied to an area in south-central Kansas. The visual comparison and integration of maps has become increasingly difficult with the large number and different types of maps necessary to interpret the geology and assess the petroleum potential of an area; therefore, it is desirable to quantify these relationships. The algebraic algorithm used in this application is based on a point-by-point comparison of any number and type of spatial data represented in map form. Ten geological and geophysical maps were compared and integrated, utilizing data from 900 wells located in a nine-township area on the Pratt Anticline in Pratt County, Kansas. Five structure maps, including top of the Lansing Group (Pennsylvanian), Mississippian chert, Mississippian limestone, Viola Limestone (Ordovician), and Arbuckle Group (Cambro-Ordovician), two isopachous maps from top of Mississippian chert to Viola and Lansing to Arbuckle, a Mississippian chert porosity map, Bouguer gravity map, and an aeromagnetic map were processed and interpreted. Before processing, each map was standardized and assigned a relative degree of importance, depending on knowledge of the geology of the area. Once a combination of weights was obtained that most closely resembled the pattern of proved oil fields (target map), a favorability map was constructed based on a coincidence of similarity values and of geological properties of petroleum reservoirs. The resulting favorability maps for the study area indicate location of likely Mississippian chert and lower Paleozoic production.     

Line-driven disc wind models with an improved line force

We describe an efficient method of calculating the radiation pressure resulting from spectral lines, including all the terms in the velocity gradient tensor. We apply this method to calculate the two-dimensional, time-dependent structure of winds from luminous discs. Qualitative features of our new models are very similar to those we calculated including only the dominant terms in the tensor. In particular, we find that models which displayed unsteady behaviour in our earlier paper are also unsteady with the new method, and gross properties of the winds, such as mass-loss rate and characteristic velocity, are not changed by the more accurate approach. The largest change caused by the new method is in the disc-wind opening angle: winds driven only by the disc radiation are more polar with the new method, whilst winds driven by the disc and central object radiation are typically more equatorial. In the closing discussion, we provide further insight into the way the geometry of the radiation field and consequent flow determine the time properties of the flow.     

Rifting and early evolution of ancient ocean basins: the record of the Mesozoic Tethys and of the Galicia-Newfoundland margins

Although of different age, the undeformed Cretaceous Iberia/Newfoundland margins and the relics of the Jurassic Briançonnais/Adriatic margins preserved in the Alps document a similar spatial and temporal evolution of rifting suggesting that the evolution of both pairs of margins was controlled by the same processes. Rifting appears to depend strongly on the thermal history of the lithosphere, which controls the rheology and consequently also the structural evolution of the margin. The tectonic evolution of non-volcanic margins appears to be distinctly different from that of volcanic ones.