Can CDM monitoring requirements be reduced while maintaining environmental integrity?

Monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) requirements in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) are perceived to be of high quality, but also complex and stringent. Only one-third of the registered projects successfully managed initial verification and already received carbon credits. The time required to achieve first issuance remains high despite considerable improvements in other CDM project cycle steps. This leads to the question of whether MRV provisions in the CDM represent barriers that could be lowered while ensuring the CDM's integrity. The CDM requirements are compared with the MRV provisions of the EU Emission Trading System (EU ETS). The comparison shows that CDM–MRV provisions are often stricter and less flexible compared to similar provisions in the EU ETS. Due to structural differences between the EU ETS and the CDM, some different MRV approaches are justified and reflect the CDM's disparate objectives and complexity. It is found that some CDM provisions result in barriers which seem avoidable and do not contribute to the CDM's environmental integrity. Recommendations are made for CDM-specific improvements and general structural changes to improve cost-efficiency and reduce uncertainty with relevance to policy developments around future market mechanisms.     

Non-Equilibrium Distribution Functions in the Heliospheric Interface and Their Relaxation by Local Wave–Particle Interactions

The partially ionized local interstellar medium, before interacting with the heliospheric plasma on the upwind side, most probably undergoes an outer bow shock. After conversion into a sub-magnetosonic plasma flow, it then passes around the heliopause. While the ionized component at the bow shock undergoes abrupt changes of its dynamical properties, the neutral component first continues to flow downstream of the shock with its unperturbed properties. Consequently, the two fluids immediately after the bow shock passage are out of dynamical and thermodynamical equilibrium. Neutral atoms move with a higher bulk velocity and are cooler than the ions. Due to intensive local charge-exchange couplings between neutral atoms and protons these different properties tend to mix each other via momentum and energy exchanges. It turns out that the charge exchange period is shorter than the relaxation period. Hence the distribution functions cannot relax rapidly enough to their highest-entropy forms, i.e. shifted Maxwellians. Here we study the transport processes of newly injected ions in velocity space considering their quasi-linear and non-linear interactions with the ambient MHD turbulence in the plasma interface region. For that purpose we study the turbulence levels in the helio-sheath plasma region. We calculate the expected deviations from equilibrium distributions of ionic and atomic species in the outer heliospheric interface. It clearly turns out from these studies that non-relaxated non-equilibrium distribution functions have to be expected both for O-/H-ions and atoms in this region. This has inherent implications for the diagnostics of interstellar parameters, deduced from observations made further inwards from the interface region.     

Derivation of sea surface current field from sequential satellite images of the East China Sea

ThisprojectwassupportedbytheGermanMinistryofScienceandTechnology(BMFTBEO/7103F0016A)andtheStateOceanicAdministration,China.INTRoDUCTIONTheEastChinaSea,withanaveraged5oOkmcontinentalshe1f,containslargeamountofnaturalresourcesandfishinggrounds.ThewarmandsalineKuroshiowhichoriginatesfromtheNorthEquatorialCurrentintrudesintothisarea.ManylargeriverssuchastheChangjiangRiverandtheQiantangRiverprovidea1otoffreshwatertotheEastChinaSea.Somanywatersource%thecomplicatedoceantoPOgraphyasw…     

Sedimentary environment dynamics and the formation of coal in the Pennsylvanian Variscan foreland in the Ruhr Basin (Germany, Western Europe)

During the Pennsylvanian, formation of coal was a phenomenon that was spread over many continents. It is the aim of this paper to illustrate factors that led to the formation of coal seams in paralic clastic sedimentary environments in the Ruhr Basin (German Variscan foreland) during the Pennsylvanian in terms of sequence stratigraphy and the structural evolution of the basin. Lithostratigraphic sections from exploration wells in the currently explored zone of the coal basin allowed the generation of volumetric lithofacies models, using geostastical methods. These models support the analysis of sedimentary facies and a sequence stratigraphic interpretation of the successions that are widely correlated throughout the basin. We then evaluate the relation of the sequence stratigraphic elements derived from the facies models with the abundance of coal seams.     

温度、光强和pH对条斑紫菜孢子体和配子体类囊体膜上光系统活性的影响

光合作用研究中,对于个体发育过程中类囊体膜蛋白结构和功能的变化所知甚少,其中的一个限制因素是能否纯化得到大量高活性的稳定且均一的膜蛋白。作者以条斑紫菜（Porphyra yezoensis）2个不同发育阶段（孢子体和配子体）作为研究对象,分离得到了孢子体和配子体的类囊体膜．在不同的温度、光强和pH下,对其类囊体膜上的光系统活性进行了研究。结果表明,孢子体和配子体的PSⅠ活性均随温度和光强的升高而呈现一个先升高后降低的趋势,在温度18℃,光强为2320lx时具有最高的PSⅠ活性。而孢子体乖配子体的PSll活性随温度和光强的变化趋势不明显,孢子体PSⅡ活性在温度18℃,光强为2320lx时最高,配子体PSⅡ活性在温度13℃,光强为2800lx时最高。孢子体PSⅠ在酸性条件下较活跃,在pH5．4时具有最高的PSⅠ活性,配子体PSⅠ在碱性条件下较活跃,PSⅠ活性在pH10．4时最高;孢子体PSⅡ活性随pH的升高呈现一个先升高后降低的趋势,配子体PSⅡ活性随pH变化趋势不明显,但都在pH8．0处活性最高。