Protected geographical indications: Institutional roles in food systems governance and rural development

This paper examines the importance of national-level institutional arrangements for promoting the EU’s Protected Geographic Indication scheme (PGI). Taking the example of Ireland, for which PGI designations remain comparatively low, it explores whether the approach to providing institutional supports to the PGI scheme is influenced by top-down technocratic governance structures that pertain to food safety and quality certification that encompass the broader operating environment for food production in Ireland. Although the regulation of food safety and quality certification are distinct remits to the administration of the PGI scheme, in the Irish context the same institutional bodies are involved in governance of both. Using a discourse analysis interpretative framework, this paper draws on interviews with Irish producer group members and institutional representatives to examine how governance of the PGI scheme reflects management perspectives and practices more in keeping with a regulatory environment for food safety and quality than with development of place-based food product links. It suggests that incentives to avail of the PGI scheme as a means of realising value-added for producers are not well established because they require the development of more subjective, context-dependent processes and practices linked to geographical place and place identity. These are not easily accommodated under current institutional arrangements that also incorporate food safety and quality remits because these are in turn strongly established through nationally and internationally recognised systems of regulation and benchmarking. The findings point to the benefits to be gained from a more layered governance structure for PGI; devolving operation of the scheme to relevant regional and local development organisations that possess the expertise and relevant local knowledge to (a) incentivise the formation of producer groups, and (b) prioritise mentoring and support for PGI concept development as a clearer reflection of bottom-up rural sustainability policy.     

Seismic random noise attenuation and signal-preserving by multiple directional time-frequency peak filtering

Time-frequency peak filtering (TFPF) is an effective method for seismic random noise attenuation. The linearity of the signal has a significant influence on the accuracy of the TFPF method. The higher the linearity of the signal to be filtered is, the better the denoising result is. With this in mind, and taking the lateral coherence of reflected events into account, we do TFPF along the reflected events to improve the degree of linearity and enhance the continuity of these events. The key factor to realize this idea is to find the traces of the reflected events. However, the traces of the events are too hard to obtain in the complicated field seismic data. In this paper, we propose a Multiple Directional TFPF (MD–TFPF), in which the filtering is performed in certain direction components of the seismic data. These components are obtained by a directional filter bank. In each direction component, we do TFPF along these decomposed reflected events (the local direction of the events) instead of the channel direction. The final result is achieved by adding up the filtering results of all decomposition directions of seismic data. In this way, filtering along the reflected events is implemented without accurately finding the directions. The effectiveness of the proposed method is tested on synthetic and field seismic data. The experimental results demonstrate that MD–TFPF can more effectively eliminate random noise and enhance the continuity of the reflected events with better preservation than the conventional TFPF, curvelet denoising method and F–X deconvolution method.     

Country-specific dietary shifts to mitigate climate and water crises

Undernutrition, obesity, climate change, and freshwater depletion share food and agricultural systems as an underlying driver. Efforts to more closely align dietary patterns with sustainability and health goals could be better informed with data covering the spectrum of countries characterized by over- and undernutrition. Here, we model the greenhouse gas (GHG) and water footprints of nine increasingly plant-forward diets, aligned with criteria for a healthy diet, specific to 140 countries. Results varied widely by country due to differences in: nutritional adjustments, baseline consumption patterns from which modeled diets were derived, import patterns, and the GHG- and water-intensities of foods by country of origin. Relative to exclusively plant-based (vegan) diets, diets comprised of plant foods with modest amounts of low-food chain animals (i.e., forage fish, bivalve mollusks, insects) had comparably small GHG and water footprints. In 95 percent of countries, diets that only included animal products for one meal per day were less GHG-intensive than lacto-ovo vegetarian diets (in which terrestrial and aquatic meats were eliminated entirely) in part due to the GHG-intensity of dairy foods. The relatively optimal choices among modeled diets otherwise varied across countries, in part due to contributions from deforestation (e.g., for feed production and grazing lands) and highly freshwater-intensive forms of aquaculture. Globally, modest plant-forward shifts (e.g., to low red meat diets) were offset by modeled increases in protein and caloric intake among undernourished populations, resulting in net increases in GHG and water footprints. These and other findings highlight the importance of trade, culture, and nutrition in diet footprint analyses. The country-specific results presented here could provide nutritionally-viable pathways for high-meat consuming countries as well as transitioning countries that might otherwise adopt the Western dietary pattern.     

Estimating the global potential of water harvesting from successful case studies

Water harvesting has been widely applied in different social-ecological contexts, proving to be a valuable approach to sustainable intensification of agriculture. Global estimates of the potential of water harvesting are generally based on purely biophysical assessments and mostly neglect the socioeconomic dimension of agriculture. This neglect becomes a critical factor for the feasibility and effectiveness of policy and funding efforts to mainstream this practice. This study uses archetype analysis to systematically identify social-ecological regions worldwide based on >160 successful cases of local water harvesting implementation. We delineate six archetypal regions which capture the specific social-ecological conditions of the case studies. The archetypes cover 19% of current global croplands with hotspots in large portions of East Africa and Southeast Asia. We estimate that the adoption of water harvesting in these cropland areas can increase crop production up to 60–100% in Uganda, Burundi, Tanzania and India. The results of this study can complement conventional biophysical analysis on the potential of these practices and guide policy development at global and regional scales. The methodological approach can be also replicated at finer scales to guide the improvement of rainfed agricultural.     

Applications of C and N stable isotopes to ecological and environmental studies in seagrass ecosystems

Stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen are increasingly used in marine ecosystems, for ecological and environmental studies. Here, we examine some applications of stable isotopes as ecological integrators or tracers in seagrass ecosystem studies. We focus on both the use of natural isotope abundance as food web integrators or environmental tracers and on the use of stable isotopes as experimental tools. As ecosystem integrators, stable isotopes have helped to elucidate the general structure of trophic webs in temperate, Mediterranean and tropical seagrass ecosystems. As environmental tracers, stable isotopes have proven their utility in sewage impact measuring and mapping. However, to make such environmental studies more comprehensible, future works on understanding of basic reasons for variations of N and C stable isotopes in seagrasses should be encouraged. At least, as experimental tracers, stable isotopes allow the study of many aspects of N and C cycles at the scale of a plant or at the scale of the seagrass ecosystem.     

Conceptualizing food systems for global environmental change research

This paper outlines a framework for studying the multiple interactions of broadly defined food systems with global environmental change and evaluating the major societal outcomes affected by these interactions: food security, ecosystem services and social welfare. In building the framework the paper explores and synthesizes disparate literature on food systems food security and global environmental change, bridging social science and natural science perspectives. This collected evidence justifies a representation of food systems, which can be used to identify key processes and determinants of food security in a given place or time, particularly the impacts of environmental change. It also enables analysis of the feedbacks from food system outcomes to drivers of environmental and social change, as well as tradeoffs among the food system outcomes themselves. In food systems these tradeoffs are often between different scales or levels of decision-making or management, so solutions to manage them must be context-specific. With sufficient empirical evidence, the framework could be used to build a database of typologies of food system interactions useful for different management or analytical purposes.     

Droughts and famines: The underlying factors and the causal links among agro-pastoral households in semi-arid Makueni district, Kenya

Famines are often linked to drought in semi-arid areas of Sub-Saharan Africa where not only pastoralists, but also increasingly agro-pastoralists are affected. This study addresses the interplay between drought and famine in the rural semi-arid areas of Makueni district, Kenya, by examining whether, and how crop production conditions and agro-pastoral strategies predispose smallholder households to drought-triggered food insecurity. If this hypothesis holds, then approaches to deal with drought and famine have to target factors causing household food insecurity during non-drought periods. Data from a longitudinal survey of 127 households, interviews, workshops, and daily rainfall records (1961–2003) were analysed using quantitative and qualitative methods. This integrated approach confirms the above hypothesis and reveals that factors other than rainfall, like asset and labour constraints, inadequate policy enforcement, as well as the poverty-driven inability to adopt risk-averse production systems play a key role. When linking these factors to the high rainfall variability, farmer-relevant definitions and forecasts of drought have to be applied.     

广西百色盆地东部古近系那读组湖相灰岩

百色盆地东部田东坳陷那坤地区古近系那读组三段下部发育一套数米至数十米厚的湖相灰岩,岩石以浅灰色-灰色、含大量的螺蚌化石和具核形石结构为特征,间夹有薄层的泥岩、钙质泥质粉砂岩。本文在实测地表剖面和详细观察岩心的基础上,仔细研究了此套灰岩的岩石学特征。依据丰富的原生沉积构造、古生物化石标志以及沉积地球化学、测井相特征将湖相灰岩的沉积相划分为滨湖、颗粒滩、浅湖三个亚相以及灰泥坪、沼泽、颗粒坪、滩缘、滩核、滩间水道、灰泥浅湖、泥质浅湖等八个微相,并详细地研究了各微相的沉积特征。结合该灰岩的区域分布和沉积相的平面展布格局指出沉积相主体属于浅湖的颗粒滩,并提出了相应的沉积相模式。     

The Geochemical Significance of Deep-water Coral and Their Food Source

Deep-sea corals live in the dark cold-water environments, the food of which that provides them with energy and nutrition is a key ecological and biogeochemical problem. Currently, the most common understanding is that their food mainly comes from organic matter produced by and deposited from surface seawater. However, more and more studies have found that they can also obtain food supply through symbiosis with a variety of chemosynthetic autotrophs and heterotrophs. Carbon and nitrogen isotopes have been used to trace and reveal the food sources of deep-sea corals. They also have been successfully used to reconstruct the phytoplankton community structure and the changes of nitrate isotopes in surface seawater in the past, thus providing valuable biogeochemical data for paleoceanographic study. However, due to the widespread existence of symbiosis with chemosynthetic autotrophs, further studies are needed to assess the reliability of organic carbon and nitrogen isotopes of deep-sea corals to reflect changes in the surface seawater. The deep-sea gorgonian coral, like those gorgonian forests recently found in the South China Sea, is relatively new and insufficiently studied in the field of deep-sea corals. Thus, basic biochemical and paleoceanographic researches on the South China Sea deep-water gorgonians will provide profound and novel insights to understanding the cold-water coral system.     

长江中游沿岸过江大桥工程建设适宜性评价与地学建议

基于长江中游沿岸地质环境条件及过江大桥场地建设基本要求,优选地形地貌、工程地质条件及区域稳定性3个评价因素,运用层次分析法开展长江中游沿岸过江大桥工程场地建设适宜性评价,将长江中游沿岸过江大桥工程分为适宜开发岸线、较适宜开发岸线、一般适宜开发岸线及非优先开发岸线4个等级。长江中游沿岸地区以较适宜开发岸线和一般适宜开发岸线为主,长度分别为625.19 km和598.99 km,分别占岸线总长度的31.35%和30.04%。针对长江中游不同等级岸线的地质特征,提出了相应的地学建议,为长江中游沿岸过江大桥优化选址提供地学指导,进一步促进长江经济带国土资源空间规划与岸线资源保护利用工作的开展。