Hasil untuk "Economic geography of the oceans (General)"

Albert Mensah Kusi

This study reviews 23 studies on the non-use values of coral reefs, focusing on the benefits people derive from knowing these ecosystems exist and are preserved, even without direct use. Coral reefs provide essential services like coastal protection, tourism, and fishing. Non-use values include existence, bequest, and option values, with individual willingness to pay (WTP) ranging from $0.99 to $487 per year, and household WTP reaching up to $695.87 per year. Studies using choice experiments (CE) generally showed higher and broader WTP values than contingent valuation (CV). The review also incorporates studies that do not report annual per individual or per household WTP estimates but provide qualitative insights into non-use values. Significant factors affecting WTP include income and education, with distance decay effects observed. The study also highlights biases in WTP estimates and the uneven global distribution of research. The results suggest caution when comparing CV and CE results and emphasise the need for improved understanding of coral reef value in policy-making, environmental conservation approaches and sustainability initiatives.

Roman Buchtele, Petra Plachtová, Miloslav Lapka

Understanding how secondary students value environmental knowledge, especially in the context of sustainable development, is one of the keys to addressing current and future environmental challenges. The aim of the study is to evaluate the significance of environmental knowledge among secondary school students. This study employed a quantitative research approach, with a total of 147 students participating. Environmental knowledge has been found to be crucial for students, as it helps them understand their personal responsibility toward the environment. Moreover, they view it as an essential knowledge base that every individual in society should possess. The interviewed students fully recognise the role of school as an important source of environmental knowledge. However, they consider the more dynamic sources to be the most influential, such as social networks and the internet. Their own observations in nature and insights from family and environmental centres are also perceived as very important.

Anna Bernaciak, Arnold Bernaciak, Bartosz Fortuński

This paper explores the challenges and opportunities associated with implementing blue-green infrastructure (BGI) in urban environments, particularly within regenerative cities. It addresses how BGI initiatives can align with urban sustainability goals, especially in densely developed areas where traditional infrastructure practices often hinder the integration of new ecological solutions. The study employs a narrative literature review and case studies to identify and categorise formal-legal, organisational, and financial barriers to implementing BGI projects in urban areas. The analysis includes examining legal documents, scholarly articles, and real-world examples, providing insights into common obstacles and practical implications for urban planning. Findings reveal significant regulatory, technical, and administrative challenges to BGI implementation, particularly related to the inflexible nature of local planning regulations and the need for interdisciplinary collaboration. The paper outlines practical recommendations, such as adjusting local policies, enhancing stakeholder engagement, and valuing ecosystem services to facilitate BGI projects. While the study highlights existing challenges, further empirical research on the long-term impacts of BGI in various climatic and urban contexts is recommended.

Amr S. Mohamed, Emily Nguyen, Deepa Kundur

Amidst the growing demand for implementing advanced control and decision-making algorithms|to enhance the reliability, resilience, and stability of power systems|arises a crucial concern regarding the safety of employing machine learning techniques. While these methods can be applied to derive more optimal control decisions, they often lack safety assurances. This paper proposes a framework based on control barrier functions to facilitate safe learning and deployment of reinforcement learning agents for power system control applications, specifically in the context of automatic generation control. We develop the safety barriers and reinforcement learning framework necessary to establish trust in reinforcement learning as a safe option for automatic generation control - as foundation for future detailed verification and application studies.

Agnieszka Petryk, Marek Ryczek, Sylwia Guzdek

The costs of fertilising the soil with sewage sludge were reduced to the operating time of the equipment and the working time of the labourers operating the equipment in the two main operations (manure spreading and ploughing), for three sewage sludge application doses, namely 50, 100 and 200 Mg·ha-1. The costs were calculated using the Katalog Nakładów Rzeczowych nr 2-21: Tereny zielone/Ministerstwo Gospodarki Przestrzennej i Budownictwa (2009) and the current prices from Sekocendbud (2023). The effectiveness of fertilisation was assessed by studying the level and change in heavy metal content after the soil was fertilised with sewage sludge at three proportional doses, namely 50, 100 and 200 Mg·kg-1. The sewage sludge used for fertilisation complied with the sanitary requirements for sludge to be utilised for natural purposes (Regulation, 2015). The estimated total cost of sludge application ranged from PLN 12646.19 to PLN 20456.73 per 1 ha for doses from 50 to 200 Mg per 1 ha. The results of the estimation confirmed the hypothesis that the unit cost of fertilisation with stabilised sewage sludge increases with the dose of sludge in relation to the area of fertilised soil and decreases with the increase of the mass of sludge deposited in the soil. Optimising fertiliser costs, therefore, requires selection - increasing the sludge dose per unit area. No contamination of the soil with copper, cadmium, lead and zinc was found despite an obvious increase in the content of these metals when mixed into the soil. The application of sewage sludge, even in multiple doses, did not result in exceeding the permissible limit for the content of these elements in the soil, as defined in the Minister of the Environment Regulation of 2015 (Regulation, 2015).

Nicole Immorlica, Brendan Lucier, Aleksandrs Slivkins

Traditionally, AI has been modeled within economics as a technology that impacts payoffs by reducing costs or refining information for human agents. Our position is that, in light of recent advances in generative AI, it is increasingly useful to model AI itself as an economic agent. In our framework, each user is augmented with an AI agent and can consult the AI prior to taking actions in a game. The AI agent and the user have potentially different information and preferences over the communication, which can result in equilibria that are qualitatively different than in settings without AI.

Frances E. Rigby, Nikku Madhusudhan

Recent studies have suggested the possibility of Hycean worlds, characterised by deep liquid water oceans beneath H$_2$-rich atmospheres. These planets significantly widen the range of planetary properties over which habitable conditions could exist. We conduct internal structure modelling of Hycean worlds to investigate the range of interior compositions, ocean depths and atmospheric mass fractions possible. Our investigation explicitly considers habitable oceans, where the surface conditions are limited to those that can support potential life. The ocean depths depend on the surface gravity and temperature, confirming previous studies, and span 10s to $\sim$1000 km for Hycean conditions, reaching ocean base pressures up to $\sim$6$\times$10$^4$ bar before transitioning to high-pressure ice. We explore in detail test cases of five Hycean candidates, placing constraints on their possible ocean depths and interior compositions based on their bulk properties. We report limits on their atmospheric mass fractions admissible for Hycean conditions, as well as those allowed for other possible interior compositions. For the Hycean conditions considered, across these candidates we find the admissible mass fractions of the H/He envelopes to be $\lesssim$10$^{-3}$. At the other extreme, the maximum H/He mass fractions allowed for these planets can be up to $\sim$4-8$\%$, representing purely rocky interiors with no H$_2$O layer. These results highlight the diverse conditions possible among these planets and demonstrate their potential to host habitable conditions under vastly different circumstances to the Earth. Upcoming JWST observations of candidate Hycean worlds will allow for improved constraints on the nature of their atmospheres and interiors.

Óscar Riezu Elizalde

La fusta va ser una de les matèries primeres més importants durant els segles XVII i XVIII. El desenvolupament de la navegació, el comerç internacional i les Armades va fer que la fusta es convertís en un article fonamental per als interessos dels estats. Per a les potències europees, les seves armades, eren el reflex del seu poder, reflectien el control que tenien sobre els seus territoris d'ultramar i les seves rutes de comerç. Aquestes enormes flotes requerien d'un enorme flux de fusta constant, primer en les drassanes i durant el segle XVIII en grans Arsenals que concentraven la construcció i manteniment de les embarcacions.

Leszek Sieczko, Zofia Koloszko-Chomentowska

Aligning farms with the European Green Deal necessitates precise identification and analysis of the interplay between primary economic factors and ecological dimensions. This study presents detailed research findings on the correlation between ecological indicators, CH4 and N2O emissions, and economic metrics within a regional framework. The research draws on data from farms participating in the European Agricultural Accounting Network (FADN) spanning 2010-2019. The resultant analysis underscores substantial correlations among the examined parameters. Regions characterised by heightened agricultural production intensity report elevated agricultural income. However, this is coupled with increased environmental impact and heightened greenhouse gas emissions, particularly among farms engaged in animal production. Mazowsze, Podlasie, Wielkopolska, and Slask exhibit notable progress in pro-environmental initiatives. In the Pomorze and Mazury regions, expenditures on fertilisation and plant protection remain close to the average, culminating in an efficient equilibrium of organic matter in the soil and minimal CH4 and N2O emissions per hectare.

Joonas Nättilä, James Y-K. Cho, Jack W. Skinner et al.

We analyze the structure and dynamics of the plasma atmospheres and Coulomb-liquid oceans on neutron stars. Salient dynamical parameters are identified and their values estimated for the governing set of magnetohydrodynamics equations. Neutron star atmospheres and oceans are strongly stratified and, depending on the rotation period, contain a multitude of long-lived vortices (spots) and/or narrow zonal jets (free-shear zones) in the large plasma-beta regime - i.e., $β_p \gg 1$ (hydrodynamic regime). In contrast, when $β_p \lesssim 1$ (magnetohydrodynamic regime), the flow is dominated by a global lattice of effectively fixed magnetic islands (plasmoids) - without any jets. Understanding the spatio-temporal variability of dynamic atmospheres and oceans on neutron stars is crucial for interpreting observations of their X-ray emissions.

Developing, systematic, review et al.

Abstract The link between ocean and human health is increasingly gaining interest among researchers. There is a rapidly growing - yet still fragmented - body of evidence on marine pollution being a major threat to human health. Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are more vulnerable and their health systems risk carrying the heaviest burden. From here, this systematic review aims to retrieve all known impacts of marine pollution on human health in SIDS. PubMed, Web of Science and Scopus were consulted from inception to 2022, to identify risk factors (pollutants), sources, human exposure channels and relative health issues, in SIDS. Out of 17,264 records, 258 were eligible for full-text screening. From preliminary results, intoxications (especially Ciguatera Fish Poisoning - CFP), neurological effects and mental health issues are the most frequently cited health outcomes whereas ocean warming, metals, harmful algal blooms, and plastic are the most frequent risk factors. Findings confirm that the relationship between marine and human health in SIDS is as strong as its body of literature's growth. Some health-threatening factors are weakening SIDS’ socio-economic dimensions too. Geographically, the Caribbean and Pacific regions attract most interest. With CFP being predominant in the list of diseases, a relatively low amount of plastic-related articles was unexpectedly found, thus further searches will ensure no pertinent articles are missed. Key messages • The health threat posed by marine pollution to SIDS needs more monitoring and evidence. • Targeted agendas and successful pollution policies require interdisciplinary and cross-border collaboration.

M. Zabokrytska

The article presents and analyzes the training manual “Hydrography and Water Resources of Europe”, published by the professor Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv V.K. Khilchevskyi in 2023. The first training manual k published in Ukraine on this topic briefly outlines the basics of EU water policy, characterizes rivers, lakes and reservoirs on a regional basis (UN geoscheme – Northern, Western, Southern and Eastern Europe), as well as seas washing the shores of Europe. The problems of global water resources are considered, the ranking of European countries in terms of renewable water resources and the index of water resource exploitation is given. In the context of all directions, questions on Ukraine were considered. In Europe, hydrographic surveys are of great importance for water management. In particular, according to the European Union Water Framework Directive (WFD) adopted in 2000, the hydrographic zoning of countries’ territories is an important step for creating river basin management plans in the implementation of water policy. This approach is used by both EU member states and other European countries that have taken the provisions of the EU WFD as the basis for their activities. Water resources in a broad sense are all the waters of the hydrosphere, including the waters of the oceans and seas, rivers and lakes, groundwater, and glaciers. In practice, both in Europe and in many countries of the world, the concept of “water resources” is interpreted in a narrower sense – these are fresh surface and groundwater that are in water bodies and are used or can be used by humans. Water resources are managed according to the basin principle, but water resources are taken into account within individual countries. For. structuring the presentation of the material in this tutorial, the division of Europe into subregions according to the UN geoscheme was chosen, according to which 4 subregions are distinguished: Northern Europe; Western Europe; Southern Europe; Eastern Europe – a total of 44 countries whose capitals are located in this part of the world. But geopolitically, Europe includes 50 sovereign states. Their territory is within the framework of the general definition of Europe, they have membership in international European organizations. The content of the manual is structured into four parts: I – Physical-geographical and economic-geographical characteristics of Europe; II – EU Environmental and Water Policy; ІІІ – Hydrography; IV – Water resources. The training manual is intended for students enrolled in the educational program “Management and Ecology of Water Resources”, specialty 103 “Earth Sciences”. It can also be useful for students of other educational programs of specialties 103 “Earth Sciences” and 106 “Geography”, which study water resources.

Romain Chuffart, Andreas Raspotnik, Luiza Brodt et al.

Global environmental crises are destabilizing the cryosphere and, as a result, the capacity of the planet's glaciated regions to absorb or even persist in the face of the current velocity of physical changes (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2019, Chown et al. 2022). According to the latest data, warming in the polar regions (Arctic and Antarctic) is occurring at three to four times global average rates. These regions should not be narrated through the prism of climate change alone, as the complex regional changes engendered by the environmental and climate crises also have profound effects on the rest of the world. At both poles, climate and environmental changes provide key warnings of potential global tipping points and underpin global environmental security concerns. The polar regions are vastly different in their geographies, populations and governance structures. However, in spite of these differences and ongoing crises, scientific cooperation has – at least until now – been a major contributor to regional governance at both poles. In the south, on top of international legal norms such as the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), since 1961 the Antarctic continent and surrounding Southern Ocean south of 60° of latitude has been governed by a major international treaty – the Antarctic Treaty – and its component instruments and their measures, referred to as the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS). Apart from year-round but transient scientific operations, the Antarctic has never had a permanent human population. Under the Antarctic Treaty, national territorial claims in the region are held in abeyance. Seven states as well as the Russian Federation (as the successor state to the USSR) and the USA have made or 'reserved their right' to make territorial claims to parts of or the entire continent. However, Article 4 of the Antarctic Treaty places these claims on hold – meaning no state can make new or expand their own sovereign claims. The ATS also prohibits military activities, the use of nuclear technologies and the disposal of radioactive waste, and it provides the frameworks for marine ecosystem and fisheries management and for environmental protection in Antarctica. Above all, the ATS provides the infrastructural mechanisms that enable state cooperation to achieve consensus governance of the Antarctic continent and surrounding Southern Ocean collectively and peacefully through science. Due to its contrasting geography, Arctic governance differs from that of its southern counterpart. As landmasses surrounding the Arctic Ocean, the eight Arctic states (the A8; Canada, the Kingdom of Denmark (Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Greenland), Norway, Finland, Iceland, Sweden, the Russian Federation and the USA) exercise their sovereignty over the land, with five of them having Arctic coastlines and sovereign rights over parts of the Arctic Ocean. Beyond general international law, the UNCLOS provides the regulatory framework to govern those parts of the Arctic Ocean and Southern Ocean not subject to sovereign rights. Since the 1990s, the A8 have cooperated at first through the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy and later through the Arctic Council. Founded in 1996 under the Ottawa Declaration – a political declaration as opposed to an international treaty – the Arctic Council has served as a high-level intergovernmental forum for the A8 and six Indigenous political representations to flexibly work together on scientific research and policy recommendations relating to social and environmental issues. Thus far, both regions, however, have somehow been able to respond to significant geopolitical and environmental challenges. Despite their structural differences, science diplomacy and scientific research have provided two pillars for both Arctic and Antarctic cooperation. Science therefore offers an avenue to think about solutions for future geopolitical polar challenges and security issues. However, can polar governance survive both the unfolding threat of a melting Earth and the latest upsurge in global geopolitical instabilities, in particular driven by Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine? This is where polar science and the science–policy nexus become matters of regional and international security. Through a critical international relations lens, security in the Arctic and the Antarctic clearly extends beyond environmental and economic security, although this should not be only understood as military security, especially since military issues are often – deliberately – off the table in both governance settings. For instance, the 1996 Ottawa Declaration explicitly expressed the wish of the A8 to keep military matters out of the Arctic Council's mandate. However, it is notable that, as a consequence of the current conflict and the massive global geopolitical ramifications that this is leading to, the Arctic Council has currently postponed all planned meetings for an undefined period, even though Russia currently holds the Council's Presidency. While Arctic scientific collaboration and diplomacy have been on hold, the 'Arctic 7' – all of the Arctic states except the Russian doi:10.1017/S095410202200027X

Emily G. Simmonds, K. P. Adjei, Christoffer Wold Andersen et al.

: How do we know how much we know? Quantifying uncertainty associated with our modelling work is the only way we can answer how much we know about any phenomenon. With quantitative science now highly influential in the public sphere and the results from models translating into action, we must support our conclusions with sufficient rigour to produce useful, reproducible results. Incomplete consideration of model-based uncertainties can lead to false conclusions with real world impacts. Despite these potentially damaging consequences, uncertainty consideration is incomplete both within and across scientific fields. We take a unique interdisciplinary approach and conduct a systematic audit of model-related uncertainty quantification from seven scientific fields, spanning the biological, physical, and social sciences. Our results show no single field is achieving complete consideration of model uncertainties, but together we can fill the gaps. We propose opportunities to improve the quantification of uncertainty through use of a source framework for uncertainty consideration, model type specific guidelines, improved presentation, and shared best practice. We also identify shared outstanding challenges (uncertainty in input data, balancing trade-offs, error propagation, and defining how much uncertainty is required). Finally, we make nine concrete recommendations for current practice (following good practice guidelines and an uncertainty checklist, presenting uncertainty numerically, and propagating model-related uncertainty into conclusions), future research priorities (uncertainty in input data, quantifying uncertainty in complex models, and the importance of missing uncertainty in different contexts), and general research standards across the sciences (transparency about study limitations and dedicated uncertainty sections of manuscripts).

Richard H. Day, Oleg V. Pavlov

Existence theory in economics is usually in real domains such as the findings of chaotic trajectories in models of economic growth, tatonnement, or overlapping generations models. Computational examples, however, sometimes converge rapidly to cyclic orbits when in theory they should be nonperiodic almost surely. We explain this anomaly as the result of digital approximation and conclude that both theoretical and numerical behavior can still illuminate essential features of the real data.

Andrew G. Sullivan, Lucas M. B. Alves, Georgina O. Spence et al.

Neutron stars in astrophysical binary systems represent exciting sources for multi-messenger astrophysics. A potential source of electromagnetic transients from compact binary systems is the neutron star ocean, the external fluid layer encasing a neutron star. We present a groundwork study into tidal waves in neutron star oceans and their consequences. Specifically, we investigate how oscillation modes in neutron star oceans can be tidally excited during compact binary inspirals and parabolic encounters. We find that neutron star oceans can sustain tidal waves with frequencies between $0.01-20$ Hz. Our results suggest that tidally resonant neutron star ocean waves may serve as a never-before studied source of precursor electromagnetic emission prior to neutron star-black hole and binary neutron star mergers. If accompanied by electromagnetic flares, tidally resonant neutron star ocean waves, whose energy budget can reach $10^{46}$ erg, may serve as early warning signs ($\gtrsim 1$ minute before merger) for compact binary mergers. Similarly, excited ocean tidal waves will coincide with neutron star parabolic encounters. Depending on the neutron star ocean model and a flare emission scenario, tidally resonant ocean flares may be detectable by Fermi and NuSTAR out to $\gtrsim 100$ Mpc with detection rates as high as $\sim 7$ yr$^{-1}$ for binary neutron stars and $\sim0.6$ yr$^{-1}$ for neutron star-black hole binaries. Observations of emission from neutron star ocean tidal waves along with gravitational waves will provide insight into the equation of state at the neutron star surface, the composition of neutron star oceans and crusts, and neutron star geophysics.

E. Ponomarev

The article is dedicated to one of the basic ideas of the philosophic movement of Eurasianism - the idea of the Motherland. Unlike the other philosophical trends of the first wave of emigration, Eurasians were the only ones who understood the Fatherland not speculatively, but geographically. Eurasians could be called the first political scientists of the Russian philosophical tradition: they tried to predict the political situation in the abandoned Russia in order to build a new state on the ruins of Bolshevism in the future. They formed the concept of the Motherland from four components: a historically formed territory, power for possession of the territory, religion (Orthodoxy), and culture (common for the entire middle Eurasia, which was yet to be created on the basis of Russian culture). The author of the article insists on the fact that the idea of a common culture was reduced to declarations and was not developed by the participants in the movement. Besides, the theme of culture exposes some structural contradictions in the Eurasian theory (it contradicts the anti-colonial pathos of some works and looks retrograde against the background of innovative political forecasts). Eurasians’ religious themes were also poorly developed, some participants in the movement even ignored the subject. Detailed historical, economic, and national issues did not remove the general “narrowness” of the theory: the Motherland was uniquely defined only as mestorazvitie [local development] (P.N. Savitsky’s term), which created a contradiction Eurasians did not feel: in the domestic policy, in modern terms, they were globalists who insisted on the victory of the centripetal forces in the “Ocean of Eurasia”; in the foreign policy, they were anti-globalists who seriously believed that a closed (but large) economic system is more efficient than a global one. This contradiction brings us to the main semantic gap of the Eurasian theory: all the creators of this doctrine refused to understand that, for the “middle lands” of Eurasia, Russian culture and the Russian language, in one way or another, represented the language and culture of the colonialists. They simply did not see this significant problem, looking at Eurasia with Russian eyes and insisting that the Russian people in Eurasia were then “the first among equals”. In addition, the concept of mestorazvitie created a negative assessment for all who had dropped out of their own “local development”. Emigration, thus, became the periphery of the Russian and Eurasian idea, meaningless from the point of view of the processes taking place in the Motherland. For this reason, in the author’s opinion, Eurasianism was doomed to an early decline: the ideas of Eurasianism lost their vitality as soon as the emigration realized (in the late 1920s - early 1930s) that there was no way back to Russia. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

Mestwin Stanisław Kostka

The aim of this paper is to justify the argument that Mankind should not stay out of the scope of economics. This article is a presentation of selected fi ndings and conclusions of long term research conducted by the author „Economics for Sustainable Development”, finished in 2013. Mankind today stands on the deadly turn on its way towards the future – facing the crisis of Gordian’s knot. The key remedy may be a global campaigns for sustainable development, where man and humanity are at the essence. In the vanguard of this campaign should be economics and the economy. Unfortunately, mainstream economics is indeed against sustainable development. It is most of all focused on economic growth and increasing production. Today, economics is mostly oriented on satisfying greed at the expense of satisfying basic needs ad hoc. Moreover, the current economy multiplies the resources which puts human well being and the environment in danger (e.g. toxic waste and weapons of mass destruction). The main reason for this situation is keeping mankind out of the scope of economy and economics. Man’s needs are the very cause and the key goal of the economy and economics itself. The elemental categories, rules, diagnosis, prognosis, assessments of economic reality, the solutions for changing this reality, almost all totally ignore the determinants and conclusions of fi ndings about mankind. There is a need for serious research to be concluded in order to understand the role of man and his place in the economy and in economics. Current economic theory almost fully omits the relevance of primal instincts and subconscious actions of man in economic reality. Also important is the lack of systemic treatment of society and its broadly defi ned natural and cultural environment based on the general theory of systems and fundamental conclusions of ecology. Better understanding of human ecology and its connections to economics will lead to a better state of existence and development of mankind. Economics must take into account new research and original input concerning man and his place and role in his natural and social environment.