Search results for " global warming"
showing 10 items of 85 documents
Predicting shifting sustainability trade-offs in marine finfish aquaculture under climate change
2018
Defining sustainability goals is a crucial but difficult task because it often involves the quantification of multiple interrelated and sometimes conflicting components. This complexity may be exacerbated by climate change, which will increase environmental vulnerability in aquaculture and potentially compromise the ability to meet the needs of a growing human population. Here, we developed an approach to inform sustainable aquaculture by quantifying spatio-temporal shifts in critical trade-offs between environmental costs and benefits using the time to reach the commercial size as a possible proxy of economic implications of aquaculture under climate change. Our results indicate that optim…
Isolating the climate change impacts on air-pollution-related-pathologies over central and southern Europe – a modelling approach on cases and costs
2019
Air pollution has important implications for human health and associated external costs to society and is closely related to climate change. This contribution tries to assess the impacts of present (1996-2015) and future (2071-2100 under RCP8.5) air pollution on several cardiovascular and respiratory pathologies and estimate the difference in the costs associated with these health impacts on the European population. For this, air quality data from the regional chemistry-climate modelling system of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) are used, together with some epidemiological information from the European Commission. The methodology considered…
Life Cycle Assessment of solar heating and cooling systems: the tool “ELISA”
2018
Solar heating and cooling (SHC) systems play an important role in the achievement of energy and climate European goals. The benefits of these technologies should be evaluated taking into account their lifecycle energy and environmental impacts, calculated by applying the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. The development of a complete LCA can be difficult and time-consuming particularly for no-LCA experts, discouraging them in the inclusion of the lifecycle perspective in their assessments. To overcome this limit, the paper presents “ELISA - Environmental Lifecycle Impacts of Solar Air-conditioning systems”, a user-friendly simplified tool for estimating the lifecycle energy and envir…
Effects of climate change and land use intensification on regional biological soil crust cover and composition in southern Africa
2022
Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) form a regular and relevant feature in drylands, as they stabilize the soil, fix nutrients, and influence water cycling. However, biocrust forming organisms have been shown to be dramatically vulnerable to climate and land use change occurring in these regions. In this study, we used Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data of biocrust-dominated pixels (NDVIbiocrust) obtained from hyperspectral and LANDSAT-7 data to analyse biocrust development over time and to forecast future NDVIbiocrust development under different climate change and livestock density scenarios in southern Africa. We validated these results by analysing the occurrence and compo…
Ecological impacts of global warming and water abstraction on lakes and reservoirs due to changes in water level and related changes in salinity
2015
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report released in September 2014, unprecedented changes in temperature and precipitation patterns have been recorded globally in recent decades and further change is predicted to occur in the near future, mainly as the result of human activity. In particular, projections show that the Mediterranean climate zone will be markedly affected with significant implications for lake water levels and salinity. This may be exacerbated by increased demands for irrigation water. Based on long-term data from seven lakes and reservoirs covering a geographical gradient of 52 of latitudes and a literature review, we discuss how changes in water le…
Nano- to Global-Scale Uncertainties in Terrestrial Enhanced Weathering.
2022
Enhanced weathering (EW) is one of the most promising negative emissions technologies urgently needed to limit global warming to at least below 2 °C, a goal recently reaffirmed at the UN Global Climate Change conference (i.e., COP26). EW relies on the accelerated dissolution of crushed silicate rocks applied to soils and is considered a sustainable solution requiring limited technology. While EW has a high theoretical potential of sequestering CO2, research is still needed to provide accurate estimates of carbon (C) sequestration when applying different silicate materials across distinct climates and major soil types in combination with a variety of plants. Here we elaborate on fundamental …
Forecasting ocean warming impacts on seabird demography: a case study on the European storm petrel
2016
Bottom-up climatic forcing has been shown to be influential for a variety of marine taxa, but evidence on seabird populations is scarce. Seasonal variation in environmental conditions can have an indirect effect on subsequent reproduction, which, given the longevity and single-brooding of seabirds, may affect population dynamics. Our study focuses on linking the effect of oceanographic conditions (from 1991 to 2013) to the fecundity and consequently pop - ulation growth rate of the Mediterranean subspecies of the European storm petrel Hydrobates pelagicus melitensis. In this study, we examined 23 yr of > 5400 capture–mark−recaptures (CMR) and modelled the probability of skipping reproductio…
Climate change and Mediterranean seagrass meadows: a synopsis for environmental managers
2014
12 páginas, 3 figuras
Adapted conservation measures are required to save the Iberian lynx in a changing climate
2013
The Iberian lynx ( Lynx pardinus ) has suffered severe population declines in the twentieth century and is now on the brink of extinction 1 . Climate change could further threaten the survival of the species 2 , but its forecast effects are being neglected in recovery plans 3,4 . Quantitative estimates of extinction risk under climate change have so far mostly relied on inferences from correlative projections of species’ habitat shifts 5 . Here we use ecological niche models coupled to metapopulation simulations with source–sink dynamics 6,7 to directly investi- gate the combined effects of climate change, prey availabil- ity and management intervention on the persistence of the Iberian lyn…
Morphological response of the larvae of Arbacia lixula to near-future ocean warming and acidification
2017
The distribution of the sea urchin Arbacia lixula, a warm affinity species, has been expanding in the Mediterranean Sea. To address questions on potential for future success of this species in the region, the thermotolerance of larval development was investigated in context of regional warming. The larvae were reared in present day spawning period (20 °C) and warming conditions (+4 = 24 and +6 = 26 °C). As the calcifying larvae of sea urchins are vulnerable to stunted growth caused by ocean acidification, the impact of lower pH (−0.3 pH units) on larval development was also investigated in combination with warming. Morphological traits of the larvae, post-oral length arms, overall length of…