Search results for "Earth"
showing 10 items of 12204 documents
Strategies for Disease Prevention and Health Promotion in Urban Areas: The Erice 50 Charter
2018
Climate change policies and agendas: facing implementation challenges and guiding responses
2020
Climate policies are essential to mitigate climate change and to develop successful adaptation processes. However, there is a paucity of international studies that analyse the status of climate change policies. This paper reports on research undertaken in a sample of 13 highly diverse countries, in regards to their geography, socioeconomic development, vulnerability elements, adaptation, and climate-risks. The results draw attention to the global spread and standardisation of climate change policies, namely through the adoption of comprehensive National Adaptation Plans/Strategies (NAPs/NASs) that include mitigation measures and evaluation mechanisms. Although NAPs tend to take into account…
Secondary minerals from salt caves in the Atacama Desert (Chile): a hyperarid and hypersaline environment with potential analogies to the Martian sub…
2017
Over the past 15 years several expeditions by French, American and especially Italian cavers have unveiled over 50 caves in the Cordillera de la Sal (Atacama Desert, Northern Chile). Many of these caves contain a variety of speleothems and minerals, some of which have rarely been observed within karst systems. Most of the secondary deposits in these caves are composed of halite, but also other halide, carbonate, sulphate, nitrate, phosphate, and silicate minerals have been found. Among the sixteen cave mineral species recognized, atacamite, darapskite, blödite, leonite, anhydrite, and especially antarcticite are worth mentioning. In one of the samples an unknown Ca-Sr-bearing chloride miner…
A Participatory Agrobiodiversity Conservation Approach in the Oases: Community Actions for the Promotion of Sustainable Development in Fragile Areas
2021
Rural development policies today include significant directions towards ecological transition and sustainability. Biodiversity plays a fundamental role, especially in fragile environments. The North African oases, for example, are socio-ecological structures with delicate balances in terms of natural resources, where the activation of participatory conservation approaches appears today to be very useful, aiming at long-lasting results. This type of approach was applied in the oasis of El Hamma, in Tunisia. The socio-ecological analysis was carried out through semi-structured interviews with different stakeholders of the oasis. The results were used to activate focus groups and to identify, …
A review of mental health and wellbeing under climate change in small island developing states (SIDS)
2021
AbstractSmall island developing states (SIDS) are often at the forefront of climate change impacts, including those related to health, but information on mental health and wellbeing is typically underreported. To help address this research lacuna, this paper reviews research about mental health and wellbeing under climate change in SIDS. Due to major differences in the literature’s methodologies, results, and analyses, the method is an overview and qualitative evidence synthesis of peer-reviewed publications. The findings show that mental health and wellbeing in the context of climate change have yet to feature prominently and systematically in research covering SIDS. It seems likely that m…
Potential-vorticity dynamics of troughs and ridges within Rossby wave packets during a 40-year reanalysis period
2020
Rossby wave packets (RWPs) are fundamental to midlatitude dynamics and govern weather systems from their individual life cycles to their climatological distributions. Renewed interest in RWPs as precursors to high-impact weather events and in the context of atmospheric predictability motivates this study to revisit the dynamics of RWPs. A quantitative potential vorticity (PV) framework is employed. Based on the well established PV-thinking of midlatitude dynamics, the processes governing RWP amplitude evolution comprise group propagation of Rossby waves, baroclinic interaction, the impact of upper-tropospheric divergent flow, and direct diabatic PV modification by nonconservative processes.…
A process-based anatomy of Mediterranean cyclones: from baroclinic lows to tropical-like systems
2021
Abstract. In this study, we address the question of the atmospheric processes that turn Mediterranean cyclones into severe storms. Our approach applies on-line potential vorticity (PV) budget diagnostics and piecewise PV inversion to WRF model simulations of the mature stage of 100 intense Mediterranean cyclones. We quantify the relative contributions of different processes to cyclone development and therefore deliver, for the first time, a comprehensive insight into the variety of cyclonic systems that develop in the Mediterranean from the perspective of cyclone dynamics. In particular, we show that all 100 cyclones are systematically influenced by two main PV anomalies: a major anomaly in…
Reactive oxygen species formed in aqueous mixtures of secondary organic aerosols and mineral dust influencing cloud chemistry and public health in th…
2017
Mineral dust and secondary organic aerosols (SOA) account for a major fraction of atmospheric particulate matter, affecting climate, air quality and public health. How mineral dust interacts with SOA to influence cloud chemistry and public health, however, is not well understood. Here, we investigated the formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are key species of atmospheric and physiological chemistry, in aqueous mixtures of SOA and mineral dust by applying electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectrometry in combination with a spin-trapping technique, liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), and a kinetic model. We found that substantial amounts of ROS includi…
Hydrological drivers of wetland vegetation community distribution within Everglades National Park, Florida
2010
The influence of hydrological dynamics on vegetation distribution and the structuring of wetland environments is of growing interest as wetlands are modified by human action and the increasing threat from climate change. Hydrological properties have long been considered a driving force in structuring wetland communities. We link hydrological dynamics with vegetation distribution across Everglades National Park (ENP) using two publicly available datasets to study the probability structure of the frequency, duration, and depth of inundation events along with their relationship to vegetation distribution. This study is among the first to show hydrologic structuring of vegetation communities at…
Marine climate and hydrography of the Coralline Crag (early Pliocene, UK): isotopic evidence from 16 benthic invertebrate taxa
2019
The taxonomic composition of the biota of the Coralline Crag Formation (early Pliocene, eastern England) provides conflicting evidence of seawater temperature during deposition, some taxa indicating cool temperate conditions by analogy with modern representatives or relatives, others warm temperate to subtropical/tropical conditions. Previous isotopic (δ18O) evidence of seasonal seafloor temperatures from serial ontogenetic sampling of bivalve mollusk shells indicated cool temperate winter (<10 °C) and/or summer (<20 °C) conditions but was limited to nine profiles from two species, one ranging into and one occurring exclusively in cool temperate settings at present. We supplement these resu…