Search results for "Natural resources"
showing 10 items of 191 documents
Changes and persistences of traditional architectural shapes in Burkina Faso
2018
Oggetto del presente lavoro è l’esito di una ricerca condotta presso il Dipartimento di Architettura dell’Università degli Studi di Palermo, finalizzata all’analisi dello stato dell’arte dell’architettura tradizionale dei Paesi dell’Africa Nord-Occidentale e agli effetti che su questa ha determinato il processo di modernizzazione dell’habitat, attraverso l’introduzione di nuovi materiali da costruzione e di tecnologie avanzate importate da Paesi industrializzati. Il Paese preso in esame è il Burkina Faso, nell’Africa sub-sahariana, uno dei più poveri del Mondo e dell’Africa e, per tale ragione, uno dei più suscettibili alla superiorità economica e tecnologica dei paesi industrializzati che …
Critical range of soil organic carbon in southern Europe lands under desertification risk.
2021
Soil quality is fundamental for ecosystem long term functionality, productivity and resilience to current climatic changes. Despite its importance, soil is lost and degraded at dramatic rates worldwide. In Europe, the Mediterranean areas are a hotspot for soil erosion and land degradation due to a combination of climatic conditions, soils, geomorphology and anthropic pressure. Soil organic carbon (SOC) is considered a key indicator of soil quality as it relates to other fundamental soil functions supporting crucial ecosystem services. In the present study, the functional relationships among SOC and other important soil properties were investigated in the topsoil of 38 sites under different …
The Air-Ténéré National Natural Reserve (RNNAT) Observatory: Territorial Intelligence for Sustainable Development
2007
International audience; The Aïr-Ténéré National Natural Reserve is a protected area in which conservation and development principles tempt to be combined (co-management). To follow-up environmental changes which determine people's life, and to support decisions to manage the Reserve, the first steps of a territorial observatory are introduced. Beyond the technical build up of the Geographical Information System (GIS), the prototype proposed here is a concrete expression of a part of a territorial intelligent tool. It embraces all territorial dimensions from spatial to actors ones, and try in the context of the reserve, to revisit the definition of local governance. This work is based on a m…
Inverse Malthusianism and Recycling Economics: The Case of the Textile Industry
2020
The current use of natural resources in the textile industry leads us to introduce a new economic concept called inverse Malthusianism describing a context in which population grows linearly and resource consumption grows exponentially. Inverse Malthusianism implies an exponential increase in environmental impact that recycling may contribute to reduce. Our main goal is to extend the analysis of materials selection under the principle of equimarginality proposed by Jevons. As a first result, we show the particular circumstances under which policies excluding recycled supplies are never optimal. We also aim to overcome the difficulties of reducing environmental aspects to monetary units. To …
Food predictability determines space use of endangered vultures: implications for management of supplementary feeding.
2013
Understanding space use of free-living endangered animals is key to inform management decisions for conservation planning. Like most scavengers, vultures have evolved under a context of unpredictability of food resources (i.e. exploiting scattered carcasses that are intermittently available). However, the role of predictable sources of food in shaping spatial ecology of vultures has seldom been studied in detail. Here, we quantify the home range of the Egyptian vulture (Neophron percnopterus), a long-lived raptor which has experienced severe population decline throughout its range and is qualified as endangered worldwide. To this end six adults were tracked by satellite telemetry in Spain d…
Illegal Chinese gold mining in Amansie West, Ghana - an assessement of its impact and implications
2014
Master thesis in development management - University of Agder 2014 The thesis’ objective is to assess the impact of Chinese illegal miners in the Amansie West District in Ghana. The illegal mining sector is seen as having several negative effects, environmentally as well as socially and economically. The influx of some 20-50 000 Chinese miners into Ghana is found to increase these impacts. The Chinese illegal miners operate largely on farmland, which is bought from locals for the sum equivalent of approximately 6.5 years of farming income. This leads to a loss of long-term income for the farmer as well as the degradation of large land areas, which in the case of Amansie West is here estimat…
Evaluación multicriterio de políticas de uso y gestión de recursos naturales
2014
The purpose of this work is show the characteristics of different environmental economic assessment methodologies, and exposes a case study where possible alternatives addressed to reduce the contamination of a bay with multicriteria approach are evaluated. The results obtained show the effectiveness of multicriteria analysis to evaluate the alternatives for solution of contamination problem in a bay. Economic evaluation of the contamination effects integrated to the environmental, social and economic dimensions through multicriteria techniques allows an alternative planning to solve the environmental problem studied, providing the right decision.
Quantifying trade-offs between ecological gains, economic costs, and landowners' preferences in boreal mire protection.
2021
Private land often encompasses biodiversity features of high conservation value, but its protection is not straightforward. Commonly, landowners’ perspectives are rightfully allowed to influence conservation actions. This unlikely comes without consequences on biodiversity or other aspects such as economic considerations, but these consequences are rarely quantitatively considered in decision-making. In the context of boreal mire protection in Finland, we report how acknowledging landowners’ resistance to protection changes the combination of mires selected to conservation compared to ignoring landowners’ opinions. Using spatial prioritization, we quantify trade-offs arising between the amo…
Disentangling canid howls across multiple species and subspecies: Structure in a complex communication channel
2016
Wolves, coyotes, and other canids are members of a diverse genus of top predators of considerable conservation and management interest. Canid howls are long-range communication signals, used both for territorial defence and group cohesion. Previous studies have shown that howls can encode individual and group identity. However, no comprehensive study has investigated the nature of variation in canid howls across the wide range of species. We analysed a database of over 2000 howls recorded from 13 different canid species and subspecies. We applied a quantitative similarity measure to compare the modulation pattern in howls from different populations, and then applied an unsupervised clusteri…
Terres et pierres pour matières de cultures : l'apparition et la diffusion de nouveaux modes et matériaux de construction dans le Nord-Est de la Gaul…
2017
Roman building materials often arose a growing interest through their presence in early contexts, sometimes way before Gallic Wars. Made from natural resources, their final shape corresponds to anthropogenic and cultural constraints. However, even if building materials are not neglected during archaeological excavations, so far they have been considered as playing a minor part in understanding ancient sites. Economical, technical and architectural aspects are regularly mentioned, creating the picture of an exploited « landscape » around the studied areas, but the question of materials as cultural markers witnessing intercultural relations between Rome and Gallic tribes has never really been…