Development and Status of Active Volcano Monitoring in China

2020 ◽  
pp. SP510-2020-62
Author(s):  
Bo Pan ◽  
Guoming Liu ◽  
Tao Cheng ◽  
Jingwei Zhang ◽  
Zigang Sun ◽  
...  

AbstractFollowing decades of geological surveys and studies, 14 active volcanic field have been identified in China. Evidence for Holocene volcanism in several of these areas highlights the need to understand and monitor volcanic hazards in those regions. Six volcano observatories have been established in the past 40 years accordingly. This work reviews China's national capability and history of volcano monitoring, with emphases on the Changbaishan-Tianchi Volcano Observatory and the Tengchong Volcano Observatory. The Changbaishan-Tianchi Volcano Observatory (CTVO) was constructed in 1996 and began monitoring in 1999, with limited recorded observations dating back to 1973. Currently, CTVO is the largest and most advanced observatory in China. The monitoring network of the CTVO incorporates 11 seismic and 15 GPS stations, 2 leveling routes, 3 gas geochemistry sampling points. The Changbaishan-Tianchi volcano experienced unrest during 2002-2005, evidenced in elevated levels of seismicity and ground deformation, as well as shifts in gas geochemistry. After 2006, the volcano returned to quiescence, with activities at background levels as recorded in 1973-2001. The monitoring network of Tengchong Volcano Observatory (TVO) incorporates 8 seismic stations, 20 GPS points, 95 leveling points, and 3 gas geochemistry sampling points. The observations made since 1965 indicate significant seismicity, with more than 3000 events recorded in 2011, mostly related to regional tectonics. Tengchong is known for its widespread hot springs, with temperatures up to 105 °C recorded at Dagunguo spring. The four other observatories are Longgang Volcano Observatory (LVO), Jingbohu Volcano Observatory (JVO), Wudalianchi Volcano Observatory (WVO) and Qiongbei Volcano Observatory (QVO). They are equipped with seismic, geodetic, and geochemical monitoring equipment. These areas saw only low levels of activity over the past several decades, but related fault systems are relatively active. In a relatively short time, China has gained considerable experience in observatory design and volcano monitoring and has trained up a sizeable task force, laying the foundation for sustained volcano monitoring at the national level. Future efforts must focus on maintaining and expanding observational capacity, as well as gaining better dynamic understanding to inform volcano hazard assessment.

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 115 ◽  
pp. 263-267
Author(s):  
Doron Teichman ◽  
Eyal Zamir

The use of nudges—“low-cost, choice-preserving, behaviorally informed approaches to regulatory problems”—has become quite popular at the national level in the past decade or so. Examples include changing the default concerning employees’ saving for retirement in a bid to encourage such saving; altering the default about consent to posthumous organ donation to increase the supply of organs for transplantation; and informing people about other people's energy consumption to spur them to reduce theirs. Nudges are therefore used to promote the welfare of the people being nudged, and of society at large. However, the use of nudges has sparked a lively normative debate. When turning to the international arena, new arguments for and against nudges can be raised. This essay focuses on the normative aspects of using nudges in the international arena.


AJIL Unbound ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 115 ◽  
pp. 11-16
Author(s):  
Giesela Rühl

The past sixteen years have witnessed the proliferation of international commercial courts around the world. However, up until recently, this was largely an Asian and a Middle Eastern phenomenon. Only during the past decade have Continental European countries, notably Germany, France and the Netherlands, joined the bandwagon and started to create new judicial bodies for international commercial cases. Driven by the desire to attract high-volume commercial litigation, these bodies try to offer international businesses a better dispute settlement framework. But what are their chances of success? Will more international litigants decide to settle their disputes in these countries? In this essay, I argue that, despite its recently displayed activism, Continental Europe lags behind on international commercial courts. In fact, although the various European initiatives are laudable, most cannot compete with the traditional market leaders, especially the London Commercial Court, or with new rivals in Asia and the Middle East. If Continental Europe wants a role in the international litigation market, it must embrace more radical change. And this change will most likely have to happen on the European––not the national––level.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 3052
Author(s):  
Sonia Calvari ◽  
Alessandro Bonaccorso ◽  
Gaetana Ganci

On 13 December 2020, Etna volcano entered a new eruptive phase, giving rise to a number of paroxysmal episodes involving increased Strombolian activity from the summit craters, lava fountains feeding several-km high eruptive columns and ash plumes, as well as lava flows. As of 2 August 2021, 57 such episodes have occurred in 2021, all of them from the New Southeast Crater (NSEC). Each paroxysmal episode lasted a few hours and was sometimes preceded (but more often followed) by lava flow output from the crater rim lasting a few hours. In this paper, we use remote sensing data from the ground and satellite, integrated with ground deformation data recorded by a high precision borehole strainmeter to characterize the 12 March 2021 eruptive episode, which was one of the most powerful (and best recorded) among that occurred since 13 December 2020. We describe the formation and growth of the lava fountains, and the way they feed the eruptive column and the ash plume, using data gathered from the INGV visible and thermal camera monitoring network, compared with satellite images. We show the growth of the lava flow field associated with the explosive phase obtained from a fixed thermal monitoring camera. We estimate the erupted volume of pyroclasts from the heights of the lava fountains measured by the cameras, and the erupted lava flow volume from the satellite-derived radiant heat flux. We compare all erupted volumes (pyroclasts plus lava flows) with the total erupted volume inferred from the volcano deflation recorded by the borehole strainmeter, obtaining a total erupted volume of ~3 × 106 m3 of magma constrained by the strainmeter. This volume comprises ~1.6 × 106 m3 of pyroclasts erupted during the lava fountain and 2.4 × 106 m3 of lava flow, with ~30% of the erupted pyroclasts being remobilized as rootless lava to feed the lava flows. The episode lasted 130 min and resulted in an eruption rate of ~385 m3 s−1 and caused the formation of an ash plume rising from the margins of the lava fountain that rose up to 12.6 km a.s.l. in ~1 h. The maximum elevation of the ash plume was well constrained by an empirical formula that can be used for prompt hazard assessment.


2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aria Asadi Eskandar ◽  
Murali Raman

Most of the international e-Government benchmarking studies have focused on national government websites such as portal of ministries at the national level. This paper examines the level of sophistication of e-Government websites for different states in Malaysia, as opposed to a national level assessment, both in terms of the breadth and depth of e-Government service offering. This paper adds to the existing body of knowledge in relation to e-Government web portal assessment in two ways. First, studies pertaining to e-Government in Malaysia focus mainly on implementation issues at the Federal/National level– The authors examined State level implementation of e-Government services. Secondly, they used a predetermined instrument to assess the sophistication level of State government web portals, by consolidating different measurement items from our review of literature over the past ten years. The authors analyzed the website for a total of thirteen states in Malaysia, in relation to six different dimension measures of e-Government service offerings, as prescribed by literature. These six dimension measures are the extent of transparency, interactivity, usability and accessibility of the portal, citizen participation, security and privacy, and maturity level of services. A content analysis of the web portal was done, using a predetermined instrument developed based on our review of literature on this topic, in the past ten years. Their findings suggest that different State Governments in Malaysia demonstrate different levels of maturity in relation to the six dimensions measured.


Author(s):  
Andrea Costa ◽  
Lorenzo Dondero ◽  
Giorgia Allaria ◽  
Bryan Nelson Morales Sanchez ◽  
Giacomo Rosa ◽  
...  

AbstractThe emerging amphibian disease, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), is driving population declines worldwide and even species extinctions in Australia, South and Central America. In order to mitigate effects of Bd on amphibian populations, high-exposed areas should be identified at the local scale and effective conservation measures should be planned at the national level. This assessment is actually lacking in the Mediterranean basin, and in particular in Italy, one of the most relevant amphibian diversity hotspots in the entire region. In this study, we reviewed the available information on Bd in Italy, and conducted a 5-year molecular screening on 1274 individual skin swabs belonging to 18 species. Overall, we found presence of Bd in 13 species and in a total of 56 known occurrence locations for peninsular Italy and Sardinia. We used these occurrence locations and climate data to model habitat suitability of Bd for current and future climatic scenarios. We then employed electric circuit theory to model landscape permeability to the diffusion of Bd, using a resistance map. With this procedure, we were able to model, for the first time, the diffusion pathways of Bd at the landscape scale, characterising the main future pathways towards areas with a high probability of Bd occurrence. Thus, we identified six national protected areas that will become pivotal for a nationally-based strategic plan in order to monitor, mitigate and possibly contrast Bd diffusion in Italy.


2021 ◽  
pp. M55-2018-56
Author(s):  
A. Geyer ◽  
D. Pedrazzi ◽  
J. Almendros ◽  
M. Berrocoso ◽  
J. López-Martínez ◽  
...  

AbstractDeception Island (South Shetland Islands) is one of the most active volcanoes in Antarctica, with more than 15 explosive eruptive events registered over the past two centuries. Recent eruptions (1967, 1969 and 1970) and volcanic unrest episodes in 1992, 1999 and 2014–15 demonstrate that the occurrence of future volcanic activity is a valid and pressing concern for scientists, logistic personnel and tourists that are visiting or are working on or near the island. Over the last few decades, intense research activity has been carried out on Deception Island to decipher the origin and evolution of this very complex volcano. To that end, a solid integration of related scientific disciplines, such as tectonics, petrology, geochemistry, geophysics, geomorphology, remote sensing, glaciology, is required. A proper understanding of the island's evolution in the past, and its present state, is essential for improving the efficiency in interpreting monitoring data recorded during volcanic unrest periods and, hence, for future eruption forecasting. In this chapter, we briefly present Deception Island's most relevant tectonic, geomorphological, volcanological and magmatic features, as well as the results obtained from decades of monitoring the island's seismic activity and ground deformation.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hampton Gray Gaddy

Increasing development is historically associated with fertility declines. However, demographic paradigms disagree about whether that relationship should hold at very high levels of development. Using national-level data through 2005, Myrskylä, Kohler, and Billari (2009) found that very high levels of the Human Development Index (HDI) were associated with increasing total fertility rates (TFR). This paper updates that finding with data up to 2017. It investigates whether the observed association has continued to hold for the countries originally studied and whether it holds for countries that have more recently reached very high HDI. For countries that reached HDI ≥ 0.8 in 2000 or before (n=27), the data indicate no clear relationship between changes in HDI and TFR at HDI ≥ 0.8. There is also no clear relationship for countries that reached HDI ≥ 0.8 between 2001 and 2010 (n=13). For countries that reached HDI ≥ 0.8 in 2000 or before, there appear to have been notable increases in TFR between 2000 and 2010, but those gains appear to have completely reversed between 2010 and 2017. The past finding of TFR increases at very high levels of development has not borne out in recent years. In fact, TFRs declined markedly in very high development countries between 2010 and 2017. This paper contributes to the debate over the relationship between development and fertility. That debate has an important bearing on how low fertility is conceived by social scientists and policymakers.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark S Davies ◽  
Maddalena Taras

<p>Assessment processes and products are important at all levels of education, from the micro context of the classroom to national level. Expertise in assessment is assumed to be a basic attribute of lecturers.  However, given the developments of the past 20-30 years a panoply of ideals and ideas have permeated discourses so as to camouflage the basics of theoretical understanding. This study examines the beliefs of 50 science and 50 education lecturers at an English university, focusing on data collected via a questionnaire to clarify the beliefs and understanding of assessment terms and the relationship between them. The results demonstrate that there is a great variety of understanding both between and within subject disciplines. This spread, though to be expected in a thinking, developing sector, has implications for learning and teaching and for quality assurance. </p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 79-89
Author(s):  
Abay Satubaldin ◽  
Kunikey Sakhiyeva

This article discusses the museum system of modern Kazakhstan and offers, for the first time ever, a classification and typology of the country’s museums.In recent years in independent Kazakhstan, on the basis of the Soviet system, a modern museum network has been formed which currently lists 250 museums. Among them are 17 national-level museums, 54 at the regional level, 73 at the provincial level, 103 branches of regional- and district-level museums and four private museums.The purpose of this article is to analyse the museum system of modern Kazakhstan and develop a classification and typology of the country’s museums.In the course of the study, conducted in 2017–2018, data was collected on the activities of museums at the national, regional and district levels over the past seven years. From the results of this investigation, the museums of Kazakhstan were systematized according to the subject or topic of the museum (e.g. history, art, scientific), its affiliation (national, regional district), and by size, measured by number of employees.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 15-21
Author(s):  
Madhusudan Subedi

  Most epidemiological studies focus on the direct causes of diseases while wider, social causal factors are ignored. This paper briefly highlights the history of major epidemics and the role of Anthropocene and Capitalocene for the emergence and reemergence of pandemics like COVID-19. Books, journal articles, and statistics offer information that can explain the phenomena. A historical inquiry can inform us about the fundamental causes of pandemics. Human security and ecology are intertwined, and the global effect of pandemics responded to at the national level is inadequate. The lessons from the past and present help us devise effective ethically and socially appropriate strategies to mitigate the threats. If the present crisis is not taken seriously at the global level, the world has to face more difficult challenges in years to come.


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