scholarly journals Relationships of climate, human activity, and fire history to spatiotemporal variation in annual fire probability across California

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. e0254723
Author(s):  
Isaac W. Park ◽  
Michael L. Mann ◽  
Lorraine E. Flint ◽  
Alan L. Flint ◽  
Max Moritz
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Fire History ◽  
The State ◽  
Carbon Accounting ◽  
Climate Variations ◽  
Probability Models ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Fire Dynamics ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Local Climate

In the face of recent wildfires across the Western United States, it is essential that we understand both the dynamics that drive the spatial distribution of wildfire, and the major obstacles to modeling the probability of wildfire over space and time. However, it is well documented that the precise relationships of local vegetation, climate, and ignitions, and how they influence fire dynamics, may vary over space and among local climate, vegetation, and land use regimes. This raises questions not only as to the nature of the potentially nonlinear relationships between local conditions and the fire, but also the possibility that the scale at which such models are developed may be critical to their predictive power and to the apparent relationship of local conditions to wildfire. In this study we demonstrate that both local climate–through limitations posed by fuel dryness (CWD) and availability (AET)–and human activity–through housing density, roads, electrical infrastructure, and agriculture, play important roles in determining the annual probabilities of fire throughout California. We also document the importance of previous burn events as potential barriers to fire in some environments, until enough time has passed for vegetation to regenerate sufficiently to sustain subsequent wildfires. We also demonstrate that long-term and short-term climate variations exhibit different effects on annual fire probability, with short-term climate variations primarily impacting fire probability during periods of extreme climate anomaly. Further, we show that, when using nonlinear modeling techniques, broad-scale fire probability models can outperform localized models at predicting annual fire probability. Finally, this study represents a powerful tool for mapping local fire probability across the state of California under a variety of historical climate regimes, which is essential to avoided emissions modeling, carbon accounting, and hazard severity mapping for the application of fire-resistant building codes across the state of California.

Plebiscitary Politics and the Threats to Legality

2019 ◽  
pp. 275-289
Author(s):  
Claudius Härpfer
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The Face ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
The Relationship

In recent times we find many plebiscitary acts that seek to democratically legitimize political processes in any direction. They have in common that they interrupt the normal routine of representative democracies to a certain degree and create an extra-daily state of affairs, which entails not only direct but also indirect consequences. The text attempts to systematize some of these mechanisms from a Weberian perspective using Brexit as an example. After a brief overview of Weber’s short-term politically inspired statements on plebiscitary democracy, the text systematizes Weber’s understanding of the state as a bureaucratic apparatus that requires any kind of leader to be controlled. Subsequently, the text discusses the relationship between domination, legality, and rationality in order to finally point out the danger of erosion of truth and legality through the emergence of competing consensus communities in the face of competing conceptions of order.

Florida voters react to Biden's Caribbean policy

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Disaster Relief ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Economic Recovery ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Family Connections ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
The Government

Significance Many areas of the Caribbean have trade, investment and family connections with communities in Florida. As the state now plays a pivotal role in US electoral politics, crises in the region can take on added political importance for parts of Florida’s electorate. Impacts Forecasts of short-term economic recovery for Florida remain highly uncertain given the continuing impact of the pandemic. Clashing interests across the Caribbean may demand greater coordination of US policy than the government can currently offer. Healthcare and disaster relief capabilities within the state are severely overstretched and could be overwhelmed by a new crisis.

Appeal to Philosophers

Philosophy ◽  
1940 ◽  
Vol 15 (60) ◽  
pp. 400-416
Author(s):  
C. E. M. Joad
Keyword(s):  
Classical Tradition ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
The State ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Human Consciousness ◽  
Dual Purpose ◽  
Conduct Of Life ◽  
The Moment

I want in this paper to enter a protest against the preoccupations of many contemporary philosophers, and to put in a plea for a return to the classical tradition in philosophy. According to this tradition, philosophy is, or at least should be, concerned with the whole conduct of life. It has two main functions, to clarify the wisdom of common-sense people, and to increase it. To put it technically, philosophy, as traditionally conceived, is an activity of self-conscious beings which seeks, among other things, critically to examine the manifestations of human consciousness and the principles which guide human activity; to examine not disinterestedly, but in order to illuminate, to assist, and to reform. Philosophy has, therefore, the dual purpose of revealing truth and increasing virtue. One of the methods traditionally employed for achieving these two purposes consists in the attempt to discover those values which are ultimate in the sense that, while other things are desired for the sake oi them, they alone are desired for their own sakes, to uncover by a process of analysis the values which underlie the judgments commonly passed by contemporary society—as for example, in our own society, the values implied by the judgment that increase of efficiency in slaughter is desirable, especially if combined with a readiness to undertake it whenever the State to which one happens to belong deems the moment expedient for the mass slaughter of the citizens of some other State—and to show how the latter deviate from the former.

scholarly journals Modelização do clima urbano de Santa Maria, RS

1986 ◽  
Vol 8 (8) ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
Maria Da Graça Barros Sartori
Keyword(s):  
Relative Humidity ◽  
Atmospheric Circulation ◽  
Urban Climate ◽  
Rio Grande ◽  
Meteorological Station ◽  
The State ◽  
Local Analysis ◽  
Rio Grande Do Sul ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
Santa Maria

Urbanization causes changes in the local climate by altering the atmosphere of a city and creating the urban climate. Attempting to verify the existence of urban climate in Santa Maria, climatic analysis was made of temperature, wind and relative humidity of data gathered in the field as well as from the meteorological station, in relaction to the regional atmospheric circulation analysis. The results of this study and samples from national and international finding, together with the local analysis of geoecological and geourban components, help in presenting a simulating model of the urban climate of Santa Maria located in the center of the State of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

scholarly journals Variability of the water availability in a river lake system – A case study of Lake Symsar

2016 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela B. Kuriata-Potasznik ◽  
Sławomir Szymczyk
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Availability ◽  
Water Retention ◽  
Water Exchange ◽  
Water Losses ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
Lake System ◽  
Catchment Areas ◽  
The Impact

AbstractIt is predicted that climate change will result in the diminution of water resources available both on global and regional scales. Local climate change is harder to observe and therefore, while counteracting its effects, it seems advisable to undertake studies on pertinent regional and local conditions. In this research, our aim was to assess the impact of a river and its catchment on fluctuations in the water availability in a natural lake which belongs to a post-glacial river and lake system. River and lake systems behave most often like a single interacting hydrological unit, and the intensity of water exchange in these systems is quite high, which may cause temporary water losses. This study showed that water in the analyzed river and lake system was exchanged approx. every 66 days, which resulted from the total (horizontal and vertical) water exchange. Also, the management of a catchment area seems to play a crucial role in the local water availability, as demonstrated by this research, where water retention was favoured by wooded and marshy areas. More intensive water retention was observed in a catchment dominated by forests, pastures and wetlands. Wasteland and large differences in the land elevation in the tested catchment are unfavourable to water retention because they intensify soil evaporation and accelerate the water run-off outside of the catchment. Among the actions which should be undertaken in order to counteract water deficiencies in catchment areas, rational use and management of the land resources in the catchment are most often mentioned.

scholarly journals Learning from Interventions Using Hierarchical Policies for Safe Learning

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (06) ◽  
pp. 10352-10360
Author(s):  
Jing Bi ◽  
Vikas Dhiman ◽  
Tianyou Xiao ◽  
Chenliang Xu
Keyword(s):  
Reaction Time ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
Policy Framework ◽  
Asymptotic Performance ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Learning From Demonstrations ◽  
Hierarchical Levels ◽  
Long Term Behavior

Learning from Demonstrations (LfD) via Behavior Cloning (BC) works well on multiple complex tasks. However, a limitation of the typical LfD approach is that it requires expert demonstrations for all scenarios, including those in which the algorithm is already well-trained. The recently proposed Learning from Interventions (LfI) overcomes this limitation by using an expert overseer. The expert overseer only intervenes when it suspects that an unsafe action is about to be taken. Although LfI significantly improves over LfD, the state-of-the-art LfI fails to account for delay caused by the expert's reaction time and only learns short-term behavior. We address these limitations by 1) interpolating the expert's interventions back in time, and 2) by splitting the policy into two hierarchical levels, one that generates sub-goals for the future and another that generates actions to reach those desired sub-goals. This sub-goal prediction forces the algorithm to learn long-term behavior while also being robust to the expert's reaction time. Our experiments show that LfI using sub-goals in a hierarchical policy framework trains faster and achieves better asymptotic performance than typical LfD.

scholarly journals Accounting and disciplinary methods in fishery management

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (9) ◽  
pp. 218-249
Author(s):  
Stefania Servalli ◽  
Antonio Gitto
Keyword(s):  
Fishery Management ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Fish Stock ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Local Authorities ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Papal States

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to contribute to the research related to “the interplay between accounting and the state, politics, and local authorities in the broad government and administration of food for sustainability of populations” (Sargiacomo et al., 2016). Considering contemporary examples and investigating the genealogy of an 18th-century reform of fishery management (the New Plan), the authors explore the role played by accounting and calculative practices when local authorities intervene using forms of discipline based on control systems that acted on commons (fish), people and space.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is historically grounded on archival research on a fish provisioning case during the 18th century in Ancona, an Italian town on the Adriatic coast. The investigation adopts an approach focussed on the use of disciplinary methods in the terms highlighted by Foucault. This perspective offers a lens capable of revealing the key role of accounting in a period when discipline became “general formulas of domination” (Foucault, 1977) and the Papal States were looking for food provisioning solutions (Foucault, 2007). The study highlights similarities with contemporary fishery management.FindingsThe paper shows that governability of fishery in a commons' logic is not limited by the properties of the good, but rather “it is achieved through the objects and instruments that are deployed to make it possible” (Johnsen, 2014, p. 429). It reveals forms assumed by economic calculation in different eras and their contribution in the art of governing realised by the state (Hoskin and Macve, 2016). The study unveils how accounting effectively operates using “naming and counting” activities (Ezzamel and Hoskin, 2002) based on a system of documents and accounting registers; these have a pivotal role in redefining fishery management and in keeping goods (fish) and people (fishermen) under control. The investigation also highlights the importance of properly quantifying data in fishery management, confirming the literature on the topic (Beddington et al., 2007, p. 1713). In contemporary situations, data refer to quantifying the fish stock in the sea and the consequent estimation of fish catch. In the historical investigation, although environmental protection was not an issue, quantification refers to the fish that entered the town of Ancona, whose estimation was the result of a new calculative approach adopted by local authorities facing fish needs. In addition, it offers early evidence of organised and rational-based control mechanisms that were the result of Enlightened ideas emerging in the Papal States context.Originality/valueDespite the fact that fish represent a fundamental good for governments to act on in response to a population's needs, there has been no attention paid to how governmental authorities have used disciplinary mechanisms to intervene in fishery management or the role played by accounting. This study's novelty is its investigation of fishery, using Foucauldian disciplinary methods to understand accounting's contribution in fishery governance. In addition, this investigation permits to unveil the role of accounting to support one of the main principles of the governance of commons that is represented by the congruence between rules and local conditions (Fennell, 2011, p. 11; Ostrom, 1990, p. 92).

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