The Feeder Effect

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darryl Jones
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Wild Bird ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Supplementary Feeding ◽  
Feeding Experiment ◽  
Additional Food ◽  
Natural Diet

The popularity of wild bird feeding has introduced enormous amounts of additional food into the ecosystem, especially in urban areas. Significantly, all of this food is supplementary to the natural diet of the birds consuming it. For this reason, bird feeding has been likened to a supplementary feeding experiment on a global scale yet with no clear expectations of possible outcomes. This chapter investigated the likely consequences of this situation.

scholarly journals Intensive supplementary feeding improves the performance of wild bird seed plots in provisioning farmland birds throughout the winter: a case study in lowland England

Bird Study ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Richard K. Broughton ◽  
Michael G.W. Kettlewell ◽  
Marta Maziarz ◽  
Stephen H. Vickers ◽  
Alan Larkman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Wild Bird ◽  
Supplementary Feeding ◽  
Farmland Birds

scholarly journals Modelling the impact of megacities on local, regional and global tropospheric ozone and the deposition of nitrogen species

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (24) ◽  
pp. 12215-12231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Z. S. Stock ◽  
M. R. Russo ◽  
T. M. Butler ◽  
A. T. Archibald ◽  
M. G. Lawrence ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Air Quality ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Surface Ozone ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Chemical Environment ◽  
Ozone Production ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Local Emissions

Abstract. We examine the effects of ozone precursor emissions from megacities on present-day air quality using the global chemistry–climate model UM-UKCA (UK Met Office Unified Model coupled to the UK Chemistry and Aerosols model). The sensitivity of megacity and regional ozone to local emissions, both from within the megacity and from surrounding regions, is important for determining air quality across many scales, which in turn is key for reducing human exposure to high levels of pollutants. We use two methods, perturbation and tagging, to quantify the impact of megacity emissions on global ozone. We also completely redistribute the anthropogenic emissions from megacities, to compare changes in local air quality going from centralised, densely populated megacities to decentralised, lower density urban areas. Focus is placed not only on how changes to megacity emissions affect regional and global NOx and O3, but also on changes to NOy deposition and to local chemical environments which are perturbed by the emission changes. The perturbation and tagging methods show broadly similar megacity impacts on total ozone, with the perturbation method underestimating the contribution partially because it perturbs the background chemical environment. The total redistribution of megacity emissions locally shifts the chemical environment towards more NOx-limited conditions in the megacities, which is more conducive to ozone production, and monthly mean surface ozone is found to increase up to 30% in megacities, depending on latitude and season. However, the displacement of emissions has little effect on the global annual ozone burden (0.12% change). Globally, megacity emissions are shown to contribute ~3% of total NOy deposition. The changes in O3, NOx and NOy deposition described here are useful for quantifying megacity impacts and for understanding the sensitivity of megacity regions to local emissions. The small global effects of the 100% redistribution carried out in this study suggest that the distribution of emissions on the local scale is unlikely to have large implications for chemistry–climate processes on the global scale.

scholarly journals A Cultural Governance Coalition in Regeneration. A Case Study of Historical Quanzhou City

2019 ◽  
pp. 145-164
Author(s):  
Shuxiang Cai
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Urban Governance ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Spatial Transformation ◽  
Common Path

Compared with the gradual and long exploration processes typical of European and American countries, China experienced a period marked by extremely high-speed modernisation and urbanisation, following the Land Reform. This is exemplified by a great number of urban reconstruction projects which have changed the traditional fabric of most cities. Yet, following the trend of cultural consumption since the late 1990s, numerous integrated restoration projects for historic districts were implemented to promote tourism as a promising industry to sustain economic growth. As a consequence of growth-oriented urban entrepreneurship, public spaces in these historic urban areas have also been perceptibly privatised. To a large extent, the capital and the authority of the local government directs the future prospect of the historic urban landscape in Chinese cities. On the other hand, development-oriented urban construction stimulates a rise in awareness of the need for protection strategies to conserve historic urban fabric. On a global scale, the public sector has begun to introspect on urban governance under the spirit of entrepreneurship. The urban renewal has now been extended to urban regeneration and the previous public-private partnership has been substituted with a multi-sectoral cooperative model. In recent years, the Chinese central government has proposed the core concept of “Seeing people, Seeing things, Seeing life”, which is re-orientated towards historic-city regeneration as a way of promoting “Micro-renewal and Micro-disturbance”. Among such activities, the use of exhibitions as a strategy for simultaneous spatial transformation and activation has gradually formed a common path, encouraging many cities to regenerate historic urban areas. This article is based on on this reorientation, taking Quanzhou as an example, making a critical observation on the new form of public space it has produced, and digs into the operational mechanism behind it as well as the possibility for publicness.

scholarly journals The “Paris-End” of Town? Deriving Urban Typologies Using Three Imagery Types

Urban Science ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
Kerry A. Nice ◽  
Jason Thompson ◽  
Jasper S. Wijnands ◽  
Gideon D. P. A. Aschwanden ◽  
Mark Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Neural Networks ◽  
Satellite Imagery ◽  
Urban Form ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Targeted Interventions ◽  
Advantages And Disadvantages ◽  
Street View ◽  
Social Demographic

Urban typologies allow areas to be categorised according to form and the social, demographic, and political uses of the areas. The use of these typologies and finding similarities and dissimilarities between cities enables better targeted interventions for improved health, transport, and environmental outcomes in urban areas. A better understanding of local contexts can also assist in applying lessons learned from other cities. Constructing urban typologies at a global scale through traditional methods, such as functional or network analysis, requires the collection of data across multiple political districts, which can be inconsistent and then require a level of subjective classification. To overcome these limitations, we use neural networks to analyse millions of images of urban form (consisting of street view, satellite imagery, and street maps) to find shared characteristics between the largest 1692 cities in the world. The comparison city of Paris is used as an exemplar and we perform a case study using two Australian cities, Melbourne and Sydney, to determine if a “Paris-end” of town exists or can be found in these cities using these three big data imagery sets. The results show specific advantages and disadvantages of each type of imagery in constructing urban typologies. Neural networks trained with map imagery will be highly influenced by the structural mix of roads, public transport, and green and blue space. Satellite imagery captures a combination of both urban form and decorative and natural details. The use of street view imagery emphasises the features of a human-scaled visual geography of streetscapes. However, for both satellite and street view imagery to be highly effective, a reduction in scale and more aggressive pre-processing might be required in order to reduce detail and create greater abstraction in the imagery.

Investigating the Potential of Urban Land Uses to Support Sustainable Energy Principles Using a Spatial Analysis Model

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sherika Gibson
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Spatial Analysis ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Sustainable Energy ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
Sustainable Communities ◽  
Renewable Energy Resources ◽  
Analysis Model ◽  
Essential Components

The underpinning elements of sustainable communities are centered on economic security, renewable energy resources, reliable infrastructure, and ecological protection. The geomorphology of urban areas is altered due to human activity leading to change in land use characteristics and resources availability. Research has shown that global population has increased drastically over the last three decades resulting in depleted efficiency of regional resources. Because of this, obtaining sustainable energy platforms is a world-wide concern. In evaluating the ability of urban communities to support sustainable elements, both spatial and temporal influences must be considered. As a result a spatial analysis model will be used to assess the geomorphological and land use aspects of urban watersheds to support sustainable communities’ platform. These data will provide insight in essential components in need of environmental restoration that contribute to future renewable resources which can then be applied on a global scale.

scholarly journals Global combustion: the connection between fossil fuel and biomass burning emissions (1997–2010)

2016 ◽  
Vol 371 (1696) ◽  
pp. 20150177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer K. Balch ◽  
R. Chelsea Nagy ◽  
Sally Archibald ◽  
David M. J. S. Bowman ◽  
Max A. Moritz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Biomass Burning ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Fossil Fuel Burning ◽  
Annual Carbon ◽  
Global Modelling ◽  
Human Use ◽  
Global Data ◽  
Fossil Fuel Emissions

Humans use combustion for heating and cooking, managing lands, and, more recently, for fuelling the industrial economy. As a shift to fossil-fuel-based energy occurs, we expect that anthropogenic biomass burning in open landscapes will decline as it becomes less fundamental to energy acquisition and livelihoods. Using global data on both fossil fuel and biomass burning emissions, we tested this relationship over a 14 year period (1997–2010). The global average annual carbon emissions from biomass burning during this time were 2.2 Pg C per year (±0.3 s.d.), approximately one-third of fossil fuel emissions over the same period (7.3 Pg C, ±0.8 s.d.). There was a significant inverse relationship between average annual fossil fuel and biomass burning emissions. Fossil fuel emissions explained 8% of the variation in biomass burning emissions at a global scale, but this varied substantially by land cover. For example, fossil fuel burning explained 31% of the variation in biomass burning in woody savannas, but was a non-significant predictor for evergreen needleleaf forests. In the land covers most dominated by human use, croplands and urban areas, fossil fuel emissions were more than 30- and 500-fold greater than biomass burning emissions. This relationship suggests that combustion practices may be shifting from open landscape burning to contained combustion for industrial purposes, and highlights the need to take into account how humans appropriate combustion in global modelling of contemporary fire. Industrialized combustion is not only an important driver of atmospheric change, but also an important driver of landscape change through companion declines in human-started fires. This article is part of the themed issue ‘The interaction of fire and mankind’.

scholarly journals OPEN STREET MAP DATA AS SOURCE FOR BUILT-UP AND URBAN AREAS ON GLOBAL SCALE

2016 ◽  
Vol XLI-B4 ◽  
pp. 557-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Brinkhoff
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Sufficient Accuracy ◽  
The Third ◽  
Software And Hardware ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Map Data ◽  
Global Vector ◽  
Standard Software

Many types of applications require information about built-up areas and urban areas. Thus, there is a need for a global, vector-based, up-to-date, and free dataset of high resolution and accuracy. The OpenStreetMap (OSM) dataset fulfills those demands in principle. However, its focus is not land use or land cover. These observations lead to following questions: (1) Which OSM features can be used for computing built-up areas on global scale? (2) How can we derive built-up and urban areas on global scale in sufficient accuracy and performance by using standard software and hardware? (3) Is the quality of the result sufficient on global scale? In this paper, we investigate the first two questions in detail and give some insights into the third question.

scholarly journals The impact of human and livestock respiration on CO2 emissions from 14 global cities

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qixiang Cai ◽  
Ning Zeng ◽  
Fang Zhao ◽  
Pengfei Han ◽  
Di Liu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Carbon Budget ◽  
Fossil Fuel ◽  
Large City ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Emissions Inventory ◽  
Budget Analysis ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Fossil Fuel Emissions

Abstract BackgroundThe CO2 released by humans and livestock through digestion and decomposition is an important part of the urban carbon cycle. But this part is reraly condidarded in the stuties of city carbon budget since its annual magnitude is lower than that of fossil fuel emissions within the boundaries of cities. However, human and livestock respiration may be substantial compared to fossil fuel emissions in areas with high population density such as Manhattan or Beijing. High-resolution datasets of CO2 release from respiration also have rarely been reported on a global scale or in cities globally. Here, we estimate the CO2 released by human and livestock respiration at global and large city scales and then compare it with the carbon emissions inventory from fossil fuels in 14 cities worldwide.ResultsThe results show that the total human and livestock respiration is up to 38.1% of fossil fuel emissions for Delhi among the studied cities. The proportion could be larger than 10% in cities of Sao Paulo, Cape Town and Tokyo. In other cities, it is raletivily small with a proportion around 5%, while Washington DC has the least proportion in 2.8%. In addition, almost 90% of respiratory carbon comes from urban areas in most cities, while up to one-third comes from suburban areas in Beijing on account of the siginificant livestock production.ConclusionThe results suggest that the respiration of humans and livestock represents a significant CO2 source in some cities and is nonnegligible for city carbon budget analysis and carbon monitoring.

Investigating vegetation role on UHI with mechanistic modelling worldwide

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ziyan Zhang ◽  
Athanasios Paschalis ◽  
Ana Mijic ◽  
Naika Meili ◽  
Simone Fatichi
Keyword(s):  
Land Surface ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Energy Demand ◽  
Land Surface Model ◽  
Remote Sensing Data ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Surface Model ◽  
Urban Fabric ◽  
Urban Energy ◽  
Set Up

<p>The urban heat island effect (UHI), defined as the temperature difference between urban areas and their surroundings, has been widely observed in many cities worldwide, impacting urban energy demand, citizen’s comfort and health. UHI intensities have been found to depend on background climate, and the urban fabric, including built (building thermal properties, heights, reflectance) and natural characteristics (vegetation cover, species composition, vegetation management). In this study, we focus on developing a global scale mechanistic understanding of how each of those properties alters the urban energy budget and leads to UHI development. To achieve this goal, we use the state-of-art urban ecohydrological and land-surface model (urban Tethys-Chloris) to perform a set of detailed UHI simulations for multiple large urban clusters across America, Europe and China in a 10-year time period (2009-2019), spanning a gradient of aridity, vegetation amount, and different compositions of the urban fabric. Model simulations were set up using the latest generation remote sensing data and climate reanalysis (ERA5). Using the simulations, we develop a paradigm of how UHIs develop worldwide, and propose viable solutions for sustainable UHI mitigation.</p>

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