Hydrological Modeling for Multifunctional Landscape Planning in the Orinoquia Region of Colombia

With over 200,000 km2 of natural savannas, the Orinoquia region of Colombia is a key and strategic conservation area. Because of Colombia’s fast economic growth, there are significant plans for agro-industrial expansion in the Orinoquia. This expansion may seriously affect water availability. To evaluate the cumulative impacts on freshwater ecosystems derived by different expansion scenarios, the use of a comprehensive framework for mathematical modeling, able to represent the hydrological processes at a macro-basin scale, is crucial for analysis and as a tool to bridge the gap between science and practice. In this work, we developed a general methodological framework for hydrological analysis at macro-basin scale consisting of four main stages: 1) collection and processing of hydro-climatological data, 2) characterization of hydro dependent water use sectors, 3) mathematical modeling and 4) scenario simulation. As a result of applying the proposed framework, we obtained a coupled hydrological model, which allows us to represent the rain-runoff process, the river-floodplain interaction and anthropic processes such as surface water extraction and groundwater extraction, enabling us to represent the complexity of the Orinoquia region. The model was successfully implemented in Matlab showing a Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient between 0.62 and 0.92 in calibration and between 0.49 and 0.92 in validation. With this model we analyzed five different agro-industrial expansion scenarios, finding that the Colombian Orinoquia may have future high pressure on water resource areas with critical changes in the water availability regime. The scenarios show reductions of up to 85% in low water flows in more than 50% of the area of the Colombian Orinoco basin. In the most extreme scenarios, the Meta, Vichada and Guaviare rivers show reductions of 95, 98 and 50% in low water flows. The results show an urgent need to consider hydrology in planning processes to ensure the sustainability of this important area in Colombia.

Films at the fault line of ‘deep’ and ‘bright’ greens in the environmental movement

In this article, I review two films challenging the technological solutions and assumptions of ‘bright green’ environmentalism, Planet of the Humans and Bright Green Lies. I explain the ways these films showcase a ‘deep green’ challenge to what is charged as magical thinking in proposals for renewable energy transition. I summarize how filmmakers explore evidence that calls into question the potential for new forms of industrial expansion to save a biome in crisis. I consider the arguments raised in each film surrounding biological limits to extraction and growth. And I discuss the importance and value of exposing students to strong counter arguments to paradigmatic proposals for energy transition in a way that invokes a critical discussion of knowledge production and application.

The two extinctions of the Carolina Parakeet Conuropsis carolinensis

Summary Due to climate change and habitat conversion, estimates of the resulting levels of species extinction over the next century are alarming. Devising conservation solutions will require many different approaches, including examining the extinction processes of recently extinct species. Given that parrots are one of the most threatened groups of birds, information regarding parrot extinction is pressing. While most recent parrot extinctions have been island endemics, the Carolina Parakeet Conuropsis carolinensis had an 18th-century range covering nearly half of the present-day United States, yet mostly disappeared by the end of the 19th century. Despite a great deal of speculation, the major cause of its extinction remains unknown. Establishing the date when a species went extinct is one of the first steps in determining what caused their extinction. While there have been estimates of their extinction date, these analyses used a limited dataset and did not include observational data. We used a recently published, extensive dataset of Carolina Parakeet specimens and observations combined with a Bayesian extinction estimating model to determine the most likely extinction dates. By considering each of the two subspecies independently, we found that they went extinct ˜30 years apart: the western subspecies C. c. ludovicianus going extinct around 1914 and the eastern subspecies C. c. carolinensis either in the late 1930s or mid-1940s. Had we only considered all observations together, this pattern would have been obscured, possibly missing a major clue in solving the mystery of the parakeet’s extinction. Since the Carolina Parakeet was a wide-ranging species that went extinct during a period of rapid agricultural and industrial expansion, conditions that mirror those occurring in many parts of the world where parrot diversity is highest, any progress we make in unraveling the mystery of their disappearance may be vital to modern conservation efforts.

Consumed Landscapes: Coal, Air and Circulation in the Writings of Catherine Hutton

This essay examines a particular nexus of ideas about health and circulation in relation to the practice and the literature of travel and tourism in Romantic-period Britain. Wales, like other ‘picturesque’ destinations, is often envisaged in these writings, and in fiction, as a space of non-metropolitan purity, of clean air, and of health. Yet this is precisely the period of industrial expansion in both south and north Wales, and coal-mines, copper-works, iron foundries and smelting furnaces also figured on many tourist itineraries. Taking as its entry point the novels of Birmingham-based writer Catherine Hutton – particularly The Welsh Mountaineer (1817), which was informed by the author's own experience of travel in north Wales in the late 1790s – the essay sets the familiar trope of travel for a ‘change of air’ against the literal changes to air quality which resulted from Britain's rapid industrialisation in the decades around 1800, revealing some inventive and complex adaptations of contemporary ideas about the effects of ‘pure’ and ‘polluted’ air on human health.

Fragilidade Ambiental e Zoneamento Ecológico Econômico da Bacia Hidrográfica do Rio Preto – Estado de Goiás – Brasil

The Ecological-Economic Zoning (EEZ) is a territorial management instrument, a king of territory organization in zones which indicate activities that consider its potentialities and fragilities. The research analyzed in an integrated way the landscape of Rio Preto’s watershed, located in the south of Goiás State (Brazil) with the objective of proposing a zoning which ally environmental preservation and socioeconomic development. From the landscape analysis, five zones were delimited: 1) zone of restrict use (32%), characterized by remaining vegetation areas, slopes with strong/very strong dissection and hydromorphic soils; 2) urban industrial expansion one (0.53%); 3) consolidated sugar-energy production zone (19.47%), area which a power plant and its respective areas of sugarcane crops are localized; 4) zones of agrosilvopastoral use I (18%), characterized for being favorable to grains cultivation, forestry and pasture; 5) agrosilvopastoral zone use II (30%), with the same characteristics of the previous zone, however with the possibility of expansion of sugarcane plantation. It was proposed the creation of a belt of preservation unities taking advantage of the mountains, besides establishing ecological corridors all over Rio Preto, which would result in an average deadline on the water production increase.

The Historical Archaeology of the Medieval Crisis in Scandinavia

In the wake of the Black Death in i 1350 Europe saw demographic disaster, economic decline, and social and political breakdown. Thousands of farms were deserted. This is the Medieval Agrarian Crisis. The latest decadesof outland archaeology, primarily within the frames of rescue archaeology, have made it possible to outline the course of the crisis in the forested parts of middle Scandinavia. The 14th and 15th centuries were a time of economic change rather than economic decline. However, various areas changed in different ways. When taking outland production into account the medieval crisis has to be conceptualised in another way; it was not solely an agrarian crisis. It was also early industrial expansion and change towards extensive farming.