▶ Addresses a wide range of timely environment, economic and energy topics ▶ A forum to review, analyze and stimulate the development, testing and implementation of mitigation and adaptation strategies at regional, national and global scales ▶ Contributes to real-time policy analysis and development as national and international policies and agreements are discussed and promulgated ▶ 94% of authors who answered a survey reported that they would definitely publish or probably publish in the journal again

Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change

/pdf/remote-sensing-of-the-environment-4yfxjaaswe.pdf

Remote sensing of the environment

Remote sensing for agricultural applications: A meta-review

The results of the Forest Resources Assessment 2000 carried out by FAO are synthetically presented and discussed. The world forest coverage is estimated equal to 38.6 million km 2 . The comparison of the estimates from the period 1990-2000 with those from the period 1980-1990 points out a certain general deceleration of the rate of net deforestation, that currently involves around 9 million hectares every year. However, the annua1 loss of tropical forests is still very large, while temperate and borea1 forests are in expansion. Overall, FRA2000 produced a relevant effort to compensate the existing technical, institutional and financial constraints and shortcomings for monitoring the world forest resources. The need to increase the quality and the frequency of forest surveys, both at national and international levels, s t a stands as a major issue to cope with.

http://ojs.aisf.it/index.php/ifm/article/download/774/738

Valutazione delle risorse forestali a livello globale

We reviewed the literature on leadership in linked social-ecological systems and combined it with the literature on institutional entrepreneurship in complex adaptive systems to develop a new theory of transformative agency in linked social- ecological systems. Although there is evidence of the importance of strategic agency in introducing innovation and transforming approaches to management and governance of such systems, there is no coherent theory to explain the wide diversity of strategies identified. Using Holling's adaptive cycle as a model of phases present in innovation and transformation of resilient social- ecological systems, overlaid by Dorado's model of opportunity context (opaque, hazy, transparent) in complex adaptive systems, we propose a more coherent theory of strategic agency, which links particular strategies, on the part of transformative agents, to phases of system change.

/pdf/a-theory-of-transformative-agency-in-linked-social-136jl6wy98.pdf

A Theory of Transformative Agency in Linked Social-Ecological Systems

The types and intensification of land use in the watershed affect the living organisms in aquatic ecosystems differently; this impact will also vary according to temporal and spatial scales. Understanding these interactions is crucial in the design of biomonitoring programs to detect the effect of different pollutants in freshwater ecosystems and improve watershed management and conservation strategies. Therefore, this paper qualitatively reviews biomonitoring studies in freshwater ecosystems to evaluate the impact of different land use types on multiple scales in watersheds. The paper is organized into four sections. The first section presents biomonitoring in different freshwater systems (streams, rivers, lakes, and reservoirs). In the second section, we describe the biomonitoring characteristics of the main land use types. In the third section, we explain how spatial and temporal scales affect biomonitoring. Finally, in the fourth section, we focus on biomonitoring planning and future prediction and discuss how to design biomonitoring programs and how to use models and eDNA in biomonitoring. Our review will assist in decision-making regarding biomonitoring programs in watersheds and will guide future studies on the different bioindicators for various land use types in diverse ecosystems worldwide.

/pdf/biomonitoring-for-watershed-protection-from-a-multiscale-1yzuif6f.pdf

Biomonitoring for Watershed Protection from a Multiscale Land-Use Perspective

Globalization, local commons, and the multiscale ecosystem framework (MEF)

The assessment and prediction of the groundwater resource quality are required for the sustainable management of this crucial resource. This study develops a new index for assessing and a model for predicting the quality of groundwater resources. The groundwater quality index (GWQI), the Shannon entropy method, was used to determine the weight of parameters, and the complex proportional assessment multi‐decision criteria method was used to score the GWQI. Water quality parameters, including TDS, EC, TH, Mg+2 , Na+ , SO42− , pH, K+ , Cl− , HCO3− and Ca+2 , were used as decision criteria. The support vector regression–particle swarm optimization )SVR‐PSO( simulation–optimization model is developed to predict new GWQI (C‐GWQI) of the aquifer. The development of this new index called C‐GWQI is one of the innovations of this article. Based on these approaches, the index is used to determine three water quality classes (optimum, permissible, and impermissible) for drinking water following World Health Organization (WHO) criteria. The distribution of C‐GWQI shows that groundwater quality in most of the Zanjan aquifer of Iran was in the optimum range. Still, it is deteriorating into the permissible range due to pollution from urban areas during some periods. The hybrid SVR‐PSO model can predict the groundwater quality with sufficient accuracy with a Mean Absolute Relative Error (MARE) of 1.5% and 0.88% in training and testing phases, respectively. Results show that temperature, precipitation, evaporation, returned water and groundwater level did not significantly affect groundwater quality prediction. In contrast, the previous month's C‐GWQI, recharge, and discharge were most influential in predicting groundwater quality.

Development of the support vector regression–particle swarm optimization simulation‐optimization model for the assessment of a novel groundwater quality index

Timothy O. Randhir

Papers

Biomonitoring for Watershed Protection from a Multiscale Land-Use Perspective

Globalization, local commons, and the multiscale ecosystem framework (MEF)

Development of the support vector regression–particle swarm optimization simulation‐optimization model for the assessment of a novel groundwater quality index

Monitoring Groundwater Storage Based on Satellite Gravimetry and Deep Learning