University of Exeter

About: University of Exeter is a education organization based out in Exeter, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Climate change. The organization has 15820 authors who have published 50650 publications receiving 1793046 citations. The organization is also known as: Exeter University & University of the South West of England.

Livelihood resilience in the face of climate change

Abstract: The resilience concept requires greater attention to human livelihoods if it is to address the limits to adaptation strategies and the development needs of the planet's poorest and most vulnerable people. Although the concept of resilience is increasingly informing research and policy, its transfer from ecological theory to social systems leads to weak engagement with normative, social and political dimensions of climate change adaptation. A livelihood perspective helps to strengthen resilience thinking by placing greater emphasis on human needs and their agency, empowerment and human rights, and considering adaptive livelihood systems in the context of wider transformational changes.

A large-scale field assessment of carbon stocks in human-modified tropical forests

Abstract: Tropical rainforests store enormous amounts of carbon, the protection of which represents a vital component of efforts to mitigate global climate change. Currently, tropical forest conservation, science, policies, and climate mitigation actions focus predominantly on reducing carbon emissions from deforestation alone. However, every year vast areas of the humid tropics are disturbed by selective logging, understory fires, and habitat fragmentation. There is an urgent need to understand the effect of such disturbances on carbon stocks, and how stocks in disturbed forests compare to those found in undisturbed primary forests as well as in regenerating secondary forests. Here, we present the results of the largest field study to date on the impacts of human disturbances on above and belowground carbon stocks in tropical forests. Live vegetation, the largest carbon pool, was extremely sensitive to disturbance: forests that experienced both selective logging and understory fires stored, on average, 40% less aboveground carbon than undisturbed forests and were structurally similar to secondary forests. Edge effects also played an important role in explaining variability in aboveground carbon stocks of disturbed forests. Results indicate a potential rapid recovery of the dead wood and litter carbon pools, while soil stocks (0–30 cm) appeared to be resistant to the effects of logging and fire. Carbon loss and subsequent emissions due to human disturbances remain largely unaccounted for in greenhouse gas inventories, but by comparing our estimates of depleted carbon stocks in disturbed forests with Brazilian government assessments of the total forest area annually disturbed in the Amazon, we show that these emissions could represent up to 40% of the carbon loss from deforestation in the region. We conclude that conservation programs aiming to ensure the long-term permanence of forest carbon stocks, such as REDD+, will remain limited in their success unless they effectively avoid degradation as well as deforestation.

Three-dimensional calculations of high- and low-mass planets embedded in protoplanetary discs

Abstract: We analyse the non-linear, three-dimensional response of a gaseous, viscous protoplanetary disc to the presence of a planet of mass ranging from 1 Earth mass (1 M⊕) to 1 Jupiter mass (1 MJ) by using the ZEUS hydrodynamics code. We determine the gas f ow pattern, and the accretion and migration rates of the planet. The planet is assumed to be in a f xed circular orbit about the central star. It is also assumed to be able to accrete gas without expansion on the scale of its Roche radius. Only planets with masses Mp 0.1 MJ produce significan perturbations in the surface density of the disc. The fl w within the Roche lobe of the planet is fullythree-dimensional.GasstreamsgenerallyentertheRochelobeclosetothediscmid-plane, but produce much weaker shocks than the streams in two-dimensional models. The streams supply material to a circumplanetary disc that rotates in the same sense as the orbit of the planet. Much of the mass supply to the circumplanetary disc comes from non-coplanar fl w. The accretion rate peaks with a planet mass of approximately 0.1 MJ and is highly efficient occurring at the local viscous rate. The migration time-scales for planets of mass less than 0.1 MJ, based on torques from disc material outside the Roche lobes of the planets, are in excellent agreement with the linear theory of type I (non-gap) migration for three-dimensional discs.ThetransitionfromtypeItotypeII(gap)migrationissmooth,withchangesinmigration times of about a factor of 2. Starting with a core which can undergo runaway growth, a planet can gain up to a few MJ with little migration. Planets with fina masses of the order of 10 MJ would undergo large migration, which makes formation and survival difficult