University of New Hampshire

About: University of New Hampshire is a education organization based out in Durham, New Hampshire, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Solar wind. The organization has 9379 authors who have published 24025 publications receiving 1020112 citations. The organization is also known as: UNH.

Meeting future food demand with current agricultural resources

Abstract: Meeting the food needs of the growing and increasingly affluent human population with the planet’s limited resources is a major challenge of our time. Seen as the preferred approach to global food security issues, ‘sustainable intensification’ is the enhancement of crop yields while minimizing environmental impacts and preserving the ability of future generations to use the land. It is still unclear to what extent sustainable intensification would allow humanity to meet its demand for food commodities. Here we use the footprints for water, nitrogen, carbon and land to quantitatively evaluate resource demands and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of future agriculture and investigate whether an increase in these environmental burdens of food production can be avoided under a variety of dietary scenarios. We calculate average footprints of the current diet and find that animal products account for 43–87% of an individual’s environmental burden – compared to 18% of caloric intake and 39% of protein intake. Interestingly, we find that projected improvements in production efficiency would be insufficient to meet future food demand without also increasing the total environmental burden of food production. Transitioning to less impactful diets would in many cases allow production efficiency to keep pace with growth in human demand while minimizing the food system’s environmental burden. This study provides a useful approach for evaluating the attainability of sustainable targets and for better integrating food security and environmental impacts.

Comparative analysis of crowding in multiple locations: Results from fifteen years of research

Abstract: Crowding is one of the most frequently studied phenomena in the outdoor recreation literature, but almost all the research focuses on single populations or settings and individual‐level analysis. The present study uses comparative analysis of aggregate data to explore questions that single studies cannot answer. Data come from more than 17,000 individuals in 35 studies of 59 different settings or activities located throughout the northeast, midwest, and northwest United States and New Zealand. All the studies used the same single‐item measure to assess visitor judgments of crowding. Dividing the nine‐point response scale to reflect the percentage of respondents reporting some degree of crowding produced a single crowding rating for each setting. Crowding scores ranged from 12 to 100%, with a mean of 57% (standard deviation, 22%). The analyses suggest that crowding varies by time, resource availability, accessibility and convenience, and management strategy. Factors that did not affect crowding in...

An ice-core record of atmospheric response to anthropogenic sulphate and nitrate

Abstract: RECORDS of sulphate and nitrate concentrations in ice cores show that these concentrations have increased recently because of the long-range transport of pollution from middle latitudes1–5. But these records have been neither complete enough nor long enough to allow an assessment of their sensitivity to variations in the emissions of sulphate and nitrate precursors. We have now analysed sections from an ice core in South Greenland which have allowed us to extend its sulphate and nitrate record back from 1869 to 1767. This longer record has enabled us to determine the pre-industrial natural interannual variability of non-sea-salt sulphate and nitrate. We find that the background concentration in the remote atmosphere over South Greenland is sensitive to changes in the anthropogenic emissions of sulphate and nitrate, and responds to these variations on a timescale of the order of decades.

Substance Abuse as a Precipitant of Wife Abuse Victimizations

Abstract: This study examines the question of whether drug and alcohol use by victims constitutes a risk factor increasing the chances of their being assaulted by their partners. Data from a subsample of the 1985 National Family Violence Survey consisting of the 2,033 female respondents who were currently married or living in a male-female couple relationship are used as the basis of the analysis. The logistic analysis revealed that, of the ten variables in the model, the most important for distinguishing abused from nonabused women are husband's drug use, a history of paternal violence in womens' family or origin, husband's drunkenness, low income, and wife's drunkenness. Women who abuse alcohol are more likely to be victims of minor marital violence, but female substance abuse of any type is not a significant factor in severe violence.

Synchronous retreat and acceleration of southeast Greenland outlet glaciers 2000–06: ice dynamics and coupling to climate

Abstract: A large portion of the recent increase in the rate of mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet is from increased outlet glacier discharge along its southeastern margin. While previous investigations of the region’s two largest glaciers suggest that acceleration is a dynamic response to thinning and retreat of the calving front, it is unknown whether this mechanism can explain regional acceleration and what forcing is responsible for initiating rapid thinning and retreat. We examine seasonal and interannual changes in ice-front position, surface elevation and flow speed for 32 glaciers along the southeastern coast between 2000 and 2006. While substantial seasonality in front position and speed is apparent, nearly all the observed glaciers show net retreat, thinning and acceleration, with speed-up corresponding to retreat. The ratio of retreat to the along-flow stress-coupling length is proportional to the relative increase in speed, consistent with typical ice-flow and sliding laws. This affirms that speed-up results from loss of resistive stress at the front during retreat, which leads to along-flow stress transfer. Large retreats were often preceded by the formation of a flat or reverse-sloped surface near the front, indicating that subsequent retreats were influenced by the reversed bed slope. Many retreats began with an increase in thinning rates near the front in the summer of 2003, a year of record high coastal-air and sea-surface temperatures. This anomaly was driven in part by recent warming, suggesting that episodes of speed-up and retreat may become more common in a warmer climate.