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.

Roadmap towards justice in urban climate adaptation research

Abstract: The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP21) highlighted the importance of cities to climate action, as well as the unjust burdens borne by the world's most disadvantaged peoples in addressing climate impacts. Few studies have documented the barriers to redressing the drivers of social vulnerability as part of urban local climate change adaptation efforts, or evaluated how emerging adaptation plans impact marginalized groups. Here, we present a roadmap to reorient research on the social dimensions of urban climate adaptation around four issues of equity and justice: (1) broadening participation in adaptation planning; (2) expanding adaptation to rapidly growing cities and those with low financial or institutional capacity; (3) adopting a multilevel and multi-scalar approach to adaptation planning; and (4) integrating justice into infrastructure and urban design processes. Responding to these empirical and theoretical research needs is the first step towards identifying pathways to more transformative adaptation policies.

Effect of a lowered water table on nitrous oxide fluxes from northern peatlands

Abstract: NORTHERN peatlands contain 20–30% of the total organic nitrogen and carbon in the world's soils1,2, and thus they apparently have the potential to exert a significant influence on the global atmospheric budget of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide (N2O). In the drier, warmer summer conditions predicted at high latitudes by some climate models3,4 as a result of greenhouse-gas forcing, northern peatlands would become drier, increasing the rate of mineralization of organic matter1,5 and of the microbial processes that produce N2O. These regions might therefore be expected to exert a strong feedback on climate. But whereas methane emissions have been well studied6,7, little is known about the effect on N2O fluxes of changes in the level of peatland water tables. Here we present a comparison of present-day N2O fluxes from virgin peatlands in Finland with those from sites in the same regions that were drained by ditching 30 and 50 years ago. The lowered water table had no effect on N2O emissions from nutrient-poor peat but enhanced those from nutrient-rich peat. We estimate that equivalent drying caused by climate change would increase the total emissions of N2O from northern peatlands by 0.03–0.1 teragrams of nitrogen per year, which is just 0.3–1% of the present global annual emissions. Thus northern peatlands are unlikely to exert a significant climate feedback from N2O emissions.

A model of cultural differences and international alliance performance

Abstract: We propose a model of cultural differences and international alliance performance to explain the ambiguous findings regarding the influence of national culture differences on alliance performance. Building on research on national, organizational, and professional cultures, we argue that the closer the domain of a social group is to the value-creating activities of an alliance, the more disruptive cultural differences between the partners’ members of that social group will be. Organizational culture differences will tend to be more disruptive than national culture differences, and differences in the professional culture most relevant to alliance value creation typically will be the most disruptive. Implications for research and managerial practice are discussed, and the model's relevance for international R&D alliances is highlighted.