• Energy Research
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Organic waste production has greatly increased following human sprawl and led to the development of landfills in recent decades. This abundant and reliable anthropogenic food source has favoured several species, some of which consequently became overabundant. Landfills present hazards to wildlife, which may suffocate on plastic materials, tangle on cords, and get exposed to pollutants and pathogens. In response to environmental and public health concerns over the maintenance of landfills, the European Commission proposed to close the landfills. Our objective was to determine the impact of the Landfill European Directive on the White Stork, Ciconia ciconia, whose population recovery and growth were linked to landfill exploitation. We implemented species distribution models to project future distribution in the absence of landfills in the Community of Madrid (Spain). Habitat suitability was estimated based on nest occurrence and we included data from land cover types, human population density and two different climate change scenarios (i.e., emissions in low and high shared socioeconomic pathways). Given that protection measures, particularly implemented in protected areas, were associated with population recovery, we also evaluated the overlapping degree between protected areas and projected distribution. Our models predicted a sharp decline in breeding population distribution with landfill closure, reaching values similar to the 1984 breeding census when the species was categorized as threatened. Our results also suggest a decrease in maximum habitat suitability. Climate change also contributed to a reduction in breeding population distribution given model predictions for the extreme emission pathway (ssp5). Measures such as gradual change in landfill management, continuous monitoring of breeding populations, and evaluation of the Stork use of natural feeding areas before and after landfill closure, should be considered.  Direct census searching for nests in the whole Community of Madrid.

The Global SPEI database, SPEIbase, offers long-time, robust information on the drought conditions at the global scale, with a 0.5 degrees spatial resolution and a monthly time resolution. It has a multi-scale character, providing SPEI time-scales between 1 and 48 months. The Standardized Precipitatin-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) expresses, as a standardized variate (mean zero and unit variance), the deviations of the current climatic balance (precipitation minus evapotranspiration potential) with respect to the long-term balance. The reference period for the calculation, in the SPEIbase, corresponds to the whole study period. Being a standardized variate means that the SPEI condition can be compared across space and time. Calculation of the evapotranspiration potential in SPEIbase is based on the FAO-56 Penman-Monteith method. Data type: float; units: z-values (standard deviations). No land pixels are assigned a value of 1.0x10^30. In some rare cases it was not possible to achieve a good fit to the log-logistic distribution, resulting in a NAN (not a number) value in the database. Dimensions of the dataset: lon = 720; lat = 360; time = 1356. Resolution of the dataset: lon = 0.5º; lat = 0.5º; time = 1 month. Created in R using the SPEI package (http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/SPEI). Global gridded dataset of the Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) at time scales between 1 and 48 months. Spatial resolution of 0.5º lat/lon. Temporal coverage between January 1901 and December 2011. This is an update of a previous version of SPEIbase v2 (http://hdl.handle.net/10261/48169). What’s new in version 2.2: 1) Data has been extended to the period 1901-2011 (it was 1901-2009 in v 2.0). 2) The FAO grass reference evapotranspiration from the CRU TS3.2 dataset has been used as PET input for the SPEI (http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/browse/badc/cru/data/cru_ts_3.20). Precipitation is also obtained from the same CRU TS3.2 dataset. 3) Unbiased probability weighted moments (ub-pwm) method has been used for fitting the log-Logistic distribution, instead of the sub-optimal plotting-position pwm method used in version 1.0. For more details on the SPEI visit http://sac.csic.es/spei. The Global 0.5° gridded SPEI dataset is made available under the Open Database License. Any rights in individual contents of the database are licensed under the Database Contents License. Users of the dataset are free to share, create and adapt under the conditions of attribution and share-alike. Use of the newest version is recommended. Older versions are still available to allow replicability.

Current rising temperatures are threatening biodiversity. It is therefore crucial to understand how climate change impacts male and female fertility and whether evolutionary responses can help in coping with heat stress. We use experimental evolution to study male and female fertility during real-time evolution of two historically differentiated populations of Drosophila subobscura under different thermal selection regimes for 23 generations. We aim to (1) tease apart sex-specific differences in fertility after exposure to warming conditions during development, (2) test whether thermal selection can enhance fertility under thermal stress, and (3) address the role of historically distinct genetic backgrounds. Contrary to expectations, heat stress during development had a higher negative impact on female fertility than on male fertility. We did not find clear evidence for enhanced fertility in males or females evolving under warming conditions. Population history had a clear impact on fertility response under thermal stress, particularly in males with those from lower latitudes presenting better performance than their higher latitude counterparts. We show that the impact of thermal stress on fertility varies between traits, sexes and genetic backgrounds. Incorporating these several levels of variation is crucial for a deeper understanding of how fertility evolves under climate change. This dataset includes the raw data for the article accepted for publication in Evolution (EVO-23-0043): "Sex and population differences underlie variation in reproductive success in a warming environment.” Data correspond to a phenotypic assay performed on experimental populations after 23 generations of evolution in different thermal selection regimes. Assay included populations from 2 thermal selection regimes (warming vs controls, each three fold replicated). Adult reproductive performance (Fecundity, productivity and juvenile viability) under warming conditions (peak temperature of 29.4ºC) was assessed for couples (1 male + 1 female) of the different experimental populations in which either the male, the female or both were exposed to those same warming conditions during the developmental stage. Raw data are the individual data from each assayed couple from a given experimental population. Please see the accompanying README.md file for details on data description and structure. 

This research studied the impacts of the environmental Kuznets curve and the determinants of economic growth for Visegrad countries from 1990 to 2018. This paper reflects on the effects of renewable and non-renewable energy, urban population, foreign direct investment, economic growth, and carbon dioxide emissions. According to our results, the panel of unit root tests showed that the variables under study are integrated into the first differences. Considering the empirical results for the environmental Kuznets curve, we observe that economic growth is positively correlated with pollution emissions; nevertheless, the squared income per capita is negatively impacted by carbon dioxide emissions. Energy consumption increases carbon emissions, and foreign direct investment confirms the pollution halo hypothesis. Therefore, the econometric results showed that renewable energy consumption promotes regional growth. Consequently, urban population and foreign direct investment positively correlate with economic growth.

Abstract. Dynamic global vegetation models are used to predict the response of vegetation to climate change. They are essential for planning ecosystem management, understanding carbon cycle–climate feedbacks, and evaluating the potential impacts of climate change on global ecosystems. JULES (the Joint UK Land Environment Simulator) represents terrestrial processes in the UK Hadley Centre family of models and in the first generation UK Earth System Model. Previously, JULES represented five plant functional types (PFTs): broadleaf trees, needle-leaf trees, C3 and C4 grasses, and shrubs. This study addresses three developments in JULES. First, trees and shrubs were split into deciduous and evergreen PFTs to better represent the range of leaf life spans and metabolic capacities that exists in nature. Second, we distinguished between temperate and tropical broadleaf evergreen trees. These first two changes result in a new set of nine PFTs: tropical and temperate broadleaf evergreen trees, broadleaf deciduous trees, needle-leaf evergreen and deciduous trees, C3 and C4 grasses, and evergreen and deciduous shrubs. Third, using data from the TRY database, we updated the relationship between leaf nitrogen and the maximum rate of carboxylation of Rubisco (Vcmax), and updated the leaf turnover and growth rates to include a trade-off between leaf life span and leaf mass per unit area.Overall, the simulation of gross and net primary productivity (GPP and NPP, respectively) is improved with the nine PFTs when compared to FLUXNET sites, a global GPP data set based on FLUXNET, and MODIS NPP. Compared to the standard five PFTs, the new nine PFTs simulate a higher GPP and NPP, with the exception of C3 grasses in cold environments and C4 grasses that were previously over-productive. On a biome scale, GPP is improved for all eight biomes evaluated and NPP is improved for most biomes – the exceptions being the tropical forests, savannahs, and extratropical mixed forests where simulated NPP is too high. With the new PFTs, the global present-day GPP and NPP are 128 and 62 Pg C year−1, respectively. We conclude that the inclusion of trait-based data and the evergreen/deciduous distinction has substantially improved productivity fluxes in JULES, in particular the representation of GPP. These developments increase the realism of JULES, enabling higher confidence in simulations of vegetation dynamics and carbon storage.

Abstract This study demonstrates the coupling of Ionic liquids (ILs) with a membrane contactor for post-combustion CO2 capture at moderate pressures and temperatures. ILs 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium methyl sulfate([emim][MeSO4]), 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium dicyanamide([emim][DCA]), 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium ethyl sulfate([emim][EtSO4]) and 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate ([emim][Ac]) were selected due to their high thermal stability, moderate viscosity and surface tension, as well as high CO2 solubility. No wetting conditions were confirmed for the polypropylene membrane by measuring contact angle, liquid entry pressure (LEP) and SEM of fiber surface before and after the operation. ILs were recirculated in the setup until reaching pseudo-steady-state. All four ILs were able to capture a substantial amount of CO2 during the specified operation time. Initially, very high values of CO2 mass transfer flux and experimental overall mass transfer coefficient were obtained which further decreased with operation time and reached a nearly constant value at pseudo-steady-state. Effect of CO2 loading of the ILs and temperature on enhancement factor and first order rate constant were evaluated. The absorption behavior and kinetics were strongly influenced by the CO2 concentration in the ILs, which divides the absorption process in two steps; an initial faster absorption at the gas-liquid interface and later slower absorption in the bulk of the IL. Finally, a pseudo-steady-state modelling approach was implemented and validated.

The integration of residential photovoltaic (PV) systems for self-consumption is expected to unlock a variety of economic, technical and social benefits, such as the creation of local work and the reduction of the price of electricity, CO2 emissions and electrical power losses in the transmission network. In spite of all these advantages, regulatory barriers prevented the development of renewable self-consumption in Spain prior to October 2018, when a new regulation introduced the right to self-consume electrical energy without charges. This work aims to estimate the effect of residential self-consumption on the Iberian electricity market. To achieve this goal, a ceteris paribus approach was adopted, the accumulated scattered PV self-production was turned into a reduction of the aggregate demand in the market and the new clearing point was established. Based on 2017 market data, the results showed that a 1% curtailment of the annual demand due to PV self-consumption could reduce the cost of the market-traded energy by almost 2%. European Commission, Horizonte 2020 SI-1778/12/ 2018