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Rural telecommunications projects in developing regions have a long history of unsuccessful experiences due to the complexity of such projects: Practically none of the dimensions of integral sustainability are straight forward in such projects. When sustainability becomes a priority, it is difficult for traditional alliances of development to account for all critical success factors. In the Peruvian Amazon Rainforest, some institutions have developed rural telecommunications projects along the Napo River during the last 10 years. The experience has shown at each stage what aspects of sustainability were not taken into account because the partners involved did not have all the needed capacities, and this has made the alliances of partners evolve in a sustainability-driven manner. This paper analyzes these cases and assesses how sustainability has evolved in relation to the structure of such alliances.

Summary Over 90% of the territory of Ukraine has complex soil conditions. Chernivtsi region located at the piedmont of the Ukrainian Carpathian Mountains is the smallest among 25 regions of Ukraine (its area is 1.3% of the whole territory of the country). Nevertheless, the landslides are significant there. There are approximately 1600 landslide sites. That is more than 9% of the territory (the highest factor in Ukraine). Landslides occupy more than 1500 ha of Chernivtsi city that is 10% of the city area. Local seismological station registers nearly 110-130 seismic events per year. 70-80% of the above events occur within 100 km radius and are of 2-4 earthquake intensity. Chernivtsi region belongs to the area of intensive heavy rains. Some rains last up to 7 hours and amount of precipitations can reach a month and a half norm. These anomalous parameters were connected with the complex influence of natural and technogenic factors: crossing the slopes of dense rivernet; seismological activity connected with 6 local earthquakes zones; active slopes deforestation during last decades of XX century (from 60% up to 25% and lesser); increasing the influence of global climate changes factors (heating, increasing of precipitations, flooding etc.). Principle new and additional factor of landslide activation within Chernivtsi region is increasing of seismic movements after abnormal rainfalls and flooding. In 1985 the “Scheme of anti-landslide structures arrangement on the territory of the city of Chernivtsi” was developed. In the “Scheme …” 31 landslide-prone and slipping slopes of Chernivtsi city are described, the possible sliding surfaces and engineering protection measures are specified, the stability coefficients for natural and “protected” slopes are determined. The engineering protection methods envisaged by the “Scheme …” can be divided into five groups as follows: (1) – shoreline stabilization; (2) - retaining structures; (3) - drainages; (4) -regulation of rivers and streams; (5) – surface-waters diversion. The “Scheme …” developers took the slope stability coefficient equal to one. Based on those data the landslide pressure was determined and the retaining structures were selected. The “Scheme …” analysis concerning the retaining structures types shows that the vertical planning and counter berms were proposed to be applied at all of 19 landslide areas. Moreover, the engineering protection was given a comprehensive approach and was carried out throughout the entire site. It is necessary to draw attention to some mistakes of the “Scheme …” developers, which were practically checked. In the “Scheme …” the landslides were divided into several ones, for example, at the Odeska Street the landslide was divided into two ones. In real life, namely in 1995, there was one continuous landslide. Accordingly, in practice the landslide masses depth was higher. The same occurred with the Dnister-Chernivtsi waterway. Because of the previous mistake of the “Scheme …” developers, the report authors corrected the maximum landslides thicknesses in the table towards the increase. That, accordingly, has led to the increase of landslide pressure value and anti-sliding engineering protection structures prices. The “Scheme …” envisages the counter berms and vertical planning arrangement for almost all areas, which may be connected with significant landslide masses depths and high values of landslide pressure.

Mountain areas provide disproportionally high runoff in many parts of the world, but their importance for water resources and food production has not been clarified from the viewpoint of the lowland areas downstream. Here we quantify the extent to which lowland inhabitants potentially depend on runoff contributions from mountain areas (39% of the global land mass). We show that ~1.5 billion people (24% of the world’s lowland population) are projected to depend critically on runoff contributions from mountains by the mid-twenty-first century under a ‘middle of the road’ scenario, compared with ~0.2 billion (7%) in the 1960s. This striking rise is mainly due to increased local water consumption in the lowlands, whereas changes in mountain and lowland runoff play only a minor role. We further show that one-third of the global lowland area equipped for irrigation is currently located in regions that both depend heavily on runoff contributions from mountains and make unsustainable use of local blue water resources, a figure that is likely to rise to well over 50% in the coming decades. Our findings imply that mountain areas should receive particular attention in water resources management and underscore the protection they deserve in efforts towards sustainable development. Runoff from mountain water sources is critical to some lowland populations. In this Article, these populations are projected to increase from 0.2 billion people in the 1960s to 1.5 billion by mid-century.

Li et al . contest the idea that vegetation greening has contributed to boreal warming and argue that the sensitivity of temperature to leaf area index (LAI) is instead likely driven by the climate impact on vegetation. We provide additional evidence that the LAI-climate interplay is indeed largely driven by the vegetation impact on temperature and not vice versa, thus corroborating our original conclusions.

AbstractThree consecutive dry summers in western Europe (2018–2019–2020) had widespread negative impacts on society and ecosystems, and started societal debate on (changing) drought vulnerability and adaptation measures. We investigate the occurrence of multi-year droughts in the Rhine basin, with a focus on event probability in the present and in future warmer climates. Additionally, we investigate the temporally compounding physical drivers of multi-year drought events. A combination of multiple reanalysis datasets and multi-model large ensemble climate model simulations was used to provide a robust analysis of the statistics and physical processes of these rare events. We identify two types of multi-year drought events (consecutive meteorological summer droughts and long-duration hydrological droughts), and show that these occur on average about twice in a 30 year period in the present climate, though natural variability is large (zero to five events can occur in a single 30 year period). Projected decreases in summer precipitation and increases in atmospheric evaporative demand, lead to a doubling of event probability at 1 $$^\circ$$ ∘ C additional global warming relative to present-day and an increase in the average length of events. Consecutive meteorological summer droughts are forced by two, seemingly independent, summers of lower than normal precipitation and higher than normal evaporative demand. The soil moisture response to this temporally compound meteorological forcing has a clear multi-year imprint, resulting in a relatively larger reduction of soil moisture content in the second year of drought, and potentially more severe drought impacts. Long-duration hydrological droughts start with a severe summer drought followed by lingering meteorologically dry conditions. This limits and slows down the hydrological recovery of soil moisture content, leading to long-lasting drought conditions. This initial exploration provides avenues for further investigation of multi-year drought hazard and vulnerability in the region, which is advised given the projected trends and vulnerability of society and ecosystems.

In this study, the potential of using very high resolution Pléiades imagery to estimate a number of common forest attributes for 10-m plots in boreal forest was examined, when a high-resolution terrain model was available. The explanatory variables were derived from three processing alternatives. Height metrics were extracted from image matching of the images acquired from different incidence angles. Spectral derivatives were derived by performing principal component analysis of the spectral bands and lastly, second order textural metrics were extracted from a gray-level co-occurrence matrix, computed with an 11 × 11 pixels moving window. The analysis took place at two Swedish test sites, Krycklan and Remningstorp, containing boreal and hemi-boreal forest. The lowest RMSE was estimated with 1.4 m (7.7%) for Lorey’s mean height, 1.7 m (10%) for airborne laser scanning height percentile 90, 5.1 m2·ha−1 (22%) for basal area, 66 m3·ha−1 (27%) for stem volume, and 26 tons·ha−1 (26%) for above-ground biomass, respectively. It was found that the image-matched height metrics were most important in all models, and that the spectral and textural metrics contained similar information. Nevertheless, the best estimations were obtained when all three explanatory sources were used. To conclude, image-matched height metrics should be prioritised over spectral metrics when estimation of forest attributes is concerned.

AbstractDue to climate change the frequency and character of precipitation are changing as the hydrological cycle intensifies. With regards to snowfall, global warming has two opposing influences; increasing humidity enables intense snowfall, whereas higher temperatures decrease the likelihood of snowfall. Here we show an intensification of extreme snowfall across large areas of the Northern Hemisphere under future warming. This is robust across an ensemble of global climate models when they are bias-corrected with observational data. While mean daily snowfall decreases, both the 99th and the 99.9th percentiles of daily snowfall increase in many regions in the next decades, especially for Northern America and Asia. Additionally, the average intensity of snowfall events exceeding these percentiles as experienced historically increases in many regions. This is likely to pose a challenge to municipalities in mid to high latitudes. Overall, extreme snowfall events are likely to become an increasingly important impact of climate change in the next decades, even if they will become rarer, but not necessarily less intense, in the second half of the century.