• Energy Research
• 2021-2025close
• 13. Climate action close
• 11. Sustainability close
• 12. Responsible consumption close
• ZENODO close

{"references": ["UNSD Demographic Statistics, available at http://data.un.org", "The World Bank GDP data, available at https://data.worldbank.org/", "UNFCCC: Greenhouse Gas Inventory Data, available at https://unfccc.int/process/transparency-and-reporting/greenhouse-gas-data/what-is-greenhouse-gas-data"]} Dataset containing all greenhouse gas emissions data submitted by countries under climate change convention (including CRF data) as published by the UNFCCC secretariat at 2021-12-03. The dataset is also available via datalad. To obtain the dataset with datalad, see the instructions at https://github.com/mikapfl/unfccc_di_data .

This is the dataset for our research on assessing CO2 emissions from Chinese inland waters, including streams, rivers, lakes and reservoirs. The dataset includes three parts, including Part 1: Lakes and Reservoirs_1980s, Part 2: CO2 Dataset_2010s, and Part 3: Water chemistry records. Detailed information on these data can be found from the 'README' text file.

Although GPS coordinates for current populations are not included due to the potential threat of poaching, the climate variables for each species are provided. The records for extant gecko and skinks mainly came from the New Zealand's Department of Conervation Herpetofauna Database. After updating the taxonomy and cleaning the data to reflect the taxonomy as at 2019 of 43 geckos speceis recognised across seven genera and 61 species in genus, we then thinned the occurrence records at a 1 km resolution for all species then predicted distributions for those with > 15 records using species distribution models. The climate variables for each species were selected among annual mean temperature (bio1), maximum temperature of the warmest month (bio5), minimum temperature of the coldest month (bio6), mean temperature of driest quarter (bio9), mean temperature of wettest quarter (bio10), and precipitation of the driest quarter (bio17). To reduce multicollinearity in species distribution models for each species, we only retained climate variables with a variable inflation factor < 10. The climate variables were from the CHELSA database (https://chelsa-climate.org/), which can be freely downloaded for current and future scenarios. We also provide MCC tree files for the geckos and skinks. The phylogenetic trees have been constructed for NZ geckos by (Nielsen et al., 2011) and for NZ skinks by (Chapple et al., 2009). For geckos we used a subset of the sequences used by Nielsen et al. (2011) for four genes, two nuclear (RAG 1, PDC) and two mitochondrial (16S, ND2 along with flanking tRNA sequences). For skinks, we used sequences from Chapple et al. (2009) for one nuclear (RAG 1) and five mitochondrial (ND2, ND4, Cyt b, 12S and 16S) genes, and additional ND2 sequences for taxa not included in the original phylogeny (Chapple et al., 2011, p. 201). In total we used sequences for all recognised extant taxa (Hitchmough et al., 2016) as at 2019 except for three species of skink (O. aff. inconspicuum “Okuru”, O. robinsoni, and O. aff. inconspicuum “North Otago”) and two species of gecko (M. “Cupola” and W. “Kaikouras”) for which genetic data were not available. Aim: The primary drivers of species and population extirpations have been habitat loss, overexploitation, and invasive species, but human-mediated climate change is expected to be a major driver in future. To minimise biodiversity loss, conservation managers should identify species vulnerable to climate change and prioritise their protection. Here, we estimate climatic suitability for two speciose taxonomic groups, then use phylogenetic analyses to assess vulnerability to climate change. Location: Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) Taxa: NZ lizards: diplodactylid geckos and eugongylinae skinks Methods: We built correlative species distribution models (SDMs) for NZ geckos and skinks to estimate climatic suitability under current climate and 2070 future-climate scenarios. We then used Bayesian phylogenetic mixed models (BPMMs) to assess vulnerability for both groups with predictor variables for life history traits (body size and activity phase) and current distribution (elevation and latitude). We explored two scenarios: an unlimited dispersal scenario, where projections track climate, and a no-dispersal scenario, where projections are restricted to areas currently identified as suitable. Results: SDMs projected vulnerability to climate change for most modelled lizards. For species’ ranges projected to decline in climatically suitable areas, average decreases were between 42–45% for geckos and 33–91% for skinks, although area did increase or remain stable for a minority of species. For the no-dispersal scenario, the average decrease for geckos was 37–52% and for skinks was 33–52%. Our BPMMs showed phylogenetic signal in climate change vulnerability for both groups, with elevation increasing vulnerability for geckos, and body size reducing vulnerability for skinks. Main conclusions: NZ lizards showed variable vulnerability to climate change, with most species’ ranges predicted to decrease. For species whose suitable climatic space is projected to disappear from within their current range, managed relocation could be considered to establish populations in regions that will be suitable under future climates.

The atmosphere concentration of CO2 is steadily increasing and causing climate change. To achieve the Paris 1.5 or 2 oC target, negative emissions technologies must be deployed in addition to reducing carbon emissions. The ocean is a large carbon sink but the potential of marine primary producers to contribute to carbon neutrality remains unclear. Here we review the alterations to carbon capture and sequestration of marine primary producers (including traditional ‘blue carbon’ plants, microalgae, and macroalgae) in the Anthropocene, and, for the first time, assess and compare the potential of various marine primary producers to carbon neutrality and climate change mitigation via biogeoengineering approaches. The contributions of marine primary producers to carbon sequestration have been decreasing in the Anthropocene due to the decrease in biomass driven by direct anthropogenic activities and climate change. The potential of blue carbon plants (mangroves, saltmarshes, and seagrasses) is limited by the available areas for their revegetation. Microalgae appear to have a large potential due to their ubiquity but how to enhance their carbon sequestration efficiency is very complex and uncertain. On the other hand, macroalgae can play an essential role in mitigating climate change through extensive offshore cultivation due to higher carbon sequestration capacity and substantial available areas. This approach seems both technically and economically feasible due to the development of offshore aquaculture and a well-established market for macroalgal products. Synthesis and applications: This paper provides new insights and suggests promising directions for utilizing marine primary producers to achieve the Paris temperature target. We propose that macroalgae cultivation can play an essential role in attaining carbon neutrality and climate change mitigation, although its ecological impacts need to be assessed further. To calculate the parameters presented in Table 1, the relevant keywords "mangroves, salt marshes, macroalgae, microalgae, global area, net primary productivity, CO2 sequestration" were searched through the ISI Web of Science and Google Scholar in July 2021. Recent data published after 2010 were collected and used since area and productivity of plants change with decade. For data with limited availability, such as net primary productivity (NPP) of seagrasses and global area and NPP of wild macroalgae, data collection was extended back to 1980. Total NPP and CO2 sequestration for mangroves, salt marshes, seagrasses and wild macroalgae were obtained by the multiplication of area and NPP/CO2 sequestration density and subjected to error propagation analysis. Data were expressed as means ± standard error.

This dataset contains the underlying data for the following publication: Doukas, H., Spiliotis, E., Jafari, M. A., Giarola, S. & Nikas, A. (2021). Low-cost emissions cuts in container shipping: Thinking inside the box. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 94, 102815, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trd.2021.102815.

Input files for the ForClim model (version 4.0.1) used in the associated paper. They can be used to to reproduce results of the simulation study. The ForClim model, including the source code, executable and documentation, is freely available under an Open Access license from the website of the original developers at https://ites-fe.ethz.ch/openaccess/. The original climatic dataset used to generate the ForClim input climate files at each site in South Tyrol is freely available at https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.924502 while the CHELSA climate data for future scenarios are available at https://www.chelsa-climate.org. If interested in using this dataset for a research study or a project, please contact Marco Mina ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Hillebrand L, Marzini S, Crespi A, Hiltner U & Mina M (2023) Contrasting impacts of climate change on protection forests of the Italian Alps. Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, 6, 2023 https://doi.org/10.3389/ffgc.2023.1240235 ABSTRACT. Protection forests play a key role in protecting settlements, people, and infrastructures from gravitational hazards such as rockfalls and avalanches in mountain areas. Rapid climate change is challenging the role of protection forests by altering their dynamics, structure, and composition. Information on local- and regional-scale impacts of climate change on protection forests is critical for planning adaptations in forest management. We used a model of forest dynamics (ForClim) to assess the succession of mountain forests in the Eastern Alps and their protective effects under future climate change scenarios. We investigated eleven representative forest sites along an elevational gradient across multiple locations within an administrative region, covering wide differences in tree species structure, composition, altitude, and exposition. We evaluated protective performance against rockfall and avalanches using numerical indices (i.e., linker functions) quantifying the degree of protection from metrics of simulated forest structure and composition. Our findings reveal that climate warming has a contrasting impact on protective effects in mountain forests of the Eastern Alps. Climate change is likely to not affect negatively all protection forest stands but its impact depends on site and stand conditions. Impacts were highly contingent to the magnitude of climate warming, with increasing criticality under the most severe climate projections. Forests in lower-montane elevations and those located in dry continental valleys showed drastic changes in forest structure and composition due to drought-induced mortality while subalpine forests mostly profited from rising temperatures and a longer vegetation period. Overall, avalanche protection will likely be negatively affected by climate change, while the ability of forests to maintain rockfall protection depends on the severity of expected climate change and their vulnerability due to elevation and topography, with most subalpine forests less prone to loosing protective effects. Proactive measures in management should be taken in the near future to avoid losses of protective effects in the case of severe climate change in the Alps. Given the heterogeneous impact of climate warming, such adaptations can be aided by model-based projections and high local resolution studies to identify forest stand types that might require management priority for maintaining protective effects in the future.

Aim: We propose that forest trees create a vertical dimension for ecological niche variation that generates different regimes of climatic exposure, which in turn drives species elevation distributions. We test this hypothesis by statistically modelling the vertical and elevation distributions and microclimate exposure of rainforest ants. Location: Wet Tropics Bioregion, Australia Methods: We conducted 60 ground-to-canopy surveys to determine the vertical (tree) and elevation distributions, and microclimate exposure of ants (101 species) at 15 sites along four mountain ranges. We statistically modelled elevation range size as a function of ant species’ vertical niche breadth and exposure to temperature variance for 55 species found at two or more trees. Results: We found a positive association between vertical niche and elevation range of ant species: for every 3 m increase in vertical niche breadth our models predict a ~150% increase in mean elevation range size. Temperature variance increased with vertical height along the arboreal gradient and ant species exposure to temperature variance explained some of the variation in elevation range size. Main Conclusions: We demonstrate that arboreal ants have broader elevation ranges than ground-dwelling ants and are likely to have increased resilience to climatic variance. The capacity of species to expand their niche by climbing trees could influence their ability to persist over broader elevation ranges. We propose that wherever vertical layering exists - from oceans to forest ecosystems - vertical niche breadth is a potential mechanism driving macrogeographic distribution patterns and resilience to climate change. Data_collections.csv Main survey collections data in a site by species matrix showing all data for all sites surveyed. Tuna baited vials were placed every three metres from ground to canopy in trees at elevation sites at four subregion mountain ranges of the Australian Wet Tropics Bioregion. Note data file includes empty vials that lacked ants. Microclimate_AthertonTemp.csv This file contains Atherton Uplands temperature data from ibuttons deployed at one tree per elevation (200, 400, 600, 800, 1000) at every three metres in height in Dec-Jan 2017- 2018 set to record every half hour. See file Metadata for details of column names and data values.

This work models a last-mile network design problem for an e-retailer with a capacitated two-echelon distribution structure - typical in e-retail last-mile distribution, catering to a market with a stochastic and dynamic daily customer demand requesting delivery within time-windows. Considering the distribution evnironment, this work formulates last-mile network design problem for this e-retailer as a dynamic-stochastic two capacitated location routing problem with time-windows. In doing so, this work splits the last-mile network design problem into its constituent strategic, tactical, and operational decisions. Here, the strategic decisions undertake long-term planning to develop a distribution structure with appropriate distribution facilities and a suitable delivery fleet to service the expected customer demand in the planning horizon. The tactical decisions pertain to medium-term day-to-day planning of last-mile delivery operations to establish efficient goods flow in this distribution structure to service the daily stochastic customer demand. And finally, operational decisions involve immediate short-term planning to fine-tune this last-mile delivery to service the requests arriving dynamically through the day. Note, the last-mile network design problem formulated as a location routing problem constitutes three subproblems encompassing facility location problem, customer allocation problem, and vehicle routing problem, each of which are NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems. To this end, this work develops an adaptive large neighborhood search meta-heuristic algorithm that searches through the neighborhood by destroying and consequently repairing the solution thereby reconfiguring large portions of the solution with specific operators that are chosen adaptively in each iteration of the algorithm, hence the name adaptive large neighborhood search. Further, considering the stochastic and dynamic nature of the delivery environment, this work develops a Monte-Carlo framework simulating each day in the planning horizon, with each day divided into 1-hr timeslots, and with each time-slot accepting customer requests for service by the end of the day. In particular, the framework assumes the e-retailer will delay route commitments until the last-feasible time-slot to accumulate customer requests and consequently assign them to an uncommitted delivery route. Note, a delivery route is committed once the e-retailer starts loading packages assigned to this delivery route onto the delivery vehicle assigned for this delivery route. At the end of every time-slot then, this framework assumes the e-retailer integrates the new customer requests by inserting these customer nodes into such uncommitted delivery routes in a manner that results in the least increase in distribution cost keeping the customer-distribution facility allocation fixed. Thus, the framework iterates through the time-slots with the e-retailer processing route commitments, accumulating customer requests, and subsequently integrating them into the delivery operations for the day. E-commerce has the potential to make urban goods flow economically viable, environmentally efficient, and socially equitable. However, as e-retailers compete with increasingly consumer-focused services, urban freight witnesses a significant increase in associated distribution costs and negative externalities particularly affecting those living close to logistics clusters. Hence, to remain competitive, e-retailers deploy alternate last-mile distribution strategies. These alternate strategies, such as those that include use of electric delivery trucks for last-mile operations, a fleet of crowdsourced drivers for last-mile delivery, consolidation facilities coupled with light-duty delivery vehicles for a multi-echelon distribution, or collection points for customer pickup, can restore sustainable urban goods flow. Thus, in this study, the authors investigate the opportunities and challenges associated with such alternate last-mile distribution strategies for an e-retailer offering expedited service with rush delivery within strict timeframes. To this end, the authors formulate a last-mile network design (LMND) problem as a dynamic-stochastic two-echelon capacitated location routing problem with time-windows (DS-2E-C-LRP-TW) addressed with an adaptive large neighborhood search (ALNS) metaheuristic.