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Cholera epidemics have a recorded history in eastern Congo dating to 1971. A study was conducted to find out the linkage between climate variability/change and cholera outbreak and to assess the related economic cost in the management of cholera in Congo.This study integrates historical data (20 years) on temperature and rainfall with the burden of disease from cholera in South-Kivu province, eastern Congo.Analyses of precipitation and temperatures characteristics in South-Kivu provinces showed that cholera epidemics are closely associated with climatic factors variability. Peaks in Cholera new cases were in synchrony with peaks in rainfalls. Cholera infection cases declined significantly (P<0.05) with the rise in the average temperature. The monthly number of new Cholera cases oscillated between 5 and 450. For every rise of the average temperature by 0.35 °C to 0.75 °C degree Celsius, and for every change in the rainfall variability by 10-19%, it is likely cholera infection risks will increase by 17 to 25%. The medical cost of treatment of Cholera case infection was found to be of US$50 to 250 per capita. The total costs of Cholera attributable to climate change were found to fall in the range of 4 to 8% of the per capita in annual income in Bukavu town.It is likely that high rainfall favor multiplication of the bacteria and contamination of water sources by the bacteria (Vibrio cholerae). The consumption of polluted water, promiscuity, population density and lack of hygiene are determinants favoring spread and infection of the bacteria among human beings living in over-crowded environments.

This presentation gives an overview of the Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management Collaborative Research Support Program (SANREM CRSP). The SANREM CRSP utilizes a systems approach to promote many goals including the improvement of agricultural productivity, the empowerment of smallholders, and the promotion of sustainable development. This presentation shows the different components, partners, and structure of the SANREM CRSP, the extent of capacity building efforts, and the long-term research activities for Phase IV. ME (Management Entity)

Research in the field of precision agriculture is becoming increasingly important due to the growing world population whilst area for cultivation remains constant or declines. In this context, methods of monitoring in?season plant development with high resolution and accuracy are necessary. Studies show that terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) can be applied to capture small objects like crops. In this contribution, the results of multi-temporal field campaigns with the terrestrial laser scanner Riegl LMS-Z420i are shown. Four surveys were carried out in the growing period 2012 on a field experiment where various barley varieties were cultivated in small-scale plots. In order to measure the plant height above ground, the TLS-derived point clouds are interpolated to generate Crop Surface Models with a very high resolution of 1 cm. For all campaigns, a common reference surface, representing the Digital Elevation Model was used to monitor plant height in the investigated period. Manual plant height measurements were carried out to verify the results. The very high coefficients of determination (R² = 0.89) between both measurement methods show the applicability of the approach presented. Furthermore, destructive biomass sampling was performed to investigate the relation to plant height. Biomass is an important parameter for evaluating the actual crop status, but non-destructive methods of directly measuring crop biomass do not exist. Hence, other parameters like reflectance are considered. The focus of this study is on non-destructive measurements of plant height. The high coefficients of determination between plant height and fresh as well as dry biomass (R² = 0.80, R² = 0.77) support the usability of plant height as a predictor. The study presented here demonstrates the applicability of TLS in monitoring plant height development with a very high spatial resolution. Proceedings of the Workshop on UAV-based Remote Sensing Methods for Monitoring Vegetation Kölner geographische Arbeiten, 94 ISSN:0454-1294

Metadata only record Adapting to Change in the Andean Highlands: Practices and Strategies to Address Climate and Market Risks in Vulnerable Agro-ecosystems (SANREM CRSP LTRA 4) focus is to identify the consequences of climate change for one of the poorest and most vulnerable regions in the Western Hemisphere and develop adaptive capacities. The project uses a cross disciplinary and participatory approach, linking biophysical and social sciences research with local knowledge systems through participatory institutions. The presentations concentrate on some of the key findings in the context of climate change. In the biophysical sciences Anji Seth will report on Altiplano climate change projections for this century; Peter Motavalli on the mitigation and adaptation aspects of organic soil amendment practices in rural communities; and Karen Garrett on anticipating and responding to plant disease and pests risks. Finally, Valdivia and Gilles will discuss findings on strategies for enhancing the adaptive capacity of small Andean producers. LTRA-4 (Practices and Strategies for Vulnerable Agro-Ecosystems)

This paper provides an overview of the economics of biofuels. It starts by describing the remarkable growth of the biofuel industry over the last decade, with emphasis on developments in the United States, Brazil and the European Union, and it identifies the driving role played by some critical policies. After a brief discussion of the motivations that are commonly argued in favor of biofuels and biofuel policies, the paper presents an assessment of the impacts of biofuels from the economics perspective. In particular, the paper explains the basic analytics of biofuel mandates, reviews several existing studies that have estimated the economic impacts of biofuels, presents some insights from a specific model, and outlines an appraisal of biofuel policies and the environmental impacts of biofuels. The paper concludes with an examination of several open issues and the future prospects of biofuels. Bio-based and Applied Economics, Vol 1 No 3 (2012): Towards a Sustainable Bio-economy: economic issues and policy challenges

There is general consensus in the scientific literature that human-induced climate change has taken place and will continue to do so over the next century. The Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes with “very high confidence” that anthropogenic activities such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation have affected the global climate. The AR4 also indicates that global average temperatures are expected to increase by another 1.1°C to 5.4°C by 2100, depending on the increase in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases that takes place during this time. Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, temperature increases, altered precipitation patterns and other factors influenced by climate have already begun to impact U.S. agriculture. Climate change will continue to have significant effects on U.S. agriculture, water resources, land resources, and biodiversity in the future as temperature extremes begin exceeding thresholds that harm crop growth more frequently and precipitation and runoff patterns continue to change. In this study, we provide an assessment of the potential long-term implications of climate change on landowner decisions regarding land use, crop mix, and production practices in the U.S., combining a crop process model (Environmental Policy Integrated Climate model) and an economic model of the U.S. forestry and agricultural sector (Forest and Agricultural Sector Optimization Model). Agricultural producers have always faced numerous production and price risks, but forecasts of more rapid changes in climatic conditions in the future have raised concerns that these risks will increase in the future relative to historical conditions.

Water and energy are two inextricably linked resources. Each has the potential to limit the development of the other. There is a substantial body of research dedicated to understanding how the availability of water can limit energy production, but the alternate relationship - that of energy limiting water production - has received much less scrutiny. The demand for both resources is predicted to increase in tandem with population growth, potentially creating or adding to conflict in regions of water or energy scarcity. To greater understand the "water/energy nexus," - a commonly used term to describe their interdependence - each phase of water supply and consumption can be broken into discrete segments that have an associated energy requirement, called an energy factor. An energy factor is the amount of energy used to develop, convey and treat a given volume of water. This study presents a methodology for calculating the energy factors of each phase of the water supply cycle that is "outside the retail meter." A case study of a large water system in an arid region of the United States is used as an example system for applying these methods. Using the case study system as a framework, an energy demand model is developed that estimates baseline energy usage for heterogeneous water systems, and then models changes in energy requirement under three alternate water supply and demand scenarios. The results of the model scenarios reveal that water demand reductions, as can be brought about by targeted water efficiency programs, can have extended energy-saving impacts - affecting all other phases of the water supply cycle. A demand reduction of 25% for the case study water system resulted in a cumulative annual energy savings of 8.9 million kilowatt hours (kWh) - a decrease of 28% from its current level of energy consumption. Modeling the conversion of agricultural or currently untreated water to municipal uses within the case study resulted in an increase in energy requirement by 6.3 million kWh - a 20% increase. Reductions in the availability of imported surface water supply, such as those brought about by prolonged drought, climate change or reservoir sedimentation, can increase energy demand as well. An additional 5.7 million kWh are needed to ameliorate the effects of a 35% reduction in surface water supply for the case study water system - an 18% increase from its current energy requirement. The process and findings of this study reveal a lack of emphasis among water agencies concerning energy consumption, and indicate that changes in supply and use patterns have dramatic effects on energy usage.

Advanced biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol are of great interest for their potential to supply a significant portion of U.S. fuel needs plus advantages over corn grain-based ethanol. The sustainability of agriculture-based advanced biofuels depends on how farmers would respond in providing biomass feedstock, yet economic behavior by farmers has been under recognized by the science community. Focusing on markets and policy incentives, this research shows that farmers are unlikely to convert current grain cropland to grow a dedicated cellulosic biomass crop such as switchgrass. However, the financial incentives to harvest cellulosic biomass provided by the 2008 farm bill may stimulate corn production due to demand for corn grain for feed and ethanol and corn residues for advanced biofuels. The prospect of continuous, possibly expanding corn production for advanced biofuels raises the same environmental issues as for corn grain-based ethanol. To assure the environmental sustainability of advanced biofuels production, environmental policies are needed to complement existing bioenergy initiatives.

While policies for responding climate change impacts need the support and cooperation from the public who may be affected by the policies, understanding the general public’s opinion is important and can help form feasible action plans. In this paper we take advantage of a temperature event that took place during primary data collection to explore how this affects public opinion about helping farmers adapt to climate change. We find that the public is surprisingly supportive of government involvement in farmer adaptation, and that the warm spell has a brief positive effect on support. For several years until 2011, there was a trend of declining belief in the existence and seriousness of climate change. In 2012, belief in climate change bounced back and meanwhile for several months in that year the monthly average temperatures were record highs. While it is reasonable to hypothesize that contemporaneous weather may influence the public’s attitudes about addressing climate change issues, it is unclear how temperature affects public attitudes. There are gaps in existing research about the determinants of public attitudes towards climate change. How public attitudes towards adaptation policy, especially with respect to a government’s intervention aimed at improving prospects for a particular industry sector, is influenced under unusual weather events, are rarely discussed. Until very recently, researchers have not explored how public opinion is influenced by climate change phenomenon per se, especially periods abnormally warm temperature. Prior articles discuss the effect of temperature with certain limitations, including perception of temperature rather than actual temperature, general temperature rather than deviations from normal status, and either short run or relatively long run average temperature to represent the temperature when the survey was taken rather than the temperature of the day when the respondent answered the survey. Another missing issue among climate change surveys is the public’s opinion on adaptation policies, although many have discussed ideas surrounding that of mitigation policies. As Palutikof, Agnew and Hoar indicated in their work, “…none of these studies addressed people’s responses and adaptations.” How the general public thinks about adaptation strategies and policies is seldom considered. Similar to studies about public opinion, we found little research regarding how willingness to pay (WTP) for adaptation policies or strategies is influenced by specific climate change phenomenon. None of the research considered the WTP for an adaptation policy in reference to a particular industry or addressed the effect of abnormal warm temperature. Since agriculture is likely to be one of the most affected industries under climate change, with potentially serious global food availability issues if climate change outpaces the rate of adaptation, understanding public support for government involvement in adaptation and the public’s WTP to fund such efforts can inform policy dialogue about these critical questions. Therefore, we focus on adaptation in agriculture to explore public opinion toward government involvement in helping the sector adapt as well as the WTP for an adaptation policy. We use the data based on a random sample general population poll in Michigan, secondary sources, and an unseasonal fruit-crop damaging warm spell that occurred during the survey period to assess the effects of this short-term phenomenon on public attitudes and the WTP. Temperatures during the two-week warm spell went as high as 40° F above normal Considered as a natural experiment, this unexpected warm spell provided variation of daily temperature deviation and variation of the exposure of this abnormal temperature when respondents were surveyed. Thus, in addition to the daily temperature deviation, as well as its accumulation for a short period (3 days, a week, etc.), several time period index variables are used to explore how the level of the respondents’ exposure to the warm spell would affect the attitudes and WTP. The basic set up is before-within-after warm spell, and we test several variations of time modeling approaches to explore the duration of the effect. Demographic variables and political ideology are used to control selection bias. While it is unable to control in our data set, we consider the effect due to media coverage of the warm spell as an indirect effect and part of the priming mechanism. We constructed four questions to understand how attitudes about government adaptation assistance vary across levels of government (state or national) and crop types (corn-soybeans or fruits-vegetables) since climate change is an issue which has national and worldwide impacts but agricultural production techniques are more localized. In addition to the questions about government assistance, the instrument also included single-bounded dichotomous choice questions to evaluate the WTP for government-sponsored adaptation programs. Given the contentious nature of climate change, it was surprising to find that around two thirds of the respondents showed a tendency to support the idea of the governments’ role helping farmers of either corn/soybeans or fruit/vegetables adjust their cropping systems. This could be due to the warm spell or the fact that we focus on agriculture, where the public may more easily connect changes in weather with the need to adapt than might be the case with other sectors. Results from the basic models confirm several of our hypotheses. Abnormally warm temperature deviation does affect the public attitude toward government’s role on adaptation significantly. So does the variables of sub-periods or exposure of warm spell. However, the WTP is only affected significantly by these time period index variables while the temperature deviation is not significant. In other words, there appears to be a kind of tipping point beyond which further increases in deviation do not make much difference. From the preliminary results, we found that, the public attitudes about whether government should be involved in the adaptation are quite sensitive to short run temperature anomalies. The warm spell effect boosted the support, but it did not last long and quickly dropped back to the pre-event level or lower level merely on the second week of the warm spell. In addition, temperature anomalies may lead to more polarized public attitudes. We also found that the support is higher while the question specified the agriculture industry than in the general question without mentioning specific industry. The importance of local agriculture production had certain but more muted influence than our a priori expectations. Our research focuses on the agriculture industry, adaptation policies, as well as the WTP. The three key dimensions distinguish this paper from prior work. Our research further identifies the effect of the unusual warm spell event by various means. This paper shows how the warm spell event influenced the public attitudes toward climate change adaptation policy regarding two government levels and two crop types and the WTP for government-sponsored adaptation programs. The effects of daily or cumulated temperature deviation as well as the level of exposure to the warm spell will be discussed.