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This paper analyzes the role of natural geography for explaining local population change patterns. Using spatially detailed data for Spain from 1960 to 2011, the estimation results indicated that natural geography variables relate to about half of the population growth variation of rural areas and more than a third of the population growth variation of urban areas during this period. Local differences in climate, topography, and soil and rock formation as well as distance to aquifers and the coast contribute to variations in local population growth patterns. Although, over time, local population change became less related to differences in natural geography, natural geography is still significantly related to nearly a third of the variation in local population change in rural areas and the contribution of temperature range and precipitation seasonality has even increased. For urban areas, weather continues to matter too, with growth being higher in warmer places.

There are many possible strategies to promote naturalization in anthropogenic landscapes to mitigate global change effects. We combined large-scale databases available for continental Spain on: (1) distribution of breeding birds, (2) forest inventory stands, (3) land-use cover, (4) 18 global climate models recently developed at local scales, and (5) historical and genetically-based information on the distribution of natural versus planted pine forests, to analyze whether back to nature strategies may help to mitigate biodiversity loss due to climate change. We performed the analysis along environmental and ecological gradients of pine forests in Southern Europe. Models suggested that, naturalization strategies, in this case defined by the replacement of planted pine forests and eucalyptus forests by natural pine forests, could help to mitigate the expected loss of bird diversity due to climate change, but that mitigation efficiency will vary along environmental and ecological gradients. Maximum levels of diversity mitigation were predicted at intermediate levels of naturalization, with lower bird richness in areas where all pine forests were either planted or naturalized. Efficiency also varied spatially, given that both cold- and hot-spots of climate-driven bird diversity loss were identified. Transforming planted forest into natural forest is not a mitigation panacea, and additional regionally-adapted strategies may be identified to mitigate the expected biodiversity loss in forest ecosystems.

Knowing the extent and environmental drivers of forests is key to successfully restore degraded ecosystems, and to mitigate climate change and desertification impacts using tree planting. Water availability is the main limiting factor for the development of forests in drylands, yet the importance of groundwater resources and palaeoclimate as drivers of their current distribution has been neglected. Here we report that mid-Holocene climates and aquifer trends are key predictors of the distribution of dryland forests worldwide. We also updated the global extent of dryland forests to 1,283 million hectares and showed that failing to consider past climates and aquifers has resulted in ignoring or misplacing up to 130 million hectares of forests in drylands. Our findings highlight the importance of a wetter past and well-preserved aquifers to explain the current distribution of dryland forests, and can guide restoration actions by avoiding unsuitable areas for tree establishment in a drier world.

There are different technologies to optimize the use of solar energy in construction systems, with the aim of improving the building energy efficiency and also to reduce the effect of solar radiation on the exterior coatings, which in turn affects the urban areas warming. Among these technologies, chromogenic devices based on materials whose optical properties can be reversibly modified by some external stimulus have become relevant. These materials are especially interesting because they adapt to variations of solar radiation during the day and throughout the different seasons of the year. The facade coating may have different types of texture or color, which determine specific optical properties. One of these properties is the absorptance, which determines the amount of solar radiation absorbed by the material with respect to the incident radiation. The effect of the absorptance on the building energy demand will be conditioned by other parameters that also influence it, such as the climatic zone, orientation and thermal properties of the wall. In the work presented, the influence of the optical properties of three types of exterior facade coating on the building energy demand is analyzed. The materials chosen for this study are a conventional white Portland cement, a belitic cement synthesized in the laboratory by a process of low energy and low CO2 emissions and a brick representative of a brickwork wall, presenting the first two a more polished finish and clearer colors than the second. The final objective of this study is to determine the parameters that optimize the utilization of the optical properties of the studied coatings in the building energy efficiency.

In recent years, black locust has been receiving special attention as a potential energy crop. Conversely, straw, which constitutes a waste product, is mainly used for energy purposes. The aim of this study was to perform the Life Cycle Assessment of straw pellet and black locust logs production. The environmental effects were investigated according to the Ecoindicator’99 and Global Warming Potential 100a methods. The single score for the functional unit of black locust logs equals 5.47 Pt, and for cereal straw pellets is between 23.37 and 30.49 Pt. The minor value of the indicator for wood results from higher density and net calorific value, which in this study was equal to 17.72 MJ/kg for black locust and 14.9 MJ/kg for cereal straw pellets. Moreover, greenhouse gas emission was calculated and equals 94.7 kgCO2eq for black locust logs and between 365.9 and 588.3 kgCO2eq for cereal straw pellets. Obtained results allow to compare the processes of biomass production. Black locust logs have a smaller potential of affecting the environment than pellets due to lower energy intensity of the production process, especially lower electricity consumption. Furthermore, logistic improvement may significantly decrease the environmental impact of discussed products.Novelty or Significance: The presented study includes the comparison of two biomass products (cereal straw pellets and black locust logs) based on the Life Cycle Assessment of their production. The originality of the comparison is based both on the detailed inventory and the applied impact assessment method (Ecoindicator'99). The broadened scope of the study allowed for the assessment of both production of materials and pellets, which brings the novel contribution into the existing state of knowledge pertaining to the biomass life cycle described by points of Ecoindicator and greenhouse gas emission. © 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 38: 163–170, 2019

Railway networks have different levels of development, which affects the overall transport process and integrated sustainable development. This paper presents a methodology to assess and classify the railway network performance along the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) core network corridor. The Orient–East Med corridor (OEM) has been examined. Twenty-two infrastructural, economic and technological criteria for assessment of railway transport have been proposed. The countries were ranked used multi-criteria decision making (MCDM), by applying the Sequential Interactive Modelling for Urban Systems (SIMUS). A sensitivity analysis was performed regarding each objective, and then, their allowable range of variation was determined without modifying the whole ranking of countries. The criteria weights have been determined on the basis of the output of using the SIMUS method. It was found that the main criteria for ranking the countries are: length of the connecting railway lines of the corridor in the country, length of the railway lines in the country, number of intermodal terminals, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, passengers transport performance, freight transport performance for the railway network, corridor freight usage intensity. It was found that the railway transport in the area of the OEM corridor located in Central Europe is better developed than in the Southeast European area. A cluster analysis was performed to classify countries into groups to verify the results. The results show that the eight countries included in the OEM corridor can be classified into three groups. The methodology could be used to make decisions about transport planning and improvement of the connectivity and sustainability of the railway transport, considering their development.

Promoting energy efficiency is generally assumed to be an effective strategy to reduce energy use and tackle climate change. However, an extensive literature has shown that rebound effects reduce its effectiveness and can even be counterproductive. We show how a more complex policy strategy, with coordinated measures, could provide the desired results by offsetting energy and carbon rebound effects. Along with the energy-efficiency improvement, we separately implement five different policies: carbon taxes, energy production taxes, an emissions trading system, and changes in consumption patterns (away from energy and toward services consumption). These policies are assessed using an economy–energy–environment dynamic Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model developed for Catalonia, and compared in economic, energy, and environmental terms. The simulations show that all the strategies tested are able to offset rebounds at a low cost, with a proper design. All of them improve GDP in relation to the no-efficiency improvement base case. If tax revenues from the parallel policies are used to encourage investment, the long-term effect on GDP may even be positive. Jaume Freire-González received the support of the Beatriu de Pinós postdoctoral program of the Government of Catalonia's Secretariat for Universities and Research of the Ministry of Business and Knowledge. Mun Ho is supported by the Harvard Global Institute.