• Energy Research
• 2025-2025close
• Open Access close
• Embargo close

AbstractAs the bones and muscles of our built environment, engineering structures support all kind of societal activities. However, they consume huge amounts of resources and significantly contribute to impact on our environment. Structural design codes play an important matter in this regard since they regulate the use of materials by use of prescribed decision rules. These relatively simple and generalized rules offer significant potential for improvement. Grounded on risk-based optimization approaches, this paper explores this potential in connection with the design of reinforced concrete floor systems. Assuming a large variety of realistic design situations, representative sets of such members are defined and designed according to the semi-probabilistic safety concept in the Eurocodes. The benefits of a risk-informed structural design compared to the use of these standardized decision rules are demonstrated in terms of material consumption and CO2 emissions.

This study investigated associations between bill size and changes in climate extremes using 4119 museum specimens of Australian passerines (Meliphagides). Location-specific climate data from 20 years prior to the collection of each specimen was used to test whether changes in summer (≥35°C) and winter (<5°C) extremes were associated with bill size variation as predicted by thermal physiology.

Background: Sustainability is paramount across all fields, especially in supply chains. The role of human resources is crucial in achieving organizational sustainability standards. However, the impact of human resources on supply chain sustainability has been underemphasized. Purpose: This paper explores the critical nexus between Human Resource Management (HRM) and sustainability within green supply chains, identifying gaps in the current body of knowledge and emerging trends. Study design/methodology/approach: A systematic literature review was conducted, emphasizing sustainability in supply chains and its intersection with HRM's "green" aspects. Web of Science and Scopus databases served as the primary sources. The research involved documentation and content analysis, leading to the development of guidelines for future studies. Findings/conclusions: The study reveals a significant yet underexplored interaction between green HRM and supply chain sustainability. It highlights the need for more focused research in this area, providing a foundational framework for future studies. Limitations/future research: The study primarily focuses on the conceptual linkage between HRM and green supply chains, suggesting the need for empirical research to further validate and expand upon the findings. Future research should investigate specific HRM practices that effectively contribute to sustainable supply chains.

Tropical forests are of great ecological and climatological importance. Although they only cover about 6% of Earth&#8217;s surface, they are home to approx. 50% of the world&#8217;s animal and plant species. Their trees store 50% more carbon than trees outside the tropics. At the same time, they are one of the most endangered ecosystems on Earth: about 6 million of hectares per year are felled for timber or cleared for farming. Compared to the other components of the carbon cycle (i.e. the ocean as a sink and the burning of fossil fuels as a source), the uncertainties in the local land carbon stocks and the carbon fluxes are particularly large. This is especially true for tropical forests: more than 98% of the carbon flux generated by changes in land-use may be due to tropical deforestation, which converts carbon stored as biomass into emissions.In this context, the AfriSAR 2015/16 campaign, supported by ESA, was carried out over four forest sites in Gabon by ONERA (July 2015) during the dry season and by DLR (February 2016) during the wet season. From the data collected the innovative techniques applied to estimate forest height and biomass could be improved significantly and are summarized in a special issue &#8216;Forest Structure Estimation in Remote Sensing&#8217; of IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing.The motivation of the AfriSAR campaign was to acquire demonstration data for the soon to be launched ESA BIOMASS mission, that was selected as the 7th Earth Explorer mission in May 2013 in order to meet the pressing need for information on tropical carbon sinks and sources by providing estimates of forest height and biomass. AfriSAR focused on African tropical and savannah forest types (with biomass in the 100-300 t/ha range) and complements previous ESA campaigns over Indonesian and Amazonian forest types in 2004 (INDREX-II) and 2009 (TropiSAR).The present contribution concerns the GABONX campaign, the ESA supported successor to AfriSAR, which took place in May to July 2023. GABONX aims to detect and quantify changes that have occurred since the DLR acquisitions in February 2016. To this end, DLR&#8217;s F-SAR sensor acquired interferometric stacks of fully polarimetric L- and P-Band data over the same forest sites in the same flight geometry as in 2016. The results presented give an overview of campaign activities with particular emphasis on the calibration of the SAR instrument as well as the validation of forest parameters derived from polarimetric interferometry. The SAR sensor calibration is based on an innovative approach that leverages state-of-the-art EM simulation to accurately characterize the 5m trihedral reference target deployed for the campaign in Gabon. The validation of derived forest parameters uses lidar measurements obtained in the time frame of the GABONX campaign by NASA&#8217;s LVIS sensor. As an outlook, further collaborative calibration and validation activities will hopefully include the cross-calibration of DLR&#8217;s F-SAR and NASA&#8217;s UAVSAR, which is set to acquire L- and P-Band data over the GABONX sites in 2024.

Based on the findings of present investigation, it can be inferred that physico-chemical properties and microbial population in soil was also varied with land use whereas the physico-chemical properties and microbial population were generally improved in kharif as compared to rabi. Plantation land use was the best land use system followed by forest land use system for sustainable improvement of soil health may be recommended in the eastern region of Uttar Pradesh or similar agro ecoregions.

La faible promotion de la production d'énergie éolienne au Pérou conduit à utiliser des combustibles fossiles et à polluer l'environnement avec des gaz à effet de serre. En outre, la campagne en hauteur offre à certaines zones un grand potentiel de ressources éoliennes et elle n'a pas encore été exploitée. Cette étude vise à examiner cinq cas dans la campagne péruvienne situés à des hauteurs allant de 2400 à 4200 mètres d'altitude pour explorer l'effet de la hauteur d'élévation dans la production d'énergie et les indicateurs économiques. Les données sur le vent provenant de l'Atlas mondial du vent et de l'ÉNERGIE ont été utilisées pour chaque zone, et une analyse comparative a été effectuée pour évaluer l'exactitude de ces ensembles de données. Pour l'analyse économique, le seuil de rentabilité du coût actualisé de l'énergie et la valeur actualisée nette ont été calculés. Les résultats indiquent que le coût actualisé de l'énergie était le plus bas, se situant entre 35 et 39 $ / MWh, pour des altitudes comprises entre 3000 et 4200 mètres au-dessus du niveau de la mer. Inversement, les coûts les plus élevés, allant de 50 à 79 $ / MWh, ont été observés à des altitudes plus basses. Cela suggère que ces provinces de haute altitude offrent un potentiel important d'énergie éolienne, ce qui les rend propices au développement de parcs éoliens. La escasa promoción de la generación de energía eólica en Perú conduce al uso de combustibles fósiles y a la contaminación del medio ambiente con gases de efecto invernadero. Además, el campo en altura proporciona algunas de las áreas con un gran potencial de recursos eólicos y aún no se ha explotado. Este estudio tiene como objetivo examinar cinco casos en el campo peruano ubicados en alturas que van desde los 2400 hasta los 4200 metros sobre el nivel del mar para explorar el efecto de la altura de la elevación en la producción de energía y los indicadores económicos. Se utilizaron datos eólicos del Global Wind Atlas y POWER para cada área, y se realizó un análisis comparativo para evaluar la precisión de estos conjuntos de datos. Para el análisis económico, se calcularon el Coste Nivelado de Energía de punto de equilibrio y el Valor Presente Neto. Los hallazgos indican que el Coste Nivelado de la Energía fue el más bajo, oscilando entre 35 y 39 $/MWh, para elevaciones entre 3000 y 4200 metros sobre el nivel del mar. Por el contrario, los costes más altos, que oscilan entre 50 y 79 $/MWh, se observaron en alturas más bajas. Esto sugiere que estas provincias de gran altitud ofrecen un importante potencial de energía eólica, lo que las hace adecuadas para el desarrollo de parques eólicos. The scarce promotion of wind energy generation in Peru leads to using fossil fuels and polluting the environment with greenhouse effect gasses. Furthermore, the countryside at height provides some of the areas with great wind resource potential and it has not been exploited yet. This study aims to examine five cases in the Peruvian countryside located at heights ranging from 2400 to 4200 meters above sea level to explore the effect of elevation height in energy production and economic indicators. Wind data from the Global Wind Atlas and POWER were used for each area, and a comparative analysis was conducted to assess the accuracy of these datasets. For the economic analysis, break-even Levelized Cost of Energy and Net Present Value were calculated. The findings indicate that the Levelized Cost of Energy was the lowest, ranging between 35 and 39 $/MWh, for elevations between 3000 and 4200 meters above sea level. Conversely, the highest costs, ranging from 50 to 79 $/MWh, were observed at lower elevations. This suggests that these high-altitude provinces offer significant wind energy potential, making them suitable for wind farm development. يؤدي الترويج النادر لتوليد طاقة الرياح في بيرو إلى استخدام الوقود الأحفوري وتلويث البيئة بغازات الاحتباس الحراري. علاوة على ذلك، يوفر الريف على ارتفاع بعض المناطق إمكانات كبيرة لموارد الرياح ولم يتم استغلالها بعد. تهدف هذه الدراسة إلى فحص خمس حالات في ريف بيرو تقع على ارتفاعات تتراوح بين 2400 و 4200 متر فوق مستوى سطح البحر لاستكشاف تأثير ارتفاع الارتفاع في إنتاج الطاقة والمؤشرات الاقتصادية. تم استخدام بيانات الرياح من أطلس الرياح العالمي والطاقة لكل منطقة، وتم إجراء تحليل مقارن لتقييم دقة مجموعات البيانات هذه. بالنسبة للتحليل الاقتصادي، تم حساب التكلفة التعادلية للطاقة وصافي القيمة الحالية. تشير النتائج إلى أن التكلفة المستوية للطاقة كانت الأدنى، حيث تراوحت بين 35 و 39 دولارًا/ميجاوات في الساعة، للارتفاعات التي تتراوح بين 3000 و 4200 متر فوق مستوى سطح البحر. وعلى العكس من ذلك، لوحظت أعلى التكاليف، التي تتراوح من 50 إلى 79 دولارًا/ميجاوات في الساعة، على ارتفاعات منخفضة. وهذا يشير إلى أن هذه المقاطعات ذات الارتفاعات العالية توفر إمكانات كبيرة لطاقة الرياح، مما يجعلها مناسبة لتطوير مزارع الرياح.

The climate crisis is the biggest threat to the health, development, and wellbeing of the current and future generations. While there is extensive evidence on the direct impacts of climate change on human livelihood, there is little evidence on how children and young people are affected, and even less discussion and evidence on how the climate crisis could affect violence against children.In this commentary, we review selected research to assess the links between the climate crisis and violence against children.We employ a social-ecological perspective as an overarching framework to organize findings from the literature and call attention to increased violence against children as a specific, yet under-examined, direct and indirect consequence of the climate crisis.Using such a perspective, we examine how the climate crisis exacerbates the risk of violence against children at the continually intersecting and interacting levels of society, community, family, and the individual levels. We propose increased risk of armed conflict, forced displacement, poverty, income inequality, disruptions in critical health and social services, and mental health problems as key mechanisms linking the climate crisis and heightened risk of violence against children. Furthermore, we posit that the climate crisis serves as a threat multiplier, compounding existing vulnerabilities and inequities within populations and having harsher consequences in settings, communities, households, and for children already experiencing adversities.We conclude with a call for urgent efforts from researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to further investigate the specific empirical links between the climate crisis and violence against children and to design, test, implement, fund, and scale evidence-based, rights-based, and child friendly prevention, support, and response strategies to address violence against children.

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) faces significant food security risks, primarily due to low soil fertility leading to low crop yields. Climate change is expected to worsen food security issues in SSA due to a combined negative impact on crop yield and soil fertility. A common omission from climate change impact studies in SSA is the interaction between change in soil fertility and crop yield. Integrated soil fertility management (ISFM), which includes the combined use of mineral and organic fertilizers, is expected to increase crop yield but it is uncertain how this advantage is maintained with climate change. &#160;&#160;We explored the impact of scenarios of change in soil fertility and climate variables (temperature, rainfall, and CO2) on rainfed maize yield in four representative sites in SSA with no input and ISFM management. To do so, we used an ensemble of 15 calibrated soil-crop models. Reset and continuous simulations were performed to assess the impact of soil fertility vs climate change on crop yield. In reset simulations, SOC, soil N and soil water were reinitialized each year with the same initial conditions. In continuous simulations, SOC, soil N and soil water values of a given year were obtained from the simulation of the previous year, allowing cumulative effects on SOC and crop yields.Most models agreed that with current baseline (no input) management, yield changed by a much larger order of magnitude when considering declining soil fertility with baseline climate (-39%), compared with considering constant soil fertility but changes in temperature, rainfall and CO2 (from -12% to +5% depending on the climate variable considered). The interaction between change in soil fertility and climate variables only marginally influenced maize yield (high agreement between models). The model ensemble indicated that when accounting for soil fertility change, the benefits of ISFM systems over no-input systems increased over time (+190%). This increase in ISFM benefits was greater in sites with low initial soil fertility. We advocate for the urgent need to account for soil-crop long-term feedback in climate change studies to avoid large underestimations of climate change and ISFM impact on food production in SSA.