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Against the backdrop of a failing vaccine innovation system, innovation policy aimed at creating a COVID-19 vaccine was surprisingly fast and effective. This paper analyzes the influence of the COVID-19 landscape shock and corresponding innovation policy responses on the existing vaccine innovation system. We use document analysis and expert interviews, performed during vaccine development. We find that the sharing of responsibility between public and private actors on various geographical levels, and the focus on accelerating changes in the innovation system were instrumental in achieving fast results. Simultaneously, the acceleration exacerbated existing societal innovation barriers, such as vaccine hesitancy, health inequity, and contested privatization of earnings. Going forward, these innovation barriers may limit the legitimacy of the vaccine innovation system and reduce pandemic preparedness. Next to a focus on acceleration, transformative innovation policies for achieving sustainable pandemic preparedness are still urgently needed. Implications for mission-oriented innovation policy are discussed.

Understanding the spatio-temporal dynamics of land use and land cover (LULC) and their drivers is instrumental in synthesizing knowledge for informed natural resource management, planning, and associated decisions. The objective of this study was to analyze LULC dynamics and their drivers in the Nyangatom district of southwest Ethiopia. This study adopted a mixed-method approach, comprising remote sensing and geographic information system-based analysis, focus-group discussions, key informant interviews, and structured interviews covering 384 agro-pastoral households. Land use and land cover maps were compiled with Landsat image data from 1992, 1999, 2010, and 2020 using supervised pixel-based classification with a maximum likelihood algorithm. The study revealed that grassland (33%) and shrub land (27%) are the dominant LULC classes in the study periods. The results show a significant increase in settlement, cropland, and bare land, between 1992 and 2020 following demand for fertile lands, overgrazing, and climate changes. Reductions in the water body, open woodland, riverine forest, and dense woodland of − 23%, − 18%, − 18%, and − 7%, respectively, were observed for the same period with an overall accuracy of 80%. Agro-pastoralists identified agricultural expansion, overgrazing, and drought as the main drivers of LULC changes, followed by conflicts, invasion of alien plant species, and change in policy institutions. The impacts of unplanned LULC change can be reduced through appropriate land-use planning with genuine stakeholder engagement. Updated information on present and future LULC dynamics can support these social dynamics and align a shared understanding among stakeholders that replaces polarization and erosion of mutual trust.

As the adverse impacts of hydrological extremes increase in many regions of the world, a better understanding of the drivers of changes in risk and impacts is essential for effective flood and drought risk management and climate adaptation. However, there is currently a lack of comprehensive, empirical data about the processes, interactions and feedbacks in complex human-water systems leading to flood and drought impacts. Here we present a benchmark dataset containing socio-hydrological data of paired events, i.e., two floods or two droughts that occurred in the same area. The 45 paired events occurred in 42 different study areas and cover a wide range of socio-economic and hydro-climatic conditions. The dataset is unique in covering both floods and droughts, in the number of cases assessed, and in the quantity of socio-hydrological data. The benchmark dataset comprises: 1) detailed review style reports about the events and key processes between the two events of a pair; 2) the key data table containing variables that assess the indicators which characterise management shortcomings, hazard, exposure, vulnerability and impacts of all events; 3) a table of the indicators-of-change that indicate the differences between the first and second event of a pair. The advantages of the dataset are that it enables comparative analyses across all the paired events based on the indicators-of-change and allows for detailed context- and location-specific assessments based on the extensive data and reports of the individual study areas. The dataset can be used by the scientific community for exploratory data analyses e.g. focused on causal links between risk management, changes in hazard, exposure and vulnerability and flood or drought impacts. The data can also be used for the development, calibration and validation of socio-hydrological models. The dataset is available to the public through the GFZ Data Services (Kreibich et al. 2023, link for review: https://dataservices.gfz-potsdam.de/panmetaworks/review/923c14519deb04f83815ce108b48dd2581d57b90ce069bec9c948361028b8c85/).

The Segura River basin in South-East Spain is home to aquatic and dry-land ecosystems of regional significance. Pressurised, over the course of the last five decades, by interests of agricultural origin, the basin is caught up in a persistent water crisis traversed by conflict and socio-ecological deterioration. This article presents a socio-ecological-system characterisation of the Segura River basin with a focus on the interactions between institutional performance and expectations on irrigation water supply. The contribution of this research is twofold: first, it provides a model that develops a conceptual articulation of a socio-ecological framework in the idiom of Systems Dynamics; second, it generates (both numerical and qualitative) policy-relevant insights into the basin's crisis, in a way that fully reflects its complexity. Our results indicate that ∼333.100 ha of drylands and agro-natural landscapes were lost to agriculture, and that groundwater overexploitation reached ∼500 Hm3 within the 1960-2021 modelling horizon. Our work accurately models the pervasive impacts of intensive agriculture expansion in the Segura basin and portrays some of the socio-ecological consequences of the hydraulic paradigm in Spain, raising crucial doubts on the dominant forms of water governance in the region.

Studying atrocities poses many challenges for ethnographers, not least of which is how to represent violent experiences, which often exceed articulation. The atrocities perpetrated during the military dictatorship in Argentina are no exception. Yet, during my fieldwork in Buenos Aires, I found that the violence forcefully surfaced in many ethnographic encounters, as a result of my having accidentally absorbed my interlocutors’ psychoanalytic reasoning into my ethnographic praxis. Everyday psychoanalytic practices used among survivors and the relatives of the disappeared, such as catharsis and working through guilt, filtered through ongoing self-reflections and served a crucial role in my emerging understanding of an Argentine “ethics of feelings.” I couple this shared psychoanalytic praxis with creative prose as one integral way of practicing an ethnography of violence. Communicating through words that instill rather than explain the vexed feelings engages readers with the indeterminateness of violence and psychic “depths” in Argentina. This way of doing anthropology is what I call deep ethnography—an emergent form of sensing, talking, thinking, and writing about feelings.

The number of late Neogene Spanish micromammal-containing continental sections with a correlation to the Geomagnetic Time Scale is steadily growing. Nonetheless, well-calibrated sections with dense micromammal records are still rare, biostratigraphic correlations between basins are not straightforward, and ages of uncalibrated sites are poorly constrained. Here, we aim at improving the chronology of Iberian micromammal sections and sites for the interval 8.5–2 Ma by: (i) analyzing qualitative and quantitative similarities between rodent assemblages and turnover in the different basins, (ii) formulating a system of fifteen Iberian assemblage biozones, and (iii) constraining the ages of zone boundaries, assuming isochroneity across basins. Age uncertainty ranges for most known Iberian micromammal sites are obtained by combining regional biozone boundary ages with local magnetostratigraphic records, sedimentation rates and/or evolutionary rates. In addition, our results include new, integrated stratigraphic records from the Jumilla-La Celia and Teruel Basins, which are used to constrain the thus far poorly dated interval covering the latest Tortonian and earliest Messinian (8–7 Ma).

Intensive agriculture is increasingly associated with environmental degradation that may jeopardise long-term environmental and economic sustainability. The high-dike system in the upper Mekong delta that has enabled intensive rice cultivation represents a prime example of these potential negative feedbacks. The lack of seasonal flooding and the associated depletion of nutrients is expected to affect farmer income as productivity declines and more fertiliser is required. Therefore, emphasis has shifted towards more sustainable, flood-based agriculture, however farmer uptake has its challenges. Based on a compilation of different household surveys we first analyse rice farmers’ ability and willingness to transition and subsequently study the economic sustainability of intensive rice-based livelihoods. A Motivation and Ability (MOTA) survey reveals that two-thirds of the surveyed rice farmers are reluctant to change to flood-based farming systems, as they consider rice cultivation to be economically viable in the near future. They also mention financial and technical ability as key constraints. Subsequently, we analyse yield and fertiliser developments for a large sample of farming households under different dike systems between 2008 and 2015. This shows that income from rice farming grew steadily under high-dike systems as productivity growth compensated for higher input requirements. This growth is partly dampened by the slightly higher negative impacts of potential flood damage in high-dike areas, compared low-dike areas. A counterintuitive effect that is related to the fact that high dikes remain prone to dike overtopping or breaching in the flooding season, resulting in potentially higher damage than low-dike areas that are able to crop flood-based alternatives. The observed growth in income is a likely explanation for the reluctance to change in the studied period. Our analysis also shows that rice income growth is unequally distributed in high-dike areas, with lower incomes being associated with new high-dike systems and slower growth of incomes of smallholder rice farmers compared to large-scale farms. This makes smallholder rice farmers in high-dike areas especially vulnerable to changing conditions, and thus a priority target group for policy makers promoting flood-based alternatives. Recent commune level yield data show that the past productivity growth has stalled, increasing the prospects for alternative flood-based agriculture. This transition can be facilitated, by enhancing the economic viability of flood-based crops and, particularly for smallholder farmers, by improving their financial and technical capabilities through supportive policies.

Previous studies showed that bark cover at early-decay stage had profound control on the invertebrate assemblages of bark and wood, with possible consequence for the decomposition process. However, previous experimental designs could not disentangle how bark versus wood traits affect the invertebrate assemblage process in bark and/or wood separately because wood traits of different tree species may vary independently from bark traits. Furthermore, we do not know whether such tree species-specific bark trait effects are still influential at mid-decay stage. To unravel whether and how bark and wood traits influence invertebrate communities in tree logs at mid-decay stage, we introduce reciprocal bark transplantation within pairs of different tree species as a new method. We applied this method to two pairs of phylogenetically contrasting species of gymnosperms (pair I: Araucaria araucana and Cryptomeria japonica, pair II: Picea abies and Thuja plicata) and another gymnosperm (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana) set as disturbance control to test for potential bark manipulation artefacts on invertebrate community composition. Our bark exchange experiment revealed that both bark and wood host abundant and divergent subsets of invertebrates on mid-decay logs of different tree species. We further documented that the invertebrate community composition was predominantly shaped by the traits of host tissue per se, while also being significantly but less strongly affected by the traits of the other tissue, that is, the adjacent bark or wood. Our results indicated that bark trait effects faded with time and how long bark trait effects persist greatly depends on bark thickness. Synthesis. Our study suggests that maintaining deadwood heterogeneity related to variation between tree species and bark versus wood, is important for nursing a large biodiversity of invertebrates. Combined with bark removal methodology, our bark exchange method can be further extended to more decay stages and more forest biomes to track bark trait effects and bark induced priority effects on deadwood decomposition, and its associated invertebrate and microbial communities.

Corruption is a pervasive phenomenon that affects the quality of institutions, undermines economic growth and exacerbates inequalities around the globe. Here we tested whether perceiving representatives of institutions as corrupt undermines trust and subsequent prosocial behaviour among strangers. We developed an experimental game paradigm modelling representatives as third-party punishers to manipulate or assess corruption and examine its relationship with trust and prosociality (trust behaviour, cooperation and generosity). In a sequential dyadic die-rolling task, the participants observed the dishonest behaviour of a target who would subsequently serve as a third-party punisher in a trust game (Study 1a, N = 540), in a prisoner's dilemma (Study 1b, N = 503) and in dictator games (Studies 2-4, N = 765, pre-registered). Across these five studies, perceiving a third party as corrupt undermined interpersonal trust and, in turn, prosocial behaviour. These findings contribute to our understanding of the critical role that representatives of institutions play in shaping cooperative relationships in modern societies.Across five studies, Spadaro et al. show that perceiving representatives of institutions as corrupt is associated with lower interpersonal trust and prosocial behaviour among strangers.

The present research addresses tools that could help reduce littering in society. Four interventions were tested which, based on different processes, should reduce littering: monetary information, the depicted injunctive norm, watching eyes and a nature picture. To test these interventions, a randomized controlled trial (RCT) involving 440 community building's waste disposal areas (N = 71,155) was conducted in Vienna. Littering was assessed before the intervention, 24–48 h after, and again seven weeks after the intervention. Results show that the financial intervention (monetary information) hardly had any effect on littering whereas the norm-based intervention (depicted injunctive norm) led to more littering compared to the control and in particular, the nature picture. In contrast, the reputation-based intervention (watching eyes) and ecology-based intervention (nature picture) reduced littering over time by 4.7%. Thus, interventions based on implicit and soft appeals to reputation and ecology are more effective in fostering clean environments than classical interventions applying explicit information on finances and norms.

Biological decomposition and wildfire are two predominant and alternative processes that can mineralize organic C in forest litter. Currently, the relationships between decomposition and fire are still poorly understood. We provide an empirical test of the hypothesized decoupling of surface litter bed decomposability and flammability, and the underlying traits and trait spectra. We employed a 41-species set of gymnosperms of very broad evolutionary and geographic spread, because of the wide range of (absent to frequent) fire regimes they are associated with. We found that the interspecific pattern of mass loss proportions in a “common garden” decomposition experiment was not correlated with any of the flammability parameters and an RDA analysis also showed that the decomposability and flammability of leaf litter in litter layers were decoupled across species. This decoupling originates from the former depending mostly on size and shape spectrum traits and the latter on PES traits and those trait spectra being virtually uncorrelated. Synthesis: Our results show that, indeed, leaf litter decomposability and flammability parameters are decoupled across species, and this decoupling can be explained by their different drivers in terms of trait spectra: chemical traits for decomposability and size-shape traits for litter layer flammability.

There is a growing body of work suggesting that social class stereotypes are amplified when people perceive higher levels of economic inequality—that is, the wealthy are perceived as more competent and assertive and the poor as more incompetent and unassertive. The present study tested this prediction in 32 societies and also examines the role of wealth-based categorization in explaining this relationship. We found that people who perceived higher economic inequality were indeed more likely to consider wealth as a meaningful basis for categorization. Unexpectedly, however, higher levels of perceived inequality were associated with perceiving the wealthy as less competent and assertive and the poor as more competent and assertive. Unpacking this further, exploratory analyses showed that the observed tendency to stereotype the wealthy negatively only emerged in societies with lower social mobility and democracy and higher corruption. This points to the importance of understanding how socio-structural features that co-occur with economic inequality may shape perceptions of the wealthy and the poor. © 2022 The Authors. European Journal of Social Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. WOS:000880016700001 2-s2.0-85141616689 Social Sciences Citation Index Q2 Article Uluslararası işbirliği ile yapılan - EVET 2022 YÖK - 2022-23 Kasım

Reflexive and deliberative knowledge co-production processes are increasingly used in dealing with contemporary sustainability challenges. These processes come with the need to develop ways to properly assess and understand their impact. In our case study, a three-year-long knowledge co-production process aimed at evaluating the Dutch nature policy, we observed that the actors involved valued and understood the impact of the process differently. Actors’ understandings of impact were also affected by political developments in the context surrounding the co-production process. Our empirical analysis focused on three dimensions of impact assessment (function of knowledge co-production, perceived pathway to impact, and problem identification) and identified four coexisting ‘rationales’ that actors used in their valuations of impact: accountability, instrumental, network and transformative rationales. Although the rationales appear incompatible, each emphasizing different ideas on how impact is achieved, in practice, individual actors drew on multiple rationales simultaneously in their assessment of the co-production process’ impact. Specific national and provincial political dynamics, related to goal achievement of the nature policy, influenced how actors used the rationales. Actors increased the use of the accountability and transformative rationales as policy deadlines drew near. Our findings have implications for designing knowledge co-production processes. The coexistence of impact rationales complicates a responsive approach to process design that aims to consider the knowledge demands of diverse actors. Nevertheless, we argue that combining impact rationales is desirable, given the nature of and reasons for knowledge co-production, and provide recommendations for dealing with their coexistence in practice.

In the West Bank, the agricultural sector accounts for the majority of water demand in the region. Where irrigated agriculture covers only 12% of the cultivated area of the West Bank it consumes around 65% of the total water resources. Most of the irrigated area of the Jordan Valley is under Majdool date palm trees, with a total number of about 250,000 trees, half of whom are younger than 5 y. Despite using drip irrigation, which is considered efficient and reduces water loss, improvement of the irrigation schedule can still be realized by a tailored management of the water demand of plants. In the Jordan Valley, the most important irrigated agricultural area in the West Bank, over-irrigation of the crops and trees is a common practice that causes the degradation of the groundwater aqui-fer systems. This study aims to use precise irrigation management to balance water demand with irrigation volumes to avoid water spillage. The Hydrus-2D package was used to develop an irrigation schedule for a 5 y date palm old. Model simulations show that farmers can schedule irrigation with less than the recommended volume of 20 m3/tree·y. By applying around 46% of the currently recommended volume, similar production levels could be obtained in terms of yield and biomass. We conclude that using precision irrigation scheduling, the water demand per tree reduces to a recommended rate of about 12.5 m3/tree·y increasing crop water productivity up to 2.63 kg/m3 as opposed to 1.66 kg/m3 with the traditional irrigation schedule. Additionally, less water drains beneath the root zone.

Context: The popularity of domain-specific languages and model driven development has made the tacit use of domain knowledge in system development more tangible. Our vision is a development process where a (software) system specification is based on multiple domain models, and where the specification method is built from cognitive concepts, presumably derived from natural language. Goal: To realize this vision, we evaluate and reflect upon the existing literature in domain-oriented specification techniques. Method: We designed and conducted a systematic literature review on domain-oriented specification techniques. Results: We identified 53 primary studies, populated the classification framework for each study, and summarized our findings per classification aspect. We found many approaches for creating domain models or domain-specific languages. Observations include: (i) most methods are defined incompletely; (ii) none offers methodical support for the use of domain models or domain-specific languages to create other specifications; (iii) there are specification techniques to integrate models in general, but no study offers methodical support for multiple domain models. Conclusion: The results indicate which topics need further research and which can instead be reused to realize our vision on system development. Editor's note: Open Science material was validated by the Journal of Systems and Software Open Science Board.

In consumer cities, the presence and location of immigrants impacts house prices through two channels, which both can be valued positively as well as negatively: (i) their presence and contribution to population diversity and (ii) the creation of immigrant-induced consumer amenities like those associated with ethnic restaurants in terms of both their quantity as well as diversity. We hypothesize that these two mechanisms create a trade-off in which city dwellers want to live apart yet consume together. We use unique microdata of house prices and ethnic restaurants in the city of Amsterdam over the 1996–2011 period and a generalized propensity score (GPS) matching technique for multiple continuous treatments to estimate the trade-off between consumers’ love for ethnic goods and their variety on the one hand, and ethnic residential composition on the other hand. We find evidence for the existence of such a trade-off: proximity to ethnically diverse restaurants indeed compensates for a negative correlation between the presence of immigrants and house prices. This trade-off mostly holds for neighborhoods featuring both a diverse population and a high level of amenities in terms of restaurants.

The role of water resources in conflict has been the centre of a polarized scientific debate on the connections between environmental and social sustainability. We investigate whether and how water availability, also in relation to water demand, increases the likelihood of violent conflict, and we analyse how hydrological factors influence social conflict dynamics involving non-state armed groups in the Lake Chad Basin. We combine hydrological and biophysical factors with information on socio-political processes. We use a novel physically based agro-hydrological model to produce water-availability and water-demand indicators to explore the conflict potential. By coupling a critical modelling perspective with a novel rendition of hydrological dynamics and statistical tools, we explore water–conflict interconnections in a broader hydrosocial framework. Our results show that, although water scarcity alone does not directly drive violent conflict, complex water-related interdependencies exist on multiple space–time scales. Analytical integration of fine-scale hydrological indicators may help deconstruct both mechanistic and relativist narratives, improve understanding of socio-hydrological complexity and move towards a comprehensive vision of socially and environmentally sustainable use of water and land.

Perfluorohexane sulfonate (PFHxS) is one of the short-chain perfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs), and frequently detected in the environment, humans, and wildlife, but a detailed mechanism of toxicity has been not studied yet. In this study, a comprehensive set of polar metabolites was determined in i) the developing zebrafish embryo (4, 24, 48, 72, and 120 h post fertilization (hpf)), and ii) in the developing zebrafish after exposure to four concentrations of PFHxS (0.3, 1, 3, and 10 μM) from 24to 120 hpf. The temporal (developmental stages) distribution of individual metabolites (541 metabolites) in zebrafish provided comprehensive information about the biological roles of various metabolites in developing vertebrates such as genetic processes, energy metabolism, protein metabolism, and glycerophospholipid metabolism. PFHxS in zebrafish embryo showed time- and concentration- dependent bioaccumulation, and no baseline toxicity was expected at the test concentrations. However, effects on many metabolites were already observed at the lowest tested concentration (0.3 μM), and these effects were more pronounced at later stages of developmental (72 and 120 hpf). In addition to oxidative stress, the effects of PFHxS on zebrafish embryos were related to the disruption of the fatty acid oxidation (FAO), sugar metabolism, and other metabolic pathways. This study gave new and comprehensive information on the underlying mechanism of the toxicity of PFHxS.

Boreal forests are particularly vulnerable to climate warming, which increases the occurrence of natural disturbances, such as fires and insect outbreaks. It is therefore essential to better understand climate-induced changes in boreal vegetation dynamics. This requires accurate estimates of variations in biomass across regions and time. This remains challenging in the extensive larch forests of northeast Siberia because of the paucity of allometric equations and physical properties of woody debris needed for quantifying aboveground biomass pools from field surveys. Our study is the first to present values of mean squared diameter (MSD) and specific gravity that can be used to calculate fine dead and downed woody debris loads in Cajander larch (Larix cajanderi) forests using the line-intersect sampling approach. These values were derived from field measurements collected in 25 forest stands in the Republic of Sakha, Russia, and compared with values reported for other prevalent boreal tree species. We developed allometric equations relating diameter at breast height (DBH, at 1.3 m) to stem wood, stem bark, branches, foliage, and aboveground biomass based on measurements of 63 trees retrieved from previous studies. Differences between our allometric models and existing equations were assessed in predicting larch aboveground biomass in 53 forest stands sampled in the Republic of Sakha. We found that using fine woody debris (FWD) parameters from other boreal tree species and allometric equations developed in other regions may result in significantly lower biomass estimates in larch-dominated forests of northeast Siberia. The FWD parameters and allometric equations presented in our paper can be used to refine estimates of aboveground biomass in Cajander larch forests in northeast Siberia.

Background:Digital infrastructures, i.e., ICT systems, or system-of-systems, providing digital capabilities, such as storage and computational services, are experiencing an ever-growing demand for data consumption, which is only expected to increase in the future. This trend leads to a question we need to answer: How can we evolve digital infrastructures to keep up with the increasing data demand in a sustainable way?Objective:The goal of this study is to understand what is the future of sustainable digital infrastructures, in terms of: which solutions are, or will be, available to sustainably evolve digital infrastructures, and which are the related adoption factors, impediments, and open problems.Method:We carried out a 3-phase mixed-method qualitative empirical study, comprising semi-structured interviews, followed by focus groups, and a plenary session with parallel working groups. In total, we conducted 13 sessions involving 48 digital infrastructure practitioners and researchers.Results:From our investigation emerges a landscape for sustainable digital infrastructures, composed of 30 solutions, 5 adoption factors, 4 impediments, and 13 open problems. We further synthesized our results in 4 incremental scenarios, which outline the future evolution of sustainable digital infrastructures.Conclusions:From an initial shift from on-premise to the cloud, as time progresses, digital infrastructures are expected to become increasingly distributed, till it will be possible to dynamically allocate resources by following time, space, and energy. Numerous solutions will support this change, but digital infrastructures are envisaged to be able to evolve sustainably only by (i) gaining a wider awareness of digital sustainability, (ii) holding every party accountable for their sustainability throughout value chains, and (iii) establishing cross-domain collaborations.

We review palaeoenvironmental proxies and combinations of these relevant for understanding hunter-gatherer niche construction activities in pre-agricultural Europe. Our approach consists of two steps: (1) identify the possible range of hunter-gatherer impacts on landscapes based on ethnographic studies; (2) evaluate proxies possibly reflecting these impacts for both the Eemian (Last Interglacial, Middle Palaeolithic) and the Early–Middle Holocene (Mesolithic). We found these paleoenvironmental proxies were not able to unequivocally establish clear-cut differences between specific anthropogenic, climatic and megafaunal impacts for either time period in this area. We discuss case studies for both periods and show that published evidence for Mesolithic manipulation of landscapes is based on the interpretation of comparable data as available for the Last Interglacial. If one applies the ‘Mesolithic’ interpretation schemes to the Neanderthal record, three common niche construction activities can be hypothesised: vegetation burning, plant manipulation and impact on animal species presence and abundance. Our review suggests that as strong a case can be made for a Neanderthal impact on landscapes as for anthropogenic landscape changes during the Mesolithic, even though the Neanderthal evidence comes from only one high-resolution site complex. Further research should include attempts (e.g. by means of modelling studies) to establish whether hunter-gatherer impact on landscapes played out at a local level only versus at a larger scale during both time periods, while we also need to obtain comparative data on the population sizes of Last Interglacial and Holocene hunter-gatherers, as these are usually inferred to have differed significantly.

Food insecurity elimination is a major focus of the Sustainable Development Goals and addresses one of the most pressing needs in developing countries. With the increasing incidence of food insecurity, poverty, and inequalities, there is a need for realignment of agriculture that aims to empower especially the rural poor smallholders by increasing productivity to improving food security conditions. Repositioning the agricultural sector should avoid general statements about production improvement, instead, it should tailor to location-specific recommendations that fully acknowledge the local spatial diversity of the natural resource base that largely determines production potentials under current low input agriculture. This paper aims to deconstruct the complex and multidimensional aspect of food insecurity and provides policymakers with an approach for mapping the spatial dimension of food insecurity. Using a set of GIS-based indicators, and a small-area approach, we combine Principal Component Analysis and GIS spatial analysis to construct one composite index and four individual indices based on the four dimensions of food security (access, availability, stability, and utilization) to map the spatial dimension of food insecurity in Vihiga County, Kenya. Data were collected by the use of a geocoded household survey questionnaire. The results reveal the existence of a clear and profound spatial disparity of food insecurity. Mapping food insecurity using individual dimension indices provides a more detailed picture of food insecurity as compared to the single composite index. Spatially disaggregated data, a small area approach, and GIS-based indicators prove valuable for mapping local-level causative factors of household food insecurity. Effective policy approaches to combat food insecurity inequalities should integrate spatially targeted interventions for each dimension of food insecurity.

This essay explores the potential for eco-theology as a part of the (Christian) theological tradition that, so far, has only been analyzed to a limited extent with regard to what it might contribute to forms of theology that further more sustainable forms of humankind’s (co-)inhabitation of the world: the tradition of apophatic theology. The question is: ‘can dimensions of the apophatic tradition be identified that can contribute to the development of eco-theology in the Christian tradition by informing the shaping of the relationship between humankind and the rest of creation?’ The question will be answered affirmatively, for which this essay takes the following steps. First, the conditions under which apophatic approaches can inform the relationship between humankind and the rest of creation are considered. Second, a recent discussion of apophatic theology by Rowan Williams is used as a point of departure to discuss apophatic theology, epistemology and representation. Third, the theology of icons, expressive as it is by forms of relational and ‘decentered’ observation, that can be understood as being closely connected with apophatic concerns, is considered as a model for humankind’s relating to the rest of creation.

The soil nitrogen (N) cycle in cold terrestrial ecosystems is slow and organically bound N is an important source of N for plants in these ecosystems. Many plant species can take up free amino acids from these infertile soils, either directly or indirectly via their mycorrhizal fungi. We hypothesized that plant community changes and local plant community differences will alter the soil free amino acid pool and composition; and that long-term warming could enhance this effect. To test this, we studied the composition of extractable free amino acids at five separate heath, meadow, and bog locations in subarctic and alpine Scandinavia, with long-term (13 to 24 years) warming manipulations. The plant communities all included a mixture of ecto-, ericoid-, and arbuscular mycorrhizal plant species. Vegetation dominated by grasses and forbs with arbuscular and non-mycorrhizal associations showed highest soil free amino acid content, distinguishing them from the sites dominated by shrubs with ecto- and ericoid-mycorrhizal associations. Warming increased shrub and decreased moss cover at two sites, and by using redundancy analysis, we found that altered soil free amino acid composition was related to this plant cover change. From this, we conclude that the mycorrhizal type is important in controlling soil N cycling and that expansion of shrubs with ectomycorrhiza (and to some extent ericoid mycorrhiza) can help retain N within the ecosystems by tightening the N cycle.

Many child and youth protection organizations are changing from being bureaucratic to becoming more learning-oriented. In the course of this radical change, many tensions and challenges are experienced. This article addresses the challenges and strategies in normalizing a radical new way of working in a child and youth protection organization in Amsterdam. It focuses specifically on the work of team leaders (middle management) in reflexive team meetings. A qualitative approach was used to understand middle-management strategies employed in team meetings to support the process of normalizing a new method called Intensive Family Case Management (IFCM). Normalization Process Theory (NPT) was used to guide the study. By using the action learning and action research approach, using peer-leader video-reflection during team meetings in a child and youth protection organization in Amsterdam, the processes leading toward normalization were observed and analyzed in depth. Peer team leaders reviewed the videos in focus group discussions (FGDs) to help interpret the data. The results show the various ways in which reflexive team meetings support the normalization process—sense-making, appraisal and engagement—and shed light on the tensions experienced by team leaders, such as shared responsibility versus dominance/control and efficiency versus learning. Some of these tensions concern defaulting to old ways of working, while others reflect the complex nature of change processes in a dynamic system. Ultimately, this study shows the importance of leaders being aware of tensions within teams in a change process and employing a “both/and” strategy to deal with these tensions.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 120(23), e2215572120 (2023). doi:10.1073/pnas.2215572120, Published by National Acad. of Sciences, Washington, DC

Dairy and probiotics are examples of products that contain ingredients that provide health benefits beyond the basic nutritional components of the food itself. However, strong evidence based on randomised controlled trials is generally lacking, which in turn leads to weak guidelines and recommendations for clinical practice. Interestingly, despite the limited regulation of probiotics, for example, a significant proportion of healthcare professionals still recommend these products. We set out studying the advising behaviour of general practitioners (GPs) and dieticians and their underlying motivations whether to advise probiotics, a relatively new intervention, and dairy, an older intervention by conducting interviews and setting out a questionnaire. This study found that the vast majority of GPs and dieticians recommended dairy and probiotics. The proportion of dieticians that do not advise both dairy and probiotics was too small for statistical analysis, therefore, the results are mainly focused on GPs. Considerations that appeared to be associated with GP advising behaviour were related to compliance with protocols and guidelines in regard to both dairy and probiotics. For probiotics in particular, GPs' knowledge and patients' interest in using probiotics was related to advising behaviour of GPs. Considerations solely related to recommending dairy were related to GPs' perceptions about the amount of evidence of dairy efficacy and the recommendation of dairy in scientific journals. The study highlights the influence of authority-driven, expertise-driven and patient-driven considerations on whether or not to proceed with recommending an intervention. Insights into the drivers of GPs to advise, gives input to stakeholders in the nutrition innovation system to understand and allow to use appropriate tools to support GPs in making an informed decision to increase the quality of care provided.

This study focuses upon knowledge governance mechanisms of integrating specialised knowledge on underground utilities in large infrastructure projects. The integration of knowledge is essential for the realisation of such projects. The study explores the formal and informal knowledge governance mechanisms in three large infrastructure projects and compares these mechanisms to reveal their effects on knowledge integration. The findings show that combining reward systems, project culture and trust are targeting the motivation of underground experts to share their knowledge, and allocation of authority and project network are mechanisms aimed at the coordination between managers and underground experts to integrate knowledge. We contribute to studies on knowledge governance by enabling further empirical insight in the relationships between formal and informal mechanisms.

Short-rotation woody plantations (SRWPs) play a major role in climate change mitigation and adaptation plans, because of their high yields of woody biomass and fast carbon storage. However, their benefits, trade-offs and growing-success are heavily location-dependent. Therefore, spatial data on the distribution of SRWPs are indispensable for assessing current distribution, trade-offs with other uses and potential contributions to climate mitigation. As current global datasets lack reliable information on SRWPs and full global mapping is difficult, we provide a consistent and systematic approach to estimate the spatial distribution of SRWPs in (sub-)tropical biomes under current and future climate. We combined three advanced methods (maximum entropy, random forest and multinomial regression) to evaluate spatially explicit probabilities of SRWPs. As inputs served a large empirical dataset on SRWP observations and 17 predictor variables, covering biophysical and socio-economic conditions. SRWP probabilities varied strongly between regions, and might not be feasible in major parts of (sub-)tropical biomes, challenging the feasibility of global mitigation plans that over-rely on tree plantations. Due to future climatic changes, SRWP probabilities decreased in many areas, particularly pronounced in higher emission scenarios. This indicates a negative feedback with higher emissions resulting in less mitigation potential. Less suitable land for SRWPs in the future could also result in fewer wood resources from these plantations, enhancing pressure on natural forests and hampering sustainability initiatives that use wood-based alternatives. Our results can help adding a more nuanced treatment of mitigation options and forest management in research on biodiversity and land use change.

PURPOSE: To compare the impact of hot-humid environmental conditions on performance outcomes, thermoregulatory responses, and thermal perception during exercise between elite para- and able-bodied (AB) athletes.METHODS: 20 elite para-athletes (para-cycling and wheelchair tennis) and 20 elite AB athletes (road cycling, mountain biking, beach volleyball) performed an incremental exercise test in a temperate environment (mean ± SD: 15.2 ± 1.2 °C, relative humidity 54 ± 7%) and a hot-humid environment (31.9 ± 1.6 °C, 72 ± 5%). Exercise tests started with a 20-min warm-up at 70% of maximal heart rate, after which power output increased by 5% every 3 min until volitional exhaustion.RESULTS: Time to exhaustion was shorter in hot-humid versus temperate conditions, with equal performance loss for para- and AB athletes (median [IQR]: 26 [20-31]% vs. 27 [19-32]%; p = 0.80). AB athletes demonstrated larger exercise-induced increases in gastrointestinal temperature (Tgi) in hot-humid versus temperate conditions (2.2 ± 0.7 vs. 1.7 ± 0.5, p < 0.001), whereas Tgi responses in para-athletes were similar between conditions (1.3 ± 0.6 vs. 1.3 ± 0.4, p = 0.74). Para- and AB athletes showed similar elevations in peak skin temperature (p = 0.94), heart rate (p = 0.67), and thermal sensation score (p = 0.64) in hot-humid versus temperate conditions.CONCLUSIONS: Elite para-athletes and AB athletes demonstrated similar performance decrements during exercise in hot-humid versus temperate conditions, whilst Tgi elevations were markedly lower in para-athletes. We observed large inter-individual variation within both groups, suggesting that in both para- and AB athletes, personalized heat mitigation plans should be developed based on individual thermal testing.

Adopting low-carbon diets is important to meet our climate goals. Prior experimental evidence suggests green nudges help people adopt such diets, more so when they are encouraged to think through them. In this paper, we re-evaluate this role of reflection in a “social norm” nudge to promote intentions for climate-friendly diets in the United Kingdom. Using 5,555 British respondents, we find the social norm nudge increases meal order intentions for low-carbon diets versus the control condition. Asking people to reveal their personal dietary norms, after exposing them to these social norms (“lower-order nudge+”), does not produce any measurable change compared to the nudge. However, when people are subsequently encouraged to think and pledge to climate-friendly diets (“higher-order nudge+”), the effectiveness of the social norm nudge increases by 90% or more.

We designed and administered an online survey experiment to 444 educators in a large social sciences university in the United Kingdom to evaluate their perceptions on the effectiveness of online teaching methods. We find that a nudge, designed to inform educators about the benefits of online teaching, does not improve the personal evaluations of educators in our sample (ntreat = 142, ncontrol = 142) about this new mode of teaching. Overall, most respondents in our sample report being comfortable with online teaching methods and think this form of teaching can continue to have some positive impact. Nonetheless, they do not favour any further online transition away from traditional modes of teaching. Online teaching is largely perceived by a majority of these educators to negatively affect student well-being and their overall university experience. We call for more experimental research in higher educational settings to evaluate the role of edunudges in improving the uptake of online teaching tools.

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all domains of human life, including the economic and social fabric of societies. One of the central strategies for managing public health throughout the pandemic has been through persuasive messaging and collective behaviour change. To help scholars better understand the social and moral psychology behind public health behaviour, we present a dataset comprising of 51,404 individuals from 69 countries. This dataset was collected for the International Collaboration on Social & Moral Psychology of COVID-19 project (ICSMP COVID-19). This social science survey invited participants around the world to complete a series of moral and psychological measures and public health attitudes about COVID-19 during an early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic (between April and June 2020). The survey included seven broad categories of questions: COVID-19 beliefs and compliance behaviours; identity and social attitudes; ideology; health and well-being; moral beliefs and motivation; personality traits; and demographic variables. We report both raw and cleaned data, along with all survey materials, data visualisations, and psychometric evaluations of key variables. ispartof: SCIENTIFIC DATA vol:10 issue:1 ispartof: location:England status: published

The engineering of modern software-intensive systems is carried out in collaboration among stakeholders with specialized expertise. The complexity of such systems often also necessitates employing more rigorous approaches, such as Model-Driven Software Engineering (MDSE). Collaborative MDSE is the combination of the two disciplines, with its specific opportunities and challenges. The rapid expansion and maturation of the field started attracting tool builders from outside of academia. However, available systematic studies on collaborative MDSE focus exclusively on mapping academic research and fail to identify how academic research aligns with industry practices and needs. To address this shortcoming, we have carried out a mixed-method survey on the practices and needs concerning collaborative MDSE. First, we carried out a qualitative survey in two focus group sessions, interviewing seven industry experts. Second, based on the results of the interviews, we constructed a questionnaire and carried out a questionnaire survey with 41 industry expert participants. In this paper, we report the results of our study, investigate the alignment of academic research with the needs of practitioners, and suggest directions on research and development of the supporting techniques of collaborative MDSE.

Behavioural public policy is increasingly interested in scaling–up experimental insights to deliver systemic changes. Recent evidence shows some forms of individual behaviour change, such as nudging, are limited in scale. We argue, we can scale up individual behaviour change by accounting for nuanced social complexities in which human responses to behavioural public policies are situated. We introduce the idea of the “social brain”, as a construct to help practitioners and policymakers facilitate a greater social transmission of pro–social behaviours. The social brain encompasses complex human relationships interacted with elements of the choice architecture. It includes three main components: (1) individual actors, representing nodes in the social brain, who interact with other actors through (2) verbal and non-verbal cues, and who are affected by the (3) physical environment in which they belong. Ignoring the social brain runs the risk of fostering localised behavioural changes, through individual actors, which are neither scalable nor lasting. We identify pathways to facilitate changes in the social brain: either through path dependencies or critical mass shifts in individual behaviours, moderated by the brain’s property of social cohesion and multiplicity of situational and dispositional factors. In this way, behavioural changes stimulated in one part of the social brain can reach other parts and evolve dynamically. We recommend designing public policies that engage different parts of the social brain as a whole.

Companies are increasingly adopting cloud-based solutions to provide their employees with tools for flexible work. The environmental consequences of this trend, although largely under-researched, are likely to be negative. In fact, by enabling integrated and easy-to-use features (document collaboration, backups, online meetings, etc.), using the cloud typically leads to a growth in data traffic and outsourced computation. At the same time, the 2022 IPCC report (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) calls for sufficiency measures to reach net-zero emissions, i.e. actions on the demand side to avoid unnecessary consumption of resources. However, how much and which cloud usage is “sufficient” for flexible work?This study explores the answer to this question by using qualitative research methods. We carried out three focus groups within two companies, investigating the daily use of digital technologies in flexible work. A thematic analysis using open coding was performed on the outcome. Our findings include (i) a list of main digital work activities and differences according to work settings, (ii) the perceptions of what makes certain digital activities or their cloud feature necessary, and (iii) a list of tactics towards sufficiency and the perceived benefits and challenges associated to them. In our increasingly connected work environments, there are plenty of opportunities to decrease our digital footprint by re-centering on the essentials, and simultaneously bring co-benefits like focus, and better quality of life.Future work could identify the cultural part of what is perceived as necessary by running the same study in other countries and professional environments. Further research would also be helpful to identify the potential impact and acceptability of the identified tactics.

This study aimed to address gaps in understanding of the lived experiences of caregivers of persons with mental illness in low-income countries. It was conducted among caregivers of persons with mental illness making use of a free non-governmental clinic in and around Chennai, India. The study adopted a qualitative methodology, with semi-structured interviews and life history exercises (n = 29) and six focus group discussions with caregivers (n = 21) and mental health professionals and community-based workers (n = 39). The experiences of caregivers were analyzed in the framework of “The Banyan model of caregiving,” which identifies six phases. Major themes in caregivers’ experience were: embarrassment and losing honor; fear; awareness; stigma and social exclusion; and reduced social interaction and loneliness. Posttraumatic growth considered as the result of caregiver experiences was found to consist mainly of personal growth and focusing on positive life experiences. Lost opportunities particular to the context of Tamil Nadu were described as the inability to get married, obtaining less education than desired, and loss of employment. Siblings faced lower levels of burden, while elderly mothers experienced especially high levels of burden and lack of happiness in life. Caregiver gains were identified as greater compassion for other people with disabilities, resulting in a desire to help others, as well as increased personal strength and confidence. Understanding the nuances of the caregiving experiences over time can provide a framework to devise more fine-tuned support structures that aim to prevent reductions in social interaction and lost opportunities, and improve a sense of meaning, in order to assist caregivers to continue providing care for their relatives with mental illness in a context with scarce mental health resources.

Context.: There are many e-Health mobile apps on the apps store, from apps to improve a user's lifestyle to mental coaching. Whilst these apps might consider user context when they give their interventions, prompts, and encouragements, they still tend to be rigid e.g., not using user context and experience to tailor themselves to the user. Objective.: To better engage and tailor to the user, we have previously proposed a Reference Architecture for enabling self-adaptation and AI personalization in e-Health mobile apps. In this work we evaluate the end users’ perception, usability, performance impact, and energy consumption contributed by this Reference Architecture. Method.: We do so by implementing a Reference Architecture compliant app and conducting two experiments: a user study and a measurement-based experiment. Results.: Although limited in the number of participants, the results of our user study show that usability of the Reference Architecture compliant app is similar to the control app. Users’ perception was found to be positively influenced by the compliant app when compared to the control group. Results of our measurement-based experiment showed some differences in performance and energy consumption measurements between the two apps. The differences are, however, deemed minimal. Conclusions.: Our experiments show promising results for an app implemented following our proposed Reference Architecture. This is preliminary evidence that the use of personalization and self-adaptation techniques can be beneficial within the domain of e-Health apps.

Research on global climate change governance is no longer primarily concerned with the international legal regime, state practice and its outcomes, but rather scrutinizes the intricate interactions between the public and the private in governing climate change. This broad trend has also taken center stage within the pages of INEA. Two decades after its establishment, we sketch the main theoretical debates, conceptual innovations and empirical findings on global climate change governance and survey the new generation of climate governance scholarship. In more detail, we sketch how climate governance research has developed into three innovative sub-debates, building on important conceptualizations and critical inquiries of earlier debates. Our aim is not so much to provide an all-encompassing assessment of global climate change governance scholarship in 2022, but rather to illustrate in what important ways current research is different from research in the early phase of INEA, and what we have learned in the process. First, we discuss scholarship on the bottom-up nature of climate governance, developing from earlier ideas on agency beyond the state and the transnationalization of governance arenas. Second, we review contributions that have more systematically engaged with the concept of governance architectures, resulting in a stimulating new academic debate on the characteristics of complex governance systems and the consequences of governance complexity and fragmentation. Third, we note a distinct normative turn in global environmental scholarship in general and global climate governance in particular, associated with question of access, accountability, allocation, fairness, justice and legitimacy. The assessment of each of these debates is centered around questions of effective and legitimate climate governance to counter the climate emergency. Finally, as a way of concluding, we critically reflect on our own scholarly shortcomings and suggest a modest remedy.

Rapid global urbanisation has seen a growing number of urban poor who lack natural endowments to cope with food shortages. Broadening their safety nets merits urgent political attention but requires understanding their profiles. A survey among 88 urban poor in Benin found that they had low educational and income levels, overcrowded and unsanitary housing conditions, and limited access to social services and health facilities; 76 per cent of them were food insecure, influenced by city, gender, ownership of a motorbike, and access to health facilities. Engaging them in allotment gardens requires farming skills, financial capital, and safety issues.

In support of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) global monitoring plan under the Stockholm Convention contributing laboratories were offered to take part in a series of interlaboratory assessments on persistent organic pollutants (POPs). The results of two rounds of these assessments are reported. The target compounds were polychlorinated biphenyls, organochlorine pesticides, polybrominated diphenylethers, one polybrominated biphenyl and hexabromocyclododecane diastereomers. The matrices distributed were a test solution, fish, sediment, human milk, and air extracts. The number of participants in each round was well over 100, showing the interest of laboratories worldwide. The results showed that many laboratories still struggle to obtain acceptable standard deviations of around 25% for their determinations. In particular for organochlorine pesticides serious improvement in quality is required. Acceptable results were obtained for the air extracts and for the determination of polybrominated diphenylethers in various matrices.

Public organizations need to learn and evolve continuously to keep up with emerging complexities. This may require a transformational organizational change, including culture, strategy, structure and working methods for service delivery. The aim of the study is to understand how a video-based reflection method could support an action learning (AL) and action research (AR) process to enhance transformative capacity among a group of team leaders in a changing youth care organization. Sixteen team leaders participated in the video-reflection process. The steps were: (1) all leaders were filmed leading a team meeting; (2) each leader reflected on a peer’s video; and (3) reflections were analyzed, and themes were abstracted. (4) Related to these themes, video fragments were compiled to share with the leaders in Focus Group Discussions (FGDs), where the leaders discussed the videos and formulated key lessons. (5) Key lessons were summarized in a report. Data collection included: video-recordings, evaluation sheets and field notes acquired during the process of video-reflection and seven months later, interviews with team leaders (n = 11) about their learning experiences. This study shows greater transformative capacity in most of the team leaders. Awareness of their work practice, as well as the process of reflexive monitoring during the FGDs, contributed to widening the scope of their reflective reality, and thus their sense of agency in adapting their practices, such as moderating their occasionally controlling behavior, being able to structure the team meetings effectively, and understanding when to use specific leadership roles.

Het opstellen van regels ter bescherming van burgers tegen de schadelijke gevolgen van klimaatverandering is een taak van de wetgever. De civiele rechter heeft op dat terrein in beginsel geen rol. Als echter sprake is van reguleringsfalen en de overheid daardoor tekortschiet in de bescherming van de burger kan dat anders zijn. Nu de doelen uit de Klimaatwet stelselmatig niet worden gehaald kan betoogd worden dat er, zeker op het moment dat de Shell-zaak speelde, sprake was van zo’n reguleringsfalen. Aan het daaropvolgende civiele oordeel kan echter wel de eis worden gesteld dat het feitelijk de mensenrechtelijke positie van de (toekomstige) bewoners van Nederland dient. Want als het optreden van de civiele rechter niet effectief is, corrigeert het dat reguleringsfalen niet. Die effectiviteit is in de Shell-zaak op voorhand niet evident.

This paper presents a geoarcheological study on potential canal subsections present in the Roman-age Vecht branch of the Rhine-Meuse delta (the Netherlands).The first Roman canals in this delta were dug around 12 BC by Drusus, but their location has been the subject of debate since the 16th century, with various hypotheses proposed. Based on actual palaeogeographical knowledge of the Rhine-Meuse delta, the Utrechtse Vecht hypothesis is considered the most plausible. Within the study area, in the northern part of the Vecht system, natural sections of this river may alternate with possible artificial reaches, created at the time of Drusus. Such artificial canals, being part of an otherwise natural channel belt system, can widen and deepen overtime, eroding all or most of the recognizable features associated with their original construction. As study area was chosen a relatively straight section of the Vecht between two former lakes. Two approaches were used. The first approach centred upon mapping channel morphology and recording sediment stratigraphy of the river deposits through detailed auger coring. Results corroborated the hypothesis of an originally straight feature (landform), confirming that it might have started life as a dug course, but not providing preserved archaeological remains of this stage. The second approach was chronological, whereby a programme of 14C dating was undertaken to refine the understanding of the origin and development of this reach of the Vecht, allowing earlier chronological investigations to be further contextualised and reassessed. A significant challenge to understand age control and floodplain evolution is the degradation of the top of the clayey peat that was observed below the levee deposits; this degradation is due to the lowering of groundwater levels and causes the end of peat growth to be dated as older than it actually is. Using new radiocarbon dates we have reconstructed that the Overmeer-Nigtevecht reach of the Vecht between two former lakes started life as a straight channel. We have constrained its age to be closer to the time of Drusus’ activities (early Roman age). Although we have not found in situ remains of Drusus canal(s), these two new insights make the Vecht option, effectuated by a series of short canals, more likely to be the Drusus canal(s).

In Massafer Yatta–Hebron Governorate, around 1,400 Palestinian people are herding sheep and goats and live in caves and movable tents without a water network or sewer system. In the winter season rainwater is harvested for drinking purposes and stored in underground cisterns. Yet, spo-radic water quality tests indicated a contamination level of micro-organisms ranging from 20 to 100 Colony Forming Unit (CFU/100 mL). In this area, rife with political conflicts, connection to a piped network seems unsure, at best, and calls for using natural and available resources to filter clean and potable water are justified. This study addresses these social requests by testing the efficiency of Thermo Tolerant Coliform removal (TTC) using bio-sand filters (BSFs) under real conditions in a full factorial design of experiment. The dependent variables are charge volume, age of BSF, the outside temperature, residential time, turbidity, water sources, and free chlorine contents. The inde-pendent variables are volume of BSF and sand grain size. The result shows that the 5 h residence time of water and the media age of more than one month is significant to remove the TTC from drinking water with P-values of 0.0439 and 0.0089, respectively. Water with 500 CFU/100 mL, TTC needs more than 5 h residence time to reduce the TTC below the 10 CFU/100 mL. Turbidity and sources of drinking water did not affect the removal of TCC, yet, using 0.18 mm effective sand grain size was significant in removing TTC. The adoption of a 23 h water residency period was the most important of all operating parameters including the 0.18 mm effective sand size to remove about 99.8% of TTC. This study recommends a BSF that generates more than 20 L in 23 h, and the BSF Schmutzdeke should be replaced every 4 y.

About half of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions remain in the atmosphere and half are taken up by the land and ocean1. If the carbon uptake by land and ocean sinks becomes less efficient, for example, owing to warming oceans2 or thawing permafrost3, a larger fraction of anthropogenic emissions will remain in the atmosphere, accelerating climate change. Changes in the efficiency of the carbon sinks can be estimated indirectly by analysing trends in the airborne fraction, that is, the ratio between the atmospheric growth rate and anthropogenic emissions of CO2 (refs. 4–10). However, current studies yield conflicting results about trends in the airborne fraction, with emissions related to land use and land cover change (LULCC) contributing the largest source of uncertainty7,11,12. Here we construct a LULCC emissions dataset using visibility data in key deforestation zones. These visibility observations are a proxy for fire emissions13,14, which are — in turn — related to LULCC15,16. Although indirect, this provides a long-term consistent dataset of LULCC emissions, showing that tropical deforestation emissions increased substantially (0.16 Pg C decade−1) since the start of CO2 concentration measurements in 1958. So far, these emissions were thought to be relatively stable, leading to an increasing airborne fraction4,5. Our results, however, indicate that the CO2 airborne fraction has decreased by 0.014 ± 0.010 decade−1 since 1959. This suggests that the combined land–ocean sink has been able to grow at least as fast as anthropogenic emissions.

In fire emission models, the spatial resolution of both the modelling framework and the satellite data used to quantify burned area can have considerable impact on emission estimates. Consideration of this sensitivity is especially important in areas with heterogeneous land cover and fire regimes and when constraining model output with field measurements. We developed a global fire emissions model with a spatial resolution of 500 m using MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data. To accommodate this spatial resolution, our model is based on a simplified version of the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED) modelling framework. Tree mortality as a result of fire, i.e. fire-related forest loss, was modelled based on the overlap between 30 m forest loss data and MODIS burned area and active fire detections. Using this new 500 m model, we calculated global average carbon emissions from fire of 2.1±0.2 (±1σ interannual variability, IAV) Pg C yr−1 during 2002–2020. Fire-related forest loss accounted for 2.6±0.7 % (uncertainty range =1.9 %–3.3 %) of global burned area and 24±6 % (uncertainty range =16 %–31 %) of emissions, indicating that fuel consumption in forest fires is an order of magnitude higher than the global average. Emissions from the combustion of soil organic carbon (SOC) in the boreal region and tropical peatlands accounted for 13±4 % of global emissions. Our global fire emissions estimate was higher than the 1.5 Pg C yr−1 from GFED4 and similar to 2.1 Pg C yr−1 from GFED4s. Even though GFED4s included more burned area by accounting for small fires undetected by the MODIS burned area mapping algorithm, our emissions were similar to GFED4s due to higher average fuel consumption. The global difference in fuel consumption could mainly be explained by higher SOC emissions from the boreal region as constrained by additional measurements. The higher resolution of the 500 m model also contributed to the difference by improving the simulation of landscape heterogeneity and reducing the scale mismatch in comparing field measurements to model grid cell averages during model calibration. Furthermore, the fire-related forest loss algorithm introduced in our model led to more accurate and widespread estimation of high-fuel-consumption burned area. Recent advances in burned area detection at resolutions of 30 m and finer show a substantial amount of burned area that remains undetected with 500 m sensors, suggesting that global carbon emissions from fire are likely higher than our 500 m estimates. The ability to model fire emissions at 500 m resolution provides a framework for further improvements with the development of new satellite-based estimates of fuels, burned area, and fire behaviour, for use in the next generation of GFED.

Datos de investigación en https://zenodo.org/record/7352172, European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program - Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement [no. 847504]; MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 [CEX2021-001131-S]; Government of Asturias (Spain), FICYT [AYUD/2021/58534]