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Communicating climate change through ICT-based visualization: towards an analytical framework
No full textThis article is available at www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainabilityThe difficulties in communicating climate change science to the general public
are often highlighted as one of the hurdles for support of enhanced climate action.
The advances of interactive visualization using information and communication technology
(ICT) are claimed to be a game-changer in our ability to communicate complex issues.
However, new analytical frameworks are warranted to analyse the role of such
technologies. This paper develops a novel framework for analyzing the content, form,
context and relevance of ICT-based visualization of climate change, based on insights from
literature on climate change communication. Thereafter, we exemplify the analytical
framework by applying it to a pilot case of ICT-based climate visualization in a GeoDome.
Possibilities to use affordable advanced ICT-based visualization devices in science and
policy communication are rapidly expanding. We thus see wider implications and
applications of the analytical framework not only for other ICT environments but also
other issue areas in sustainability communication
Informal Waste Recovery and Recycling: Alleviating Poverty, Environmental Pollution and Unemployment in Douala, Cameroon
No full textSCIENCEDOMAIN international
www.sciencedomain.or
Research on Climate Change and Its Impacts Needs Freedom of Research
No full textThis article is available at www.mdpi.com/journal/climateClimate change captured my interest as a teenager when, at the dining table, my dad talked about potential anthropogenic climate changes. He brought up subjects such as “climate could change if the Siberian Rivers were to be deviated to the South for irrigation of the (semi) arid areas of the former Soviet Union”. Other subjects were afforestation in the Sahel to enhance precipitation recycling, deforestation in the Tropics that could have worldwide impacts on climate, the local climate impacts of the Merowe High Dam in its vicinity and downstream, Atlantropa, a new ice age, and the increase in days with sunshine after the introduction of the high-chimney policy in the Rhein-Ruhr area, just to mention a few.
Various investigations from different, independent researchers showed evidence for climate change at various spatial and temporal scales. The causes of climate change are manifold. They range from astronomical changes, changes in the distribution of continents including mountain ranges and heights, volcanic eruptions, evolution of the biosphere, to anthropogenic impacts, among many others. Anthropogenic impacts encompass, but are not limited to, emission of greenhouse gases (e.g., water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone) as well as trace gases that are precursors for aerosols, land-cover changes for food production, grazing, hunting, wood harvesting, housing, recreation, water storage, and transportation, as well as openpit mining, oil and gas drilling. Even emission-control measures, to protect human health, may impact the local, and potentially regional, climate as aerosol-precursor concentrations, and particle concentrations and their composition may change. Teleconnections can propagate regional change signals to areas far downwind of the initial changes. This means climate change needs no passport or visa to enter another country. We are all in it together.
A habitable, reachable planet is hard to find. Thus, just the idea that the activity of humankind may impact the climate of our “spaceship” Earth can be frightening, even terrifying, and may cause stress. As with handling any other stress, it is important to stay cool. Doing so enables researchers to gather the facts (knowledge, data), think, build hypotheses and test them, identify gaps in the knowledge, think about what data one would need to close these gaps, build new hypotheses, gather further data and/or develop and improve models to test the hypotheses, and so on. Scientific data-based knowledge is critical for understanding natural and anthropogenic impacts on climate, feedback mechanisms between various processes and components of the Earth system, sensitivities, uncertainties, and the magnitude of various natural and anthropogenic impacts. Such understanding and knowledge are urgent needs for cost-effective and ethical decisions for all living beings on Earth, and a growing world population with its growing water, food, and energy demands.
Being aware that climate change has always happened, humankind cannot afford to split into groups that are not willing and/or even not able to talk to each other. Humankind cannot afford that their scientists waste their time on being captivated by interest groups, and petty discussions for/about funding, and lose the freedom of research.
Scientific debate is fruitful, necessary and will always exist. Recall when physicists disputed about the wave and particle structure of electro-magnetic waves, or the validity of the general theory of relativity. In the end, it turned out both times that both arguments were right. The discrepancies were due to the experimental design and the point they were coming from.
Most likely climate science is at the dawn of something similarly exciting. In the interest of freedom of research and progress in climate research, we should not ask to which group a scientist and/or his/her research “belongs”. Instead, we, as the climate science community, have to ask questions like: Why do we get results that have to be interpreted in one or the other way? Did we, by accident, capture a special case such as mechanics within the relativity theory? Are we overlooking something? What impacts have closing/installing of observational sites and improved measurements for knowledge about the climates of the globe? Can we demonstrate that Earth system models, climate models or even very simple models are able to capture past observations? Which opportunities have we overlooked and tools do we have available that could advance climate research? For instance, a great, often overlooked, capability of models is that they can be used to learn/examine what is important when, and where.
If the same hypothesis is once rejected based on a dataset used, and once accepted based on another dataset, the logical next step is to compare the two datasets, and to investigate the reasons. Is one or are both datasets biased and/or contaminated by changes in the instrumentation, the measurement protocol, or in the environment other than climate change? What different information do the two datasets hold that led to the different answers? Can we find other data to figure out whether we are dealing with a special case? Are we overlooking a process that only becomes important under certain circumstances? Are we facing something similar to the UV-catastrophe in the Rayleigh-Jeans law? Climate wants to be a forum to stimulate such questions, ideas, and discussions
Human influences on tree diversity and composition of a coastal forest ecosystem: The case of Ngumburuni forest reserve, Rufiji, Tanzania
No full texthttp://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/305874This paper reports on the findings of an ecological survey conducted in Ngumburuni Forest Reserve, a biodiversity rich forest
reserve within the coastal forests of Tanzania. The main goal of this study was to determine the influence of uncontrolled
anthropogenic activities on tree species diversity and composition within the forest ecosystem. It was revealed that economic
activities including logging, charcoaling, and shifting cultivation were the most important disturbing activities affecting ecological
functioning and biodiversity integrity of the forest. Further to this, we noted that the values of species diversity, composition,
and regeneration potential within the undisturbed forest areas were significantly different from those in heavily disturbed areas.
These observations confirm that the ongoing human activities have already caused size quality degradation of useful plants,
enhanced species diversification impacts to the forest ecosystem, and possibly negatively affected the livelihoods of the adjacent
local communities. Despite these disturbances, Ngumburuni forest reserve still holds important proportions of both endemic and
threatened animal and plant species. The study suggests urgent implementation of several conservation measures in order to limit
accessibility to the forest resources so as to safeguard the richness and abundance of useful biodiversity stocks in the reserve
Decline in maize and beans production in the face of climate change at Hai District in Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania
No full textPurpose – The purpose of this paper is to show how climatic change in Africa is expected to lead to a higher occurrence of severe droughts in semiarid and arid ecosystems. Understanding how crop productions react to such events is, thus, crucial for addressing future challenges for food security and poverty alleviation.
Design/methodology/approach – The authors explored how temperature and rainfall patterns determined maize and beans production in Hai District in Kilimanjaro Region, Tanzania.
Findings – Annual food crops were particularly sensitive to the drought and maize and beans yields were lower than perennial crops during the years of drought. The authors also report strong and significant association between maize and beans production with temperature and rainfall patterns.
Practical implications – This study highlights how severe droughts can dramatically affect yields of annual crops and suggests that extreme climatic events might act as a major factor affecting agriculture production and food security, delaying or preventing the realization of the Millennium Development Goals.
Originality/value – This is the first study that highlights how severe droughts can dramatically affect yields of annual crops in Hai District contributing to other climate studies done elsewhere in Tanzania and the world at large.The authors thank the staff at Hai District Council and Kilimanjaro International Airport
Meteorological station for providing access to data used in this research. The authors also thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable contribution to the improvement of this manuscrip
Integrated assessment of forest cover change and above-ground carbon stock in Pugu and Kazimzumbwi forest reserves, Tanzania
No full textthis article is also available at http://coastalforests.tfcg.org/pubs/Japhet%20et%20al%202013.%20Integrated%20assesment%20of%20forest%20cover%20change%20in%20Tanzania.pdfA study was conducted to estimate the forest cover change, quantify and map tree above-ground carbon stock using Re- mote sensing and GIS techniques together with forest inventory. Landsat images of 1980, 1995 and 2010 acquired dur- ing dry season were used in the estimation of cover changes. Supervised image classification using Maximum Likeli- hood Classifier was performed in ERDAS Imagine software to analyze the images and further analysis was performed in Arc GIS 9.3 software. Stratified sampling procedure was used to select concentric inventory plots in Pugu Forest Re- serve (PFR) and Kazimzumbwi Forest Reserve (KFR). Plots were laid according to NAFORMA, and the tree parame- ters in each sampling plot were collected. A Microsoft Excel spreadsheet was used to compute the above-ground bio- mass for each plot using an empirical equation relating wood basic density and tree height. The above-ground carbon was calculated using a conversion factor of 0.49. Geostatistical method in ArcGIS was used to analyze and map carbon. Results revealed that for the periods 1980-1995 and 1995-2010, Closed Forest in PFR decreased by 4.5% and 25.3% respectively, while for KFR, Closed Forest decreased by 11.9% and 31.3% respectively. The mean carbon density for PFR and KFR were respectively 5.72 tC/ha and 0.98 tC/ha while carbon stocks were 14 730.41 tC and 7 206.46 tC re- spectively. The revealed low carbon densities were attributable to decline in area under Closed Forest in the two Forest Reserves. The study recommends concerted efforts to enhance proper management of the forests so that the two forest reserves may contribute to REDD initiatives.This research was supported by a NORAD funded re- search programme—Climate Change Impacts, Adapta- tion and Mitigation (CCIAM) of the Sokoine University of Agricultur
Using climate information to support adaptation planning and policy-making: A step-by-step guide With a case study in Cape Town, South Africa
No full textThis document is available at http://weadapt.org/knowledge-base/using-climate-information/guide-to-using-climate-informationthe Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN
On the Current and Future Dry Spell Characteristics over Africa
No full textChanges in precipitation frequency and intensity distribution over Africa will
have a direct impact on dry spells and, therefore, will affect various climate sensitive
sectors. In this study, the ability of the fifth generation of the Canadian Regional Climate
Model (CRCM5) in simulating annual and seasonal dry spell characteristics is assessed for
four precipitation thresholds (0.5 mm, 1 mm, 2 mm and 3 mm) over Africa. The dry spell
characteristics considered are the number of dry days, number of dry spells and five-year
return levels of maximum dry spell durations. The performance errors are assessed by
comparing ERA-Interim driven CRCM5 with the Global Precipitation Climatology Project
(GPCP) dataset, for the common 1997–2008 period. Lateral boundary forcing errors, i.e.,
errors in the CRCM5 simulation created by errors in the driving Canadian Earth System
model (CanESM2) data—as well as the added value—of CRCM5 over CanESM2 are also
assessed for the current climate. This is followed by an assessment of projected changes to
dry spell characteristics for two future climates (2041–2070 and 2071–2100) simulated by
both CRCM5 driven by CanESM2 and CanESM2 itself, for Representative Concentration
Pathway (RCP) 4.5. Results suggest that CRCM5 driven by ERA-Interim has a tendency to
overestimate the annual mean number of dry days and the five-year return level of the
maximum dry spell duration in a majority of the regions while it slightly underestimates
the number of dry spells. In general, the CRCM5 performance errors associated with the
annual and seasonal dry spell characteristics are found to be larger in magnitude compared to the lateral boundary forcing errors. Projected changes to the dry spell characteristics for the 2041–2070 and 2071–2100 periods, with respect to the 1981–2010 period suggests significant changes in the tropics, with the mean number of dry days and the five-year return levels of maximum dry spell duration increasing, while the mean number of dry spell days decreases
Heavy metal in inhalable and respirable particles in urban atmosphere
No full textHuman activities in Sapele are veritable sources of particulate pollution which are exuded into the atmosphere.
These activities include bush burning which is one of the pre-planting activities, transportation, gas flaring,
incineration of wastes refuse disposal and the use of wood as a source of fuel. The objective of this study is to
determine the concentration of the trace metal in particulate matter captured in glass fibre filter paper. High
volume sampler was used to collect the respirable and inhalable suspended particulate matter at ten different
sites located in Sapele, from December 2010 to April 2011. The foam and the glass fibre filter were analysed
for nine (Mn, Ni, Cr, Cd, Zn, Cu, Co, Fe, and Pb) respectively by Flame Atomic Absorption
Spectrophotometer (FAAS). The concentration of the respirable particle ranged from 104.17 to 145.83μg/m3
while the inhalable concentration ranged from 166.67 to 812.50μg/m3. From the analysis the element Cd was
moderately enriched
Socio-economic and ecological dimensions of climate variability and change for agropastoral communities in central Tanzania
No full textA study was conducted in 2012 in Gairo district, central Tanzania with aim to assess the socio-economic and ecological factors influencing the agro-pastoral communities in responding to the prevailing climate variability and change. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected through a combination of methods including structured interviews, focused group discussions and personal observations. Quantitative data were analyzed by means of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) IBM 20 computer program whilst qualitative data were subjected to content analysis. A multiple regression analysis was used to explore the relationship between socio-economic factors as independent variables and perceptions on variability and change of rainfall as a dependent variable. Climate variability and change was found to increase death of animals due to inadequate pasture and water especially during dry season. It was further unfolded that human conflicts due to grazing in unauthorized areas and decreased crop yield and failure incidences are increasing. Women were seen in many ways to be more vulnerable to climate variability and change than men due to their household roles and dominancy of male in decision making regarding household assets at times of famine. A number of adaption and coping strategies were spontaneously practiced across the study area to cope with water related stresses in crop and livestock production. The coping strategies include shifting cultivation, vegetable gardens, pasture trekking, digging boreholes in sand rivers, mixed cropping including earlier maturing crops (groundnuts) and drought resistant crops such as sorghum. Therefore, there is a need to undertake capacity building activities to agro-pastoral communities for increased awareness of the effects of climate changes, and improved capacity to understand and deal with climatic change impacts. Also, training in agro-ecological technologies and practices for the conservation of soil and water resources in order to improve their adaptation and mitigation capacity.CCIAM Programm