1,721,045 research outputs found
Sustainability, collapse and oscillations in a simple World-Earth model
No full textThe Anthropocene is characterized by close interdependencies between the natural Earth system and the global human society, posing novel challenges to model development. Here we present a conceptual model describing the long-term co-evolution of natural and socio-economic subsystems of Earth. While the climate is represented via a global carbon cycle, we use economic concepts to model socio-metabolic flows of biomass and fossil fuels between nature and society. A well-being-dependent parametrization of fertility and mortality governs human population dynamics. Our analysis focuses on assessing possible asymptotic states of the Earth system for a qualitative understanding of its complex dynamics rather than quantitative predictions. Low dimension and simple equations enable a parameter-space analysis allowing us to identify preconditions of several asymptotic states and hence fates of humanity and planet. These include a sustainable co-evolution of nature and society, a global collapse and everlasting oscillations. We consider different scenarios corresponding to different socio-cultural stages of human history. The necessity of accounting for the ‘human factor’ in Earth system models is highlighted by the finding that carbon stocks during the past centuries evolved opposing to what would ‘naturally’ be expected on a planet without humans. The intensity of biomass use and the contribution of ecosystem services to human well-being are found to be crucial determinants of the asymptotic state in a (pre-industrial) biomass-only scenario without capital accumulation. The capitalistic, fossil-based scenario reveals that trajectories with fundamentally different asymptotic states might still be almost indistinguishable during even a centuries-long transient phase. Given current human population levels, our study also supports the claim that besides reducing the global demand for energy, only the extensive use of renewable energies may pave the way into a sustainable future.Open-Access-Publikationsfonds 201
How temperature seasonality drives interglacial permafrost dynamics: implications for paleo reconstructions and future thaw trajectories
No full textAbstract. Various proxy records have suggested widespread permafrost degradation in northern high latitudes during interglacial warm climates, including the mid Holocene (MH, 6000 years before present) and the last interglacial (LIG, 127 ka BP), and linked this to substantially warmer high-latitude climates compared to the pre-industrial period (PI). However, most Earth system models suggest only modest warming or even slight cooling in terms of annual mean surface temperatures during these interglacials, seemingly contradicting the reconstructions of widespread permafrost degradation. Here, we combine paleo climate simulations of the Alfred Wegener Institute's Earth system model version 2.5 (AWI-ESM-2.5) with the CryoGridLite permafrost model to investigate the ground thermal regime and freeze-thaw dynamics in northern high-latitude land areas during the MH and the LIG in comparison to the PI. Specifically, we decompose how the annual mean and seasonal amplitude (that is, the difference between the maximum and minimum monthly mean) of surface temperatures affect the occurrence of permafrost, seasonal frost, thaw depth and duration, and thermal contraction cracking activity. For the MH (LIG) AWI-ESM-2.5 simulated global-mean surface temperatures in the simulation domain to be about 0.1 K lower (0.4 K higher), and the global-mean seasonal amplitudes to be 2.9 K (7.4 K) higher than for the PI. With respect to interglacial permafrost characteristics, our simulations revealed that (i) local permafrost probabilities and global permafrost extent are predominantly determined by mean temperatures, (ii) maximum thaw depths are increasing with both annual mean and seasonal amplitudes, and (iii) thermal contraction cracking within the permafrost domain is almost solely driven by the seasonal amplitudes of surface temperatures. Thus, not only mean warming, but also the enhanced seasonal temperature amplitude due to a different orbital forcing have driven permafrost and ground ice dynamics during past interglacial climates. Our results provide an additional explanation of reconstructed periods of marked permafrost degradation in the past, which was driven by deep surficial thaw during summer, while colder winters allowed for permafrost persistence in greater depths. Our results further suggest that past interglacial climates have limited suitability as analogues for future permafrost thaw trajectories, as rising mean temperatures paralleled by decreasing seasonal amplitudes expose the northern permafrost region to magnitudes of thaw that are likely unprecedented since at least Marine Isotope Stage 11c (about 400 ka BP)
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Measurements in soil and air at Samoylov Station (2002-2018), version 201908
No full textThis data set includes meteorological, soil, permafrost data obtained from the long term observational site Samoylov, located in the Lena River Delta, Siberia, between 1998 to 2018. The instrumentation, calibration, proccessing and data quality control is explained in Boike et al. (2018).
The mean annual air temperature 1998–2017 was calculated as -12.3 °C, but includes years with missing data (1998, 2000–2003, 2005, 2006, 2009, 2010). Including only years with full data records (1999, 2004, 2007-2017), the mean annual air temperature is -11.7 °C. Similarly, the mean monthly temperatures of the warmest month (July) is computed as 9.4 °C (average of years 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2011-2017) and for the coldest month (February) -31.7 °C (average of months of 1999, 2000, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2011-2017). The average summer rainfall (June-October) was 145.2 mm (average of years 1999, 2003–2008, 2011-2017).
This is a new version of dataset:
Boike, Julia; Nitzbon, Jan; Anders, Katharina; Grigoriev, Mikhail N; Bolshiyanov, Dimitry Yu; Langer, Moritz; Lange, Stephan; Bornemann, Niko; Morgenstern, Anne; Schreiber, Peter; Wille, Christian; Chadburn, Sarah; Gouttevin, Isabelle; Kutzbach, Lars (2018): Measurements in soil and air at Samoylov Station (2002-2018). PANGAEA, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.891142
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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