SEI Publications 2018
Publications by SEI York centre staff are listed here. For the full list of SEI Publications please visit the SEI website.
To read the publication click the title.
This paper draws attention to the fact that material efficiency perspectives are insufficient in the assessment of pressures on the marine environment driven by consumption of fisheries products, and – whilst challenges remain - there is a growing abundance of information and development of methods that could potentially be utilised to overcome gaps in the future.
Authors: West, C. D., Hobbs, E., Croft, S. A., Green, J. M. H., Schmidt, S. Y. and Wood, R.
Four published ozone damage functions previously used in terrestrial biosphere models were evaluated regarding their ability to simulate observed biomass dose–response relationships using the O-CN model. Neither damage function was able to reproduce the observed ozone-induced biomass reductions. Calibrating a plant-functional-type-specific relationship between accumulated ozone uptake and leaf-level photosynthesis did lead to a good agreement between observed and modelled ozone damage.
Authors: Franz, M., Alonso, R., Arneth, A., Büker, P., Elvira, S., Gerosa, G., Emberson et al
The study estimates the number of asthma emergency room visits and new onset asthma cases globally attributable to fine particulate matter (PM2.5), ozone, and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) concentrations.
Methods included epidemiological health impact functions combined with data describing population, baseline asthma incidence and prevalence, and pollutant concentrations, as well as a new dataset of national and regional emergency room visit rates among asthmatics using published survey data.
Authors: S. C. Anenberg, D. K. Henze, N. Fann, C. S. Malley, J.C.I. Kuylenstierna et al
Citizen science, the active participation of the public in scientific research projects, is a rapidly expanding field in open science and open innovation. This chapter sets out to identify and explain the Ten Principles of Citizen Science as the product of international collaboration within the citizen science community. These principles present a framework of standards to foster excellence in all aspects of citizen science. They were developed by an international community of citizen science practitioners and researchers who set out their shared view of the characteristics that underpin high quality citizen science. The principles are currently available in 26 languages.
The Ten Principles provide a framework against which to assess new and existing citizen science initiatives with the aim of fostering excellence in all aspects of citizen science. At a time when citizen science is rapidly expanding but not yet mainstreamed within traditional research or policy processes, the Ten Principles provide governments, decision-makers, researchers and project leaders with a common set of core principles to consider when funding, developing or assessing citizen science projects.
Authors: Sarah West et al
This article assesses premature respiratory mortality attributable to long-term O3 exposure for three regions of the world using ground-based monitoring data.
This study highlights the utility of dense observation networks in estimating exposure to long-term O3 exposure and provides an observational constraint on subsequent health burdens for three regions of the world. In addition, these results demonstrate how small biases in modeled results of long-term O3 exposure can amplify estimated health impacts due to nonlinear exposure-response curves.
Authors: Seltzer, K.M., Shindell, D.T., and Malley, C.S.
Recent literature has recognised the value of food sovereignty and human rights frameworks in agrarian struggles. Relatively little attention has gone toward how agrarian movements develop and apply their own rights discourses to further demands for social justice. This study considers Brazil's landless movement (MST) between 1984 and 1995, revealing three distinct rights discourses that recruited and mobilised protest by linking local issues to the movement's broader political project. The findings illustrate the value of rights, frames and ideology as analytical tools, shedding light on how movement-generated rights emerge through processes of reflexivity and in response to dynamic social-political contexts.
Authors: Hoddy, E. T. and Ensor, J. E.
This report analyses the challenges and opportunities to develop a forest based bioeconomy in southern Europe. It is based on a synthesis of published research papers, grey literature and reports produced by the European Commission, governmental non-governmental and corporate organisations
Authors: I. M. de Arano, B. Muys, C. Topi, D. Pettenella, D. Feliciano, E. Rigolot, F. Lefevre et al
This study introduces SEI’s hybridised multiregional input-output (MRIO) model, IOTA. IOTA utilises subnational and national-level production, trade and environmental data; national-scale commodity-use data; and a global economic MRIO to link sub-national production and associated impacts to regional final consumption.
Authors: Croft, S. A., West, C. D. and Green, J. M. H.
This paper takes a rights-based approach to understand how cultural, political and social norms and practices influence resilience.
While the complex nature of the linkages between the human and the natural have been recognised for more than a decade, the integration of the cultural, political, and social context into resilience remains an outstanding challenge. This paper argues that a better understanding of this complex context is essential if the challenges of environmental change and disaster risk are to be addressed adequately in conflict and post conflict settings.
Authors: Ensor, J. , Forrester, J. and Matin, N.
This paper quantifies the negative impact of ozone pollution on crop yields and identifies practical short- and medium-term action that could make crops more resilient.
Authors: Mills G, Sharps K, Simpson D; Pleijel H, Frei M, Emberson L, Uddling J, Broberg M, Feng Z, Kobayashi K, Agrawal M.
This paper explores the dynamics of expectations in international forest conservation and development programs, and the impacts and implications of (unfulfilled) expectations for actors involved.
Authors: Massarella, K., Sallu, S. M., Ensor, J. E. and Marchant, R.
Chamber carbon flux measurements are routinely used to assess ecosystem carbon sink/source dynamics. Often these point measurements enclose considerable vegetation biomass, with fluxes upscaled in space and time for each vegetation type. This paper assesses the importance of including the volume of peatland dwarf shrub vegetation in chamber flux calculations and outlines a simple but effective method of assessing plant volumes. It shows that inclusion of plant volumes significantly affects fluxes and that this effect becomes greater as the proportion of chamber volume occupied by plants increases. Moreover, it demonstrates that, with an initial destructive laboratory assessment for each plant species and a little practice at volume estimation, plant volumes can be accurately assessed non-destructively in the field.
Author(s): Morton, P. A. and Heinemeyer, A.
Resilience has attracted criticism for its failure to address social vulnerability and to engage with issues of equity and power. This paper asks: what is equitable resilience? Its focus is on what resilience does on the ground in relation to development, adaptation and disaster management, and on identifying critical issues for engaging with equity in resilience practice. Using techniques from systematic reviews, with variants of equitable resilience as key search terms, an analytical literature review was carried out which revealed four interconnected themes: subjectivities, inclusion, cross-scale interactions, and transformation.
Authors: Matin, N., Forrester, J. and Ensor, J.
Peatlands represent globally significant soil carbon stores that have been accumulating for millennia under water-logged conditions. However, deepening water-table depths (WTD) from climate change or human-induced drainage could stimulate decomposition resulting in peatlands turning from carbon sinks to carbon sources. Contemporary WTD ranges of testate amoebae (TA) are commonly used to predict past WTD in peatlands using quantitative transfer function models.
This study demonstrates the value of a site-specific and combined data-model validation step towards using TA-derived moisture conditions to understand past climate-driven peatland development and carbon budgets alongside modelling likely management impacts.
Author(s): Heinemeyer A., and Swindles G.T.
The report is the first Integrated Assessment of Short-lived Climate Pollutants (SLCPs) for the Latin American and Caribbean region. It highlights immediate and long-term benefits for health, food security and the climate by reducing dangerous air and climate pollutants.
Authors include: Vallack, H.W, Kuylenstierna, J.C.I , Hicks, W.K. and Malley, M.
This is the first UK study to provide a detailed qualitative longitudinal analysis of the interaction between poverty and housing over lifetimes. The report shows that good and stable housing can mitigate poverty and support life transitions.
Author(s): Croucher, K., Quilgars D. and Dyke, A.
This article presents research led by the Universities of Leicester and Edinburgh and 12 other research institutions into surface ozone levels that are important for human health.
Ozone found at the Earth’s surface (the troposphere) is an air pollutant harmful to human health. The regulatory ozone limit values designed to protect human health vary by country. The research conducted was a component of the Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report (TOAR), an international effort to improve scientific understanding of ozone’s global distribution and trends. The results provide the most ambitious ever ground-level ozone assessment, using data from over 4,800 monitoring stations across the globe.
This study uses a variety of ways of measuring the occurrence of high ozone levels to assess the frequency of periods a given population is exposed to harmful ozone levels and how this has changed over time.
Authors: Zoë L. Fleming, Ruth M. Doherty, Erika von Schneidemesser, Christopher S. Malley, Owen R. Cooper, Joseph P. Pinto, Augustin Colette, Xiaobin Xu, David Simpson, Martin G. Schultz, Allen S. Lefohn, Samera Hamad, Raeesa Moolla, Sverre Solberg, Zhaozhong Feng.
This paper provides the scientific underpinnings necessary to better understand the implications of and rationale for selecting a specific TOAR metric for assessing spatial and temporal variation in ozone for a particular impact. The rationale and underlying research evidence that influence the derivation of specific metrics are given. The form of 25 metrics (4 for model-measurement comparison, 5 for characterization of ozone in the free troposphere, 11 for human health impacts, and 5 for vegetation impacts) are described.
This CADWAGO paper analyses nine water governance case studies to help illustrate some of the underlying perspectives and implementations that underpin promising configurations in water governance.
This paper shows that global assessments of how to increase crop yield have failed to consider the negative effects of tropospheric ozone. Using a novel modelling method, the paper shows where wheat yield reductions are likely to be felt most and influenced by management practices such as irrigation.
Authors: Gina Mills, Katrina Sharps, David Simpson, Håkan Pleijel, Malin Broberg, Johan Uddling, Fernando Jaramillo, William J Davies, Frank Dentener, Maurits Van den Berg, Madhoolika Agrawal, S B Agrawal, Elizabeth A Ainsworth, Patrick Büker, Lisa Emberson, Zhaozhong Feng, Harry Harmens, Felicity Hayes, Kazuhiko Kobayashi, Elena Paoletti and Rita Van Dingenen
This paper reports on a co-design study with 117 participants investigating the interaction of existing urban spaces and infrastructure on mobility and well-being for older residents (aged 55 + years) in three UK cities.
Mobility is a key aspect of active ageing enabling participation and autonomy into later life. Remaining active brings multiple physical but also social benefits leading to higher levels of well-being. With globally increasing levels of urbanisation alongside demographic shifts meaning in many parts of the world this urban population will be older people, the challenge is how cities should evolve to enable so-called active ageing.
This paper describes the application of a spatial model to demonstrate the scale of costs and benefits arising from conservation practice in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania.
Cost data are crucial in conservation planning to identify more efficient and equitable land use options. However, many studies focus on just one cost type and neglect others, particularly those borne locally. The authors develop, for a high priority conservation area, spatial models of two local costs that arise from protected areas: foregone agricultural opportunities and increased wildlife damage.
Authors: Green, J. M. H., Fisher, B., Green, R. E., Makero, J., Platts, P. J., Robert, N., Schaafsma, M., Turner, R. K. and Balmford, A.
Tropospheric ozone is considered the most detrimental air pollutant for vegetation at the global scale, with negative consequences for both provisioning and climate regulating ecosystem services. In spite of recent developments in ozone exposure metrics, from a concentration‐based to a more physiologically relevant stomatal flux‐based index, large‐scale ozone risk assessment is still complicated by a large and unexplained variation in ozone sensitivity among tree species. Here, we explored whether the variation in ozone sensitivity among woody species can be linked to interspecific variation in leaf morphology.
We found that ozone tolerance at the leaf level was closely linked to leaf dry mass per unit leaf area (LMA) and that whole‐tree biomass reductions were more strongly related to stomatal flux per unit leaf mass (r2 = 0.56) than to stomatal flux per unit leaf area (r2 = 0.42). Furthermore, the interspecific variation in slopes of ozone flux–response relationships was considerably lower when expressed on a leaf mass basis (coefficient of variation, CV = 36%) than when expressed on a leaf area basis (CV = 66%), and relationships for broadleaf and needle‐leaf species converged when using the mass‐based index. These results show that much of the variation in ozone sensitivity among woody plants can be explained by interspecific variation in LMA and that large‐scale ozone impact assessment could be greatly improved by considering this well‐known and easily measured leaf trait.
Authors: Feng Z, Büker P, Pleijel H, Emberson L, Karlsson PE, Uddling J.