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Cities are central to the fight against climate change, but the IPCC recently noted that many cities — and particularly those in the developing world — lack the institutional, financial and technical capacities needed to switch to low emission development paths
. Based on detailed case studies of three Asian cities, this paper finds that the adoption of low emission development strategies (LEDS) at the urban level could be economically attractive. However, it also argues that without a coordinated multi-level, cross-sectoral governance framework these opportunities for low carbon urban development are likely to be left unexploited. As these governance conditions are frequently not in place, we argue that these case study cities, and cities in similar contexts, are likely to miss even the economically attractive low carbon development opportunities and become increasingly locked in to higher cost, higher carbon development paths. Due to their growing size and importance, we conclude that the presence or absence of governance arrangements that enable the adoption of low carbon development strategies in Asian cities will have global implications for climate change
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An extensive collection of speciated PM2
.5 measurements including organic tracers permitted a detailed examination of the emissions from residential wood combustion (RWC) in the southeastern United States over an entire year (2007). The Community Multiscale Air Quality model-based Integrated Source Apportionment Method (CMAQ-ISAM) was used in combination with the U.S. National Emissions Inventory (NEI) to compute source contributions from ten categories of biomass combustion, including RWC. A novel application of the receptor-based statistical model, Unmix, was used to subdivide the observed concentrations of levoglucosan, a unique tracer of biomass combustion. Using the CMAQ-ISAM and Unmix models together, we find that the emission-based RWC contribution to ambient carbonaceous PM2.5 predicted by the model is approximately a factor of two lower than indicated by observations. Recommendations for improving the temporal allocation of the emissions are proposed and tested to show a potential improvement in model RWC predictions, quantified by approximately 15% less bias. Further improvements in the sector predictions could be achieved with a survey-based analysis of detailed RWC emission patterns
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Satellite based, stereo imaging with advanced RADAR instruments appears to be a promising method for REDD
. Interferometric processing of the RADAR data provides maps of forest height changes from which we can estimate temporal changes in biomass and carbon
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Forest conservation is an important climate change mitigation strategy
. National parks in Canada’s Rocky and Purcell Mountains offer a rare opportunity to evaluate the impacts of a century of conservation on forest carbon (C) stocks and fluxes. We studied forest ecosystem C dynamics of three national parks in the Rocky and Purcell Mountains of British Columbia – Yoho, Kootenay, and Glacier National Parks – over the period 1970–2008 using the CBM-CFS3 inventory-based forest C budget model. We hypothesized that parks and protected areas would contain higher forest C density and have lower CO2 uptake rates compared to their surrounding reference areas because of the exclusion of timber harvesting and resulting predominance of older, slower growing forest stands. Results for Glacier National Park relative to its reference area were consistent with our hypothesis. Forests in Kootenay National Park were substantially younger than those in its reference area despite the exclusion of harvesting because natural disturbances affected large areas within the park over the past century. Site productivity in Kootenay National Park was also generally higher in the park than in its reference area. Consequently, Kootenay National Park had both higher C density and higher CO2 uptake than its reference area. Yoho National Park forests were similar in age to reference area forests and more productive, and therefore had both higher C stocks and greater CO2 uptake. C density was higher in all 3 parks compared to their surrounding areas, and parks with younger forests than reference areas had higher CO2 uptake. The results of this study indicate that forest conservation in protected areas such as national parks can preserve existing C stocks where natural disturbances are rare. Where natural disturbances are an important part of the forest ecology, conservation may or may not contribute to climate change mitigation because of the risk of C loss in the event of wildfire or insect-caused tree mortality. Anticipated increases in natural disturbance resulting from global warming may further reduce the climate change mitigation potential of forest conservation in disturbance-prone ecosystems. We show that managing for the ecological integrity of landscapes can also have carbon mitigation co-benefits
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We present a GIS method to interpret qualitatively expressed socio-economic scenarios in quantitative map-based terms
. (i) We built scenarios using local stakeholders and experts to define how major land cover classes may change under different sets of drivers; (ii) we formalised these as spatially explicit rules, for example agriculture can only occur on certain soil types; (iii) we created a future land cover map which can then be used to model ecosystem services. We illustrate this for carbon storage in the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania using two scenarios: the first based on sustainable development, the second based on [`]business as usual' with continued forest-woodland degradation and poor protection of existing forest reserves. Between 2000 and 2025 4% of carbon stocks were lost under the first scenario compared to a loss of 41% of carbon stocks under the second scenario. Quantifying the impacts of differing future scenarios using the method we document here will be important if payments for ecosystem services are to be used to change policy in order to maintain critical ecosystem services
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