Response of coastal zone management programs to sea level rise in the United States

Abstract

State coastal zone management programs are responding to the potential impacts of accelerated sea level rise through a wide range of activities and policies. This article provides a brief overview of the Coastal Zone Management Act and other federal laws that provide the basis for coastal state regulatory activities. It surveys the level of response to sea level rise by state coastal management programs in 24 marines coastal states, from formal recognition to implementation of policies addressing the issue. Individual state CZMP responses and policies that have been implemented or proposed are categorized. The adaptation of sea level rise to ongoing institutional objectives is discussed and policy constraints and trends are summarized.     

Highway alignment optimization through feasible gates

An efficient optimization approach, called feasible gate (FG), is developed to enhance the computation efficiency and solution quality of the previously developed highway alignment optimization (HAO) model. This approach seeks to realistically represent various user preferences and environmentally sensitive areas and consider them along with geometric design constraints in the optimization process. This is done by avoiding the generation of infeasible solutions that violate various constraints and thus focusing the search on the feasible solutions. The proposed method is simple, but improves significantly the model's computation time and solution quality. Such improvements are demonstrated with two test examples from a real road project.     

Sediment community biomass and respiration in the Northeast water polynya, Greenland: a numerical simulation of benthic lander and spade core data

Sediment community metabolism (oxygen demand) was measured in the Northeast Water (NEW) polynya off Greenland employing two methods: in situ benthic chambers deployed with a benthic (GOMEX) lander and shipboard laboratory Batch Micro-Incubation Chambers (BMICs) utilizing ‘cores’ recovered from USNEL box cores. The mean benthic respiration rate measured with the lander was 0.057 mM O₂ m⁻² h⁻¹ (n = 5); whereas the mean measured with the BMICs was 0.11 mM O₂ m⁻² h⁻¹ (n = 21; p < 0.01 that the means were the same). In terms of carbon fluxes (14 and 27 mg C m⁻² d⁻¹), these respiration rates represent ca. 5–15% of the average net primary production measured in the euphotic zone in 1992. The biomass of the bacteria, meiofauna and macrofauna were measured at each location to quantify the relationship between total community respiration and total community biomass (mean 1.42 g C m⁻²). Average carbon residence time in the biota, calculated by dividing the biomass by the respiration, was on the order of 50–100 days, which is comparable to relatively oligotrophic continental margins at temperate latitudes.The biomass and respiration data for the aerobic heterotrophic bacteria, the infaunal invertebrates (meiofauna and macrofauna), and the epifaunal megabenthos (two species of brittle stars) are summarized in a ‘steady-state’ solution of a sediment food chain model, in terms of carbon. This carbon budget illustrates the relative importance of the sediment-dwelling invertebrates in the benthic subsystem, compared to the bacteria and the epibenthos, during the summer open-water period in mud-lined troughs at depths of about 300 m. The input needed to drive heterotrophic respiratory processes was within the range of the input of organic matter recorded in moored, time-sequencing sediment traps.A time-dependent numerical simulation of the model was run to investigate the potential responses of the three size groups of benthos to abrupt seasonal pulses of particulate organic matter. The model suggests that there is a time lag in the increase in bottom community biomass and respiration following the POC pulse, and provides hypothetical estimates for the potential carbon storage in the summer (open water), followed by catabolic losses during each ensuing winter (ice covered).This sequence of storage and respiration may contribute to the process of seasonal CO₂ ‘rectification’ (sensu Yager et al., 1995) in some Arctic ecosystems.     

Diel vertical migration and feeding in adult female Calanus pacificus, Metridia lucens and Pseudocalanus newmani during a spring bloom in Dabob Bay, a fjord in Washington USA

Diel vertical migration and feeding on phytoplankton by adult female Calanus pacificus, Metridia lucens and Pseudocalanus newmani were simultaneously measured near the end of a phytoplankton bloom. Almost the entire Calanus population migrated out of the deep layer (108–50 m) at night but only about 30% came to the surface (25–0 m). Feeding occurred only at night and was equally high in the surface and intermediate layers, in spite of much higher food concentrations in the surface. Like Calanus, the entire Metridia population was found in the deep layer during the day but unlike Calanus, 20–50% remained in the deep layer at night and most migratory Metridia were collected from the surface layer. Metridia feeding at night was highest in the surface layer but significant feeding also occurred in both the intermediate and deep layers. Migratory behavior of Pseudocalanus was weak, with the proportion of the population in the surface layer increasing from slightly <10% during the day to approx 30% at night. Feeding occurred in both surface and intermediate layers throughout the 24 h but was greater in both layers at night. The different migratory patterns are discussed in the context of our current understanding of the contributions of predator avoidance and feeding to diel vertical migration.     

(Law for the Promotion of Competition and Consumer Protection) was passed in early 1995. The impact this law will eventually have, however, is uncertain because rules for its implementation have not yet been established.

Governments in their port reform efforts have experimented with liberalization and commercialization to improve port operations. Because of their failure to meet expectations or because of changing competitive environments, these options have generally been discarded in favour of privatization. In mature large-volume port systems, privatization was a relatively obvious solution, because interport or interterminal competition would be achieved to the extent that the monopolistic tendencies characteristic of their predecessor organizations would cease to exist. In countries with a limited number of ports having relatively small cargo volumes, however, the case is quite different. These countries would have to pursue strategies that would still induce competition in spite of their limited cargo volumes if they hoped to achieve the same privatization benefits and market disciplines enjoyed in other countries. This article examines the port reform approaches used in three distinct competitive settings;the experiences in these countries offer some guidance on how to assure that ports will feel competitive pressures even under conditions of limited cargo volumes.     

小型帆船自适应自动舵

帆船由于其结构的特殊使其动态特性呈严重的非线性，航向很难控制。首先针对一种小型竞赛用的12m长美洲杯赛帆船，从其结构出发建立数学模型，并对该模型进行了开环仿真试验以验证其真实程度。然后利用MATLAB辨识工具在不同的外部条件下得到各具特色的不同模型，由此确认模型参数的巨大变化难以用一个近似于当前运行模式下的线性化模型设计控制器，因而设计了一个采用自适应LQR的自动舵以控制帆船尖不同外部条件下都能保持航向。最后在该模型上作了仿真，取得了较好的效果。     

BOOK REVIEW

Abstract

Nationwide Transport Surveys and Time‐Use Surveys both reflect the daily agendas and schedules of the reporting individuals and should therefore yield comparable indicators of travel behaviour; for instance: immobility rate (share of persons not leaving the home on any one day), daily travel time, and number of trips per day. These two surveys exist in three countries from the same time period: Belgium, France, Great Britain. The comparisons demonstrate that they tell parallel stories, but that the levels of the variables are significantly different with lower immobility rates and longer travel times reported in the Time‐Use Surveys. These surveys should therefore be integrated in the analysis of travel behaviour analysis as a crucial yardstick. In Europe, where Nationwide Travel Surveys are intermittent and not harmonized, the harmonised Time‐Use Surveys allow for crucial European‐wide comparisions across time and space.     

Mass and heat transports in the NE Barents Sea: Observations and models

The strait between Novaya Zemlya and Frans Josef Land, here called the Barents Sea Exit (BSX) is investigated using data obtained from a current-meter array deployed in 1991–1992, and two numerical models (ROMS and NAME). Combining the observations and models the net volume flux towards the Arctic Ocean was estimated to 2.0 ± 0.6 Sv (1 Sv = 10⁶ m³s^? 1). The observations indicate that about half of this transport consists of dense, Cold Bottom Water, which may penetrate to great depths and contribute to the thermohaline circulation. Both models give quite similar net transport, seasonal variations and spatial current structures, and the discrepancies from the observations were related to the coarse representation of the bottom topography in the models. Also the models indicate that actual deployment did not capture the main in- and outflows through the BSX. A snapshot of the hydrographic structure (CTD section) indicates that both models are good at reproducing the salinity. Nevertheless, they react differently to atmospheric cooling, although the same meteorological forcing was applied. This may be due to the different parameterisation of sea ice and that tides were included in only one of the models (ROMS). Proxies for the heat transport are found to be small at the BSX, and it can not be ruled out that the Barents Sea is a heat sink rather than a heat source for the Arctic Ocean.     

2009年美国市场新车技术概览（下）

当我们提到进口汽车品牌（译者注：这里指在美国市场）时，往往会想到燃油经济性，因为这是市场上进口车型获得赞誉的法宝，也是经济型车辆占据主流的原因。但2009年的进口车型系列看起来却更像是各品牌、各档次车型的群星荟萃，这表明经济型车辆之外的车型也多少进入了美国车市的主流，如KIa（起亚）这样的曾经被视为低价位经济型轿车的制造商也将于2009年推出的新款Borrego，装备了38LV6发动机并可选装4．6LV8发动机，是具有非承载式车身的中型SUV车型；现代汽车公司将于2009年推出的一款豪华运动型轿车——Genesis。