Electricity distribution is a fundamental activity for society. However, mitigating actions on risks and dependencies of this activity still need to be discovered concerning Ecosystem Services (ES). This fact can negatively influence its prosperity, especially in the long term. Within this context, this paper aims to identify actions that mitigate the risks and dependencies on ES associated with a company in the electricity sector in Brazil that performs electricity distribution services. The identification was based on the collection, analysis, and interpretation of stakeholders’ perceptions of the activity through an adaptation of the Strategic Options Development and Analysis (SODA) problem structuring method. As a result, a structured vision of actions that mitigate ES risks and dependencies of electric power distribution, enabling management focused on the longevity of both the ES and the economic activity.
Quality control measures for ocean waves observations are necessary to give confidence of their accuracy. It is common practice to detect anomalies or outliers in surface displacement observations by applying a standard deviation threshold. Besides being a purely statistical method, this quality control procedure is likely to flag extreme wave events erroneously, thereby impacting higher order descriptions of the wave field. In this paper we extend the use of the statistical phase-space threshold, an established outlier detection method in the field of turbulence, to detect anomalies in a wave record. We show that a wave record in phase-space (here defined as a diagram of displacement against acceleration) can be enclosed by a predictable ellipse where the major and minor axis are defined by the spectral properties of the wave field. By using the parameterized ellipse in phase-space as a threshold to identify wave anomalies, this is a semi-physical filtering method. Wave buoy data obtained from a mooring deployed near King George Island, Antarctica (as part of the Antarctic Modeling Observation System, ATMOS) and laser altimeter data obtained at the Northwest Shelf of Australia were used to demonstrate the functioning of the filtering methodology in identifying wave anomalies. Synthetic data obtained using a high-order spectral model is used to identify how extreme waves are positioned in phase-space.
O conceito de serviços ecossistêmicos tratado nos capítulos anteriores transmite uma ideia geral intuitiva e facilmente compreensível a respeito da dependência do bem-estar humano em relação aos ecossistemas (SCHWILCH et al., 2016). Entretanto, apesar dos avanços em pesquisas nas últimas décadas, a incorporação do conceito de serviços ecossistêmicos na tomada de decisões e gestão do território ainda apresenta grandes desafios, como lacunas de pesquisa sobre as relações causais entre as funções ecossistêmicas, os serviços por elas produzidos e o bem-estar humano, (DE GROOT et al., 2010; PIRES et al., 2018) e abordagens transdisciplinares que relacionem, de maneira genuína, diferentes setores sociais e formas de conhecimento para solucionar complexos desafios socioambientais (PEREVOCHTCHIKOVA et al. 2019). De maneira correlata, observa-se também uma lacuna entre a ciência e a prática, predominando uma visão unidirecional de transferência de conhecimento científico baseado em evidências em Ecologia e Conservação, na qual dificilmente são considerados aspectos como a limitação da racionalidade humana, a complexidade de fatores, atores e interesses na tomada de decisão, os limites difusos entre a ciência e a prática e a pluralidade de sistemas de conhecimento e visões de mundo envolvidas nas esferas de decisão (BERTUOL-GARCIA et al., 2018). Este descompasso entre a ciência e a prática se re-
Abstract One of the benefits of forest and reforestation is linked to the erosion control and reduction of the amount of sediments suspended in water. This study proposes a methodology for Payments for Ecosystem Services associated to these benefits in 24 water supply watersheds, under influence of the Paraíba do Sul River Basin Environmental Protected Area, in Brazil. In order to estimate the water resources protection through the reforestation, the current scenario was compared to a hypothetical scenario, in which degraded pasture are replaced by forest. The avoided soil erosion could reach around 40t.ha-1.yr-1. Reforestation can avoid expenditures in water treatment, sludge disposal and dredging around USD 7.8 million per year. Annual values for PES range from USD 6 to 3,014 per hectare of reforested area. The results highlight the importance of valuing the benefits of the ecosystem services rescued.
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