During the last decade, fuelwood has developed in the alpine territories under voluntarist policies. Facing a next shortage of sawmill by-products, widely used for paper, chipboards and pellets, forest chips are bound to develop for industrial or local use. This is an opportunity for the alpine forests and territories, of which, nevertheless, vulnerability must be taken in account. Studying policies and instruments shows very contrasted approaches, which could generate tensions on the resource, and behaviors in possible contradiction with de development of a true green energy, such as: increase of transport lengths and then of pollutants emissions, degradation of the environment, and loss of the multifunctionality of the forests
Depuis dix ans, le bois-énergie se développe dans les territoires alpins, sous l’impulsion de politiques volontaristes. Face à l'épuisement prochain des produits connexes de scierie, déjà largement utilisés dans la papeterie, la panneauterie et la granulation, la plaquette forestière est amenée à se développer pour des usages industriels ou locaux. Il s’agit d’une opportunité pour les territoires et les forêts alpines, dont la vulnérabilité doit cependant être prise en compte dans la délicate conciliation d'objectifs économiques et environnementaux. L’étude des différentes politiques et dispositifs montre des approches très différentes. Cela peut générer des tensions sur la ressource et donner lieux à des comportements contradictoires avec le développement d’une énergie dite verte : allongements des distances de transports et donc des émissions de polluants, dégradation de l’environnement et de la multifonctionnalité des forêts, etc
The marked variations in EM risk among the five regions were partly related to differences in landscape and environmental characteristics. The latter may point out potential risk areas and provide information for targeting preventive actions.
Knowing reference (i.e., baseline) riverine nutrient concentrations is essential to understand fundamental processes of biogeochemical transport from continents to the ocean, describing ecological conditions, and informing managers of best attainable conditions for nutrient abatement and controlling anthropogenic eutrophication. We used data from 434 Brazilian watersheds representative of six South American biomes to estimate expected nutrient levels in the absence of anthropogenic influence. We used a novel watershed-based approach to describe spatial patterns throughout Brazil and for the entire Amazon basin. We found reference total nitrogen concentrations were most closely related to biome, whereas total phosphorus levels were to soil properties in addition to climatic factors influencing biomes. We found that many areas have intrinsically high background phosphorus and relatively low nitrogen, suggesting nitrogen-limitation of freshwaters could be widespread in South America, and nitrogen-fixing cyanobacterial blooms could have a competitive advantage. These results represent the first broad-scale analyses of spatial distribution of baseline nutrient levels for tropical and subtropical waters.
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