Aim
Elevation is an important factor that influences bioregionalisation in mountainous areas, but its effects are not well known. Taking the Sino‐Himalayan flora as a case, we aimed to test the ...effect of elevation on bioregionalisation and provide a regionalisation scheme of the Sino‐Himalayan flora.
Location
The Sino‐Himalaya (East Himalaya, the Hengduan Mountains and the Yunnan Plateau in China).
Taxon
Angiosperms.
Methods
We compiled distribution data and elevation ranges of angiosperms in the Sino‐Himalaya and adjacent areas and reconstructed a species‐level phylogenetic tree of 19,313 angiosperm species. The area was divided into 398 grid cells, each 1 × 1°. Nine datasets of different elevation ranges were then used to delineate the flora of the Sino‐Himalaya and adjacent areas using the phylogenetic dissimilarity approach.
Results
A comparison of nine regionalisation schemes of the Sino‐Himalayan flora based on different elevation range datasets revealed that more than half of grid cells were allocated to more than one subregion. Most of these grid cells were located in areas with a wide range of elevation and/or at the boundaries between subregions. After revising the subregion allocations of eight shifting grid cells, we generated a phylogeny‐ and elevation‐based regionalisation scheme of three regions, comprising eight subregions, for the Sino‐Himalayan flora.
Main conclusions
By integrating phylogenetic and elevational information, the Sino‐Himalaya can be divided into three floristic regions: the Yunnan Plateau region, the Hengduan Mountains region and the East Himalaya region. Our study provides novel insights into the regionalisation of the flora and highlights the importance of incorporating elevation data in the bioregionalisation of areas with a broad elevational range.
The paper explores the application of the gravity model, namely the delineation of the urban predominant influence areas via the generation of the multiplicatively weighted Voronoi diagram, to the ...socio-economic regionalisation and administrative territorial division of Ukraine, including the existing state of affairs and several proposals on their improvement. The research uses quantitative statistical data on interregional migration and rail passenger traffic within the country, processed via the Statistica analytics software, and a subsequent spatial analysis conducted by GIS. The findings suggest that the gravity model can serve as a tool for optimisation the administrative territorial division, as well as for the delineation of the planning regions and urban hinterlands. At the same time, it has certain limitations and should not be treated as a panacea for regional planning and development.
As centres of consumption, knowledge and services under some political and administrative control, cities are acknowledged as strategic food governance transition nodes. Increasing stakeholder ...coordination and participation, however, means identifying pathways for transformative change and accelerating uptake of innovative and participatory modes of governance. We argue that modelling approaches, by helping to meet the three pre-conditions for participatory governance (relationship-building, shared understanding and experimentation) offer valuable input and can help establish ad hoc institutional space for redesigning food system governance. Based on a selective literature review, we define four key dimensions to consider when modelling for participatory food governance in city-regions: stakeholders’ involvement, process phases, capacity for joint action and use of a multi-sectoral and multi-scale approach. The state-of-the-art review presented in this paper focuses on seven modelling approaches that can meaningfully support stakeholder participation in food system transitioning processes, considering the specific context, objectives and available resources. The strengths and limitations of combined modelling approaches are illustrated and critically reviewed, using a concrete example from the Berlin city-region. This highlights the relevant contribution that modelling can make to creating new spaces for participatory food governance.
•Modelling can be used to support new spaces for redesigning food system governance.•Modelling can help build relationships and a shared view, and promote experiments.•Dimensions considered: involvement, phase, capacity and multi-scale/multi- sector.•A modelling approach is context-, objective- and resource-dependent.•Comprehensive guidelines for a system-perspective selection are provided.
Les mutations du dernier demi-siècle ont considérablement accru la dépendance des Etats, économies et sociétés aux espaces maritimes. Les petits et micro-Etats ont été fortement intégrés à cette ...maritimisation du monde, corolaire de la mondialisation, contribuant à favoriser de nombreuses opportunités de développement. Elle a, néanmoins, considérablement accentué leur exposition à certains risques et enjeux d’ordre maritime, suscitant de nombreuses interrogations. L’étude de ces petits et micro-Etats dans la grande région caraïbe confirme que, bien qu’acteurs incontournables de la gouvernance mondiale des mers et océans, ils font face à de grands défis multiscalaires en matière de sécurité maritime. S’ils mettent en œuvre des stratégies individuelles, mais le plus souvent coopératives en favorisant les relations de proximité, ces régionalismes sécuritaires demeurent entravés par une forte fragmentation géopolitique.
•We assess the load shifting potential in the 401 German administrative districts.•The average load increase potential is 25 MW per administrative district.•Load shifting could avoid the curtailment ...of 8 wind turbines per district.•Heat pump flexibilisation costs are 23% lower in Berlin than in a rural district.•Data and developed source code are provided under open source licenses.
With the expansion of renewable energies in Germany, imminent grid congestion events occur more often. One approach for avoiding curtailment of renewable energies is to cover excess feed-in by demand response. As curtailment is often a local phenomenon, in this work we determine the regional demand response potential for the 401 German administrative districts with a temporal resolution of 15 min, including technical, socio-technical and economic restrictions. Our analysis yields that power-to-heat technologies provide the highest potentials, followed by residential appliances, commercial and industrial loads. For the considered 2030 scenario, power-to-gas and e-mobility also contribute a significant potential. The median value of the cumulated load increase potential of all technologies is 25MW per administrative district. Using such a load increase potential to cover regional excess feed-in would suffice to avoid the curtailment of 8 classical wind turbines. Further, we calculated load shifting cost-potential curves for each district. Industrial processes and power-to-heat in district heating have the lowest load shifting investment cost, due to the largest installed capacities per facility. We distinguished between different size classes of the installed capacity of heat pumps, yielding 23% lower average investment cost for heat pump flexibilisation in the city of Berlin compared to a rural district. The variable costs of most considered load shifting technologies remain under the average compensation costs for curtailment of renewable energies of 110 € /MWh. As all results and the developed code are published under open source licenses, they can be used to integrate load shifting dispatch into energy system models.
Bridging the gap between the micro and the macro scale in modelling food security to inform context-specific regionalised policies remains a major scientific challenge. A better understanding of the ...relations between global and local drivers impacting local food self-sufficiency (LFSS) is essential. We applied to the whole Mediterranean environmental area (Southern and Northern) a modelling framework for structural estimates (PLS-PM) using qualitative and quantitative methods to combine local-level information from field surveys and participatory workshops with global-level data. Our findings show that farmland expansion and intensification spatially disconnected from urban consumption areas do not appear to foster LFSS. On the other hand, public policies appear key to enhancing LFSS in the Mediterranean area if appropriate to the particular regional context. We outline how this multi-level modelling methodology can contribute to a place-based approach by informing context-specific regionalised policies aimed at food security.
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•Land system dynamics impact local food systems on both supply and demand sides.•A multi-level modelling approach highlights interactions in the Mediterranean area.•Farmland expansion and intensification do not foster local food self-sufficiency.•Context-specific public policies are key to foster local food self-sufficiency.•Modelling approaches can enable tailored cross-scalar context-specific policies.
Student mobility constitutes a core pillar of higher education internationalisation. Reflecting wider global trends, Canada and the EU have increasingly prioritised equity and inclusion in their ...student mobility programmes. Canada’s Global Skills Opportunity programme, launched in 2021, provides federal funding specifically to low-income students, students with disabilities, and Indigenous students. The EU’s Erasmus Programme has a long-standing tradition of community-building through inclusive student mobility. This article traces the principle of inclusion as a mobility rationale and analyses the role of the federal government in Canada and the European Commission in the EU supporting it. Using a policy framing lens, this study compares problem definitions, policy rationales, and solutions for federal/supranational involvement in student mobility. Findings show that inclusiveness has been an underlying silent value, yet it has mostly supported larger political and economic goals in both contexts.
Geothermal heat flow is inferred from the gradient of temperature values in boreholes or short-penetration probe measurements. Such measurements are expensive and logistically challenging in remote ...locations and, therefore, often targeted to regions of economic interest. As a result, measurements are not distributed evenly. Some tectonic, geologic and even topographic settings are overrepresented in global heat flow compilations; other settings are underrepresented or completely missing. These limitations in representation have implications for empirical heat flow models that use catalogue data to assign heat flow by the similarity of observables. In this contribution, we analyse the sampling bias in the Global Heat Flow database of the International Heat Flow Commission; the most recent and extensive heat flow catalogue, and discuss the implications for accurate prediction and global appraisals. We also suggest correction weights to reduce the bias when the catalogue is used for empirical modelling. From comparison with auxiliary variables, we find that each of the following settings is highly overrepresented for heat flow measurements; continental crust, sedimentary rocks, volcanic rocks, and Phanerozoic regions with hydrocarbon exploration. Oceanic crust, cratons, and metamorphic rocks are underrepresented. The findings also suggest a general tendency to measure heat flow in areas where the values are elevated; however, this conclusion depends on which auxiliary variable is under consideration to determine the settings. We anticipate that using our correction weights to balance disproportional representation will improve empirical heat flow models for remote regions and assist in the ongoing assessment of the Global Heat Flow database.
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