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US cities can manage national hydrology and biodiversity using local infrastructure policy.

ABSTRACT: Cities are concentrations of sociopolitical power and prime architects of land transformation, while also serving as consumption hubs of "hard" water and energy infrastructures. These infrastructures extend well outside metropolitan boundaries and impact distal river ecosystems. We used a comprehensive model to quantify the roles of anthropogenic stressors on hydrologic alteration and biodiversity in US streams and isolate the impacts stemming from hard infrastructure developments in cities. Across the contiguous United States, cities' hard infrastructures have significantly altered at least 7% of streams, which influence habitats for over 60% of North America's fish, mussel, and crayfish species. Additionally, city infrastructures have contributed to local extinctions in 260 species and currently influence 970 indigenous species, 27% of which are in jeopardy. We find that ecosystem impacts do not scale with city size but are instead proportionate to infrastructure decisions. For example, Atlanta's impacts by hard infrastructures extend across four major river basins, 12,500 stream km, and contribute to 100 local extinctions of aquatic species. In contrast, Las Vegas, a similar size city, impacts <1,000 stream km, leading to only seven local extinctions. So, cities have local policy choices that can reduce future impacts to regional aquatic ecosystems as they grow. By coordinating policy and communication between hard infrastructure sectors, local city governments and utilities can directly improve environmental quality in a significant fraction of the nation's streams reaching far beyond their city boundaries.

SUBMITTER: McManamay RA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5594670 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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US cities can manage national hydrology and biodiversity using local infrastructure policy.

McManamay Ryan A RA Surendran Nair Sujithkumar S DeRolph Christopher R CR Ruddell Benjamin L BL Morton April M AM Stewart Robert N RN Troia Matthew J MJ Tran Liem L Kim Hyun H Bhaduri Budhendra L BL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20170821 36

Cities are concentrations of sociopolitical power and prime architects of land transformation, while also serving as consumption hubs of "hard" water and energy infrastructures. These infrastructures extend well outside metropolitan boundaries and impact distal river ecosystems. We used a comprehensive model to quantify the roles of anthropogenic stressors on hydrologic alteration and biodiversity in US streams and isolate the impacts stemming from hard infrastructure developments in cities. Acr ...[more]

PMID: 28827332

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Project description:Urban hydrology and green infrastructure (GI) can be modeled using the Automated Geospatial Watershed Assessment (AGWA) Urban tool and the Kinematic Runoff and Erosion (KINEROS2) model. The KINEROS2 model provides an urban modeling element with nine overland flow components that can be used to represent various land cover types commonly found in the built environment while treating runoff-runon and infiltration processes in a physically based manner. The AGWA Urban tool utilizes a Geographic Information System (GIS) framework to prepare parameters required for KINEROS2, executes the model, and imports results for visualization in the GIS. The AGWA Urban tool was validated on a residential subdivision in Arizona, USA, using 47 rainfall events (June 2005 to September 2006) to compare observed runoff volumes and peak flow rates with simulated results. Comparison of simulated and observed runoff volumes resulted in a slope of 1.00 for the regression equation with an R2 value of 0.80. Comparison of observed and simulated peak flows had a slope of 1.12 with an R 2 value of 0.83. A roof runoff analysis was simulated for 787 events, from January 2006 through December 2015, to analyze the water availability from roof runoff capture. Simulation results indicated a 15% capture of the average monthly rainfall volume on the watershed. Additionally, rainwater captured from roofs has the potential to provide for up to 70% of the domestic annual per capita water use in this region. Five different scenarios (S1 - base, S2 - with retention basins, S3 - with permeable driveways, S4 - with rainwater harvesting cisterns, and S5 - all GI practices from S2, S3, and S4) were simulated over the same period to compare the effectiveness of GI implementation at the parcel level on runoff and peak flows at the watershed outlet. Simulation results indicate a higher runoff volume reduction for S2 (53.41 m3 average capacity, average 30% reduction) as compared to S3 (average 14% reduction), or S4 (3.78 m3 capacity, average 6% reduction). Analysis of peak flows reveal larger peak flow reduction for S2. S3 showed more reduction of smaller peak flows as compared to S4.

Project description:BackgroundCities are shifting toward providing more efficient services and the Internet of Things (IoT) becoming the future of things. The shift toward using eco-friendlier LED lights in lighting cities is another genuine game-changer in the future of Light Fidelity technology (Li-Fi). Li-Fi is a visible light communication (VLC) technology that uses Light Emitting Diodes (LED) bulbs for communication. The utilisation of thousands of light sources around a city acting as wireless access points and delivering location-based content will shift cities towards being smart sustainable cities. Recently, this technology got huge attention from the research community and different research has been conducted to improve this filed. However, there is a noticeable need to develop real-world systems that utilise Li-Fi technology.MethodsThis article aims to contribute to developing a Geo-Li-Fi system that uses LED lights to provide the services for collecting contextual data and delivering location-based services (LBS) in different areas of the city. The system is described along with details of its design, implementation and development. Moreover, the overall set-up of the testbed that used to evaluate the proposed system is presented. In addition, an experiment is conducted using a real-world scenario to test the functionality of the system and report the outputs.ResultsThe effect of the system is discussed according to different aspects of sustainability which include economic, social and environmental aspects. The system was tested in indoor and outdoor environments, and it can be seen that the sunlight does not affect the ability of LEDs to deliver the content during the daytime. Regarding the transmission range of the LED lamp, it can be seen that it is affected by different factors. It depends mainly on the power of lamp, so it will be increased significantly when the power of LED is increased. Also, an increase in the beam angle will result in wider coverage area which affected by the intensity.

Project description:BackgroundGlobal policy to guide action on musculoskeletal (MSK) health is in a nascent phase. Lagging behind other non-communicable diseases (NCDs) there is currently little global policy to assist governments to develop national approaches to MSK health. Considering the importance of comparison and learning for global policy development, we aimed to perform a comparative analysis of national MSK policies to identify areas of innovation and draw common themes and principles that could guide MSK health policy.MethodsMulti-modal search strategy incorporating a systematic online search targeted at the 30 most populated nations; a call to networked experts; a specified question in a related eDelphi questionnaire; and snowballing methods. Extracted data were organised using an a priori framework adapted from the World Health Organization (WHO) Building Blocks and further inductive coding. Subsequently, texts were open coded and thematically analysed to derive specific sub-themes and principles underlying texts within each theme, serving as abstracted, transferable concepts for future global policy.ResultsThe search yielded 165 documents with 41 retained after removal of duplicates and exclusions. Only three documents were comprehensive national strategies addressing MSK health. The most common conditions addressed in the documents were pain (non-cancer), low back pain, occupational health, inflammatory conditions, and osteoarthritis. Across eight categories, we derived 47 sub-themes with transferable principles that could guide global policy for: service delivery; workforce; medicines and technologies; financing; data and information systems; leadership and governance; citizens, consumers and communities; and research and innovation.ConclusionThere are few examples of national strategic policy to address MSK health; however, many countries are moving towards this by documenting the burden of disease and developing policies for MSK services. This review found a breadth of principles that can add to this existing work and may be adopted to develop comprehensive system-wide MSK health approaches at national and global levels.

Dataset Information

US cities can manage national hydrology and biodiversity using local infrastructure policy.

Publications

US cities can manage national hydrology and biodiversity using local infrastructure policy.

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