Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Analysing REDD+: challenges and choices.

This is the third book in a series of highly recognised REDD+ volumes from CIFOR. It provides an analysis of actual REDD+ design and early implementation, based on a large research project – the Global Comparative Study on REDD+ (GCS), undertaken by CIFOR and partners. It takes stock of national, subnational and local REDD+ experiences, and identifies the political and practical challenges to designing and implementing effective, efficient and equitable REDD+ policies and projects.Key conclusions are: As an idea, REDD+ is a success story: It is a fresh approach generating hope of significant result-based funding to address an urgent need for climate change mitigation. The idea has been sufficiently broad to serve as a canopy, under which a wide range of actors can grow their own trees.REDD+ faces huge challenges: Powerful political and economic interests favour continued deforestation and degradation. Implementation must be coordinated across various government levels and agencies; benefits must be distributed and need to balance effectiveness and equity; tenure insecurity and safeguards must be genuinely addressed; and transparent institutions, reliable carbon monitoring and realistic reference levels are all required to support result-based systems.REDD+ requires – and can catalyse – transformational change: New economic incentives, new information and discourses, new actors and new policy coalitions have the potential to move domestic policies away from the business as usual trajectory. REDD+ projects are hybrids in high deforestation areas: Project proponents are pursuing strategies that mix the enforcement of regulations and support to alternative livelihoods (ICDP) with result-based incentives (PES). Projects tend to be located in high deforestation and high forest carbon areas, yielding high additionality if they succeed. ‘No regret’ policy options exist: Despite uncertainty about the future of REDD+, stakeholders need to build political support and coalitions for change, invest in adequate information systems, and implement policies that can reduce deforestation and forest degradation, but are desirable regardless of climate objectives.Table of Contents: 1 Introduction Part 1. Understanding REDD+2 Seeing REDD+ through 4Is 3 The evolution of REDD+ 4 REDD+ and the global economy Part 2. Implementing REDD+5 Politics and power in national REDD+ policy processes 6 Multiple levels and multiple challenges for REDD+ 7 Financing REDD+ 8 Who should benefit and why? 9 Tenure matters in REDD+ 10 REDD+ projects as a hybrid of old and new forest conservation approaches 11 Local hopes and worries about REDD+ projects 12 Site selection for forest carbon projects Part 3. Measuring REDD+ performance13 Performance indicators and REDD+ implementation 14 Baselines and monitoring in local REDD+ projects 15 Emissions factors 16 A stepwise framework for developing REDD+ reference levels 17 REDD+ safeguards in national policy discourse and pilot projects 18 Summary and conclusions: REDD+ without regrets
Base load - displacement response of piles in sand

The paper presents the results of a series of laboratory and field model pile tests performed to study the factors controlling the base pressure – settlement reponse of piles in sand. One series of tests involved the installation and load testing of steel open- and closed-ended piles in loose sand contained in a large pile testing chamber. A second series involved tests on open- and closed-ended steel piles and a concrete bored pile at a dense sand test bed site. The experiments were designed to investigate the effects of pile type, sand consistency, and installation resistance on a pile’s base response during static loading. The tests revealed that both the base capacity and stiffness of piles in sand are controlled by the degree of prestress imposed on the soil below the pile tip. Simple expressions, which require the small strain stiffness and cone penetration test data as the input parameters, are developed to predict the base pressure – settlement response. The final part of the paper employs other f.
Do internal flow measurements improve the calibration of rainfall‐runoff models?

This paper compares four calibration strategies for a daily semidistributed rainfall‐runoff model. The model is applied over 187 French catchments where streamflow data are available at the catchment outlet and at internal gauging stations. In the benchmark calibration strategy, the model parameters were optimized against the outlet flow only, with internal points considered as ungauged. In the three multisite alternative strategies, the parameters were optimized against the flow at the outlet and at one internal gauge. On 53 catchments, a second interior gauge was used as an independent validation point. The four methods were compared for their ability to estimate flow at the two internal points and at the catchment outlet, in calibration and validation modes, and considering three performance metrics. The results in validation indicate that interior flow data provided limited improvement in model performance. When the performance was evaluated at the outlet point, multisite calibrations led to nearly identical performance as the single‐site calibrations, regardless of the number of calibrated parameters. Unexpectedly, similar results were obtained for most performance statistics when the model was evaluated at interior points. A sensitivity analysis performed on streamflow data confirmed that this conclusion still holds in presence of errors in flow data. Last, the comparison between lumped and semidistributed parameterizations clearly favored the lumped schemes, which show more stable parameters and equivalent performance for the simulation at independent interior points. The finding from this study provides confidence in lumped parameterization schemes, even for predicting the flow at interior gauges in a catchment.
Chinese Migrants and Internationalism: Forgotten Histories, 1917–1945

The transnational and diasporic dimensions of early Chinese migrant politics opened in the late nineteenth century when Chinese radical groups bent on overthrowing the Qing dynasty (1644-1911) vied with one another to win Chinese overseas to their modernizing projects, and immigrants who had suffered discrimination welcomed their proposals. The radicals’ concentration on Chinese communities abroad as outposts of Chinese politics and culture strengthened the stereotype of Chinese as clannish, unassimilable, xenophobic, and deeply introverted. This book argues that such a view has its roots less in historical truth than in political and ideological prejudice and obscures a rich vein of internationalist practice in Chinese migrant or diasporic history, which the study aims to restore to visibility. In some cases, internationalist alliances sprang from the spontaneous perception by Chinese and other non-Chinese migrants or local workers of shared problems and common solutions in everyday life and work. At other times, they emerged from under the umbrella of transnationalism, when Chinese nationalist and anti-imperialist activists overseas received support for their campaigns from local internationalists; or the alliances were the product of nurturing by Chinese or non-Chinese political organizers, including anarchists, communists, and members of internationalist cultural movements like Esperantism. Based on sources in a dozen languages, and telling hitherto largely unknown or forgotten stories of Chinese migrant experiences in Russia, Germany, Cuba, Spain and Australia, this study will appeal to students and scholars of Chinese history, labour studies and ethnic/migration studies alike.
EVALUATION OF K-STIFFNESS METHOD FOR VERTICAL GEOSYNTHETIC REINFORCED GRANULAR SOIL WALLS IN JAPAN

In this paper the K-stiffness Method as originally proposed by Allen et al. (2003) is re-examined using a total of six new case studies-five from Japan and one from the USA. A common feature of the walls in this new data set is that the walls were all constructed with a vertical face and a granular backfill. However, the walls varied widely with respect to facing type. This new data set together with data for vertical walls previously published by Allen and Bathurst (2002a,b) and Allen et al. (2002) is now used to isolate the effect of the facing stiffness factor on reinforcement loads and to adjust the original equation that was developed to calculate its value. The paper also shows that predicted reinforcement loads using the current AASHTO Simplified Method in the USA and the current PWRC method in Japan give the same reinforcement load predictions, and both grossly over-estimate the values deduced from measured strains. The new data set is used to slightly refine the estimate of the facing stiffness factor used in the original K-stiffness Method. The original and modified K-stiffness Method are demonstrated to quantitatively improve the estimate of the magnitude and distribution of reinforcement loads for internal stability design of vertical-faced geosynthetic reinforced soils walls with granular backfills when compared to the current American and Japanese methods.
Biogenic nitric oxide emissions upscaling: An approach for Zimbabwe

A mechanistic upscaling scheme was developed to estimate temporal nitric oxide [NO] emissions from soils for three distinct land use classes by spatial extrapolation of laboratory measurements for Zimbabwe (383,667 km2). Laboratory measurements on miombo woodland, grassland, and agricultural Zimbabwean soils were used to derive moisture‐ and temperature‐dependent NO emission algorithms. By combining monthly fields of modeled soil moisture and temperature (based on climate means, vegetation indices, soil, and terrain elevation data) a mean monthly soil NO flux, including rainfall‐induced elevated flux events (pulsing), was obtained. Countrywide emission rates ranged from 0.1–0.4 ng N m−2 s−1 for the dry season to wet season mean fluxes of 3.7–9.4 ng N m−2 s−1 for miombo, 4.4–7.0 ng N m−2 s−1 for grassland, and 4.6–10.9 ng N m−2 s−1 for agriculture. Annual net soil NO emissions (less canopy reduction) for Zimbabwe were 32.9 Gg N yr−1, with miombo woodlands (66% of Zimbabwe) contributing 63% to the regional NO budget. Rainfall‐induced NO pulsing contributed an additional 14% to countrywide annual bulk NO emissions. The majority of these pulses occurred during the first half of the rainy season (November‐December), with agricultural soils contributing the most and grassland soils contributing the least to pulsing. The upscaling approach provided a first countrywide estimate of spatiotemporal soil NO emissions for a hitherto largely unresolved source: the soil‐moisture‐limited African subtropical savannas.
Equatorial plasma bubbles with enhanced ion and electron temperatures

[1] While the ion and electron temperatures inside equatorial plasma bubbles (EPBs) are normally lower than those in an ambient plasma, bubbles with enhanced temperatures (BETs) are found occasionally in the topside ionosphere. Here we report the characteristics of BETs identified from observations of the first Republic of China Satellite (ROCSAT-1), the first Korea Multi-purpose Satellite (KOMPSAT-1), and the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) F15 during the solar maximum period between 2000 and 2001. The oxygen ion fraction inside the BETs, which was no lower than that of the ambient ionosphere, was similar to the case of ordinary low-temperature EPBs. These observations indicate that the BETs and low-temperature EPBs detected on the topside were produced by the upward drift of low-density plasma from lower altitudes. The feature that distinguishes BETs from normal EPBs is the occurrence of an unusually fast poleward field-aligned plasma flow relative to the ambient plasma. The BETs occurred preferentially around geomagnetic latitudes of 10° in the summer hemisphere, where the ambient ion and electron temperatures are lower than those in the conjugate winter hemisphere. The occurrence of BETs did not show any notable dependence on geomagnetic activities. The characteristics of the BETs suggest that the BETs were produced by adiabatic plasma heating associated with a fast poleward oxygen ion transport along magnetic flux tubes.
A new approach to using wind speed for prediction of tropical cyclone generated storm surge

We examine the best track wind speed data for all U.S. landfalling hurricanes between 1986 and 2007 to determine the relationship between wind speed and observed maximum storm surge heights at the coast. We show that pre‐landfall intensity correlates significantly better with observed maximum surge heights than landfall intensity does. This outcome is not a result of outliers skewing the data, but is representative of a more definitive trend. We anticipate that our findings will lead to a reconsideration of the way wind is used as a surge predictor, and we believe that our findings provide a possible explanation for why some tropical cyclones' storm surges tend to over/under perform with respect to official storm surge forecasts.
Critical finite‐size scaling of energy and lifetime probability distributions of auroral emissions

Based on statistical study of approximately 15,500 ultraviolet images of auroral emission regions provided by the UVI experiment on the POLAR spacecraft, we show that energy and duration probability distributions of particle precipitation events obey finite‐size scaling relations indicative of a self‐organized critical (SOC) dynamical state. The revealed relations are invariant with respect to significant changes in the spatial scale of the emission areas, and involve a set of mutually consistent critical exponents providing a quantitative basis for future theoretical studies of multiscale magnetospheric fluctuations. The reported statistical results highlight the importance of cross‐scale coupling in the development of nighttime geomagnetic disturbances and suggest that various manifestations of substorm activity associated with localized magnetic reconnections in the magnetotail (small to large scale substorms, pseudo‐breakups, BBFs and other types of short‐term localized excitations) can be coordinated on the global scale by universal dynamical principle represented by scale‐free avalanching in numerical SOC models.
Etudes ethnobotanique et écologique des plantes d’hygiène intime féminine utilisées à Kinshasa (République Démocratique du Congo)

En Afrique, plus de 80% de la population recourent a la medecine traditionnelle en utilisant les especes vegetales pour resoudre le probleme de sante primaire. Le but de ce travail a ete d'identifier les plantes utilisees par des femmes a Kinshasa/Republique Democratique du Congo, pour les soins intimes et de determiner leurs caracteristiques ecologiques. L'enquete ethnobotanique a concerne trois cents personnes comprenant cinquante huit herboristes, habitant Kinshasa. Trente sept especes, regroupees en vingt deux familles botaniques, ont ete identifiees comme plantes pour le soin de la region genitale. Les especes de Rubiaceae etaient les plantes les plus citees. Au sujet de statut ecologique, 32% d’especes identifiees sont des microphanerophytes, 35% sont des especes Afro-tropicales et 51% d’especes sont de la savane. La feuille est la partie la plus utilisee (65%) et les raisons a caractere sanitaire expliquent 54% de cas d'utilisation des plantes tandis que les raisons a caractere erotique comptent pour 46%. Ces divers resultats laissent decouvrir la richesse culturelle et traditionnelle que les plantes d’hygiene intime constituent. Elles peuvent servir de materiel pour la production des substances bioactives. Mots cles : Inventaire, plantes, region vaginale, sante primaire, erotique.
Quasistatic electric field structures and field-aligned currents in the polar cusp region

[1] Cluster data have been examined for quasi-stationary electric field structures and field-aligned currents (FACs) in the vicinity of the dayside cusp region. We have related the measurements to the Region 1/Region 2 (R1/R2) current system and the cusp current system. It has been theoretically proposed that the dayside R1 current may be located on open field lines, and experimental evidence has been shown for R1 currents partially on open field lines. We document that R1 currents may flow entirely on open field lines. The electric field structures are found to occur at plasma density gradients in the cusp. They are associated with strong FACs with current directions that are consistent with the cusp currents. This indicates that the electric field structures are closely coupled to the cusp current system. The electric equipotential structures linking the perpendicular electric fields seen at Cluster altitudes to field-aligned electric fields at lower altitudes fall into one of two categories: S shape or U shape. Both types are found at both the equatorward edge of the cusp ion dispersion and at the equatorward edge of injection events within the cusp. Previous studies in the nightside auroral region attributed the S-shaped potential structures to the boundary transition between the low-density polar cap and the high-density plasma sheet, concluding that the shape of the electric potential structure depends on whether the plasma populations on each side of the structure can support intense currents. This explanation is not applicable for the S-shaped structures observed in the dayside cusp region.
An investigation of the magnetic variation within two recent lava flows

SUMMARY Samples collected in vertical sections from two recent (1169 AD and 1971 AD) lava flows show significant variations in both the palaeomagnetic vector and the rock magnetic characteristics. The age and the short cooling time of the flows (both are less than 3 m thick) are such that the observed range of palaeomagnetic variation is more than can reasonably be explained by secular variation. The variations in palaeomagnetic and rock magnetic characteristics appear in part to be a response to the relative proportions of two coexisting ferrimagnetic phases, one that displays a primary coarsegrained and Ti-rich composition and a second that has finer-grained, Ti-poor characteristics. The use of AF demagnetization in this study means that the latter phase will have a disproportionate influence on the palaeomagnetic results. It has been suggested elsewhere that in such a magnetic system the Ti-poor phase may represent a CRM formed at some temperature below its final Curie temperature; if so, the results of this study imply that not only does it affect the palaeointensity estimate (which requires a pure TRM) but it appears also to influence the palaeomagnetic direction to an extent that far exceeds the normal secular change that might be expected to occur during delayed acquisition. Such a result has important implications for palaeomagnetic studies that use lavas, both in the selection of a suitable sampling strategy and in the geomagnetic interpretation of palaeomagnetic variation within single flow units.
Interpretation of Seismic Reflection, Gravity, and Magnetic Data Across Middle Proterozoic Mid-Continent Rift System, Northwestern Wisconsin, Eastern Minnesota, and Central Iowa

Seismic reflection, gravity, and magnetic data were used along four profiles to study the Mid-Continent rift system between northwestern Wisconsin and central Iowa. Mafic lavas in medial horsts are characterized by strong laterally continuous reflections that indicate a stratigraphic package as much as 10 km thick. Mafic roots extending beneath the reflective sequence to mid-crustal depths were defined from gravity modeling in northwestern Wisconsin, southeastern Minnesota, and central Iowa. A strong normally directed remanent magnetization was modeled for most lavas, although some lavas deep in the section of northwestern Wisconsin and central Iowa were modeled as magnetically reversed. The horsts are apparently bounded by faults that are vertical or dip moderately inwar . Several of these faults originated as growth faults in fault-bounded grabens, but these faults were transposed into reverse faults by a late-stage compressional event. The medial horsts are flanked by several half-graben basins that contain as much as 5 km of sedimentary material inferred to be lithologically akin to the Oronto and Bayfield Groups of Michigan and Wisconsin. Several synclinal basins characterized by 2-4 km of sedimentary rocks are developed atop the medial horsts. When viewed regionally, the four interpretive profiles show a marked asymmetry, with regard to the off-axis placement of the deep mafic roots and the positions of postulated growth faults. This asymmetry is consistent with the rift propagating as a series of northeast-striking, en echelon half grabens, separated by northwest-striking scissor faults or accommodation zones.
Geodynamic events reconstructed in the Betic, Maghrebian, and Apennine chains (central-western Tethys)

A synthetic study has been made to identify main tectono-sedimentary and geodynamic events in central-western Tethys. For this, an interdisciplinary analysis has been performed on successions belonging to tectonic units derived from Betic-Maghrebian-southern Apennine "Flysch basin" domain. The stratigraphic records of the internal, external, and mixed successions deposited in lateral basins of different chains show very similar characters, especially regarding: (a) lithostratigraphy and ages; (b) kind and provenance of supplies (immature and supermature petrofacies from internal and external margins, respectively); (c) presence of "mixed successions" (composed of alternating internal and external petrofacies) attesting to clear palaeogeographic relationships between opposite depositional systems; and (d) timing of the deformation. In addition, specific lithofacies reveal correspondence with similar sedimentary events, such as: (1) very thick silicoclastic supply concentrated in restricted time ranges indicating the main deformational phases in the margin/basin systems; (2) levels rich in black-shales, glauconian, siliceous-producers, and volcaniclastic intercalations, widespread in the studied successions and linked to particular events at the Tethyan scale (anoxic periods, starvation-upwelling, acid-intermediate penecontemporaneous volcanic activity, respectively). Tectonic influence has also been recorded by means of unconformities and tectofacies (such as turbidites, slumps, or olisthostromes, etc.), being correlated with the main deformational phases. Similar stratigraphic and tectonic events have also been found in the Calvana unit of Val Marecchia nappe (Ligurides, northern Apennine). Correlations of stratigraphic and tectonic events support the proposal of an evolutionary geodynamic model involving the presence of a "Mesomediterranean microplate" in intermediate position during Africa-Europe convergence. The closure of central-western Tethys occasioned the Betic-Maghrebian-southern Apennine oceanic branch deformation and the birth of perimediterranean chains during middle-late Miocene.