Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Unlocking the potential of BECCS with indigenous sources of biomass at a national scale

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) could play a large role in meeting the 1.5C argets, but faces well-documented controversy in terms of land-use concerns, competition with food production, and cost. This study presents a bottom-up assessment of the scale at which BECCS plants – biomass pulverised combustion plants (“BECCS” in this study) and bioenergy combustion in combined heat and power plants (BE-CHP-CCS) – can be sustainably deployed to meet national carbon dioxide removal (CDR) targets, considering the use of both primary and secondary (waste-derived) biomass. This paper also presents a comprehensive, harmonised data set, which enables others to build upon this work. Land availability for biomass cultivation, processing, and conversion is quantified based on a land-use analysis, avoiding all competition with land used for food production, human habitation, and other protected areas. We find that secondary biomass sources provide a valuable supplement to primary biomass, augmenting indigenous biomass supplies. In initial phases of deployment, we observe that infrastructure is initially clustered near cities, and other sources of low cost, secondary biomass, but as CDR targets are increased and indigenous secondary biomass supplies are exhausted, infrastructure begins to move closer to potential biomass planting areas with higher yield. In minimising the cost of CDR on a cost per tonne CO2 removed basis, we find that the availability of secondary biomass, land availability, and yield are key factors that drive the cost of CDR. Importantly biomass conversion efficiency of a BECCS plant has an inverse effect on CDR costs, with less efficient plants resulting in lower costs compared to their more efficient counterparts. By consuming secondary biomass in BECCS and BE-CHP-CCS plants, the UK is able to be self-sufficient in biomass supply by utilising available indigenous biomass to remove up to 50 MtCO2 /yr, though for cost reasons, it may be preferable to import some biomass.
Phase-Noise Compensation for Space-Division Multiplexed Multicore Fiber Transmission

The advancements of popular Internet-based services such as social media, virtual reality, and cloud computing constantly drive vendors and operators to increase the throughput of the Internet backbone formed by fiber-optic communication systems. Due to this, space-division multiplexing (SDM) has surfaced as an appealing technology that presents an opportunity to upscale optical networks in a cost-efficient manner. It entails the sharing of various system components, such as hardware, power, and processing resources, as well as the use of SDM fibers, e.g., multicore fibers (MCFs) or multimode fibers, which are able to carry multiple independent signals at the same wavelength in parallel. Higher-order modulation formats have also garnered attention in recent years as they allow for a higher spectral efficiency, an important parameter that relates to the throughput of communication systems. However, a drawback with increasing the order of modulation formats is the added sensitivity to phase noise, which calls for effective phase-noise compensation (PNC). This thesis studies the idea of sharing processing resources to increase the performance of PNC in SDM systems using a particular type of fiber, namely uncoupled, homogeneous, single-mode MCF. Phase noise can be highly correlated across channels in various multichannel transmission scenarios, e.g., SDM systems utilizing MCFs with all cores sharing the same light source and local oscillator, and wavelength-division multiplexed systems using frequency combs. However, the nature of the correlation in the phase noise depends on the system in question. Based on this, a phase-noise model is introduced to describe arbitrarily correlated phase noise in multichannel transmission. Using this model, two pilot-aided algorithms are developed using i) the sum–product algorithm operating in a factor graph and ii) variational Bayesian inference. The algorithms carry out joint-channel PNC and data detection for coded multichannel transmission in the presence of phase noise. Simulation results show that in the case of partially-correlated phase noise, they outperform the typical PNC approach by a wide margin. Moreover, it is shown that the placement of pilot symbols across the channels has a considerable effect on the resulting performance. Focusing on SDM transmission through an uncoupled, homogeneous, single-mode MCF with shared light source and local oscillator lasers, the performance benefits of joint-channel PNC are investigated. A significant gain in transmission reach is experimentally demonstrated, and the results are shown to agree strongly with simulations based on the introduced phase-noise model. In addition, the simulations show that dramatic improvements can be made for phase-noise limited systems in terms of power efficiency, spectral efficiency, and hardware requirements.
Physical retrieval of sea-surface temperature from INSAT-3D imager observations

Abstract This paper presents results of physical retrieval of sea-surface temperature (SST) from the INSAT-3D imager observations. Radiance measurements from two thermal infrared imager channels are used for retrieving SST. Prior to their use in the retrieval process, the INSAT-3D radiances are corrected for the biases using a newly developed algorithm. The physical retrieval of SST is performed using an optimal estimation method. The optimisation is performed under two scenarios. In the first scenario, the SST retrieval problem is assumed to be linear while in the second one, the assumption of linearity is relaxed. Further, retrievals are performed by considering the reduced, as well as, the full state vector. Overall, physical retrieval performs much better than the regression-based approach. Moreover, in the physical retrieval, the best performance is obtained in the second scenario with the use of the full state vector. Validation of these retrievals with the iQuam SST resulted in a standard deviation (bias) of ∼0.65 (0.19) K while those from the regression-based method are found to have standard deviation (bias) of ∼0.68 (–0.17) K.
Process Benefits of Using Biomass Pellets in a Biorefinery

iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . iv LIST OF TABLES . ix LIST OF FIGURES . x LIST OF APPENDIX TABLES . xi LIST OF APPENDIX FIGURES. xii 1. GENERAL INTRODUCTION . 1 1.1. References . 3 2. LITERATURE REVIEW . 4 2.1. Biomass Sources . 5 2.1.1. Dedicated energy crops . 5 2.1. 2. Agricultural crops . 5 2.1. 3. Agriculture crop residues . 5 2.1. 4. Forestry residues . 5 2.1. 5. Aquatic plants . 6 2.1. 6. Biomass processing residues . 6 2.1. 7. Municipal waste. 6 2.1. 8. Animal waste . 6 2.2. Uses of Biomass . 6 2.3. Current Trends . 7 2.3. 1. Starch and sugar feedstocks – first generation biofuel . 7 2.3. 2. Cellulosic feedstocks – second generation biofuel . 7 2.4. Conversion Processes . 8 2.4. 1. Combustion. 8
Humans, fire, and ecology in the southern Missouri Ozarks, USA

A multiproxy study from Sweeton Pond, Ozark County, Missouri, USA, provides a high-resolution 1900-year-long history of vegetation and fire in the southern Missouri Ozarks, where the modern vegetation is oak-hickory (Quercus-Carya) forest. Pollen and charcoal data are compared with dendroecological data to assess how climate and fire shaped local vegetation history. Land use, particularly by the Osage tribe of Native Americans, is assessed from historical and archaeological records. Three cultural periods are superimposed on the paleoenvironmental history: (1) The Pre-Osage period, ending ~1500 CE, was characterized by open oak-hickory forest and frequent low-severity fires, suggesting interannual climate variability as a driver of vegetation and fire occurrence. At ~1360 CE, mesic tree species began to expand, while fire frequency remained low. (2) The Osage period (~1500–1820 CE) was characterized by the continued expansion of mesic, fire-sensitive species, especially elm (Ulmus), in conjunction with cool, effectively wet conditions in the southern Missouri Ozarks. Despite climate conditions less favorable for fire, Osage expansion in the region was accompanied by increased fire and fire-dependent shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata). The expansion of both fire-sensitive and fire-dependent taxa coincident with Osage occupation suggests that anthropogenic fire and land use was local in nature and increased landscape heterogeneity prior to Euro-American settlement. (3) The Euro-American period (since ~1820 CE) was characterized by increased disturbance pollen types (e.g. Ambrosia-type) at the expense of shortleaf pine pollen, resulting from increased settlement size and extensive agricultural and logging activities. During this period, forest clearance led to fuel fragmentation, reducing fire activity; after 1920 CE, fire was actively suppressed.
Interactive Visualization Software to Improve Relief Interpretation Skills: Spatial Data Infrastructure Geoportal versus Augmented Reality

The improvement of geospatial thinking is essential for success in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines. Training based on the geovisualization and interpretation of landforms can develop the relief interpretation skill. The research reported here focuses on the study of relief visualization and interpretation, using results from a workshop performed with forty-six university students using different displays of geovisualization in a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) geoportal: LiDAR digital surface model, HillShade digital terrain model, digital elevation model, slope model, high-resolution orthophoto, and topographic map. The results are compared with those of another workshop on the same topic carried out with augmented reality (AR) technology. The relief interpretation skill improvement was measured before and after each of the workshops using the Topographic Map Assessment test. The results with the SDI geoportal showed a significant gain in relief interpretation skill between pretest and posttest scores but less than the gain obtained with AR. No differences were found due to the gender of the participants in either case. Key Words: augmented reality, geospatial thinking, landform interpretation, relief interpretation skill, Spatial Data Infrastructure.
Spatial and Temporal Variations in Precipitation Amount, Frequency, Intensity, and Persistence in China, 1973–2016

In this paper, we examined the spatial and temporal variations in precipitation amount, frequency, and intensity in China based on daily precipitation data from 2050 weather stations from 1973 to 2016. We used two Markov chain parameters to quantify the wet persistence and dry persistence that characterizes the temporal pattern of wet and dry days, respectively. We found that China’s annual precipitation changed little from 1973 to 2016, but varied dramatically from 524 to 688 mm yr−1, with an average of 592 mm yr−1, during this period. China’s precipitation frequency, the number of days with effective precipitation (>0.1 mm day−1) in a year, significantly decreased at a rate of 0.9 days decade−1 from 1973 to 2016, but precipitation intensity significantly increased at a rate of 0.12 mm day−1 decade−1 during the same period. Of the changes in China’s total precipitation amount, precipitation intensity played a dominant role, contributing 70.8%, while precipitation frequency contributed the remaining 29.2%. Little change was found in the wet persistence in China over the period of 1973–2016, but the dry persistence significantly increased with an average increasing trend of 1.62 × 10−3 probability per decade during the same period, and no significant correlations were found between these two variables. China’s precipitation also changed nonuniformly in space, with increasing trends in precipitation amount, frequency, intensity, and wet persistence in western and northeastern China but decreasing trends in the Sichuan basin, northeast of Inner Mongolia, and the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei region.
Economic aspects of the East Asian steel industry

The East Asian steel industry has experienced rapid growth in recent decades, with crude steel consumption increasing from 144 million tonnes (Mt) in 1980 to 329 M t in 2000. Concomitant with this growth in consumption has been significant expansion in steel-making capacity and iron ore imports into the region. Continued growth in steel consumption within East Asia will provide ongoing marketing opportunities for iron ore producers. Given that iron ore is one of the largest export earning industries within Australia, the future of steel consumption within the East Asian region is of considerable importance to the Western Australian and Australian economies. In order to assess the impact of continued growth in the East Asian steel industry on iron ore exports from Western Australia, the objectives of this thesis are as follows. Firstly, to develop models to forecast steel consumption in each of the steel consuming countries of East Asia. Secondly, to explore the nature of the relationship between steel consumption and economic activity, given that steel consumption is a derived demand dependent upon production in steel consuming sectors of the economy. Thirdly, to forecast the adoption of electric arc furnace steel-making technology in Japan. Finally, to quantify the impact on the Western Australian economy of continued growth in iron ore export volumes to East Asia. The results suggest steel consumption in East Asia should rise from 329 Mt in 2000 to 448 M t in 2010, with China accounting for around 65 M t of this increase. The prospects for continued growth in iron ore exports from Western Australia appear to be excellent with the forecasts of steel consumption suggesting annual exports of ore will rise from 133 M t in 2001 to 162 M t in 2010. Using a computable general equilibrium model of the W A economy, W A G , growth in iron ore exports of this magnitude is shown to significantly increase both gross state product and state employment. As a result of a large iron ore industry, gross state product is expected is increase by an additional 0.17 per cent per annum on average from 1998 to 2010, while an additional 1800 new jobs are estimated to be created annually.
A Hierarchical Classification Framework of Satellite Multispectral/Hyperspectral Images for Mapping Coastal Wetlands

Mapping different land cover types with satellite remote sensing data is significant for restoring and protecting natural resources and ecological services in coastal wetlands. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical classification framework (HCF) that implements two levels of classification scheme to identify different land cover types of coastal wetlands. The first level utilizes the designed decision tree to roughly group land covers into four rough classes and the second level combines multiple features (i.e., spectral feature, texture feature and geometric feature) of each class to distinguish different subtypes of land covers in each rough class. Two groups of classification experiments on Landsat and Sentinel multispectral data and China Gaofen (GF)-5 hyperspectral data are carried out in order to testify the classification behaviors of two famous coastal wetlands of China, that is, Yellow River Estuary and Yancheng coastal wetland. Experimental results on Landsat data show that the proposed HCF performs better than support vector machine and random forest in classifying land covers of coastal wetlands. Moreover, HCF is suitable for both multispectral data and hyperspectral data and the GF-5 data is superior to Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 multispectral data in obtaining fine classification results of coastal wetlands.
The relative representation of ecosystem services and disservices in South African newspaper media

ABSTRACT Newspapers are key information sources and may influence both public opinion and policy. Previous studies have analysed the portrayal of ecosystem disservices in newspapers, but none have assessed the relative coverage between disservices and services, or how it might have changed over time. We report on the relative frequency and depiction of ecosystem services and disservices in South African, English newspapers over a 15-year period. We used a SABINET search complemented by key-informant interviews with environmental journalists. For each article we recorded if it covered ecosystem services or disservices, the type of service or disservice, and article tone and length. Overall, 2,201 articles were found, of which 25% were on services and 75% on disservices. The number of articles per year declined over the 15-year period for services, but not disservices. The most common services were energy and craft materials, food production, recreation and culture, and disservices were human health, heat waves and floods. Articles on ecosystem services were 25–40% longer than those on disservices. Article lengths on both declined over the 15 years. The greater reporting of ecosystem disservices over services is likely to influence public opinion and environmental decision-making accordingly. EDITED BY Kurt Jax
A Two-Stage Fusion Framework to Generate a Spatio-Temporally Continuous MODIS NDSI Product over the Tibetan Plateau

The Tibetan Plateau (TP) is an important component of the global environmental system, on which the snow cover greatly affects the regional climate and ecology. Moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) snow cover products have been demonstrated to be appropriate for investigating the snow cover over the TP. However, they are subject to cloud obscuration, and the TP’s extremely complex terrain makes the snow monitoring difficult. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a two-stage spatio–temporal fusion framework for the cloud removal of MODIS C6 snow products, including an adjusted Terra and Aqua combination (TAC) and a spatio–temporal fusion based on Gaussian kernel function and error correction (STF-GKF-EC). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that a spatio–temporally continuous daily 500-m MODIS normalized difference snow index (NDSI) product has been generated for the TP, which greatly improves the spatial and temporal resolutions of the current snow cover products. The main stage, STF-GKF-EC, adaptively weights the spatial and temporal correlations by the Gaussian kernel function, and further takes the rapid changes of snow cover into consideration through the error correction. The experiments indicated that STF-GKF-EC removes clouds completely, achieving an overall accuracy (OA) and mean absolute error (MAE) of 91.48% and 3.88, respectively. Based on the cloud-removed results, during 2001–2017, as far as the intra-annual variation is concerned, a large proportion of the snow cover appears between October and May, with a peak in February/March, and the variation is mainly controlled by temperature. For the inter-annual variation, an obvious increasing trend of 0.68/year for NDSI is observed before 2005, followed by a slight decreasing trend of 0.16/year, in which precipitation is a better explanation factor than temperature.
Nano−porous pyrite and organic matter in 3.5-billion-year-old stromatolites record primordial life

Stromatolites of the ∼3.5 billion-year-old Dresser Formation (Pilbara Craton, Western Australia) are considered to be some of Earth’s earliest convincing evidence of life. However, uniquely biogenic interpretations based on surface outcrops are precluded by weathering, which has altered primary mineralogy and inhibited the preservation of microbial remains. Here, we report on exceptionally preserved, strongly sulfidized stromatolites obtained by diamond drilling from below the weathering profile. These stromatolites lie within undeformed hydrothermal-sedimentary strata and show textural features that are indicative of biogenic origins, including upward-broadening and/or upward-branching digitate forms, wavy to wrinkly laminae, and finely laminated columns that show a thickening of laminae over flexure crests. High-resolution textural, mineralogical, and chemical analysis reveals that the stromatolites are dominated by petrographically earliest, nano-porous pyrite that contains thermally mature, N-bearing organic matter (OM). This nano-porous pyrite is consistent with a formation via sulfidization of an originally OM-dominated matrix. Evidence for its relationship with microbial communities are entombed OM strands and filaments, whose microtexture and chemistry are consistent with an origin as mineralized biofilm remains, and carbon isotope data of extracted OM (δ13COM = −29.6‰ ± 0.3‰ VPDB [Vienna Peedee belemnite]), which lie within the range of biological matter. Collectively, our findings provide exceptional evidence for the biogenicity of some of Earth’s oldest stromatolites through preservation of OM, including microbial remains, by sulfidization.
Taphonomic experiments resolve controls on the preservation of melanosomes and keratinous tissues in feathers

Fossils are a key source of data on the evolution of feather structure and function through deep time, but their ability to resolve macroevolutionary questions is compromised by an incomplete understanding of their taphonomy. Critically, the relative preservation potential of two key feather components, melanosomes and keratinous tissue, is not fully resolved. Recent studies suggesting that melanosomes are preferentially preserved conflict with observations that melanosomes preserve in fossil feathers as external moulds in an organic matrix. To date, there is no model to explain the latter mode of melanosome preservation. We addressed these issues by degrading feathers in systematic taphonomic experiments incorporating decay, maturation and oxidation in isolation and combination. Our results reveal that the production of mouldic melanosomes requires interactions with an oxidant and is most likely to occur prior to substantial maturation. This constrains the taphonomic conditions under which melanosomes are likely to be fossilized. Critically, our experiments also confirm that keratinous feather structures have a higher preservation potential than melanosomes under a range of diagenetic conditions, supporting hitherto controversial hypotheses that fossil feathers can retain degraded keratinous structures.
The impacts of pharmaceuticals on biogeochemical processes and basal resources in freshwater ecosystems

As a result of human drug consumption and drug manufacturing activities, pharmaceuticals are now detected in aquatic environments globally. However, little is known about pharmaceutical effects on the health of streams and rivers. This thesis investigated the effects of environmentally-relevant concentrations of pharmaceuticals on freshwater ecosystems. Pharmaceuticals affected nutrient turnover rates, photosynthesis, respiration and ecosystem structure. The effects were generally only seen after long-term exposure, and affected functions, such as photosynthesis, rather than directly killing aquatic life. This thesis contributes to our scientific understanding of how pharmaceuticals impact aquatic ecosystems and recommends a more holistic experimental approach.