Resource frontiers and agglomeration economies: The varied logics of transnational land-based investing in Southern and Eastern Africa.

Actor-level data on large-scale commercial agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa are scarce. The peculiar choice of transnational investing in African land has, therefore, been subject to conjecture. Addressing this gap, we reconstructed the underlying logics of investment location choices in a Bayesian network, using firm- and actor-level interview and spatial data from 37 transnational agriculture and forestry investments across 121 sites in Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania, and Ethiopia.

Using Blue Intensity from drought-sensitive in Fennoscandia to improve reconstruction of past hydroclimate variability.

High-resolution hydroclimate proxy records are essential for distinguishing natural hydroclimate variability from possible anthropogenically-forced changes, since instrumental precipitation observations are too short to represent the whole spectrum of natural variability. In Northern Europe, progress in this field has been hampered by a relative lack of long and truly moisture-sensitive proxy records. In this study, we provide the first assessment of the dendroclimatic potential of Blue Intensity (BI) and partial ring-width measurements (latewood and earlywood width series) from a network of cold and drought-prone L.

Corrigendum to "Geochemical characteristics of Holocene aeolian deposits east of Qinghai Lake, China, and their paleoclimatic implications" [Sci. Total Environ. 692(2019) 917-929].

The paleoclimate evolution of the northeastern Tibetan Plateau (TP), especially in the Qinghai Lake Basin (QLB), has long been a subject of interest to scholars due to the particularity of the geographical location. However, because of the uncertainties of the chronologies and the interpretations of the proxies used, climate change in this region remains controversial during the Holocene. The Hudong dunefield is located to the east of Qinghai Lake and is the largest sand accumulation area in the QLB.

Geochemical characteristics of Holocene aeolian deposits east of Qinghai Lake, China, and their paleoclimatic implications.

The paleoclimate evolution of the northeastern Tibetan Plateau (TP), especially in the Qinghai Lake Basin (QLB), has long been a subject of interest to scholars due to the particularity of the geographical location. However, because of the uncertainties of the chronologies and the interpretations of the proxies used, climate change in this region remains controversial during the Holocene. The Hudong dunefield is located to the east of Qinghai Lake and is the largest sand accumulation area in the QLB.

Using climate models to estimate the quality of global observational data sets.

Observational estimates of the climate system are essential to monitoring and understanding ongoing climate change and to assessing the quality of climate models used to produce near- and long-term climate information. This study poses the dual and unconventional question: Can climate models be used to assess the quality of observational references? We show that this question not only rests on solid theoretical grounds but also offers insightful applications in practice. By comparing four observational products of sea surface temperature with a large multimodel climate forecast ensemble, we find compelling evidence that models systematically score better against the most recent, advanced, but also most independent product.

Towards a resource-based habitat approach for spatial modelling of vector-borne disease risks.

Given the veterinary and public health impact of vector-borne diseases, there is a clear need to assess the suitability of landscapes for the emergence and spread of these diseases. Current approaches for predicting disease risks neglect key features of the landscape as components of the functional habitat of vectors or hosts, and hence of the pathogen. Empirical-statistical methods do not explicitly incorporate biological mechanisms, whereas current mechanistic models are rarely spatially explicit; both methods ignore the way animals use the landscape (i.

Shaping zoonosis risk: landscape ecology vs. landscape attractiveness for people, the case of tick-borne encephalitis in Sweden.

Background: In this paper, the hazard and exposure concepts from risk assessment are applied in an innovative approach to understand zoonotic disease risk. Hazard is here related to the landscape ecology determining where the hosts, vectors and pathogens are and, exposure is defined as the attractiveness and accessibility to hazardous areas. Tick-borne encephalitis in Sweden was used as a case study.

Modelling metal speciation in the Scheldt Estuary: combining a flexible-resolution transport model with empirical functions.

Predicting metal concentrations in surface waters is an important step in the understanding and ultimately the assessment of the ecological risk associated with metal contamination. In terms of risk an essential piece of information is the accurate knowledge of the partitioning of the metals between the dissolved and particulate phases, as the former species are generally regarded as the most bioavailable and thus harmful form. As a first step towards the understanding and prediction of metal speciation in the Scheldt Estuary (Belgium, the Netherlands), we carried out a detailed analysis of a historical dataset covering the period 1982-2011.

Integrated modelling of faecal contamination in a densely populated river-sea continuum (Scheldt River and Estuary).

In order to simulate the long-term (months-years) median Escherichia coli distributions and variations in the tidal Scheldt River and Estuary, a dedicated module was developed for the Second-generation Louvain-la-Neuve Ice-ocean Model (SLIM, www.climate.be/slim).

Modelling zoonotic diseases in humans: comparison of methods for hantavirus in Sweden.

Because their distribution usually depends on the presence of more than one species, modelling zoonotic diseases in humans differs from modelling individual species distribution even though the data are similar in nature. Three approaches can be used to model spatial distributions recorded by points: based on presence/absence, presence/available or presence data. Here, we compared one or two of several existing methods for each of these approaches.