This study analyses anaerobic digestion (AD) as a renewable energy technology by quantifying the emissions avoided and the cost incurred in the process. The quantitative model developed and demonstrated uses basic farm information to evaluate dairy farms from an environmental and economic perspective. Based on the cost of installing and operating an anaerobic digester and the emissions avoided ...

We present a cooperative, multistep negotiation mechanism for multiagent systems. This mechanism uses marginal utility gain and marginal utility cost to structure the negotiation process. This enables an agent to understand another agent’s situation in order to find a solution that increases their combined utility. These two values summarize the agent’s local information and reduce the communic...

Zamioculcas zamiifolia (Araceae), a terrestrial East African aroid, with two defining attributes of crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) (net CO(2) uptake in the dark and diel fluctuations of titratable acidity) is the only CAM plant described within the Araceae, a mainly tropical taxon that contains the second largest number of epiphytes of any vascular plant family. Within the Alismatales, the ...

We present a multi-dimensional, multistep negotiation mechanism for task allocation among cooperative agents based on distributed search. This mechanism uses marginal utility gain and marginal utility cost to structure this search process, so as to find a solution that maximizes their combined utility. These two utility values together with temporal constraints summarize the agents’ local infor...

Stable isotope analysis is a powerful tool for assessing plant carbon and water relations and their impact on biogeochemical processes at different scales. Our processbased understanding of stable isotope signals, as well as technological developments, has progressed significantly, opening new frontiers in ecological and interdisciplinary research. This has promoted the broad utilisation of car...

The needs of reservoirs grow with population, standard of living, urbanization in the form of water supply, flood control, hydroelectric generation, navigation, recreation etc. Their development inevitably involves a substantial degree of environmental impact. The impact of reservoirs, on an average, increases in an exponential way with their size. If the marginal net benefit were assessed at t...

Mangroves are among the most threatened and rapidly disappearing natural environments worldwide. In addition to supporting a wide range of other ecological and economic functions, mangroves store considerable carbon. Here, we consider the global economic potential for protecting mangroves based exclusively on their carbon. We develop unique high-resolution global estimates (5' grid, about 9 × 9...

An optimization model is presented that examines the relationship between root architecture and multiple resource acquisition, specifically water and phosphorus in spatially heterogeneous environments. The basal root growth angle of an individual common bean plant, which determines the orientation and localization of the bulk of the root system, was modeled as the decision variable. The total p...