In June 2020, China unilaterally announced two seasonal closures on squid fishing in certain areas of the high seas that apply to the Chinese distant water fishing fleets. Such closure refers to the withdrawal of the Chinese distant water fishing fleet from part of the high seas where they regularly operate. It is an innovative conservation measure initiated by a nation-state with the significance for global ocean governance and meeting the requirements from the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This paper is designed to seek the possibility, through a qualitative study and interpretive analysis, of whether such an innovative conservation measure can be introduced into the fishery management in the Southern Ocean, currently mainly under the framework of CCAMLR. This paper attempts to answer some questions with this new introduction. First, whether this kind of seasonal closure is applicable or feasible within the framework of CCAMLR. Second, whether this kind of seasonal closure would infringe upon or disrupt existing regimes, such as marine protected areas (MPAs) created by CCAMLR. Third, how and to what extent such a measure is supported by best scientific evidence so as to reach optimal effectiveness. In this regard, firm support from contracting parties is necessary to enforce the seasonal closure within the coverage of CCAMLR. The paper concludes that the seasonal closure feasible under the CCAMLR legal framework, which, like the measures of MPAs, will facilitate the fulfillment of best scientific evidence and eventually contribute to the SDG-14 progressively in the Southern Ocean.
Regular inspection of subsea pipelines is crucial for assessing their integrity and for maintenance. These inspections usually are very expensive without employing Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs). Most of the research focus in this area has been directed in automating the process to reduce operational costs and is done by using multiple perceptive sensors. This paper investigates the problem of pipeline detection using optical sensors in highly turbid subsea scenarios. A deep neural network is designed to segment pipes from optical images. Since a common issue with underwater optical sensing is dynamic changes in scenes and the difficulty of labelling large dataset, a novel self-supervision method based on multibeam echosounder is proposed to fine-tune a pre-trained network on the fly. Extensive experiments are conducted in real-world challenging scenarios, showing the effectiveness of the proposed method. The proposed method can run real-time on an Nvidia Jetson AGX embedded PC, supporting AUV field operation.
Over the past eight decades, British Columbia's silvicultural programs have gone through three stages: initiation, establishment and development. For a long time, silviculture was a minor activity associated with timber harvesting, and the formation of silviculture as a distinct sector did not take place until the late 1960s. Shifts in societal values and changes in public expectations concerning forest management contributed to changes in B.C.'s forestry institutions that, in turn, altered the structure of silviculture programs. Especially since the 1980s, expansion in the scope and scale of silvicultural activities transformed contractual relationships. This paper profiles the contractual structure of B.C.'s silviculture sector. Results of a survey of contractors indicate that seed orchards, forest nurseries and companies holding timber tenures on public land economize on transaction costs by choosing appropriate organizational and contractual forms in accordance with identifiable attributes of silvicultural activities and firms' characteristics. Key words: silviculture, contractual forms, transaction cost, payment schemes
In this paper we present an on-manifold sequence-to-sequence learning approach to motion estimation using visual and inertial sensors. It is to the best of our knowledge the first end-to-end trainable method for visual-inertial odometry which performs fusion of the data at an intermediate feature-representation level. Our method has numerous advantages over traditional approaches. Specifically, it eliminates the need for tedious manual synchronization of the camera and IMU as well as eliminating the need for manual calibration between the IMU and camera. A further advantage is that our model naturally and elegantly incorporates domain specific information which significantly mitigates drift. We show that our approach is competitive with state-of-the-art traditional methods when accurate calibration data is available and can be trained to outperform them in the presence of calibration and synchronization errors.
Over the past two decades, China has undertaken unprecedented forest programs in an effort to restore damaged ecosystems and increasing farmers’ income. Using survey results of 2,070 rural households in 15 counties of six provinces, we estimate the effects of China’s Priority Forest Programs (PFPs) on rural households’ income mobility. The effects of the area enrolled in the PFPs on rural households are mixed. It appears that larger area enrolled in the Industrial Timber Plantation Program and the Sloping Land Conversion Program pushed up rural households’ income mobility, whereas greater area enrolled in the Natural Forest Protection Program constrained their income mobility, and the size of enrollment in the Desertification Combating Program around Beijing and Tianjin and the Shelterbelt Development Program in the Three-North Regions and the Yangtze River Basin seem to have little effect on rural households’ income mobility.
The world's forests have all the characteristics of "wicked problems" that are complex, tricky and thorny. Decades of sweeping changes that have taken place worldwide at various levels have resulted in the emergence of "metaforestry" which transcends the field of conventional forestry in response to the need to deal with ulterior and more fundamental problems concerning the forest. Being an overarching objective of metaforestry, sustainable forest management calls for a new line of thinking to promote collaboration in international forums concerning global forest policy. Key words: adaptive management, criteria and indicators, ecosystem, global forest policy, sustainable forest management
Development trend of production and researches on Amygdalus communi L.were analyzed and predicted.Some points of view were put forward,which were that fine varieties selection in Amygdalus communi L.and variety regionalization could ensure healthy predevelopment of Amygdalus communi L.production;collection and appraisal of Amygdalus communi L.germplasm resources and deep researches on molecular genetics and grasping the key of efficient cultivation techniques were the keystones of researches on Amygdalus communi L.;oil replacing kernel as a main application of Amygdalus communi L.,extraction and separation of active components and efficient application of secondary metabolites in Amygdalus communi L.were inevitable and were the motive power of whole Amygdalus communi L.industry development.
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