So long and thanks for all the fish!

Well, thats it! This marks the end of my assessed blogging endeavours. Over the last few months we have investigated a range of topics relating to the environmental impacts of an increasing population with a particular focus on Hong Kong. The topics covered include the following:

Impacts of agriculture on the environment including algal blooms;
Environmental impacts on marine ecology;
Land reclamation;
Overfishing;
Air Pollution.

I have also touched upon possible solutions for some of these environmental issues.

From all the research I have undertaken, I think its clear for all to see that pollution is a really serious issue in Hong Kong and that whilst efforts are being made by the Hong Kong Government to improve the situation, it will be an uphill struggle as demands become greater from an increasing population.

I hope that you have enjoyed reading my posts over the last few months and have learnt a lot. I know I have and it has certainly made me more aware of how fragile our planet is.

Thanks again for tuning in, and because you know you want it here’s another porpoise:

Courtesy of cnn.com

Who impacts the impactors??

Hi, welcome back to Standing Room only.

Ok, so I realise that this blog is geared towards human impacts upon the environment but I thought it was about time that we had a little segway into how we are impacting ourselves. With that today’s blog post is going to be on a major problem that Hong Kong and in fact Asia in general are facing -  Air Pollution!

Having visited Hong Kong myself I can attest that there is definite evidence of air pollution which can display itself as a haze that appears across the harbour, making visibility very poor on some days.

This blog post is going to primarily focus on the causes and effects of air pollution with a strong focus on Hong Kong.

So, what causes air pollution?

There are a number of contributing factors to air pollution but generally we can lump them into three catagories:

• Agriculture
• Burning of fossil fuels (e.g. transportation)
• Emissions from factories and other industrial activities

These factors are clearly anthropogenic in origin and increase proportionally. An increased population on the scale and density of HK magnifies the effects of air pollution to the extent that it has become a serious environmental issue. Levels of air pollution are demonstrated by an Air Quality Index (AQI) (formerly the Air Pollution Index).

Visibility in Hong Kong on a bad (left) and good (right) day. Image courtesy of blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime

There has been a lot of research undertaken on air pollution that, unsurprisingly, predominantly focuses on the impact of air pollution on human health. Meteorological influences over air pollution levels are also well studies.

Tai et al (2010) look into how meteorological conditions have an effect on air pollution (Particulate Matter PM2.5). They conclude that there is a link between meteorological conditions and air pollution and suggest that the findings point to the possibility of climate change affecting future air pollution. Although this study focuses on the air pollution in the United States, the indications are clearly applicable to Hong Kong.

A more recent study undertaken by Fung and Wu (2014) looks into the relationship between intraseasonal variations of air pollution and meteorological variables in Hong Kong as this is important in regions that experience monsoon like conditions, which includes Hong Kong.  The meteorological conditions that the study predominantly focuses on are precipitation, wind direction and wind speed. Fung and Wu conclude that the intraseasonal relationship is complex and that whilst precipitation generally favours improved air quality, more robust data is required. They also conclude that the impact of wind speed on the API  intraseasonal variations is dependent on the season and differs year to year. Finally the study has found high API values are usually encountered under northerly winds in Hong Kong, however, there are cases when winds from other directions may lead to air quality problems.

Every year an estimated half million urban deaths in Asia are thought to be caused by air pollution (Brajer et al, 2005), however, compared to other cities in Asia, Hong Kong actually has relatively clean air due to pollution control measures put in place over the last two decades . They discuss how high levels of particulate matter (PM10) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) have been linked to several health problems. These include:

• Decreased lung function;
• Bronchitis;
• Emphysema; and
• Heart disease;

Some of these health issues can even lead to premature death. Brajer et al (2005) assess the health benefits of reducing air pollution in Hong Kong by estimating the resulting health improvements from additional cleanup of the air pollution using data provided by several sources including Hong Kong’s Environmental Protection Department and the Department of Health . The study concludes that whilst there has been some success when it comes to the mitigation efforts that has been put in for air pollution, there is still a long-term air pollution problem in Hong Kong. It estimates a projected gain of several billion dollars (U.S dollar) should Hong Kong achieve further reduction in air pollution levels which is a significant amount. So the benefits of cleaning up air pollution will not only improve human health, it will also save a substantial amount of money.

So, what can be done to help clean up the air pollution? In March 2013, the Hong Kong Government issued a document called 'A Clean Air Plan for hong Kong' the main driving force for this plan was to improve the health of the public. The plan focuses on ways to reduce roadside air pollution which includes changing vehicular technology. Examples of this is changing the fleet of taxis and Public Light Buses (PLB) from diesel to Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and increasing the use of hybrid or Electric Vehicles (EV). The plan also identifies the need for reducing marine emissions by changing the fuel used for operating vessels and also reducing power plant emissions (although this has been greatly reduced already) by changing the fuel mix used and improving energy efficiency in buildings across Hong Kong.

It’s a long road to improving air quality in Hong Kong, however it is clearly being recognised as a necessity and by undertaking the few changes mentioned above, there will hopefully be significant improvements to come!

If you’re curious you can visit the website http://aqicn.org/city/hongkong/, to see the real time AQI for Hong Kong, at the time of writing this blog (HK time monday 5am) Hong Kong had an AQI of 162 which is classed as being unhealthy!

Courtesy of http://aqicn.org/city/hongkong

Here's PREDICTS-ing you have a happy new year!

Greetings,

With new years hangovers out of the way and the left over mince pies well and truly gone I welcome you back to Standing Room Only.  I thought that I'd I write a post, belatedly inspired by a tweet about the PREDICTS database from UCL's very own Prof. Anson Mackay, regarding bio-diversity.

The global eco-system is suffering from a declining trend in biodiversity. Furthermore this trend is potentially accelerating. Butchart et al (2010) compile a summary of 5 biodiversity pressures and demonstrate that all possess increasing trends:

• Anthropogenic consumption of ecological resources
• Introduction of Alien species in ecologies
• Nitrogen Pollution (predominantly agricultural)
• Fisheries exploitation
• Climate change impacts

Unsurprisingly, these pressures are directly derived from Anthropogenic impacts (BTW: if you're a climate change denier then check out a fellow UCL Masters students blog that has all the facts:  Fighting-climate-change blog. C. Ferrere, 2014).

One of the biggest obstacles in evaluating species loss and biodiversity trends is the lack of empirical evidence. Numerous biodiversity projects are underway (Hong Kong's AFCD has implemented its own bio-diversity database) but many exist as separate entities that collect their own data solely for their own research. Huamán et al's (2000) seminal Inter-genebank Potato Database (complete with a summary of dimensions of wild potato germplasm) remains, unfortunately, in the realm of the Solarnum advocates. But I digress...

The PREDICTS (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems) database represents an effort to form a global community of  contributors of terrestrial biodiversity data. To date the effort has data for more than 38,000 species across the world.

Representation of PREDICTS current geographical range of data, courtesy of www.predicts.org.uk.

The database is the result of combining numerous small scale biodiversity studies (no potatoes yet) that cover the majority of biomes (portions of the earth that demonstrate similar, if not the same, climatic and environmental conditions, typically reflecting a latitudinal relationship).

Biome classification parameters, courtesy of Marietta College.

It is estimated that up to 50% of 9 out of 14 biomes have been impacted by agricultural activity alone. This pressure is resulting in extensive damage to biodiversity in those regions (Hassan et al, 2005).

The homogenisation of biodiversity is a real problem, its potential severity reflected by its inclusion at number 7 in the United Nations Millenium Development Goals (MDG) (2008). Butchart et al's (2010)  biodiversity pressures represent activity that we have, in the course of this blog, identified as extensive in Hong Kong:

The immutable Morton (1995) points out that the boom in population and industry after the Second World War sparked an increase in the consumption of resources (both terrestrial and aquatic).

Whilst his editorial (2005) indicates that the exploitation of fishery resources over the same period has resulted in the loss of higher trophic level species.

Nitrogen pollution both from Hong Kong itself and flowing from the Pearl River Delta wreaks havoc with marine diversity causing HAB events which create toxic marine conditions and potential deplete oxygen levels, suffocating the aquaculture (Anderson et al, 2002).

Thanks for joining me again, I'll leave you with some Solarnum biodiversity that didn't make it into Huamán et al's (2000) database, more's the pity.

Courtesy of it.wikipedia.org

Trawling for solutions

Hi there, welcome back to standing room only.

To reduce that Tryptophan induced coma resulting from 3 days of constant turkey intake let's dive right in with some positivity regarding our impacts on the marine environment of Hong Kong:

WWF-Hong Kong has been at the vanguard of environmental impact issues for 33 years and has been partially responsible for many of the environmental reforms across Hong Kong. Its Save Our Seas (SOS) campaign saw a focus on the protection of marine biodiversity. Perhaps the most prevalent result of the SOS campaign is the instigation of a trawling ban inside HK waters. Between 2004 and the ban's commencement on the 31st of December 2013 the SOS campaign applied concerted pressure on the Hong Kong SAR government through a program of public petitions and open letters from highly regarded members of academia (WWF-HK open letter) all aimed at raising awareness of the marine environments fragile state and providing researched evidence that changes need to be made quickly.

"The ban increases the public’s interest in and commitment to the sea. It will have a major positive impact on the whole ecosystem. Banning trawling is the best single action to help Hong Kong’s fishery on the road to recovery. It also shows that the government is beginning to listen to stakeholders other than the fishermen."

Prof. Yvonne Sadovy, Department of Ecology and Biodiversity, The University of Hong Kong (WWF-HK Save Our Seas supplement, 2011).

Prior to the trawling ban the management of fishery practices around Hong Kong was pretty minimal. Not surprising when we consider that, as noted in our initial fisheries post, after WW2 the primary focus for Hong Kong was to rebuild and enhance its fishing fleet in order to fulfil the growing demand for fresh fish in an increasingly competitive market (Cheung and Sadovy, 2005). Until relatively recently there simply wasn't a whole-hearted consideration of the sustainable nature of new fishery practices being adopted in HK and the situation manifested itself as a decrease in overall capture fisheries since the 1980s. In a broader perspective Hong Kong was suffering an exaggerated version of  the contemporary decreasing trend observed globally by Pauly et al (2002) whereby increasing fishery technology and expansion of fleet size resulted in over-exploitation of fishery resources and a major drop in the actual number of fish being caught per trip.

Cheung and Sadovys (2005) determination of  the variations of 'Total inshore landings' (total quantity of fish caught) and the  Catch Per Unit Effort (CPUE, basically how many fish were caught per trip compared to 1950 catches) in Hong Kong waters between 1950 and 1997.  

"Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, this huge increase of global fishing effort led to an increase in catches ... encouraging an entire generation of managers and politicians to believe that launching more boats would automatically lead to higher catches."

Shots-fired! Pauly's (2002) rhetoric places the blame for global over-exploitation of fishery resources squarely at the feet of the upper-echelons of power. 

The exclusion of Hong Kong waters to trawling practices is hoped to allow the local aquaculture to restore itself to its former glory. Samantha Lee, Senior Marine Conservation Officer for WWF-Hong Kong, expects marine stocks to recover by up to 30% inside of 5 years (Marine Science Today, 2013).

As well as increasing in numbers the decline in the mean-trophic value of catches, caused by the loss of larger slow growing species and highlighted in Mortons editorial (2005), is also estimated to reverse itself with a 10-20% increase over 5 years (WWF-HK 'submission to the Legislative Council', 2011: page 3).

Only time will tell if these changes can be maintained and have their desired effects, but for now I personally think that we can take this as evidence that the human race is beginning to take responsibility for its impacts and invest seriously in taking steps to lessen and hopefully reverse them.

TED Talk Time

Hi there,

Thought I'd throw a quick movie your way; 4 years ago Johan Rockström, a professor at Stockholm University and (at the time of filming) the executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, gave a TED talk describing his 9 recently identified 'Planetary Boundaries'.

The boundaries represent limits on human impacts on the environment. Johan explains within these limits the earth can remain at a level that maintains our current global environmental state, whilst exceeding these limits (or possibly only a number of them) could cause an abrupt change in the global environmental state from which it is likely we could never return.

The talk immediately identifies human population growth as a primary pressure on the earth's environmental conditions and the identified planetary boundaries encompass the majority of the topics we have investigated so far. Although his talk takes a much wider global and temporal viewpoint than that of this blog, I think its a great piece of media that conveys how the issues we are investigating all contribute to a much larger problem.

Interestingly, although perhaps unsurprisingly, Johan suggests that many aspects of human impact need to be initially addressed on a smaller cultural scale which will then allow incremental improvements of our environmental impacts to combine and result in global scale changes. I think this is a valid observation; the solutions to excess nutrient pollution and fishery resource exploitation impacts I mentioned in earlier posts both appear to have their beginnings at grassroots level. Guidelines for the control of agriculturally derived water pollution, released last year by the FAO, noted that there has been ''considerable success'' (Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations - Water Pollution Guidelines, page 13: 2013) in decreasing nutrient pollution through educating farmers in best practises and demonstrating financial savings through lower, correctly timed applications of fertiliser.

As yet we haven't broached the subject of 'reducing impacts' but I think this video offers us a great excuse to start looking at the more positive side of the subject in my next post.

Take care and don't stress about Christmas shopping to much.

Blooming Hell!

Hello again,

Today's post is going to be a little different and self indulgent; as a member of the Environmental Modelling MSc course at UCL I was particularly interested in a paper I referenced last week by Lai and Yin (2014). The paper investigated the potential for Algae Blooms to derive from physical accumulation via the application of a coastal circulation model.

Typically, algae blooms are considered to result from excess agricultural nutrients entering the aquatic system and promoting the growth of diatoms or other single celled algae to an exaggerated level (eutrophication). As the concentrations of algae increase they reach toxic levels (referred to as 'Harmful Algae Blooms' or HABs), ingestion of which can increase mortality rates of marine life and cause illness in those that eat the affected fish/shellfish etc. Backer and McGillicuddy's (2006) study on the relationship between humans and the ocean contains a plethora of illnesses that can be caused by ingestion, although I wouldn't advise reading it if you're at all partial to seafood!

Delicious! a glass of Microcystis bacteria (this is a surface sample of a HAB affected freshwater lake). These bacteria excrete neuro-toxins which can kill humans (Oberholster et al, 2004). Photo credited to T. Bridgeman in (Backer and McGillicuddy, 2006). Presumably Mr Bridgeman is no longer with us.

Lai and Yin's (2013) study theorised that, aside from nutrient pollution, blooms can arise from a combination of physical factors causing an accumulation of the single celled algae. Their theory was based on observations in Port Shelter bay in north-east Hong Kong; the bay suffers from frequent HAB's of Dinoflagellates that tend to occur in the same area each time (a band mirroring the coastline). Water samples from the bay indicate that nutrient levels are too low to produce a eutrophication event and hence a second, physical factor seemed likely.

In order to understand the complex mechanisms at play a Finite Volume Community Ocean Model (FVCOM) was used in combination with a series of water samples that were taken during a bloom event and identified Algae concentrations. The model was utilised in 3 experiments, each increasing in complexity by the application of new variables, with assessment of the potential for aggregation:

• Experiment 1 involved two model runs: Both utilised the morphology of the coastal region and the effects of the tidal forcing on the movement of algae in the bay. However, 1A was performed under a homogenous water profile (basically ignoring the effects of changing temperture and salinity levels based upon water depth), whilst the 1B was performed under a stratified water profile whereby the temperature and salinity (which both affect algae concentrations) were utilised to aid aggregation of the Dinoflagellates.
• Experiment 2 maintained the stratified water profile and tidal forcing but included the effects of wind conditions on the surface of the water.
• Experiment 3 enhanced Experiment 2 with the inclusion of the ability for the Dinoflagellates to swim upwards, against flow in order to promote photosynthesise. This ability results in amplified accumulation as the flagellates are suspended in the same location, swimming against the current, for longer periods of time.

The experiments proved that by applying several variables:

• An accurate approximation of the coastal topography
• Tidal forcing
• Wind effects
• A stratified, saline/temperature dependent water profile
• A potential for the modelled particles (in this case the Dinoflagellatte algae) to vertically migrate towards the surface

The FVCOM model can simulate the physical aggregation effects observed across Port Shelter bay! Woohoo! Modelled cross-sections across portions of the bay that have been observed to contain HAB's clearly indicate that there is a convergence of currents (and hence Dinoflagellates).

Cross sections of the modelled bay indicating convergence of currents. Larger arrows on the surface indicate position of observed HABs whilst smaller arrows indicate current direction (Lai and Ying, 2014. page 73).

Cartoon representation of the modelled process (Lai and Ying, 2014. page 74).

I hope this sortie into my preferred discipline has given you a little more insight into how we can begin to enhance our understanding of the environment. I feel that mitigation of human impacts on the environment must begin with a good understanding of how the environment works and how our impacts actually affect it. As we have seen in this post, natural processes can cause similar outcomes as those derived from humans. Without this further investigation we may have assumed that such HAB events are solely due to our influence, giving us a misguided sense of our impact.

As a thanks for joining me again, here's another Harmful Bloom.

Courtesy of lotr.wikia.com.

Teach a man to fish a lot!

Hi there, welcome back.

Last week we had a run through the evolution of Hong Kong's fishery practises over the last 80 years. We observed that Hong Kong's fishing fleet evolved from low tech, mostly wind powered, vessels to a predominantly mechanised fleet. This mechanisation, and the newer fishing practises that it enabled, resulted in yearly increases in fishery yields. Although these increases are associated with an actual decrease in per unit yield (basically catches are becoming smaller so an increased number of catches is require to meet the demand).

This post is going to have a quick look at three dominant fishery methods utilised by the Hong Kong fleet:

Gei Wai (fish ponds):

Gei Wai are large bunded ponds that can be either replenished tidally or through deviation of freshwater sources dependent upon the culture (Lai et al, 1999). They are effectively nurseries where young fish, shrimp etc. are introduced and allowed to mature in a relatively protected, and easily farmed habitat (www.wwf.org, 2014).

As I'm sure you've already realised, this method requires a large areas of coastal land (perpetually at a premium in Hong Kong) and as such the practise is slowly being ousted in favour or less spatially demanding methods. Gei Wai now predominately survive in the very northern portion of the new Territories (Lai et al, 1999) on government owned land.

Marine Culture Cages:

Culture cages are large, fine grated cages suspend from rafts in coastal waters. The practise was adopted in the 1960s after growing population demands required a greater output from marine resources.

Gei Wai and Fish Culture Zones in 1998, courtesy of www.afcd.gov.hk.

Although the method thrived for approximately 20 years (Morton, 2005) this flourishing new industry couldn't sustain itself for very long. Typically the farms were situated in protected environments (shallow coastal bays etc.) in order to allow the livestock to growth as quickly and easily as possible.

However, the low current energy of these protective areas prevented the excess chum and supplements that were fed to the fish from being transported away from the farm area resulting in a rising levels of local nutrient pollution.


The increasing levels of marine population deriving from Hong Kong's rising population also had a severe impact on Cage fishery. Perhaps most notable impact event is the 1998 'Red tide': a significant algae bloom swept across Hong Kong and decimated caged cultures and corals. The bloom affected 25 of the culture zones in HK and resulted in a loss of approximately 2,500 tonnes of fish culture at an estimated HK$250,000,000 impact on the Hong Kong economy (Yang et al, 2003).

Capture fisheries:

A quick referal to the ever useful 'Hong Kong: The Facts' government released fact sheet (www.gov.hk, 2014) gives us a summation of Hong Kong's modern fisheries fleet:

• 33% of vessels are >15m and carry out activities outside HK local waters, along the northern continental shelf of south china sea: Trawling, Line fishing and Gill netting.
• The remaining two thirds of the fleet comprise smaller vessels whose activities are generally carried out inside HK local waters (Gill-Netting, Line fishing, Purse Seiners and Cage Trapping).

For the sake of brevity I am going to focus on, arguably, the most impactful of these capture methods: Trawling. I feel that the other techniques, whilst clearly impacting the environment, can pretty much be regarded as a single entity that represents the exploitation of shallow marine ecology. Although many of the techniques are similar to trawling, they typically do not disturb the seabed envrionment to the same degree.

The trawling method involves dragging large nets across, or near, the seabed in order to catch fish and Crustacea.

Basic trawling method, courtesy of web.duke.edu.

The environmental impacts of trawling have long been recognised (Van Dolah et al, 1987) and consist of two primary effects:

• Huge plumes of sediment are disturbed by the nets. Similar to the side effects of reclamation the spread of the disturbed sediment can spread across huge areas preventing phytoplankton photosynthesis (Yan et al, 2013). Fish species also have 'varying tolerances of suspended solids' (Newell et al, 1998. Page 25) and may suffer clogging of the gills eventually preventing feeding and causing death.
• The second impact is a much more obvious and severe matter; the act of dragging a net (complete with ballast to maintain negative buoyancy) literally scours a path across the sea floor destroying habitats in its way. Coral reefs are particularly susceptible to this destruction due to the slow growth rate. Years of growth can be removed in a single pass (Hall-Spencer et al, 2002).

The severity of trawling impact on marine ecology is such that in early 2013 the practice was banned inside HK local waters, given Hong Kong's establishment and ubiquitous association with fishery practises the acknowledgement of trawling's destructive capability was a huge step. An article, released on the day of the bans commencement by the South China Morning Post (www.scmp.com, 2013) stated that HK$1.7 billion were due to be paid out as compensation to affected companies and fishery families.

Above is a quick Youtube clip issued by www.seafish.org. It's not an immensely exciting clip but I think it really allows you to comprehend just how much damage trawling could do across delicate marine ecologies. Scary!