A necessidade de se estabelecer maiores garantias jurídicas na efetivação de uma busca de preservação do meio ambiente, tem nos levado a discutir suas diferentes abordagens pelas Ciências Jurídicas, uma vez que atuará o Poder Judiciário, como um mediador deste conflito. O direito a um meio ambiente ecologicamente equilibrado e sadio e o o desenvolvimento econômico cada vez mais se tornam pertinentes, ante a ausência de uma correta exploração dos recursos naturais. O sistema jurídico necessita possuir instrumentos jurídicos hábeis, como o Estudo de Impacto Ambiental e o Relatório de Impacto Ambiental, meios estes capazes a compatibilizar o desenvolvimento econômico e as atividades econômicas geradoras de riquezas, sob pena de uma perda da qualidade de vida existente no planeta. O sistema legal para a concessão do licenciamento ambiental na mineração assim, deverá atuar como um compatibilizador da permissão para a extração de minérios e a possibilidade de recuperação da área explorada, com o seu conseqüente plano de recuperação, que deverá avaliar a impactação necessária a sustentabilidade da atividade. / The need of establishing wider legal guarantees in the interest of environment preservation has raised the discussion of its different approaches in Legal Sciences, since the Judiciary Power would act as the mediator of this conflict. The entitlement of an ecologically and healthy balanced environment and the entitlement of the economic development have become more relevant because of the absence of a correct natural resources exploration. The juridical system must have clever juridical methods capable of making the economic development compatible with the economic activities that generate wealth, in risk of, otherwise, harming the quality of life existent in the planet. The juridical system of the environment licensing in mining must therefore act as a conciliator in the mining extraction allowance and the possibility of recovery of the explored area, including its regeneration plan that should evaluate the necessary effort to make this activity sustainable.

MENVSC / Department of Ecology and Resource Management / Rodents can quickly respond to land use changes whether the change positively or negatively influences their life. In the case of positive influence, rodents exploit the additional food resources and increase their numbers to potential pest level, especially in the absence of predators. Such a population increase can potentially be harmful to humans due to the diseases that rodents carry and the costs due to damage to crops, stored foods and personal possessions that they may cause to small holder farmers. Small holder farmers live in a mixed landscape that is constantly changing. Such changes are changes in land use and they do not only affect rodent population dynamics and species composition, but also their ecosystem services and integrity. Understanding how rodents respond to these land use changes (crop, grazing and settlement) will not only improve the implementation of Ecologically Based Rodent Management (EBRM), but might also enable the monitoring of ecosystem integrity. Rodent trapping was conducted in two different study sites which experience different rainfalls during wet and dry season. A 70 m x 70 m grid was set in three different land uses (crops, grazing and settlement) per study site. A mark-recapture technique was applied and all captures were processed on a temporal station on site. In all grids at a distance of 30 m a line of 20 snap traps were set. With the tapping effort of 1470 trap nights per season for both seasons in this study we captured 839 rodents and 2 shrews, which represented 469 individual rodents and 1 individual shrew. At Vyeboom, cropping land use had the highest number capture (210) and the highest in species richness (9) rodent species and 1 shrew. The settlement land use was second at 144 captures for 8 rodent species and lastly the grazing land use at 80 captures with 7 rodent species. On the other hand, at Ka-Ndengeza also cropping land use had the highest capture (186) with highest richness at 7 rodent species. When it comes to settlement and grazing, settlement was second (129) to cropping in terms of the number of capture but last in terms of richness (5) whilst grazing was last in terms of number of captures 92 and second in terms of richness (6). Despite the high diversity of rodents, only Mastomys natalensis, Gerbilliscus leucogaster, Steatomys pratensis and Rattus rattus were captured in meaningful sample sizes to allow for robust density estimation. Similarly there were strong seasonal effects on rodent captures, with almost no captures during the wet season.

Für einen ökologischen Waldumbau sind naturwissenschaftliche und ökonomische Grundlagen erforderlich, um die Entscheidungsträger unterstützen. Die Problematik des Waldumbaus bei heterogenen Bedingungen des Osterzgebirges setzt ein flächenbezogenes Informationsmanagement voraus. Durch Aufbau eines forstökologischen Informationssystems werden naturwissenschaftliche und forstbetriebliche Grunddaten auf räumliche Einheiten übertragen und damit Entscheidungshilfen. Zur Erzielung standortsgerechter, stabiler und leistungsfähiger Mischbestände müssen unter Berücksichtigung waldbaulicher und ertragskundlicher Verhältnisse waldbauliche Strategien aufgezeigt und deren mittelfristige Umsetzung geplant werden. Zur Gestaltung des Planungskonzepts werden ausgehend vom IST-Zustand geeignete Maßnahmen zum Erreichen eines SOLL-Zustands aufgezeigt. Instrumentelle Basis bildet ein Forstökologisches Informationssystem, dessen GIS-Funktionalitäten flächenbezogene Entscheidungshilfen durch vielschichtige Datenanalyse ermöglichen. Die Auswertung von analogen und digitalen Luftbildern mit verschiedenen Stichprobenverfahren werden kombiniert. Mit einem Kalkulationsprogramm werden Bewirtschaftungsmaßnahmen hinsichtlich zu erwartender Kosten und Erlöse charakterisiert. Durch das Informationssystems lassen sich die naturwissenschaftlichen und forstbetrieblichen Grunddaten auf räumliche Einheiten übertragen. Planungsvorschläge zum Waldumbau in Form von Entscheidungshilfen stehen zur Verfügung. Die Integration auf Intensivmeßflächen gewonnener Daten ins Informationssystem und Übertragung auf flächige Bezugseinheiten gewährleisten die Beachtung vielfältiger Ursache-Wirkungsbeziehungen zur forstbetrieblichen Planung. Für die verschiedenen Höhenstufen werden spezifische waldbauliche Behandlungsvarianten durch Entscheidungsmodelle abgebildet, die eine flächenbezogene Umsetzung ermöglichen.

The thesis is about environmental values that we encounter in our everyday life. The thesis also talks about environmental justice dialogues and tensions that play in Bangladesh. The thesis, in the first place, explores how an environmental planning and resource management approach causes a particular type of environmental injustice; i.e., non-recognition of access to the decision making process of local ethnic communities, which identifies them as adivasi meaning indigenous, poses a threat to their livelihood and culture, and obstructs the process of environmental protection in Bangladesh. / The existing theories of environmental justice and four case studies conducted in Bangladesh have been used to interrogate the research findings. I argue, along with Low and Gleeson (1998) that for environmental justice, recognition of environmental needs for every entity as an ingredient of human dignity should be basis of the planning process. The research findings also suggest that , at all levels of decisions, fair access to decision, information and justice for all entities should be an integral part of environmental planning and resource management. / The thesis explores avenues for fair access to justice, meaning redress and remedy of environmental injustice, in the context of Bangladesh. I argue that capillaries of justice such as Salish, a process and institution for public interest negotiation (PIN) embedded in Bangladesh culture, can be reinvented. In addition, access to information should be a prerequisite for meaningful deliberation at all levels of decision making and dispute resolving processes.

Although current augmented, virtual, and mixed reality (AR/VR/MR) systems are facing advanced and immersive experience in the entertainment industry with countless media forms. Theses systems suffer a lack of correct direct and indirect illumination modeling where the virtual objects render with the same lighting condition as the real environment. Some systems are using baked GI, pre-recorded textures, and light probes that are mostly accomplished offline to compensate for precomputed real-time global illumination (GI). Thus, illumination information can be extracted from the physical scene for interactively rendering the virtual objects into the real world which produces a more realistic final scene in real-time. This work approaches the problem of visual coherence in AR by proposing a system that detects the real-world lighting conditions in dynamic scenes, then uses the extracted illumination information to render the objects added to the scene. The system covers several major components to achieve a more realistic augmented reality outcome. First, the detection of the incident light (direct illumination) from the physical scene with the use of computer vision techniques based on the topological structural analysis of 2D images using a live-feed 360^o camera instrumented on an AR device that captures the entire radiance map. Also, the physics-based light polarization eliminates or reduces false-positive lights such as white surfaces, reflections, or glare which negatively affect the light detection process. Second, the simulation of the reflected light (indirect illumination) that bounce between the real-world surfaces to be rendered into the virtual objects and reflect their existence in the virtual world. Third, defining the shading characteristic/properties of the virtual object to depict the correct lighting assets with a suitable shadow casting. Fourth, the geometric properties of real-scene including plane detection, 3D surface reconstruction, and simple meshing are incorporated with the virtual scene for more realistic depth interactions between the real and virtual objects. These components are developed methods which assumed to be working simultaneously in real-time for photo-realistic AR. The system is tested with several lighting conditions to evaluate the accuracy of the results based on the error incurred between the real/virtual objects casting shadow and interactions. For system efficiency, the rendering time is compared with previous works and research. Further evaluation of human perception is conducted through a user study. The overall performance of the system is investigated to reduce the cost to a minimum.

Following a grounded theory research model, the research uncovered and presented the state of debris recycling to a national association of demolition contractors to measure their willingness and attitudes towards the growing trend in the circular economy and adapting their business models to incorporate it into their own contracts. The first part was finding the deficiencies in the current model based on government reports and through interviews with county-level emergency managers. Second, successful businesses that already use the circular economy design in their operations were used as exemplars to emulate and their opinions and suggestions were discussed. The outputs of the emergency managers and the successful businesses was folded into the third phase of the research with surveys to the membership of the National Demolition Association (NDA) with multiple-choice, scalar questions and open-ended, opinion-heavy questions throughout. The findings were reported back to the head of the partnering organization, the NDA, to focus outreach, training, and policy advocacy concentration for the national organization as a whole, but to related and tangentially-connected industries to their own.