The impact of projected increases in urbanization on ecosystem services.

Alteration in land use is likely to be a major driver of changes in the distribution of ecosystem services before 2050. In Europe, urbanization will probably be the main cause of land-use change. This increase in urbanization will result in spatial shifts in both supplies of ecosystem services and the beneficiaries of those services; the net outcome of such shifts remains to be determined. Here, we model changes in urban land cover in Britain based on large (16%) projected increases in the human population by 2031, and the consequences for three different services--flood mitigation, agricultural production and carbon storage. We show that under a scenario of densification of urban areas, the combined effect of increasing population and loss of permeable surfaces is likely to result in 1.7 million people living within 1 km of rivers with at least 10 per cent increases in projected peak flows, but that increasing suburban 'sprawl' will have little effect on flood mitigation services. Conversely, losses of stored carbon and agricultural production are over three times as high under the sprawl as under the 'densification' urban growth scenarios. Our results illustrate the challenges of meeting, but also of predicting, future demands and patterns of ecosystem services in the face of increasing urbanization.

A titanosilicate molecular sieve with adjustable pores for size-selective adsorption of molecules.

Zeolites and related crystalline microporous oxides-tetrahedrally coordinated atoms covalently linked into a porous framework-are of interest for applications ranging from catalysis to adsorption and ion-exchange. In some of these materials (such as zeolite rho) adsorbates, ion-exchange, and dehydration and cation relocation can induce strong framework deformations. Similar framework flexibility has to date not been seen in mixed octahedral/tetrahedral microporous framework materials, a newer and rapidly expanding class of molecular sieves. Here we show that the framework of the titanium silicate ETS-4, the first member of this class of materials, can be systematically contracted through dehydration at elevated temperatures to 'tune' the effective size of the pores giving access to the interior of the crystal. We show that this so-called 'molecular gate' effect can be used to tailor the adsorption properties of the materials to give size-selective adsorbents suitable for commercially important separations of gas mixtures of molecules with similar size in the 4.0 to 3.0 A range, such as that of N2/CH4, Ar/O2 and N2/O2.