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Island Systems (island + system)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Life Sciences	75%

Selected Abstracts

Unit commitment at frequency security condition

EUROPEAN TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRICAL POWER, Issue 2 2001
X. Lei
In island grids and weakly interconnected power systems, the loss of a large proportion of generation will cause the system frequency to fall dramatically. In order to ensure a stable operation with the lowest impact to the system, the disturbed power balance must be equalized within a short specified time by activating the second-reserve of on-line units or by load shedding or both. Unit commitment procedures shall consider these factors to ensure a reliable power supply while minimizing the fuel costs. This paper presents a unit commitment procedure taking the frequency security condition of systems into account. The procedure commits and optimizes units, calculates necessary second-reserve capability, and allocates them among the available on-line units. Parallel to the minimization of daily fuel costs, a specified frequency minimum following the loss of generation is employed as a criterion for maintaining system security. A case study on typical island systems with a large number of different units is demonstrated using the proposed procedure. Results from the study validated robust performance of the proposed procedure that minimizes fuel costs while maintaining frequency security condition. This paper considers only the frequency security condition to be handled. However, it can also be extended with other criteria such transmission capability during transient conditions of interconnected systems. [source]

Measurements of area and the (island) species,area relationship: new directions for an old pattern

OIKOS, Issue 10 2008
Kostas A. Triantis
The species,area relationship is one of the strongest empirical generalizations in geographical ecology, yet controversy persists about some important questions concerning its causality and application. Here, using more accurate measures of island surface size for five different island systems, we show that increasing the accuracy of the estimation of area has negligible impact on the fit and form of the species,area relationship, even though our analyses included some of the most topographically diverse island groups in the world. In addition, we show that the inclusion of general measurements of environmental heterogeneity (in the form of the so-called choros model), can substantially improve the descriptive power of models of island species number. We suggest that quantification of other variables, apart from area, that are also critical for the establishment of biodiversity and at the same time have high explanatory power (such as island age, distance, productivity, energy, and environmental heterogeneity), is necessary if we are to build up a more predictive science of species richness variation across island systems. [source]

Biogeographic anomaly or human introduction: a cryptogenic population of tree skink (Reptilia: Squamata) from the Cook Islands, Oceania

BIOLOGICAL JOURNAL OF THE LINNEAN SOCIETY, Issue 2 2010
ALISON M. HAMILTON
Archaeological and molecular data have revealed that the present day faunas of many island groups in Melanesia, Polynesia, and Micronesia are not representative of the biodiversity generated within this region on an evolutionary timescale. Erroneous inferences regarding the mechanisms of speciation and the significance of long distance dispersal in shaping the present diversity of these island systems have resulted from this incomplete diversity and distributional data. The lizard fauna east of Samoa has been suggested to derive entirely from human-mediated introductions, a distribution congruent with biogeographic patterns for other Pacific species. Distinguishing between introduced populations and those that result from natural colonization events is difficult, although molecular data provide a useful means for elucidating population history and identifying the likely sources of introductions. We use molecular data (1726 bp of mitochondrial DNA and 286 bp of nuclear DNA) to evaluate a population of arboreal lizards from the Cook Islands and to determine whether this arboreal skink population is the sole endemic component of the lizard fauna east of Samoa or the result of human-mediated introduction. © 2010 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2010, 100, 318,328. [source]