Legal and Regulatory Issues in Air Quality Management for the Electric Power Industry

A Conference on Air Quality Management in the Electric Power Industry was held at The University of Texas at Austin in Austin, TX, on January 28-30, 1976. The opening session of the Conference was devoted to legal and regulatory issues in air pollution control related to the electric power industry. The purpose of this session was to present the viewpoints of those Federal and state regulatory agencies most directly involved in air pollution control for the electric power industry. Emphasis was placed on those issues relating to the increasing need for coal and oil combustion to meet the Nation’s electrical energy requirements, concentrating on the five southwestern states of Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas in Federal Region VI.     

Nutrient mitigation in a temporary river basin

We estimate the nutrient budget in a temporary Mediterranean river basin. We use field monitoring and modelling tools to estimate nutrient sources and transfer in both high and low flow conditions. Inverse modelling by the help of PHREEQC model validated the hypothesis of a losing stream during the dry period. Soil and Water Assessment Tool model captured the water quality of the basin. The ‘total daily maximum load’ approach is used to estimate the nutrient flux status by flow class, indicating that almost 60 % of the river network fails to meet nitrogen criteria and 50 % phosphate criteria. We recommend that existing well-documented remediation measures such as reforestation of the riparian area or composting of food process biosolids should be implemented to achieve load reduction in close conjunction with social needs.     

Four priorities for new links between conservation science and accounting research

Article impact statement: New collaborations with accounting research can improve conservation impact of ecosystem-based information systems.     

Nitrogen concentrations in mosses indicate the spatial distribution of atmospheric nitrogen deposition in Europe

In 2005/6, nearly 3000 moss samples from (semi-)natural location across 16 European countries were collected for nitrogen analysis. The lowest total nitrogen concentrations in mosses (<0.8%) were observed in northern Finland and northern UK. The highest concentrations (≥1.6%) were found in parts of Belgium, France, Germany, Slovakia, Slovenia and Bulgaria. The asymptotic relationship between the nitrogen concentrations in mosses and EMEP modelled nitrogen deposition (averaged per 50 km × 50 km grid) across Europe showed less scatter when there were at least five moss sampling sites per grid. Factors potentially contributing to the scatter are discussed. In Switzerland, a strong (r² = 0.91) linear relationship was found between the total nitrogen concentration in mosses and measured site-specific bulk nitrogen deposition rates. The total nitrogen concentrations in mosses complement deposition measurements, helping to identify areas in Europe at risk from high nitrogen deposition at a high spatial resolution.     

Lingual and biting responses to prey chemicals by ingestively naive scincid lizards: discrimination from control chemicals,time course,and effect of method of stimulus presentation

Summary. We tested responses to prey chemicals by lizard hatchlings of an oviparous species and neonates of a viviparous species, neither of which had never eaten. Both species responded more strongly to prey chemicals than to odorous and odorless control stimuli presented on cotton swabs. Although only a few species have been examined, all that have been tested have an innate capacity for prey chemical discrimination, suggesting that this innate response to prey chemicals is widespread among lizards that use the lingual-vomeronasal system to locate and identify prey. Innate prey chemical discrimination has the great advantage of permitting lizards lacking prior experience with food to respond appropriately to chemical cues associated with food. Both species discriminated prey chemicals from control substances at age three days, earlier than previously known. Our data hint that Mabuya macularia may be capable of discrimination on its day of birth, but further study is needed to determine the exact onset. A stronger tendency to attack swabs bearing prey chemicals by Scincella lateralis than by M. macularia may be explained by differences in defensiveness near an experimenter or by differences in the importance of visual prey cues for confirmation of chemical cues in the natural habitats of these species. In M. macularia responses to the control stimuli declined over days of testing, suggesting habituation, but responses to prey chemicals did not habituate by the third day of testing, which is interpreted as a possible adaptive response to permit location of food. In the standard method of stimulus presentation, a cotton swab bearing a chemical stimulus is placed anterior to a lizard's snout. We tested a new method in which the swab was placed in continuous contact with the lizard's anterior labial scales. The new method elicited significantly stronger responses from M. macularia. We discuss reasons for this finding and applications for the new method. Received 2 September 1999; accepted 15 December 1999     

Three-dimensional numerical simulation of water quality and sediment-associated processes with application to a Mississippi Delta lake

A three-dimensional water quality model was developed for simulating temporal and spatial variations of phytoplankton, nutrients, and dissolved oxygen in freshwater bodies. Effects of suspended and bed sediment on the water quality processes were simulated. A formula was generated from field measurements to calculate the light attenuation coefficient by considering the effects of suspended sediment and chlorophyll. The processes of adsorption–desorption of nutrients by sediment were described using the Langmuir Equation. The release rates of nutrients from the bed were calculated based on the concentration gradient across the water–sediment interface and other variables including pH, temperature and dissolved oxygen concentration.The model was calibrated and validated by applying it to simulate the concentrations of chlorophyll and nutrients in a natural oxbow lake in Mississippi Delta. The simulated time series of phytoplankton (as chlorophyll) and nutrient concentrations were generally in agreement with field observations. Sensitivity analyses were conducted to demonstrate the impacts of varying suspended sediment concentration on lake chlorophyll levels.     

Iodine-129 and plutonium isotopes in Arctic kelp as historical indicators of transport of nuclear fuel-reprocessing wastes from mid-to-high latitudes in the Atlantic Ocean

Iodine-129:iodine-127 ratios were determined using accelerator mass spectrometry in 34 Arctic marine algae collected between 1930 and 1993. A smaller set (5) of marine algae were also analyzed mass spectrometrically to determine plutonium-isotope ratios. The ¹²⁹I:¹²⁷I ratio increased as much as three orders of magnitude from a mean of <1×10⁻¹¹ (atom/atom) in the pre-nuclear era (before 1945) to nearly 1000×10⁻¹¹ in 1993 for marine algae collected from the Novaya Zemlya archipelago separating the Barents and Kara Seas. The predominant basis for the higher ratios in the Novaya Zemlya kelps appears to be upcurrent sources of ¹²⁹I from nuclear fuel-reprocessing facilities at Sellafield (UK) and La Hague (France). Relatively high ²⁴¹Pu:²³⁹Pu ratios (compared to observed bomb fallout at boreal latitudes, decay corrected to the date of collection) also corroborate the influence of non-fallout sources. The small size of the data set precludes determining if there are significant contributions of ¹²⁹I and other radionuclides from Russian sources. In contrast, marine algae collected between 1969 and 1993 in the Bering, Beaufort and East Siberian Seas had much lower ¹²⁹I:¹²⁷I ratios (mean=14.04×10⁻¹¹±3.15 SD) than those observed in the European Arctic. The narrow range of ratios in Ameriasian Arctic kelps, and the modest change over that time period, indicate that there were no major contributions of non-fallout ¹²⁹I to North American Arctic surface waters at the time that the algae were collected. The potential for timing the transport of fuel-reprocessed ¹²⁹I through analysis of additional archived samples is outlined. Received: 10 November 1997 / Accepted: 24 February 1998