Impact of flood control reservoirs and pollution influx on the Sandy Creek Watershed,Mercer County,Pennsylvania, USA

A study of the impact of two flood control reservoirs and pollution influx was conducted on two streams within the Sandy Creek Watershed, Mercer County, Pennsylvania, USA. Fecal coliforms were significantly reduced in the outflows without affecting water chemistry, thereby improving the overall water quality. The size and composition of the aquatic communities as well as stream metabolism varied seasonably among the different sampling stations. Pollution influx primarily from communities and agricultural drainage had a greater impact on the stream ecosystem than did impounding of the streams. Natural wetlands and riparian vegetation were important factors in reducing the pollution load in these streams. The reestablishment and maintenance of riparian vegetation should therefore be an integral part of the land-use plan for watersheds in order to improve water quality and wildlife habitats. In the future, the maintenance of riparian vegetation should be given prime consideration in the development of watershed projects.     

Protecting the National Estate: Issues and practice in Australian Heritage Conservation

Summary The author presents a personal view of the role and functions of both the Australian Heritage Commission and the Australian Register of the National Estate. Operational problems are highlighted, and a critique of the Commission and difficulties encountered in working within both national and federal political confines, are outlined. In a decade, the Commission has achieved much towards the preservation of the Australian environment: important in the Commission's current activity is the task of explaining to the lay public precisely what heritage conservation entails and why it is an essential activity.Professor Bruce Davis has been, in the past, Chairman of the Australian Heritage Commission and the contents of this paper are based upon his delivery of an address at the inaugural conference of the Environment Institute of Australia, in Sydney, during November 1987. The views expressed are the personal opinion of the author and should not be construed as necessarily representing the policy of views of any institution with which the author may be connected.     

EFFECTS OF RATE STRUCTURE KNOWLEDGE ON HOUSEHOLD WATER USE1

ABSTRACT: Socioeconomic determinants of individual household water use were estimated using regressions of these characteristics with actual household water use for winter and summer. Results were disaggregated between those consumers who were aware of an increasing block rate price structure and those who were not. Most of the informed group members believed that this price structure did result in significant reductions in water use. Nevertheless, overall water use was greater for the informed group. The determinants of water use were found to differ between informed and uninformed users as well as between winter and summer. The uninformed users were influenced by a larger set of variables in each season than the informed group. In winter, the informed group members with swimming pools and/or arid landscaping used less water than their uninformed counterparts. Summer water use increased with length of tenancy in home for the uninformed group but not for informed, while increasing with ownership for informed consumers.     

An evaluation of resource inventory and monitoring program used in national forest planning

The National Forest Management Act (1976) specifies that multiresource inventories be conducted to provide baseline data for development and, later, monitoring of national forest management plans. This mandate entails the most ambitious and complex resource planning effort ever attempted. In this paper we evaluate the structure and use of current inventory-monitoring programs and recommend a framework for gathering data to improve national forest planning. Current national guidelines are general and provide only basic directions to forest-level planners. Forest inventories have traditionally concentrated on timber. Although these inventories are often well designed, the questions we are now asking about forest resources have outgrown these methods. Forest management is impeded by general confusion over definitions of resources and the interactions among them. We outline a simple classification scheme that centers on identification of basic ecosystem elements that can be readily measured. Furthermore, spatial and temporal scales must be considered in the design of inventory-monitoring programs. The concept of ecological indicators is reviewed, and caution is advised in their use. Inventory-monitoring programs should be goal-directed and based on as rigorous a statistical design as possible. We also review fundamental issues of variable selection, validation, and sampling bias. We conclude by developing a flexible inventory-monitoring program that is designed to provide information on individual characteristics of the environment, rather than being based on fixed definitions of resources.     

INTEGRATING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY TO SUPPORT STREAM NATURALIZATION NEAR CHICAGO,ILLINOIS1

ABSTRACT: Many urban and suburban communities in the Midwest are seeking to establish sustainable, morphologically and hydraulically varied, yet dynamically stable fluvial systems that are capable of supporting healthy, biologically diverse aquatic ecosystems — a process known as stream naturalization. This paper describes an integrated research program that seeks to develop a scientific and technological framework to support two stream naturalization projects near Chicago, Illinois. The research program integrates theory and methods in fluvial geomorphology, aquatic ecology, hydraulic engineering and social theory. Both the conceptual and the practical challenges of that integration are discussed. Scientific and technical support emphasize the development of predictive tools to evaluate the performance of possible naturalization designs at scales most appropriate to community based projects. Social analysis focuses on place based evaluations of how communities formulate an environmental vision and then, through decision making, translate this vision into specific stream naturalization strategies. Integration of scientific and technical with social components occurs in the context of community based decision making as the predictive tools are employed by project scientists to help local communities translate their environmental visions into concrete environmental designs. Social analysis of this decision making process reveals how the interplay between the community's vision of what they want the watershed to become, and the scientific perspective on what the watershed can become to achieve the community's environmental goals, leads to the implementation of specific stream naturalization practices.     

Management plan for an alkali sink and its endangered plantCordylanthus palmatus

Cordylanthus palmatus is a hemiparasitic annual of the family Scrophulareacae. It is on both the federal and state lists of endangered species. Only four widely separated populations remain, all of them in alkali sinks, where the plant thrives in saline-sodic soils. The largest population is at Springtown, Alameda County, California. This article reports on efforts to develop a management plan for both the plant and the alkali sink ecosystem. The plan is based on: (1) characterization of hydrology, soils and geomorphology of the site; (2) characterization of the land use impacts to the site; (3) analysis of plant distribution in relation to gradients of elevation and soil chemistry; (4) studies on water potential and water stress inCordylanthus palmatus and associated species. On the basis of this plan, both the State of California and private groups are cooperating to create, restore, and manage a preserve in the Springtown Alkali Sink.     

INTERSTATE AND INTERNATIONAL AQUIFERS1

Many important groundwater aquifers cross state and national boundaries. The flow of water in these aquifers is not influenced by the boundaries but may be materially influenced by mans activities on one or both sides of a boundary. Interstate and international problems may develop because of excessive groundwater lowering on one side of a boundary affecting water users on the opposite side of the line. Similarly, intensive groundwater development along a surface stream may influence the amount of surface water that flows across a boundary. A third type of problem may develop when pumping on one side of the boundary induces poor quality water into an aquifer on the other side of the boundary. Several specific interstate and international aquifer problems are briefly described.     

FACTORS THAT AFFECT ACTIVATED SLUDGE PHOSPHATE RELEASE1

The activated sludge process can remove significant amounts of phosphorus from sewage, but the removal efficiency is usually significantly reduced by the release of phosphate back to solution during subsequent treatment steps. This research presents a study of soluble phosphate release from activated sludge with emphasis on defining the factors that affect such release and the actual release mechanisms. Laboratory units were used for experimental purposes. The experiments were designed to study the relationship between soluble phosphate release and various environmental factors such as redox potential (ORP), dissolved oxygen (DO), pH, solids concentration, solids destruction, and sulfate salt addition. The effect of substrate utilization on phosphate uptake and the relationship between uptake characteristics and subsequent phosphate release were also studied. The results show that some phosphate storage occurs during aerobic substrate utilization. Following substrate utilization, activated sludge phosphate release is directly related to the amount of biological stress the organisms are subjected to, and the mechanism of release is primarily cell lysis. The phosphate released per unit sludge under anoxic conditions is relatively constant. Under normal environmental conditions, neither ORP or pH change have a significant affect on phosphate release.