Monitoring saltwater intrusion in Rupert Bay,Québec,Canada, after the partial diversion of a major tributary

As part of a large hydroelectric project in northern Québec (Canada), a portion of the flow of the Rupert River was diverted toward the existing La Grande hydroelectric complex. As a result of the partial diversion, the discharge of the Rupert River at its mouth is reduced by an average of 50% annually. This corresponds to an 18% decrease in the total freshwater inflow into the bay and, thus, to a shift of the upstream limit of the saltwater intrusion in Rupert Bay. Changes in saltwater intrusion had been predicted numerically as part of the project’s environmental impact assessment (EIA). In the project’s conditions of authorization, monitoring the hydraulic conditions and the extent of saltwater intrusion in the Rupert Bay was required by government authorities. The objective of this paper is to present the results of this environmental monitoring and, more specifically, to validate the modifications predicted in the EIA in terms of both saltwater intrusion limit and hydraulic conditions in the Rupert Bay. Results obtained during 2 years of monitoring are within the predicted trends and order of magnitude of changes anticipated in the EIA. The results, thus, confirm that the shift of the upstream limit of the saltwater front along the channels of the bay was conservatively predicted by numerical modeling.     

Nanoplastic occurrence,transformation and toxicity: a review

Environmental Chemistry Letters - Nanoplastics are emerging contaminants of concern for living organisms and ecosystems, yet nanoplastics are difficult to extract and analyse. Once released into...     

Upgrading food wastes by means of bromelain and papain to enhance growth and immunity of grass carp (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Ctenopharyngodon idella</Emphasis>)

The fast growing of global aquaculture industry accompanied with increasing pressure on the supply and price of traditional feed materials (e.g., fish meal and soy bean meal). This circumstance has urged the need to search alternative sources of feed stuff. Food waste was used as feed stuff in rearing fish which possess substantial protein and lipid. Grass carp are major species reared in Hong Kong with lower nutritional requirements; it is also an ideal species for investigating the feasibility of using food waste as fish feeds for local aquaculture industry. The growth and immunity, reflected by total protein, total immunologlobulin (IgI), and nitroblue tetrazolium (NBT) activity of grass carp blood, were depressed when feeding with food waste feeds without enzymes. However, the supplementation of bromelain and papain in fish feed enhanced the efficient use of food waste by grass carp, which in turn improved the fish immunity. The present results indicated that the addition of those enzymes could enhance the feed utilization by fish and hematological parameters of grass carp, and the improvement on growth and immunity superior to the control (commercial feed) was observed with the addition of bromelain and papain supplement. Addition of 1 and 2 % mixture of bromelain and papain could significantly enhance the lipid utilization in grass carp.     

The role of digital data entry in participatory environmental monitoring

Many argue that monitoring conducted exclusively by scientists is insufficient to address ongoing environmental challenges. One solution entails the use of mobile digital devices in participatory monitoring (PM) programs. But how digital data entry affects programs with varying levels of stakeholder participation, from nonscientists collecting field data to nonscientists administering every step of a monitoring program, remains unclear. We reviewed the successes, in terms of management interventions and sustainability, of 107 monitoring programs described in the literature (hereafter programs) and compared these with case studies from our PM experiences in Australia, Canada, Ethiopia, Ghana, Greenland, and Vietnam (hereafter cases). Our literature review showed that participatory programs were less likely to use digital devices, and 2 of our 3 more participatory cases were also slow to adopt digital data entry. Programs that were participatory and used digital devices were more likely to report management actions, which was consistent with cases in Ethiopia, Greenland, and Australia. Programs engaging volunteers were more frequently reported as ongoing, but those involving digital data entry were less often sustained when data collectors were volunteers. For the Vietnamese and Canadian cases, sustainability was undermined by a mismatch in stakeholder objectives. In the Ghanaian case, complex field protocols diminished monitoring sustainability. Innovative technologies attract interest, but the foundation of effective participatory adaptive monitoring depends more on collaboratively defined questions, objectives, conceptual models, and monitoring approaches. When this foundation is built through effective partnerships, digital data entry can enable the collection of more data of higher quality. Without this foundation, or when implemented ineffectively or unnecessarily, digital data entry can be an additional expense that distracts from core monitoring objectives and undermines project sustainability. The appropriate role of digital data entry in PM likely depends more on the context in which it is used and less on the technology itself.     

The influence of the level of definition of functional specifications on the environmental performances of a complex system. EcoCSP approach

The tendency towards a homogenous mode of development modelled on that of Western countries means that sustainable development has become increasingly urgent. It is necessary to thoroughly redefine products and their expected performances in such a way that the consequences are compatible with sustainable development. In the domain of product design, this means that it is no longer sufficient to use assessment tools “after the fact” to check the impact of products whose functional unit (FU) was defined prior to production; it is now necessary to rethink the definition of the FU itself. This article aims to present an approach based on a combination of life cycle analysis methods and problem-solving by constraint satisfaction. This original approach makes it possible to vary the design of the different dimensions of the FUs of a complex system and thus to make it easier to identify the best architecture along with the best functional definition of the system. In this study, the EcoCSP approach is applied to define the functional performances of an ecological passenger ferry. The complexity of couplings between subsystems and the sheer number of those subsystems mean that the designer has to use “intelligent” tools. These simulate a great number of scenarios and help him/her to fine-tune the system and make the right technological choices with regard to the right functional specifications.     

Carbonyl emissions from vehicular exhausts sources in Hong Kong

Vehicular emission (VE) is one of the important anthropogenic sources for airborne carbonyls in urban area. Six types of VE-dominated samples were collected at representative locations in Hong Kong where polluted by a particular fueled type of vehicles, including (i) a gas refilling taxis station (liquefied petroleum gas [LPG] emission); (ii) a light-duty passenger car park (gasoline emission); (iii) a minibus station (diesel emission); (iv) a single-deck-bus depot (diesel emission); (v) a double-deck-bus depot (diesel emission); and (vi) a whole-food market entrance for light- and heavy-duty vehicles (diesel emission). A total of 15 carbonyls in the samples were quantified. Formaldehyde was the most abundant carbonyl among the VE-dominated samples, and its contribution to the total quantified amount on a molar basis ranged from 54.8% to 60.8%. Acetaldehyde and acetone were the next two abundant carbonyls. The carbonyls were quantified at three roadside locations in Hong Kong. The highest concentrations of formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, 22.7 +/- 8.4 and 6.0 +/- 2.8 microg/m3, respectively, were determined in the samples collected at a main transportation gate for goods between Hong Kong and Mainland China. The total quantified carbonyl concentration, 37.9 +/- 9.3 microg/m3, was the highest at an entrance of a cross-harbor tunnel in downtown area. The theoretical carbonyls compositions of the three roadside locations were estimated according to the VE-dominated sample profiles and the statistics on vehicle numbers and types during the sampling period. The measured compositions of formaldehyde were much higher than the theoretical compositions in summer, demonstrating that photochemical reactions significantly contributed to the formaldehyde production in the roadsides.