Environmental justice in Nigeria: A narration of residents’ experience in Ile-Ife

The sharing of environmental cost by residents in various residential areas in the developing world is perceived to be unfair. This study therefore assessed residents’ experiences of environmental justice in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. Three residential areas were identified in the study area and samples were selected using systematic sampling. Using availability and condition of urban infrastructure, severity of environmental problems and residents’ involvement in environmental issues, the study examined environmental justice in the study area. The study established a variation in environmental issues across identified residential areas. The severity of environmental problem measured through an index tagged Severity of Environmental Problem (SEPI) revealed that environmental problems was most severe in the core (SEPI = 4.00), followed by the peripheral area (SEPI = 3.71) and least in the transition area (SEPI = 3.56). On the condition of available environmental infrastructure, the study revealed that the conditions of infrastructure were most improved in the peripheral area (ICI = 3.07), followed by the core (ICI = 2.67) and the least in the transition area (ICI = 2.42). The study concluded that residents’ experiences of environmental justice differ significantly across the different residential zones as reflected by residents’ socio-economic characteristics. Furthermore, it established that age, gender, educational status, and number of years spent in the area can be used to explain the differences in residents’ experience of environmental justice in the study area. To enhance the liveability, the study recommends adequate provision of environmental amenities needed by each category of people in the city.     

Non-CO2 gaseous emissions from upstream oil and gas operations in Nigeria

The Nigerian crude oil is formed in association with natural gas. The associated gas has mostly been flared in the process of crude oil exploitation. Current estimates are that approximately 70% of produced natural gas is flared. Carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides emissions from oil and gas exploitation activities are presented for major combustion activities: gas flares and power generation at oil fields for oil and gas gathering systems. The emissions rates and combustion efficiency for a newly tested modified flaring system with enhanced air supply and liquid aspiration system for the atomization of the condensate phases of the flared gas was found to be capable of improving combustion efficiency by 20% or more in comparison with the conventional flare-type currently in vogue. Flare emissions for CO and NO_x are an order of magnitude higher than other sources in the oil and gas sector.     

Trace element concentrations from lichen transplants in Pretoria,South Africa

Purpose  

The purpose of this study was to assess the level and possible sources of trace elements in Tshwane metropolis using transplanted lichen thallus of Parmelia sulcata with a view to evaluating the ability of this lichen species to monitor air pollutants from a perceived polluted environment.     

Perceived causes, exposures and adjustments to seasonal heat in different residential areas in Ibadan, Nigeria

Local perception can be an important resource for assessing and managing climate-related extremes and identifying adjustment strategies unique to specific settings. The objectives of the study are two-fold. Firstly, it examined the perceived causes, exposures and adjustments to seasonal heat events using different residential density areas of Ibadan, Nigeria, as spatial units of analysis. Secondly, it investigated the relationship between heat exposure, built environment, socio-economic and cultural factors. Results show that intense heat from the sun, climate change and absence of rains, among others, was identified as perceived causes. Number of electricity hours, distance from water supply points and the number of neighborhood trees were listed as the three most important factors affecting heat exposure. In addition, there were considerable variations in the perceived causes (F?=?4.86, p?<?0.05), in exposures (F?=?3.61, p?<?0.05), and in adjustments to seasonal heat (F?=?8.75, p?<?0.05) across different residential density areas in Ibadan, Nigeria. The study demonstrates that local knowledge based on the perceptions, exposures and adjustments to seasonal heat waves has the potential in some cases to provide valid inputs into vulnerability and adaptation assessments.     

The Aerodyne Inverse Modeling System (AIMS): Source estimation applied to the FFT 07 experiment and to simulated mobile sensor data

The Aerodyne Inverse Modeling System was developed to enable location and characterization of hazardous atmospheric releases from dispersion and meteorological data. It combines an automatically-generated tangent-linear of SCIPUFF with a cost function tailored for practical applications and a minimization algorithm that can search for multiple instantaneous or continuous sources without requiring an initial guess. In this work AIMS was applied to estimate the sources in 84 FFT 07 cases that included instantaneous and continuous releases for up to four source locations. FFT 07 was a controlled short-range (～500 m) dispersion test using 100 digiPIDs evenly distributed over an area of 0.5 × 0.5 km. AIMS estimated sources were in average within 90–150 m of the real sources, with the distances from estimated to real source ranging from 0 to 510 m. AIMS performed better estimating the location of instantaneous sources than of continuous ones. It also performed better for single-source situations than for multiple source scenarios and when 16 sensors were used instead of 4. In addition to using stationary sensors, AIMS also has the capability of processing data from mobile sensors. This was applied using model-generated data in an example of a release in a setting similar to an industrial facility.     

Agricultural land use and soil degradation in a part of kwara state,Nigeria

Summary Because of the alarming rate of increase in population all over tropical Africa, and the consequent need to grow more food, several writers have suggested the practice of continuous or permanent cultivation in place of the traditional bush fallowing system. This suggestion has been made without recognising the natural vulnerability of tropical soils and the associated problems of actual soil degradation, especially in situations where fertilizer inputs are limited. This study examines the effects of different land use practices on actual soil degradation in a part of Kwara State, Nigeria. This involves comparing the physical and chemical properties of the soils in areas under continuous cultivation, fallow and forests, and using the technique of factor analysis to isolate indices which best describe these phenomena. The results show that the main effects of continuous cultivation in the area examined were to increase the acidity of the soil, that soil organic matter content was likely to double after 10 years of fallow conditions, and that continuous cultivation was capable of reducing the cation-exchange capacity of soils by at least one-third.In general, the soils of the area of study display marked variability, especially with respect to their chemical properties. This is mainly due to variations in soil organic matter content, which in itself is due to differences in agricultural land use practices. Factor analysis of the soil properties generated four main indices of actual soil degradation, of which organic matter is the most important. Some implications of the results are examined, particularly in relation to generating an awareness of actual soil degradation and land use planning.Dr J. Oluwole Ameyan, the senior author, is on the staff of the University of Ilorin. Mr O. Ogidiolu is at the Department of Geography, Ondo State University, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria.     

Multifunctional metal-organic frameworks in oil spills and associated organic pollutant remediation

The release of toxic organic compounds into the environment in an event of oil spillage is a global menace due to the potential impacts on the ecosystem. Several approaches have been employed for oil spills clean-up, with adsorption technique proven to be more promising for the total reclamation of a polluted site. Of the several adsorbents so far reported, adsorbent-based porous materials have gained attention for the reduction/total removal of different compounds in environmental remediation applications. The superior potential of mesoporous materials based on metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) against conventional adsorbents is due to their intriguing and enhanced properties. Therefore, this review presents recent development in MOF composites; methods of preparation; and their practical applications towards remediating oil spill, organic pollutants, and toxic gases in different environmental media, as well as potential materials in the possible deployment in reclaiming the polluted Niger Delta due to unabated oil spillage and gas flaring.

     

The use of parent material/slope positions as soil mapping units in irrigation soil surveys of Northern Nigeria

The problems of different mapping units which hitherto formed the basis for irrigation soil surveys of the savanna landscapes in Nigeria are discussed. Using data from a semi-detailed soil survey, the possibility of establishing the major variations in soil properties which are relevant to irrigation by using a combination of parent material and slope position as mapping units are examined. In the mapping units considered, thirteen topsoil and eleven subsoil properties are significantly different between mapping units and have smaller variances within than between the mapping units. The variations of these topsoil and subsoil properties are also adequately accounted for by using parent material/slope position as a basis for mapping, suggesting that units based on parent material/slope position are of high utility for establishing the irrigation potentials of areas at the feasibility level of survey.