Land-Use Planning in the Chaco Plain (Burruyacú, Argentina): Part 2: Generating a Consensus Plan to Mitigate Land-Use Conflicts and Minimize Land Degradation

The Burruyacú district (Tucumán province, Northwest Argentina) has been traditionally an area with rural activities based on the exploitation of the Chaco forest for timber and livestock browsing. Since the 1960s, local institutions started promoting soybean due to favorable land conditions and good market prices. Soybean extension, as from the 1970s, has resulted in important reduction of the Chaco forest and also caused physical soil degradation, especially soil compaction and erosion. A land-use-planning exercise was carried out using the Land-Use Planning and Information System (LUPIS) as a spatial decision support system. LUPIS facilitates the generation of alternative land-use plans by adjusting the relative importance attributed by multiple stakeholders to preference and avoidance policies. The system leads to the allocation of competing land uses to land map units in accordance with their preferred resource requirements, conditional upon the resource base of the area and the stakeholders' demands. After generating a land use plan for each stakeholder category identified in the study area, including commercial farmers, conservative/conventional farmers, and conservationists, a consensus plan was established to address the land-use conflicts between mechanized agriculture, traditional agriculture and forest conservation, and to mitigate soil degradation caused by extensive dry-farming. Although the planning exercise did not directly involve the stakeholders, the results are sufficiently practical and realistic to suggest that the approach could be extended to the entire Chaco plain region.     

Detection of methylquinoline transformation products in microcosm experiments and in tar oil contaminated groundwater using LC-NMR

N-heterocyclic compounds are known pollutants at tar oil contaminated sites. Here we report the degradation of methyl-, and hydroxy-methyl-substituted quinolines under nitrate-, sulfate- and iron-reducing conditions in microcosms with aquifer material of a former coke manufacturing site. Comparison of degradation potential and rate under different redox conditions revealed highest degradation activities under sulfate-reducing conditions, the prevailing conditions in the field. Metabolites of methylquinolines, with the exception of 2-methylquinolines, were formed in high amounts in the microcosms and could be identified by ¹H NMR spectroscopy as 2(1H)-quinolinone analogues. 4-Methyl-, 6-methyl-, and 7-methyl-3,4-dihydro-2(1H)-quinolinone, the hydrogenated metabolites in the degradation of quinoline compounds, were identified by high resolution LC-MS. Metabolites of methylquinolines showed persistence, although for the first time a transformation of 4-methylquinoline and its metabolite 4-methyl-2(1H)-quinolinone is described. The relevance of the identified metabolites is supported by the detection of a broad spectrum of them in groundwater of the field site using LC-NMR technique. LC-NMR allowed the differentiation of isomers and identification without reference compounds. A variety of methylated 2(1H)-quinolinones, as well as methyl-3,4-dihydro-2(1H)-quinolinone isomers were not identified before in groundwater.     

Hydrodynamics of a periodically wind-forced small and narrow stratified basin: a large-eddy simulation experiment

Environmental Fluid Mechanics - We report novel results of a numerical experiment designed for examining the basin-scale hydrodynamics that control the mass, momentum, and energy distribution in a...     

Degradation of macrolide antibiotics by ozone: a mechanistic case study with clarithromycin

Macrolide antibiotics are widely used (in the order of 1g per person per year). They pass the body largely unchanged and are also not degraded in wastewater treatment plants. With not too much effort, they may be eliminated from their effluents by ozonation. The macrolide antibiotics have all a dimethylamino group at one of the carbohydrate residues in common. This functional group is the target of the ozone reaction, and clarithromycin has been selected here for a more detailed study. Since only the free amine reacts with ozone, the rate of reaction is pH dependent (at pH 7: k = 4 x 10(4) M(-1) s(-1)). In analogy to the ozonolysis of trimethylamine, the main reaction is a transfer of an O-atom yielding the N-oxide (identified by HPLC/MS-MS). A minor product (10%, based on formaldehyde yields) is demethylated clarithromycin (identified by HPLC/MS-MS). The dimethylamino group is thought to be essential for the binding of the macrolide antibiotics to their target. As a consequence, chemical changes of this functional group, notably the formation of the N-oxide that is no longer a proton acceptor, inactivates these drugs as assayed by the suppression of the growth of Pseudomonas putida. This is most important for wastewater treatment, as mineralization of clarithromycin by ozone would require 100 times as much ozone.     

碳酸钙与生物炭对酸化菜地土壤持氮能力的影响

针对太湖地区稻田改种菜地后带来的土壤酸化现象,以碳酸钙与生物炭作为酸化改良剂,开展室内培养及多次淋洗模拟试验,比较两种改良剂对酸化菜地土壤持氮能力及酸化修复效果的影响.结果表明,基于碱缓冲曲线法,本试验用酸化菜地土壤每提高1个p H单位需向土壤中添加碳酸钙3.92×10-2mol·kg~(-1)或生物炭27.73 g·kg~(-1).无外源氮条件下碳酸钙添加使土壤氮矿化速率显著提高了37%,对土壤铵态氮、硝态氮含量影响不显著;生物炭添加使土壤氮矿化速率显著提高了35%~44%,且显著增加了土壤硝态氮含量42%~58%.模拟淋洗下,生物炭添加显著消减渗漏液体积24%,渗漏液氮浓度45%,显著减少氮淋失量42%~57%,而碳酸钙添加对渗漏液体积没有影响,增加了渗漏液中氮浓度,氮淋失量增加了12%~76%.淋洗后,各处理土壤p H值发生不同程度的降低,无外源氮条件下添加碳酸钙处理土壤p H值降幅最低,外源氮添加条件下生物炭添加处理降幅最低.由此可见,碳酸钙对酸化土壤修复效率较高,但在外源氮添加条件下降低了土壤持氮能力,更适用于酸化严重且需要休耕改良的菜地土壤;生物炭在维持土壤p H值的同时可以有效提高土壤矿质氮留存量,降低氮淋失,更适用于仍在高强度种植的菜地土壤.     

Have international remittance inflows degraded environmental quality? A carbon emission mitigation analysis for Ghana

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Despite the considerable contributions of remittances to households and economic advancements, their environmental implications have received little...     

Overview of the impact of noninvasive prenatal testing on diagnostic procedures

Noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) has had a profound influence in the field of prenatal diagnosis since the 1997 discovery of cell-free fetal DNA in maternal blood. Research has progressed rapidly, with clinical data supporting laboratory studies showing that NIPT is highly sensitive and specific for fetal aneuploidy, resulting in marked uptake in the high-risk patient population. The superior accuracy of NIPT compared with conventional screening methods has led to significant decreases in the number of invasive diagnostic procedures, in addition to a concomitant decrease in the number of procedure-related fetal losses. Yet, NIPT has been described as a ‘disruptive innovation’ due to the considerable changes the technology has commanded on current prenatal screening and diagnostic practices. This review summarizes both institutional and global experience with NIPT uptake, its effect on reducing diagnostic invasive procedures, and the unique challenges that reduced procedural volume may have on physician and trainee proficiency, cytogenetic laboratories, and neonatal outcome. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Understanding the Underwater Behaviour of Scuba Divers in Hong Kong

Diving-related activities may constitute a major threat to coral reefs. This study aimed to quantify the impact of diving in Hong Kong on hard corals and understand how socio-economic characteristics and experience level of divers influence diver-inflicted damage. We recorded and analysed the underwater behaviour of 81 recreational divers. On average, a diver was in contact with marine biota 14.7 times with about 40 % of contacts involved corals and 38 % were damaging contacts with corals or other biota in a single dive. The most harm-inflicting groups included inexperienced and camera-carrying divers. Although Hong Kong divers did not make many damaging contacts with corals, there is still an imminent need to determine the scale of damage from diving activities on the marine ecosystem given the rapid development of marine-based tourism and the limited coral-inhabited areas in Hong Kong where the marine environment is already under stress from anthropogenic activities.     

Nonseparability and the voluntary approach to externality problems

Ronald Coase asserted that voluntary two-party bargaining with zero transaction costs results in an optimal resource allocation, which is invariant with respect to the liability rule. It has been argued that nonseparabilities destroy the validity of Coase's theorem. In this paper it is shown that this criticism is based on implausible assumptions about the externality-receivers adjustment to the externality level.