Metal contents of marine turtle eggs (Chelonia mydas; Lepidochelys olivacea) from the tropical eastern pacific and the implications for human health

Concentrations of eight elements were measured in Chelonia mydas and Lepidochelys olivacea eggs collected along the Pacific coast of Panama. Manganese (Mn), iron (Fe), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), and mercury (Hg) concentrations were similar to previous reports of these species from around the world, while lead (Pb) was lower than previous reports. Cd posed the highest health risk to people who regularly eat the eggs, with average consumption rates leading to target hazard quotients (THQ) of up to 0.35 ± 0.15. Our conclusions indicate that current turtle egg consumption in isolated, coastal Pacific communities may pose a health concern for young children, and that youth and young adults should limit their consumption of turtle eggs to reduce their total intake of nonessential metals.     

Occurrence of PPCPs in the marine environment: a review

Little research has been conducted on the occurrence of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) in the marine environment despite being increasingly impacted by these contaminants. This article reviews data on the occurrence of PPCPs in seawater, sediment, and organisms in the marine environment. Data pertaining to 196 pharmaceuticals and 37 personal care products reported from more than 50 marine sites are analyzed while taking sampling strategies and analytical methods into account. Particular attention is focused on the most frequently detected substances at highest concentrations. A snapshot of the most impacted marine sites is provided by comparing the highest concentrations reported for quantified substances. The present review reveals that: (i) PPCPs are widespread in seawater, particularly at sites impacted by anthropogenic activities, and (ii) the most frequently investigated and detected molecules in seawater and sediments are antibiotics, such as erythromycin. Moreover, this review points out other PPCPs of concern, such as ultraviolet filters, and underlines the scarcity of data on those substances despite recent evidence on their occurrence in marine organisms. The exposure of marine organisms in regard to these insufficient data is discussed.     

Exploring socio-cultural values of ecosystem service categories in the Central Alps: the influence of socio-demographic factors and landscape type

The socio-cultural assessment of ecosystem services has been proposed as a promising tool for eliciting people’s preferences towards ecosystem services. Despite an increasing integration of the socio-cultural perspective in ecosystem service research, little knowledge exists about linkages between landscape and the socio-cultural values people assign to ecosystem services. This paper combines a socio-cultural valuation approach with the use of landscape pictures to analyse and compare people’s perceived importance of the provisioning, regulating, and cultural ecosystem service categories across three landscape types (i.e. larch meadows, spruce forests, and hay meadow). A survey with 470 tourists visiting the region of South Tyrol (Italy) was conducted to link people’s perceived importance to their socio-demographic background and to the landscape types explored. The results show that regulating ecosystem services are preferred over provisioning and cultural services, whereby environmental awareness is found to be more influential than formal education levels regarding the perceived importance of regulating services. The results further demonstrate that cultural background is an important driver in determining people’s perceived importance of cultural services. The underlying landscape types, however, exert an even stronger influence on people’s socio-cultural valuation of ecosystem service categories. This finding suggests that the focus of most ecosystem services assessments on the study area as a whole risks mistakenly attributing differences in people’s socio-cultural values to socio-demographic characteristics only. A better knowledge of the spatial integration of socio-cultural values, however, could help with anticipating the consequences of changes in the landscape and provide better guidance for future landscape planning.     

Benefits from and threats to European treeline ecosystem services: an exploratory study of stakeholders and governance

The concept of ecosystem services (ES) is being increasingly applied in environmental governance and science. To safeguard key ES in changing and complex social–ecological systems such as treeline areas, we need to (1) map key ES in different types of treeline landscapes, (2) identify the stakeholders benefiting from and threatening ES, and (3) examine how ES could be governed more sustainably. We explore these questions in European treeline areas by using quantitative and qualitative social science techniques to analyse responses from a survey of local scientific experts in 20 altitudinal and polar treeline areas in 15 European countries. In contrast to the prevalent consideration of treeline areas as a single type of a social–ecological system, we show that European treeline areas can be divided into two types that significantly differ in the delivery of ES. Our analyses allowed us to categorize stakeholders according to their benefits from and threats to ES; “Green key players” formed the most numerous group, while smaller number of stakeholder groups was categorized as “Harmless crowd”, “Occasional stressors”, and “Risky users”. However, behaviour of stakeholders is very much site-specific. Of 595 pairs of stakeholders analysed, we found <5 EU-wide “Allies” and “Opponents”. Recommendations for improved governance include adjusting governance instruments to specific problems in divergent treeline systems and creating participatory structures where stakeholders better interact with scientists and can genuinely influence management decisions.     

Dissolved phosphorus transport from soil to surface water in catchments with different land use

Diffuse phosphorus (P) export from agricultural land to surface waters is a significant environmental problem. It is critical to determine the natural background P losses from diffuse sources, but their identification and quantification is difficult. In this study, three headwater catchments with differing land use (arable, pasture and forest) were monitored for 3 years to quantify exports of dissolved (<0.45 µm) reactive P and total dissolved P. Mean total P exports from the arable catchment ranged between 0.08 and 0.28 kg ha^?1 year^?1. Compared with the reference condition (forest), arable land and pasture exported up to 11-fold more dissolved P. The contribution of dissolved (<0.45 µm) unreactive P was low to negligible in every catchment. Agricultural practices can exert large pressures on surface waters that are controlled by hydrological factors. Adapting policy to cope with these factors is needed for lowering these pressures in the future.     

Enhanced science–stakeholder communication to improve ecosystem model performances for climate change impact assessments

In recent years, climate impact assessments of relevance to the agricultural and forestry sectors have received considerable attention. Current ecosystem models commonly capture the effect of a warmer climate on biomass production, but they rarely sufficiently capture potential losses caused by pests, pathogens and extreme weather events. In addition, alternative management regimes may not be integrated in the models. A way to improve the quality of climate impact assessments is to increase the science–stakeholder collaboration, and in a two-way dialog link empirical experience and impact modelling with policy and strategies for sustainable management. In this paper we give a brief overview of different ecosystem modelling methods, discuss how to include ecological and management aspects, and highlight the importance of science–stakeholder communication. By this, we hope to stimulate a discussion among the science–stakeholder communities on how to quantify the potential for climate change adaptation by improving the realism in the models.     

Construction and demolition waste management in Kosovo: a survey of challenges and opportunities on the road to circular economy

Managing Construction and demolition waste (CDW) is a severe and growing urban challenge, particularly in post-conflict countries. Though Kosovo has significantly rebuilt and developed after the Liberation War, these initiatives have accompanied suboptimal waste management. This research evaluates CDW management in Kosovo by assessing current practices and operations vis-a-vis the legal framework and EU requirements. It identifies instruments and policies capable of ameliorating gaps and proposes a more sustainable and circular CDW management system for Kosovo. Information was primarily collected during on-site visits to Pristina and the surroundings by a cohort of Urban Management Students from the Technische Universität Berlin, students from Kosovo, and the local office of the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, GIZ. The analysis identified gaps in Kosovo's CDW management and its observance and enforcement of existing CDW legislation, including an ambiguous licensing system impeding sustainable demolition, storage, and transport; the absence of approved CDW storage options leading to uncontrolled disposal; and an underdeveloped market for recycling and reuse, deterring stakeholders from further pursuit of circular practices. These gaps were compounded by poor recordkeeping, obscuring precise information on CDW streams. Possible instruments and incentives to support Kosovo's transition to a more sustainable CDW management system were then identified.

     

Spatiotemporal evolution of soil pH and zinc after the Aznalcollar mine spill

The residual pollution after the Aznalcóllar (southwestern Spain) pyrite mine spill is still a threat due to the continuing oxidation of sulfuric minerals. The objective of this paper was to analyze the combined effect of pyrite oxidation, sugar beet foam applications, and meteorological conditions on the spatiotemporal evolution of the pH and EDTA-extractable Zn concentration, using non co-located data from 11 sampling dates between June 1999 and March 2002. Median pH values ranged from 4.4 at the beginning of the monitoring period to 7.6 at the end, although values near 2.5 were observed throughout the entire period, despite of two sugar beet foam (SBF) applications. Zinc distributions were positively skewed and median concentrations ranged from 17 to 94 mg kg(-1). The inverse relationship between pH and Zn became weaker toward the end of the monitoring period as a consequence of the precipitation and posterior dissolution of newly formed minerals from the reaction products of the pyrite oxidation. Normal score maps showed that after the SBF applications only 0.5% of the monitored area was below the pH = 4 threshold, while on other dates up to one-third of the area remained below this value. The better performance of the second SBF application could be explained in terms of pyrite oxidation pathways and environmental conditions. From this analysis, with data obtained under uncontrolled field conditions, it is concluded that SBF should be applied before or during the wet and cold season to alleviate acidification, caused by the oxidation of pyrite or other sulfuric minerals.     

Using Relative Risk to Compare the Effects of Aquatic Stressors at a Regional Scale

The regional-scale importance of an aquatic stressor depends both on its regional extent (i.e., how widespread it is) and on the severity of its effects in ecosystems where it is found. Sample surveys, such as those developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP), are designed to estimate and compare the extents, throughout a large region, of elevated conditions for various aquatic stressors. In this article, we propose relative risk as a complementary measure of the severity of each stressor’s effect on a response variable that characterizes aquatic ecological condition. Specifically, relative risk measures the strength of association between stressor and response variables that can be classified as either “good” (i.e., reference) or “poor” (i.e., different from reference). We present formulae for estimating relative risk and its confidence interval, adapted for the unequal sample inclusion probabilities employed in EMAP surveys. For a recent EMAP survey of streams in five Mid-Atlantic states, we estimated the relative extents of eight stressors as well as their relative risks to aquatic macroinvertebrate assemblages, with assemblage condition measured by an index of biotic integrity (IBI). For example, a measure of excess sedimentation had a relative risk of 1.60 for macroinvertebrate IBI, with the meaning that poor IBI conditions were 1.6 times more likely to be found in streams having poor conditions of sedimentation than in streams having good sedimentation conditions. We show how stressor extent and relative risk estimates, viewed together, offer a compact and comprehensive assessment of the relative importances of multiple stressors.