Exploring the risk information gap. Research into information supply and information demand of different parties concerned

The Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), a governmental research institute, provides information on environmental and health risks. The primary contractors’ information demands are served well. But the risk information available from the RIVM does not always correspond to the desires and requirements of other parties concerned. It became apparent that – to a certain extent – an information gap exists, arising from a difference between the institute’s information supply and the information demand of the different parties concerned.This explorative study focuses on the information demand and supply with regard to three different risks: flooding by rivers, air pollution and food related risks.For each risk, the information supply was determined by listing the available risk information in RIVM reports. In a second step, the information demand of the five different parties, as well as different channels of communication, were examined. The parties’ perceptions and requirements concerning risk information were identified in interviews and focus group discussions.The public, which in general appeared to be quite unfamiliar with the institute and its information sources, preferred risk information tailored to its personal circumstances. Policy makers mainly appreciated personal contacts in order to keep up to date on risk topics, whereas NGOs and fellow researchers judged the institute’s website and reports to be more relevant. Press releases appeared to add little to satisfying the information demand of the media.     

Land Cover Changes as a Result of Environmental Restrictions on Nitrate Leaching in Dairy Farming

Nitrate leaching forms an important environmental problem because it causes pollution of groundwater and surface water, and adds to already problematic eutrophication. This study analyses the impact of reductions in nitrate leaching on land cover decisions of dairy farms, of which the activities make an important contribution to nitrate leaching. As the level of nitrate leaching depends on groundwater depth as well as on the supply of nitrogen, spatial variation in groundwater levels will cause a spatial variation in land cover under restrictions on nitrate leaching. A non-linear partial optimisation model for the economic and ecological aspects of the problem were used to show how land cover and dairy farms' financial balances change when nitrate losses are reduced. The model is spatially explicit, and describes nitrate leakage and yields of maize and grass as a function of groundwater depth, including the effects of various grazing systems. The model analyses the decisions of a risk neutral agent who minimises costs under the following constraints: (i) production, feed requirements and mass balances for fodder; (ii) constraints for nitrate leaching. Economic costs are attributed to increased costs of fodder and processing of manure when nitrate restrictions are tightened. An important result of the study is the variation in compliance costs and land cover for maize and grass production brought about by spatial variation in groundwater depth. While the effects are negligible for some shallow groundwater classes, it is extremely difficult in other classes – if not impossible – to obtain the EU standard of maximum admissible losses of 34 kg N ha^–1 at low costs. The study shows an important reduction in land cover by maize.     

Landscape Correlates of Breeding Bird Richness Across the United States Mid-Atlantic Region

Using a new set of landscape indicator data generated by the U.S.EPA, and a comprehensive breeding bird database from the National Breeding Bird Survey, we evaluated associations between breeding bird richness and landscape characteristics across the entire mid-Atlantic region of the United States. We evaluated how these relationships varied among different groupings (guilds) of birds based on functional, structural, and compositional aspects of individual species demographics. Forest edge was by far the most important landscape attribute affecting the richness of the lumped specialist and generalist guilds; specialist species richness was negatively associated with forest edge and generalist richness was positively associated with forest edge. Landscape variables (indicators) explained a greater proportion of specialist species richness than the generalist guild (46% and 31%, respectively). The lower value in generalists may reflect finer-scale distributions of open habitat that go undetected by the Landsat satellite, open habitats created by roads (the areas from which breeding bird data are obtained), and the lumping of a wide variety of species into the generalist category. A further breakdown of species into 16 guilds showed considerable variation in the response of breeding birds to landscape conditions; forest obligate species had the strongest association with landscape indicators measured in this study (55% of the total variation explained) and forest generalists and open ground nesters the lowest (17% of the total variation explained). The variable response of guild species richness to landscape pattern suggests that one must consider species' demographics when assessing the consequences of landscape change on breeding birds.     

Land Use Changes in Regional Economic Theory

Land use and land cover changes are a major source of environmental degradation and therefore a serious issue in sustainable development studies and in the integrated assessment of environmental problems. In an attempt to understand part of the complexity of land use change we here aim to explore the ways in which economists deals with the land use issue. We argue that space is one of the forgotten items in economics. Economists often seem to ignore high-resolution spatial dynamics either because they are not considered as an important feature of the problem or out of habit. It seems as though there is a trade-off between spatial resolution and human behaviour in current applications. Certain types of models are capable of capturing the spatial complexity of urban and regional areas, for instance, by using cellular automata. Other types of land use models clearly have shortcomings where it concerns spatial detail. Dynamic modelling approaches do not guarantee a high spatial resolution.We propose to give more attention to agent based modelling as this type of modelling provides a specific connection between processes on micro level and macro-level spatial structures.     

Principal response curves technique for the analysis of multivariate biomonitoring time series

Although chemical and biological monitoring is often used to evaluate the quality of surface waters for regulatory purposes and/or to evaluate environmental status and trends, the resulting biological and chemical data sets are large and difficult to evaluate. Multivariate techniques have long been used to analyse complex data sets. This paper discusses the methods currently in use and introduces the principal response curves method, which overcomes the problem of cluttered graphical results representation that is a great drawback of most conventional methods. To illustrate this, two example data sets are analysed using two ordination techniques, principal component analysis and principal response curves. Whereas PCA results in a difficult-to-interpret diagram, principal response curves related methods are able to show changes in community composition in a diagram that is easy to read. The principal response curves method is used to show trends over time with an internal reference (overall mean or reference year) or external reference (e.g. preferred water quality or reference site). Advantages and disadvantages of both methods are discussed and illustrated.     

Investigating Jacaranda mimosifolia tree as biomonitor of atmospheric trace metals

Studies on the use of tree bark as biomonitors for environmental pollutants are still very scarce. We evaluated the reliability of using Jacaranda mimosifolia, a common tree in Tshwane City of South Africa, as a suitable biomonitor of atmospheric trace metals. Bark samples were collected from ten different locations during two sampling periods. The concentrations of the metals were determined by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. The concentrations of the metals were 33.2–1,795 μg/g (Pb), 21.4–210 μg/g (Cu), 68.4–490 μg/g (Zn), 30.6–2,916 μg/g (Cr), 0.12–1.34 μg/g (Cd), and 6.04–68.0 μg/g (V), respectively. The differences obtained for the results from different sites were significant (p?< 0.05). A significant difference was also observed between the two sampling periods. The trace metals concentrations suggested that automobile emissions are a major source of these metals. The study also confirms the suitability of J. mimosifolia as a biomonitor of atmospheric deposition of these metals.     

Estimating pesticide runoff in small streams

Surface runoff is one of the most important pathways for pesticides to enter surface waters. Mathematical models are employed to characterize its spatio-temporal variability within landscapes, but they must be simple owing to the limited availability and low resolution of data at this scale. This study aimed to validate a simplified spatially-explicit model that is developed for the regional scale to calculate the runoff potential (RP). The RP is a generic indicator of the magnitude of pesticide inputs into streams via runoff. The underlying runoff model considers key environmental factors affecting runoff (precipitation, topography, land use, and soil characteristics), but predicts losses of a generic substance instead of any one pesticide. We predicted and evaluated RP for 20 small streams. RP input data were extracted from governmental databases. Pesticide measurements from a triennial study were used for validation. Measured pesticide concentrations were standardized by the applied mass per catchment and the water solubility of the relevant compounds. The maximum standardized concentration per site and year (runoff loss, R_Loss) provided a generalized measure of observed pesticide inputs into the streams. Average RP explained 75% (p < 0.001) of the variance in R_Loss. Our results imply that the generic indicator can give an adequate estimate of runoff inputs into small streams, wherever data of similar resolution are available. Therefore, we suggest RP for a first quick and cost-effective location of potential runoff hot spots at the landscape level.     

Competition between phenanthrene, chrysene, and 2,5-dichlorobiphenyl for high-energy adsorption sites in a sediment

We determined the maximum amounts of added phenanthrene, chrysene, and 2,5-dichlorobiphenyl sorbed onto high-energy adsorption sites in a sediment on bi-solute experiments. The bi-solute pairs were phenanthrene/chrysene and phenanthrene/2,5-dichlorobiphenyl. On the bi-solute sorption experiments, one solute was introduced and equilibrated with sediment prior to addition of the second solute. The values for the maximum amounts adsorbed onto high-energy sites revealed that, after equilibration of the first solute, still some high-energy sites could be occupied by the second solute. Phenanthrene, chrysene, and 2,5-dichlorobiphenyl seem to share about 30% of the accessible high-energy adsorption sites in the sediment employed.     

Androgenic and antiandrogenic activities in water and sediment samples from the river Lambro, Italy, detected by yeast androgen screen and chemical analyses

The river Lambro is the most polluted tributary of the river Po in North Italy and was chosen as a representative water course discharging industrialized areas. Water and sediment samples of the river Lambro were investigated regarding the presence of endocrine disrupting compounds. A combined procedure was used consisting of solid-phase extraction and HPLC based fractionation of samples, of screening for (anti)androgenic activity using the yeast androgen screen (YAS) and of chemical analysis using HPLC-MS/MS and GC-MS. Androgenic and antiandrogenic activities were found in specific fractions of the water and sediment while the total extracts showed antiandrogenic activity only. The chemical analysis of the fractions and total extracts with antiandrogenic activities revealed the presence of compounds with suspected antiandrogenic potency such as bisphenol A, iprodione, nonylphenol, p,p'-DDE and tert-octylphenol but other unknown compounds contributed mainly to the observed antiandrogenic activities. The antiandrogenic load of the river Lambro ranged between 1.34 and 17.1 microM flutamide-equivalents and may pose a risk to aquatic environments. Future screenings for EDC in the environment that have the potential to interfere with reproduction of aquatic organisms should be extended to different modes of actions including (anti)androgenic ones.     

Heavy metal resistance and genotypic analysis of metal resistance genes in gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria present in Ni-rich serpentine soil and in the rhizosphere of Alyssum murale

Forty-six bacterial cultures, including one culture collection strain, thirty from the rhizosphere of Alyssum murale and fifteen from Ni-rich soil, were tested for their ability to tolerate arsenate, cadmium, chromium, zinc, mercury, lead, cobalt, copper, and nickel in their growth medium. The resistance patterns, expressed as minimum inhibitory concentrations, for all cultures to the nine different metal ions were surveyed by using the agar dilution method. A large number of the cultures were resistant to Ni (100%), Pb (100%), Zn (100%), Cu (98%), and Co (93%). However, 82, 71, 58 and 47% were sensitive to As, Hg, Cd and Cr(VI), respectively. All cultures had multiple metal-resistant, with heptametal resistance as the major pattern (28.8%). Five of the cultures (about of 11.2% of the total), specifically Arthrobacter rhombi AY509239, Clavibacter xyli AY509235, Microbacterium arabinogalactanolyticum AY509226, Rhizobium mongolense AY509209 and Variovorax paradoxus AY512828 were tolerant to nine different metals. The polymerase chain reaction in combination with DNA sequence analysis was used to investigate the genetic mechanism responsible for the metal resistance in some of these gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria that were, highly resistant to Hg, Zn, Cr and Ni. The czc, chr, ncc and mer genes that are responsible for resistance to Zn, Cr, Ni and Hg, respectively, were shown to be present in these bacteria by using PCR. In the case of, M. arabinogalactanolyticum AY509226 these genes were shown to have high homology to the czcD, chrB, nccA, and mer genes of Ralstonia metallidurans CH34. Therefore, Hg, Zn, Cr and Ni resistance genes are widely distributed in both gram-positive and gram-negative isolates obtained from A. murale rhizosphere and Ni-rich soils.