Effect of a starch-rich industrial wastewater on the acid-phase anaerobic digestion process.

This research investigated the effect of varying the starch-rich, industrial-wastewater component of mixtures with municipal wastewater fed to an anaerobic digester. A laboratory-scale, completely-mixed anaerobic digester was operated at an HRT of 30 h, an SRT of 10 d, and an ambient temperature of 21.5 +/- 1.5 degrees C. The industrial-to-municipal ratios tested were 1:3, 1:1, 3:1, and 100% industrial by volume. Steady-state, acidogenic conditions were achieved for all runs, except 100% industrial. The pH was observed to drop substantially as the industrial constituent of the feed increased. Net volatile fatty acids (VFA) production reached a plateau of approximately 800 mg/L at ratios of 1:1 and higher, while volatile suspended solids (VSS) reduction steadily increased as the industrial component rose. The specific VFA and soluble chemical oxygen demand (SCOD) production rates leveled off at approximately 0.070 mgVFA/ mgVSS.d and 0.124 mgSCOD/mgVSS.d, respectively, for all the mixtures investigated, except for 100% industrial. In this latter case, both rates dropped dramatically. Finally, acetic and propionic acid concentrations fell as the industrial proportion of the mixture increased. This was compensated by a rise in butyric acid production.     

Irrigation of soil with synthetic landfill leachate--speciation and distribution of selected pollutants

The fates and toxicities of selected landfill leachate pollutants in a soil with a low attenuation potential were investigated. Soil columns consisting of a loamy sand which had been irrigated with synthetic landfill leachates were dissected and analysed for pH, electrical conductivity, copper and zinc species, iron and phenol concentrations and microbial activity. Copper was found to be least mobile and accumulated in the top 4 cm of the soil columns. Sequential extraction of the soil revealed that at least two-thirds of the total copper was in the EDTA-, NaOH-extractable and residual fractions. Approximately 2% of the copper was water soluble and between 1 and 22% was in the MgCl(2)-extractable fraction. Zinc and phenol were relatively mobile and were detected throughout the soil-column profile as well as in the column effluents. The greatest zinc fraction (55-71%) was MgCl(2)-extractable. Zinc solubility in water was again low (1-4%). Phenol was partially adsorbed by the soil but its main attenuation occurred by biodegradation. Microbial activity was affected by the availability of the carbon source as well as the presence of copper and zinc. Copper was more inhibitory to microbial activity than zinc. In the presence of phenol, the simultaneous application of zinc and copper distinctly reduced microbial activity. No inhibitory effect of copper and zinc was observed in the absence of phenol when the microorganisms were severely carbon limited.     

Development of a protocol for monitoring status and trends in forest soil carbon at a national level

The national Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) program requires protocols for monitoring soil carbon contents. In a pilot study, 30 FHM plots loblolly shortleaf (Pinus taeda L./Pinus echinata Mill.) pine forests across Georgia were sampled by horizon and by depth increments. For total soil carbon, approximately 40% of the variance was between plots, 40% between subplots and 20% within subplots. Results by depth differed from those obtained by horizon primarily due to the rapid changes in carbon content from the top to the bottom of the A horizon. Published soil survey information overestimated bulk densities for these forest sites. The measurement of forest floor depths as a substitute to sampling did not provide reliable estimates of forest floor carbon. Precision of replicate samples was approximately 10-30% for field duplicates and 5-10% for laboratory duplicates. Based on national indicator evaluation criteria, sampling by depth using bulk density core samplers has been recommended for national implementation. Additional procedures are needed when sampling organic soils or soils with a high percentage of large rock fragments.     

Effects of Contaminant Decay on the Diffusion Centre of a River

Many contaminants exhibit decay (radioactive decay, consumed by bacteria, heat loss or evaporation through the surface, dissolution by turbulence). For a non-symmetric river with non-reversing flow, the effects of decay are allowed for in specifying the diffusion centre, i.e. the optimal position for a steady discharge. Three families of exact solutions are presented that illustrate the effect on the diffusion centre of cross-channel variation in the decay (uniform, decreasing or increasing with depth). The diffusion centre is shifted to deeper or to shallower water accordingly as the temporal decay divided by flow speed decreases or increases with water depth.     

Predicting tree species presence and basal area in Utah: A comparison of stochastic gradient boosting,generalized additive models,and tree-based methods

Many efforts are underway to produce broad-scale forest attribute maps by modelling forest class and structure variables collected in forest inventories as functions of satellite-based and biophysical information. Typically, variants of classification and regression trees implemented in Rulequest's^© See5 and Cubist (for binary and continuous responses, respectively) are the tools of choice in many of these applications. These tools are widely used in large remote sensing applications, but are not easily interpretable, do not have ties with survey estimation methods, and use proprietary unpublished algorithms. Consequently, three alternative modelling techniques were compared for mapping presence and basal area of 13 species located in the mountain ranges of Utah, USA. The modelling techniques compared included the widely used See5/Cubist, generalized additive models (GAMs), and stochastic gradient boosting (SGB). Model performance was evaluated using independent test data sets. Evaluation criteria for mapping species presence included specificity, sensitivity, Kappa, and area under the curve (AUC). Evaluation criteria for the continuous basal area variables included correlation and relative mean squared error. For predicting species presence (setting thresholds to maximize Kappa), SGB had higher values for the majority of the species for specificity and Kappa, while GAMs had higher values for the majority of the species for sensitivity. In evaluating resultant AUC values, GAM and/or SGB models had significantly better results than the See5 models where significant differences could be detected between models. For nine out of 13 species, basal area prediction results for all modelling techniques were poor (correlations less than 0.5 and relative mean squared errors greater than 0.8), but SGB provided the most stable predictions in these instances. SGB and Cubist performed equally well for modelling basal area for three species with moderate prediction success, while all three modelling tools produced comparably good predictions (correlation of 0.68 and relative mean squared error of 0.56) for one species.     

Land reclamation requirements and their estimated effects on the coal industry

This paper develops a model of the bituminous coal industry that is then used to simulate the price, output, and employment effects of land reclamation requirements in strip mining (other things equal). Our main conclusion is that a requirement to return strip-mined land to its approximate original contour and vegetative cover would have only slight effects on either sector of the industry. We estimate that such a requirement, had it been imposed in 1971, would have decreased strip-mining employment and output by 2.370, while inducing an increase in underground employment more than sufficient to offset these job losses.     

Intertemporal production externalities,technical change,and public expenditure analysis

This paper discusses the implications of relative price change for public expenditure analysis involving natural environments. It develops a model which identifies those demand and supply factors which must be considered in the evaluation of the time stream of benefits associated with the amenity services provided by natural environments in their preserved status.     

The skull of the giant predatory pliosaur Rhomaleosaurus cramptoni: implications for plesiosaur phylogenetics

The predatory pliosaurs were among the largest creatures ever to inhabit the oceans, some reaching gigantic proportions greater than 15 m in length. Fossils of this subclade of plesiosaurs are known from sediments all over the world, ranging in age from the Hettangian (approximately 198 Myr) to the Turonian (approximately 92 Myr). However, due to a lack of detailed studies and because only incomplete specimens are usually reported, pliosaur evolution remains poorly understood. In this paper, we describe the three dimensionally preserved skull of the giant Jurassic pliosaur Rhomaleosaurus cramptoni. The first phylogenetic analysis dedicated to in-group relationships of pliosaurs allows us to hypothesise a number of well-supported lineages that correlate with marine biogeography and the palaeoecology of these reptiles. Rhomaleosaurids comprised a short-lived and early diverging lineage within pliosaurs, whose open-water top-predator niche was filled by other pliosaur taxa by the mid-late Jurassic. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.