Establishing the link between ammonia emission control and measurements of reduced nitrogen concentrations and deposition

In the context of international efforts to reduce the impactsof atmospheric NH₃ and NH₄ ⁺ (collectively, NH_x), it is important to establish the link between NH₃emissions and monitoring of NH_x concentrations and deposition. This is equally relevant to situations where NH₃emissions changes are certain (e.g. due to changed source sectoractivity), as to cases where NH₃ abatement technologies havebeen implemented. Correct interpretation of adequate atmosphericmeasurements is essential, since monitoring data provide the onlymeans to evaluate trends in regional NH₃ emissions.These issues have been reviewed using available measurements and modelling from nine countries. In addition to historic datasets,the analysis here considers countries where NH₃ source sector activity changed (both increases and decreases) and countries where NH₃ abatement policies have been implemented.In The Netherlands an `ammonia gap' was identified between the expected reduction and results of monitoring, and was attributedinitially to ineffectiveness of the abatement measures. The analysis here for a range of countries shows that atmospheric interactions complicate the expected changes, particularly sinceSO₂ emissions have decreased at the same time, while at manysites the few years of available data show substantial inter-annual variation. It is concluded that networks need to beestablished that speciate between NH₃ and aerosol NH₄ ⁺, in addition to providing wet deposition, and sample at sufficient sites for robust regional estimates to be established. Such measurements will be essential to monitor compliance of the international agreements on NH₃ emission abatement.     

Rove beetles (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae) collected during the long term ecological research in a Hungarian oak forest

Along term ecological research was carried out in a Hungarian oak forest, in "Bükk" National Park starting with 1972. During the faunistical studies 3,602 insect species and more than 200,000 individuals were collected. The dominant orders were Coleoptera (1,051 species), Lepidoptera (803 species), Hymenoptera (470 species) and Diptera (400 species). The relative species abundance (RSA) for all insects collected in all years of sampling period suggests a rather J shape curve than a not clear scaling property. This means that we were able to identify almost three quarters of the insect species from one ha European oak forest during the survey (from 1987 to 2003), and two third of the staphylinides expected. Considering the staphylinid fauna a total number of 160 species and 4,022 individuals were collected. The most widely occurring species in dominance order were: Ocypus biharicus, Pseudocypus mus, Atheta gagatina, Philonthus quisquiliarius, Oxypoda acuminate, Platydracus chalcocephalus, Atheta crassicomis, Latrimaeum atrocephalum, Haploglossa puncticollis, Philonthus succicola and Anotylus mutator. The pooled value of alpha diversity was 1.51. The Shannon-Weiner Index (H') was relatively high (3.29) in comparison with other studies.     

Einsatz der Hasse-Diagrammtechnik zur vergleichenden Datenanalyse von Biomarkerantworten und ökotoxikologischen Tests

Ecotoxicological investigations focus on biological systems and their response to chemically induced stress. Experimental techniques are much more developed than deterministic dynamic modelling. In this methodological contribution a technique is presented, based on lattice theory. This technique, also calledHasse diagram technique, allows data analysis with respect to comparative evaluation. Hasse diagrams are used

? to suggest a possible measure of microbial diversity,

? to analyze dependencies between phospholipid fatty acids and simple geochemical parameters on an ordinal scale and

? to visualise complex results of interactions of humic substances with xenobiotics.

     

Cleaner production alternatives: Biomass utilisation options

The increasing price of energy, the security of supply, the reduction of green house gases, and the scarcity of oil and gas urge the use of more and more renewable energy. An important renewable energy source is the biomass which can be applied for heat, electricity, and transportation fuel production. The heat and electricity production are the so called “direct utilisation” alternatives and the transportation fuel production alternatives are the “indirect utilisation” alternatives of biomass energy. If efficient land use is considered, the alternatives can be compared on the basis of the utilisable energy produced from the biomass per hectare. It is shown that the bioethanol production from corn has about 89–99% less energy production capability than that of the direct utilisation alternatives. The cellulosic type bioethanol production technologies, since these partially directly utilise the biomass energy, have better energy utilisation potential, that is about 40–50% of direct alternatives.     

Crop demand of manganese

The peri-urban soils of Huelva, one of the first industrial cities in Spain, are subject to severe pollution problems primarily due to past poor management of industrial wastes and effluents. In this study, soil cores were collected in seven sites potentially contaminated with toxic chemicals arising from multiple anthropogenic sources, in order to identify trace elements of concern and to assess human health risks associated with them. In most soil core samples, total concentrations of As (up to 4,390 mg kg⁻¹), Cd (up to 12.9 mg kg⁻¹), Cu (up to 3,162 mg kg⁻¹), Pb (up to 6,385 mg kg⁻¹), Sb (up to 589 mg kg⁻¹) and Zn (up to 4,874 mg kg⁻¹) were by more than one order of magnitude greater than the site-specific reference levels calculated on the basis of regional soil geochemical baselines. These chemicals are transferred from the hazardous wastes, mainly crude pyrite and roasted pyrite cinders, to the surrounding soils by acid drainage and atmospheric deposition of wind-blown dust. Locally, elevated concentrations of U (up to 96.3 mg kg⁻¹) were detected in soils affected by releases of radionuclides from phosphogypsum wastes. The results of the human health risk-based assessment for the hypothetical exposure of an industrial worker to the surface soils indicate that, in four of the seven sites monitored, cancer risk due to As (up to 4.4 × 10⁻⁵) is slightly above the target health risk limit adopted by the Spanish legislation (1 × 10⁻⁵). The cumulative non-carcinogenic hazard index ranged from 2.0 to 12.2 indicating that there is also a concern for chronic toxic effects from dermal contact with soil.     

Dual Objective Control of Nutrient Loading into a Lake1

ABSTRACT: The control of nutrient loading into a water body is approached from a multiobjective viewpoint. The example of phosphorus (P) loading into Lake Balaton, Hungary, is used as a case study. The element P is chosen because it appears to be the limiting factor of eutrophication in the lake considered, as in many other lakes. About one-half of P loading originates from nonpoint sources; furthermore, the mechanism is poorly known and only few observation data are available. The objective of eutrophication control is to minimize P loading, while the objective of watershed management is to maximize agricultural revenue. These two objectives often appear to be in conflict. A discrete set of alternative control methods is defined, consisting in controlling a mix of the following elements: point sources, runoff, fertilizer type and application, cropping management, erosion, and sedimentation. The system dynamics is provided by a previously developed stochastic model, whose output is an empirical prohability density function (pdf) of P-loading reflecting the control policy. A compromise solution of “satisfactum” can then be chosen as a mix of the best ranked policies.     

Why most conservation monitoring is, but need not be, a waste of time

Ecological conservation monitoring programmes abound at various organisational and spatial levels from species to ecosystem. Many of them suffer, however, from the lack of details of goal and hypothesis formulation, survey design, data quality and statistical power at the start. As a result, most programmes are likely to fail to reach the necessary standard of being capable of rejecting a false null hypothesis with reasonable power. Results from inadequate monitoring are misleading for their information quality and are dangerous because they create the illusion that something useful has been done. We propose that conservation agencies and those funding monitoring work should require the demonstration of adequate power at the outset of any new monitoring scheme.     

Development of the Ammonia Injection Technology (AIT) for the Control of PCDD/PCDF and Acid Gases from Municipal Solid Waste Incinerators

This article describes the development of the Ammonia Injection Technology (AIT), a technology for the simultaneous control of the emissions of PCDD/PCDF (polychlorinated p-dibenzodioxins and polychlorinated dibenzofurans), HCI, SO₂ and NOX from municipal solid waste incinerators. It briefly reviews the theoretical basis of the technology and the bench-scale and pilot-scale experiments. It describes the results of the pilot-scale experiment in detail and reports on the finding that the formation of PCDD and PCOF takes place in different regions of the boiler system. Finally, a concept is introduced for the treatment of emission control residues which could lead to the recovery of chlorine from waste products and its “recycle” to the chlorine manufacturing process (“closed chlorine life cycle“ concept).