不同植被绿色屋顶径流水质年际变化特征

绿色屋顶是海绵城市建设的重要措施之一,近年来逐渐得到广泛关注.为探究植被和使用时长对绿色屋顶径流水质的影响,于北京市区搭建了3种不同植被类型[佛甲草（Sedum lineare）、大花马齿苋（Portulaca grandiflora）和无植被（对照）]的绿色屋顶.根据2017～2019年植物生长情况、雨季雨水和绿色屋顶径流水质的长期监测,定量分析不同植被绿色屋顶径流水质的年际变化特征.结果表明,相较雨水,3种绿色屋顶在监测期内均是NH⁺₄-N的汇,浓度平均削减率在50.1%～79.2%之间,但均是PO^3-₄-P、 DCr、 DCu和DNi的源;佛甲草和大花马齿苋绿色屋顶在2017年是NO^-₃-N的汇,浓度平均削减率分别为71.4%和99.5%,在2018和2019年是NO^-₃-N的源,而对照绿色屋顶在监测期均为NO^-₃-N的源;绿色屋顶的植被类型和使用时长显著影响其径...     

Effects of air filtration on spring wheat grown in open-top field chambers at a rural site. I. Effects on growth, yield and dry matter partitioning

Spring wheat, Triticum aestivum, was grown in open-top field chambers and exposed during the whole life cycle to filtered and non-filtered ambient air. The relatively low ambient pollution level did affect plant growth but had no effect on the overall grain yield of the two spring wheat cultivars Echo (1987) and Pelican (1988). A reduced root growth was found in both years which could be attributed mainly to the deposition of NO2 and SO2. Effects on crop development most likely due to ozone were limited to the 1987 growing season during which the ambient ozone concentrations were enhanced compared to 1988. This resulted in a slightly increased grain harvest index, a reduced 1000-grain weight, straw yield and a greater reduction in root growth. Visible damage resembling ozone injury appeared both years during seedling growth.     

Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) and their methoxylated derivatives in pike from Swedish waters with emphasis on temporal trends, 1967-2000

Temporal trends of five tetra- to hexabromodiphenyl ethers [BDE47, BDE99, BDE100, BDE153 and BDE154) and two methoxy-tetraBDEs [6-methoxy-2,2',4,4'- tetraBDE (6-MeO-BDE47) and 2'-methoxy-2,3',4,5'- tetraBDE (2'-MeO-BDE68)] in pike from Lake Bolmen for the years 1967-2000, are presented. All BDE congeners show increasing trends up to the mid-1980s (Sigma5PBDE from 60 to 1600 pg/g wet weight in 1989, i.e. a more than 25-fold increase), and then decrease or level off. The decreasing trends of PBDEs after the 1980s were considerably slower in the present study than was found in a study of an environmental matrix from the Baltic Proper covering the same time period. This difference suggests local sources near Lake Bolmen. The MeO-BDEs show initially decreasing concentrations, which for 6-MeO-BDE47 continues until the early 1990s. The concentrations of 6-MeO-BDE47 in herring from five locations along the Swedish coast increased from south to north in the Baltic Sea. No correlation between the concentrations of the BDE congeners and the MeO-BDEs was observed, indicating sources other than PBDEs for these compounds. The presence of MeO-BDEs in fish from lakes with different characteristics suggests a natural production not favoured by eutrophication, or dependent on sampling season and geographical location.     

Equilibrium disorders in workers exposed to mixed solvents

Background. Organic solvents cause diseases of the vestibular system. However, little is known regarding the correlation between vestibular damage and exposure to organic solvents below threshold limit values. The best measure by which to evaluate vestibular disorders is static and dynamic posturography. Objective. The aim of this study was to evaluate equilibrium disorders via static and dynamic posturography in workers without clear symptoms and exposed to low doses of mixed solvents. Methods. 200 subjects were selected. Using an Otometrics device (Madsen, Denmark), all subjects endured static and dynamic posturography testing with both eyes-open and eyes-closed conditions. Results were compared with a control group of unexposed individuals. Result. Based on the obtained data, the following results can be drawn: (a) subjects exposed to mixtures of solvents show highly significant differences regarding all static and dynamic posturography parameters in comparison to the control group; (b) posturography testing has proven to be a valid means by which to detect subliminal equilibrium disorders in subjects exposed to solvents. Conclusion. We can confirm that refinery workers exposed to mixtures of solvents can present subliminal equilibrium disorders. Early diagnosis of the latter is made possible by static and dynamic posturography.     

Biofluorescence as a survey tool for cryptic marine species

As ecosystems come under increasing anthropogenic pressure, rare species face the highest risk of extinction. Paradoxically, data necessary to evaluate the conservation status of rare species are often lacking because of the challenges of detecting species with low abundance. One group of fishes subject to this undersampling bias are those with cryptic body patterns. Twenty‐one percent of cryptic fish species assessed for their extinction risk (International Union for Conservation of Nature [IUCN]) are data deficient. We developed a nondestructive method for surveying cryptically patterned marine fishes based on the presence of biofluorescence (underwater biofluorescence census, UBC). Blue LED torches were used to investigate how widespread biofluorescence was in cryptic reef fishes in the Coral Triangle region. The effectiveness of UBC to generate abundance data was tested on a data‐deficient pygmy seahorse species (Hippocampus bargibanti) and compared with data obtained from standard underwater visual census (UVC) surveys. We recorded 95 reef fish species displaying biofluorescence, 73 of which had not been previously described as biofluorescent. Of those fish with cryptic patterns, 87% were biofluorescent compared with 9% for noncryptic fishes. The probability of species displaying biofluorescence was 70.9 times greater for cryptic species than for noncryptic species. Almost twice the number of H. bargibanti was counted using the UBC compared with UVC. For 2 triplefin species (Ucla xenogrammus, Enneapterygius tutuilae), the abundance detected with UBC was triple that detected with UVC. The UBC method was effective at finding cryptic species that would otherwise be difficult to detect and thus will reduce interobserver variability inherent to UVC surveys. Biofluorescence is ubiquitous in cryptic fishes, making this method applicable across a wide range of species. Data collected using UBC could be used with multiple IUCN criteria to assess the extinction risk of cryptic species. Adopting this technique will enhance researchers’ ability to survey cryptic species and facilitate management and conservation of cryptic marine species.     

Biomonitoring of polychlorinated biphenyls in Bavaria/Germany—long-term observations and standardization

In the 1980s, it was demonstrated that semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs) like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) accumulate in plant leaves. Plants are at the base of the food chain, and therefore a starting point for transfer of PCBs to animals and related human exposure. For two decades, the Environment Agency of the German federal state of Bavaria (LfU) has been operating long-term monitoring stations to measure the impact of organic air pollutants. Standardized ryegrass, curly kale, and spruce needles are used as bioindicators for the atmospheric entries of PCBs into vegetation. From the end of 1990s to 2009, there was a marked decline in the concentrations of indicator PCBs (i-PCBs) and a minor decline in PCB-TEQ levels. After 2009, the concentrations leveled off. In rural areas, the median concentrations of Σ6 i-PCB in ryegrass and curly kale were about 3 and 4 μg/kg dm in 2000, and have been about 0.5 and 1 μg/kg dm since 2009, respectively. Concentrations in spruce needles fell from 0.9 to 0.4 μg/kg dm. Median PCB-TEQ concentrations in the bioindicator plants ranged from 0.05 to 0.23 ng/kg dm between 2002 and 2009 and from 0.15 to 0.05 ng/kg dm after 2009. Indicator PCB and PCB-TEQ concentrations were several times higher at the urban station in Munich than at the rural areas, reflecting the emissions from in-use PCB stocks in the building sector. The likely reason of the slower decrease of PCB-TEQ compared to i-PCBs is the formation of PCB-126 by dechlorination of industrial PCBs in open applications.     

Microwave and Fenton's reagent oxidation of wastewater

We compared two H₂O₂ oxidation methods for the treatment of industrial wastewater: oxidation using Fenton's reagent [H₂O₂/Fe(II)] and microwave irradiation. Both methods were applied to the treatment of synthetic phenol solutions (100 mg L⁻¹) and of an industrial effluent containing a mixture of ionic and non-ionic surfactants at high load (20 g L⁻¹ of COD). The effects of initial pH, initial H₂O₂ concentration, Fenton catalyst amount and irradiation time were assessed. According to the oxidation of phenol, it has been found that the oxidation by Fenton's reagent is dependent on the pH, contrary to the microwave system, which is not influenced by this parameter. For both systems, a limiting amount of oxidant has been found; above this point the oxidation of phenol is not improved by a further addition of peroxide. The oxidation of the industrial surfactant effluent has only been successful with the Fenton's reagent. In this case, large amounts of ferrous ions are necessary for the precipitation of the ionic surfactants of the effluent, followed by the oxidation of the non-ionic constituents of the solution. Electronic Publication     

An experimental study on fermentative H2 production from food waste as affected by pH

Batch dark fermentation experiments were performed on food waste and mixtures of food waste and wastewater activated sludge to evaluate the influence of pH on biological H₂ production and compare the process performance with and without inoculum addition. The effect of a preliminary thermal shock treatment of the inoculum was also investigated as a means to harvest the hydrogenogenic biomass. The best performance in terms of both H₂ generation potential and process kinetics was observed at pH = 6.5 under all experimental conditions (no inoculum, and untreated or thermally treated inoculum added). H₂ production from food waste was found to be feasible even without inoculum addition, although thermal pre-treatment of the inoculum notably increased the maximum production and reduced the lag phase duration. The analysis of the fermentation products indicated that the biological hydrogen production could be mainly ascribed to a mixed acetate/butyrate-type fermentation. However, the presence of additional metabolites in the digestate, including propionate and ethanol, also indicated that other metabolic pathways were active during the process, reducing substrate conversion into hydrogen. The plateau in H₂ generation was found to mirror the condition at which soluble carbohydrates were depleted. Beyond this condition, homoacetogenesis probably started to play a role in the degradation process.     

Safety assessment of automated vehicles: how to determine whether we have collected enough field data?

Abstract

Objective: The amount of collected field data from naturalistic driving studies is quickly increasing. The data are used for, among others, developing automated driving technologies (such as crash avoidance systems), studying driver interaction with such technologies, and gaining insights into the variety of scenarios in real-world traffic. Because data collection is time consuming and requires high investments and resources, questions like “Do we have enough data?,” “How much more information can we gain when obtaining more data?,” and “How far are we from obtaining completeness?” are highly relevant. In fact, deducing safety claims based on collected data—for example, through testing scenarios based on collected data—requires knowledge about the degree of completeness of the data used. We propose a method for quantifying the completeness of the so-called activities in a data set. This enables us to partly answer the aforementioned questions.

Method: In this article, the (traffic) data are interpreted as a sequence of different so-called scenarios that can be grouped into a finite set of scenario classes. The building blocks of scenarios are the activities. For every activity, there exists a parameterization that encodes all information in the data of each recorded activity. For each type of activity, we estimate a probability density function (pdf) of the associated parameters. Our proposed method quantifies the degree of completeness of a data set using the estimated pdfs.

Results: To illustrate the proposed method, 2 different case studies are presented. First, a case study with an artificial data set, of which the underlying pdfs are known, is carried out to illustrate that the proposed method correctly quantifies the completeness of the activities. Next, a case study with real-world data is performed to quantify the degree of completeness of the acquired data for which the true pdfs are unknown.

Conclusion: The presented case studies illustrate that the proposed method is able to quantify the degree of completeness of a small set of field data and can be used to deduce whether sufficient data have been collected for the purpose of the field study. Future work will focus on applying the proposed method to larger data sets. The proposed method will be used to evaluate the level of completeness of the data collection on Singaporean roads, aimed at defining relevant test cases for the autonomous vehicle road approval procedure that is being developed in Singapore.     

Mediterranean land systems under global change: current state and future challenges

Regional Environmental Change -