Report on the fifth meeting of INRA’s national network of ecotoxicologists,ECOTOX

The fifth meeting of INRA’s national network of ecotoxicologists took place on 25 to 27 November 2014 in Biarritz, France. The main aim of the meeting was to bring together ecotoxicologists from INRA and associated partners, providing them ample opportunity to share and discuss their latest scientific results as well as the national policy of research in ecotoxicology and to precise perspectives for the network.     

Occurrence of dioxin-like POPs in soils from urban green space in a metropolis,North China: implication to human exposure

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Urban green space is a special space for urban life and natural contact and has an important impact on human health. However, little information is...     

Study on NOx removal from simulated flue gas by an electrobiofilm reactor: EDTA-ferrous regeneration and biological kinetics mechanism

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The regeneration of EDTA-FeII is a key step in electrobiofilm reduction-integrated systems for NOx removal from industrial boiler flue gas. The...     

The temporal stability and developmental differences in the environmental impacts of militarism: the treadmill of destruction and consumption-based carbon emissions

This study examines the relationship between national-level militarism and consumption-based carbon dioxide emissions. We analyze panel data from 1990 to 2010 for 81 nations to determine whether the magnitude of the effects of (1) military expenditures as percent of total gross domestic product and (2) military personnel as percent of total labor force on carbon emissions change over time. Results of two-way fixed effects models highlight the temporal stability of the environmental impacts of both national-level military characteristics. The findings also reveal that the effect of military expenditures on emissions is larger in the more developed OECD nations than in the developing non-OECD nations. Overall, the results support the treadmill of destruction perspective, which suggests that the nations’ militaries are an important social institution to consider in sustainability science research on the human drivers of global environmental change.     

Carbon dioxide emissions,output, and energy consumption categories in Algeria

This study examines the relation between CO₂ emissions, income, non-renewable, and renewable energy consumption in Algeria during the period extending from 1980 to 2011. Our work gives particular attention to the validity of environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) with break point method outcome demonstrates the positive effect of non-renewable type of energy on CO₂ emissions consumption. On the contrary, the results reveal an insignificant effect of renewable energy on environment improvement. Moreover, the results accept the existence of EKC hypothesis but the highest gross domestic product value in logarithm scale of our data is inferior to the estimated turning point. Consequently, policy-makers in Algeria should expand the ratio of renewable energy and should decrease the quota of non-renewable energy consumption.     

Optimal Policy Mechanism Design for Cross-Sector and Multi-Stage Pollution Control with a Bilevel Model: Application to SO<Subscript>2</Subscript> Emission in China

In this paper, we construct a multi-stage coordinated programming model under tax system to control SO₂ emission. The model is based on an explicitly formulated SO₂ abatement cost function created under Chinese condition. Analysis of the effectiveness and impact on the economy of the model is carried out with consideration of game theory. By solving the model, theoretical results show that the volume-based multi-stage SO₂ tax system has two properties: effectiveness and equal-rate. Based on these theoretical results, empirical study is also performed using Chinese historical data. Compared with yearly single-stage programming model, the tax rate generated by the coordinated multi-stage programming model is time-invariant and rather moderate in scale. The total abatement cost among planning years in our model is 21.03 % less than the actual number and 6.68 % less than that in the single-stage situation. The tax payment suggested by our model is 10.62 % less than by the single-stage model. In general, a coordinated multi-stage programming model helps reduce the overall costs of environmental protection while achieving the same emission control target with less burden added to the economy.     

Applicability of hybrid bionic optimization models with kernel-based extreme learning machine algorithm for predicting daily reference evapotranspiration: a case study in arid and semiarid regions,China

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The accurate prediction of daily reference crop evapotranspiration (ETO) enables effective management decision-making for agricultural water...