Long-term trends and short-term variability of water quality in Skive Fjord, Denmark – nutrient load and mussels are the primary pressures and drivers that influence water quality

Nineteen years of monitoring data from the eutrophic Skive Fjord, Denmark were examined for linkages to external pressures and drivers, including nutrient inputs, meteorology and stocks of blue mussels. Linkages were examined by: 1) time-series analysis to document effects of nutrient reduction programs, 2) Pearson Rank correlations, 3) multivariate statistical analysis (PLS) to identify water quality variables with high predictability and their linkages to pressures, and 4) regression analysis to quantify relationships between pressures and water quality. Freshwater input, nitrogen load and phosphorus load showed decreasing trends through the period 1984–2002. The load reductions were only partially translated into trends in water quality: phosphorus decreased in most seasons, while total nitrogen decreased during winter and spring only. Phosphorus concentration had the highest predictability (explained by seasonal temperature variation) followed by transparency, silicate, tot-N, chlorophyll-a, primary productivity, phytoplankton diversity and phytoplankton turnover. The variation in pressures other than nutrient input confounded the relations between loads and water quality. High biomass of mussels led to reduced chlorophyll-a and increased transparency, while short-term variability in water column mixing led to changes in chlorophyll-a due to nutrient entrainment and coupling to benthic mussels.     

Rare chromosome 20 variants encountered during prenatal diagnosis

A case with an uncommon heteromorphism in the centromeric region of chromosome 20, var (20) (cen, CBG 50), and a family with a pericentric inversion of chromosome 20, inv (20) (p11.23q11.21), are reported, both detected in amniotic fluid cell cultures. It appears that small pericentric inversions of chromosome 20 have a low risk of recombination.     

Prerequisites for learning from accident investigations – A cross-country comparison of national accident investigation boards

In this paper railway accident investigation reports issued by the national accident investigation boards in three Scandinavian countries during a 2-year period have been systematically studied. Content analysis of attributed causes in these reports reveals a considerable emphasis on physical processes, actor activities and equipment (the microlevel). Much less attention is paid to organisational factors (the mesolevel) and conditions related to regulators, associations and government (the macrolevel). This means that lessons will primarily be learned about aspects at the lower of these levels. Interviews show that the factors emphasised in investigation reports typically reflect the competences and experiences of the investigators, i.e. they are inclined to focus on areas of their own expertise. Since failures at the microlevel in many cases merely are symptoms of trouble at higher levels, it is argued that competence among investigators that supplements entirely technical or operational backgrounds are necessary for enabling deeper understanding of the factors leading to accidents. One possible way for achieving this is the creation of multi-modal investigation boards that provide a number of potential advantages, such as increased access to specialist competences that are shared between different sectors. Although a multi-modal approach to some degree has been adopted in all three countries, interviews reveal that these positive effects do not emerge automatically. It can therefore be concluded that multi-modal investigation boards offer a number of possible advantages, but only when these synergies are fully exploited can they provide a potential for more effective learning from accidents.     

1987 APCA Govermenet Agencies Directory

A method for setting air quality standards for long-term cumulative exposures of a population based on epidemiological studies has been developed. It uses exposure estimates interpolated from monitoring stations to zip code centroids, each month applied to zip code by month residence histories of the population. Two alternative cumulative exposure indices are used—hours in excess of a threshold, and the sum of concentrations above a threshold. The indices are then used with multiple logistic regression models for the health outcome data to form dose response curves for relative risk, adjusting for covariates. These curves are useful for determination of at what exposure amounts and threshold levels, effects which have both statistical and public health significance begin to occur. The method is applied to a ten year follow-up of a sub cohort of 7,343 members of the National Cancer Institute-funded Adventist Health Study. Up to 20 years of residence history was available. Analysis for prevalence of symptoms was conducted for four air pollutants— total oxidants, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and total suspended particulates. For each pollutant, cumulated exposures were calculated above each of five different thresholds. Statistically significant effects were noted for total suspended particulates, total oxidants, sulfur dioxide, past and passive smoking.     

WEEE and portable batteries in residual household waste: Quantification and characterisation of misplaced waste

A total of 26.1 Mg of residual waste from 3129 households in 12 Danish municipalities was analysed and revealed that 89.6 kg of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), 11 kg of batteries, 2.2 kg of toners and 16 kg of cables had been wrongfully discarded. This corresponds to a Danish household discarding 29 g of WEEE (7 items per year), 4 g of batteries (9 batteries per year), 1 g of toners and 7 g of unidentifiable cables on average per week, constituting 0.34% (w/w), 0.04% (w/w), 0.01% (w/w) and 0.09% (w/w), respectively, of residual waste. The study also found that misplaced WEEE and batteries in the residual waste constituted 16% and 39%, respectively, of what is being collected properly through the dedicated special waste collection schemes. This shows that a large amount of batteries are being discarded with the residual waste, whereas WEEE seems to be collected relatively successfully through the dedicated special waste collection schemes. Characterisation of the misplaced batteries showed that 20% (w/w) of the discarded batteries were discarded as part of WEEE (built-in). Primarily alkaline batteries, carbon zinc batteries and alkaline button cell batteries were found to be discarded with the residual household waste. Characterisation of WEEE showed that primarily small WEEE (WEEE directive categories 2, 5a, 6, 7 and 9) and light sources (WEEE directive category 5b) were misplaced. Electric tooth brushes, watches, clocks, headphones, flashlights, bicycle lights, and cables were items most frequently found. It is recommended that these findings are taken into account when designing new or improving existing special waste collection schemes. Improving the collection of WEEE is also recommended as one way to also improve the collection of batteries due to the large fraction of batteries found as built-in. The findings in this study were comparable to other western European studies, suggesting that the recommendations made in this study could apply to other western European countries as well.     

Knowledge co‐production and boundary work to promote implementation of conservation plans

Knowledge co‐production and boundary work offer planners a new frame for critically designing a social process that fosters collaborative implementation of resulting plans. Knowledge co‐production involves stakeholders from diverse knowledge systems working iteratively toward common vision and action. Boundary work is a means of creating permeable knowledge boundaries that satisfy the needs of multiple social groups while guarding the functional integrity of contributing knowledge systems. Resulting products are boundary objects of mutual interest that maintain coherence across all knowledge boundaries. We examined how knowledge co‐production and boundary work can bridge the gap between planning and implementation and promote cross‐sectoral cooperation. We applied these concepts to well‐established stages in regional conservation planning within a national scale conservation planning project aimed at identifying areas for conserving rivers and wetlands of South Africa and developing an institutional environment for promoting their conservation. Knowledge co‐production occurred iteratively over 4 years in interactive stake‐holder workshops that included co‐development of national freshwater conservation goals and spatial data on freshwater biodiversity and local conservation feasibility; translation of goals into quantitative inputs that were used in Marxan to select draft priority conservation areas; review of draft priority areas; and packaging of resulting map products into an atlas and implementation manual to promote application of the priority area maps in 37 different decision‐making contexts. Knowledge co‐production stimulated dialogue and negotiation and built capacity for multi‐scale implementation beyond the project. The resulting maps and information integrated diverse knowledge types of over 450 stakeholders and represented >1000 years of collective experience. The maps provided a consistent national source of information on priority conservation areas for rivers and wetlands and have been applied in 25 of the 37 use contexts since their launch just over 3 years ago. When framed as a knowledge co‐production process supported by boundary work, regional conservation plans can be developed into valuable boundary objects that offer a tangible tool for multi‐agency cooperation around conservation. Our work provides practical guidance for promoting uptake of conservation science and contributes to an evidence base on how conservation efforts can be improved.