Calculating ecological footprints at the municipal level: what is a reasonable approach for Canada?

No clear ecological footprint calculation strategy is available for small- and mid-sized communities within Canada. By adjusting provincial or national footprint findings using data sets available in the public domain, we develop and test a calculation strategy to estimate municipal ecological footprints. Because the calculation approach is consistent with the Global Footprint Network standardised methodology, it permits meaningful comparisons between communities and with global and national footprint estimates. It offers planners, policy-makers, and community leaders an accessible, straight forward, and cost effective strategy for estimating the ecological footprint at the community and municipal level. The suggested approach is best suited for using the ecological footprint as an awareness and education tool. The large number of limitations associated with calculating the municipal approach and limitations associated with calculating ecological footprints in general at the local level make it an unsuitable tool to inform community planning and policy development.     

The on-road experiences and awareness of sleepiness in a sample of Australian highway drivers: A roadside driver sleepiness study

Objective: Driver sleepiness contributes substantially to road crash incidents. Simulator and on-road studies clearly reveal an impairing effect from sleepiness on driving ability. However, the degree to which drivers appreciate the dangerousness of driving while sleepy is somewhat unclear. This study sought to determine drivers' on-road experiences of sleepiness, their prior sleep habits, and personal awareness of the signs of sleepiness.

Methods: Participants were a random selection of 92 drivers traveling on a major highway in the state of Queensland, Australia, who were stopped by police as part of routine drink driving operations. Participants completed a brief questionnaire that included demographic information, sleepy driving experiences (signs of sleepiness and on-road experiences of sleepiness), and prior sleep habits. A modified version of the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) was used to assess subjective sleepiness in the 15 min prior to being stopped by police.

Results: Participants' ratings of subjective sleepiness were quite low, with 90% reporting being alert to extremely alert on the KSS. Participants were reasonably aware of the signs of sleepiness, with many signs of sleepiness associated with on-road experiences of sleepiness. Additionally, the number of hours spent driving was positively correlated with the drivers' level of sleep debt.

Conclusions: The results suggest that participants had moderate experiences of driving while sleepy and many were aware of the signs of sleepiness. The relationship between driving long distances and increased sleep debt is a concern for road safety. Increased education regarding the dangers of sleepy driving seems warranted.     

A Multiple Lines of Evidence Framework to Evaluate Intrinsic Biodegradation of 1,4‐Dioxane

Development of a multiple lines of evidence (MLOE) framework to evaluate the intrinsic biodegradation potential of 1,4‐dioxane is vital to implementing management strategies at groundwater sites impacted by 1,4‐dioxane. A comprehensive MLOE approach was formed to provide significant evidence of natural degradation of 1,4‐dioxane comingled with tetrahydrofuran (THF) within a large, diffuse plume. State‐of‐the art molecular biological analyses and compound‐specific isotope analysis (CSIA) were employed to support more traditional approaches for data analysis (concentration trend analyses, spatial distribution, temporal changes, geochemical biodegradation attenuation indicators, plume mass estimates, and fate and transport modeling). The molecular analyses demonstrated that microorganisms capable of both metabolic and cometabolic degradation of 1,4‐dioxane were present throughout the groundwater plume, whereas the CSIA data provided supporting evidence of biodegradation. 1,4‐Dioxane biomarkers were present and abundant throughout the 1,4‐dioxane plume, and our biomarkers tracked the plume with reasonable accuracy. Evidence also suggests that THF‐driven cometabolic biodegradation as well as catabolic 1,4‐dioxane biodegradation were active at this site. These data supplemented the traditional lines of evidence approaches, which demonstrated that 1,4‐dioxane attenuation was occurring across the groundwater plume and that nondestructive physical processes alone did not account for the observed 1,4‐dioxane attenuation. This MLOE framework combining new and traditional analyses demonstrates that this site has a significant capacity for intrinsic biodegradation of 1,4‐dioxane. ©2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Starch-Based Materials Encapsulating Anthocyanins: A Review

Journal of Polymers and the Environment - Anthocyanins (ACNs) are natural pigments broadly used in the food industry due to their color, antioxidant, and antimicrobial properties, however, these...     

Assessing conservation status with extensive but low-resolution data: Application of frequentist and Bayesian models to endangered Athabasca River rainbow trout

Use of extensive but low-resolution abundance data is common in the assessment of species at-risk status based on quantitative decline criteria under International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and national endangered species legislation. Such data can be problematic for 3 reasons. First, statistical power to reject the null hypothesis of no change is often low because of small sample size and high sampling uncertainty leading to a high frequency of type II errors. Second, range-wide assessments composed of multiple site-specific observations do not effectively weight site-specific trends into global trends. Third, uncertainty in site-specific temporal trends and relative abundance are not propagated at the appropriate spatial scale. A common result is the propensity to underestimate the magnitude of declines and therefore fail to identify the appropriate at-risk status for a species. We used 3 statistical approaches, from simple to more complex, to estimate temporal decline rates for a designatable unit (DU) of rainbow trout in the Athabasca River watershed in western Canada. This DU is considered a native species for purposes of listing because of its genetic composition characterized as >0.95 indigenous origin in the face of continuing introgressive hybridization with introduced populations in the watershed. Analysis of abundance trends from 57 time series with a fixed-effects model identified 33 sites with negative trends, but only 2 were statistically significant. By contrast, a hierarchical linear mixed model weighted by site-specific abundance provided a DU-wide decline estimate of 16.4% per year and a 3-generation decline of 93.2%. A hierarchical Bayesian mixed model yielded a similar 3-generation decline trend of 91.3% and the posterior distribution showed that the estimate had a >99% probability of exceeding thresholds for an endangered listing. We conclude that the Bayesian approach was the most useful because it provided a probabilistic statement of threshold exceedance in support of an at-risk status recommendation.     

Methods for selenium removal from contaminated waters: a review

Environmental Chemistry Letters - Worldwide contamination of waters by metals, metalloids, and organometallic pollutants is a major health issue. In particular, the occurrence of the selenium...