Characterization of black crusts developed on historic stones with diverse mineralogy under different air quality environments

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Black crusts (BCs) are one of the most critical alteration forms found on stones belonging to architectural heritage. Since they could be considered...     

Calcitic-based stones protection by a low-fluorine modified methacrylic coating

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Atmospheric pollutants, such as NOx, SO2, and particulate matter, together with water percolation inside the stone pores, represent the main causes of...     

Microplastics as vectors of metals contamination in Mediterranean Sea

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Microplastics are contaminants of great concern all over the world. Microplastics constitute pollutants themselves; moreover, other contaminants such...     

The role of iron nanoparticles on anaerobic digestion: mechanisms,limitations, and perspectives

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Anaerobic digestion (AD) is the most widely used technology for organic matter treatment. However, multiple types of research have reported on...     

Forests in common: Learning from diversity of community forest arrangements in Europe

Europe has a wealth of community forest arrangements. This paper aims to transcend the diversity of locally specific terms and forms, to highlight the value of considering them inclusively. Building on methods to make sense of diversity, we use reflexive grounded inquiry in fifteen cases in Italy, Scotland, Slovenia and Sweden. Within four dimensions (forest, community, relationships between them, and relationships with wider society), we identify 43 subdimensions to describe them collectively. Our approach shows how European arrangements contribute to wider discourses of collective natural resource management. Both tradition and innovation in Europe inform options for environmental governance. Arrangements challenge the distinction between ‘communities of place’ and ‘communities of interest’, with implications for social and environmental justice. They exemplify multilevel environmental governance through both vertical and horizontal connections. Emerging from long histories of political and environmental pressures, they have a role in enhancing society’s connection with nature and adaptive capacity.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1007/s13280-020-01377-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorised users.     

Spatial and seasonal variability of dissolved oxygen and nutrients in the Southern Adriatic coastal waters

The main objective of this paper is to present vertical and horizontal patterns of dissolved oxygen and nutrients found during four seasonal surveys (March, June, September and December 2000) in the Southern Adriatic Sea coastal waters. The multivariate technique Principal Component Analysis has been applied to our dataset considering the following parameters: seawater temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen and nutrients (nitrate, nitrite, phosphate, silicate). The resulting plot shows in a self-explanatory way that a seasonal trend was not observable in the investigated period and that no significant differences occur between the stations sampled in the Taranto Gulf and those along the Adriatic coast. Water column stratification persists in all seasons, except in spring, in the shallowest stations. The surface layer is characterized by a low nutrient content. The influence of the Northern Adriatic Surface Water in the Southern Adriatic sub-basin seems to be very low and can be traced by nitrate and silicate only in spring and winter. Regarding deep waters, nitrate distribution shows an increasing gradient moving from the coast to the open sea, having the lowest concentration in the shelf area and the highest in the most offshore stations of the Otranto Strait. In the Otranto Strait area the vertical distributions of physical and chemical parameters show, at middle depths, the inflow of Levantine Intermediate Water, traced by both the maximum of salinity, nitrate and phosphate and the minimum of oxygen. The LIW signal is lost moving northward. The outflow of Adriatic Dense Water is less evident, being traced only in spring by an oxygen increase at the bottom layer in the shelf area. The N:P ratio is highly variable but in the range already observed in the Southern Adriatic, suggesting a P-limitation, which can both contribute to the low primary productivity of the area and support the N:P ratio anomaly of the Eastern Mediterranean.     

Sri Lanka: a political ecology of socio-environmental conflicts and development projects

By analyzing 26 cases in the EJ Atlas for Sri Lanka, their causes, the impacts, the social actors involved, the forms of mobilization, and the main outcomes of the conflicts, this article examines in what ways activities aiming at economic growth produce socio-environmental conflicts. Such activities increase the social metabolism causing changes that translate into environmental, social, and health impacts which due to inequality of power are unequally distributed. As a result, those who are negatively impacted sometimes mobilize claiming environmental justice. The mining of construction materials to support the boom in the building sector and the expansion of intensive plantations into ‘extraction frontiers’ in new territories, cause deforestation, biodiversity loss, and hurt the local communities. Tourism and industries and new infrastructures are causing displacement, pollution, land degradation, and water shortage, affecting communities of farmers and fishermen that mobilize against the adverse impacts. Those with power to appropriate the natural resources are mostly the state together with international finance institutions and international actors who are able to implement the construction of infrastructures, plantations, and mass tourism. Mobilizations are mostly geared to the protection of livelihoods threatened by loss of access to land, pollution, deforestation, diseases, water scarcity, and new uncertain risks. The protection of the environment demanded by the mobilized groups in Sri Lanka does not aim just to protect nature itself but belongs to a wider movement of an “environmentalism of the poor”.     

Trends in motor vehicle crash mortality in Europe, 1980-2007

Recent trends (1980-2007) in mortality from road traffic crashes in European countries, and, for comparative purposes, in the USA and Japan were reviewed. Data came from the World Health Organisation database. Age-standardised rates, at all ages and at 15-24, 25-64, ?65 years, were computed. Joinpoint regression analyses to evaluate significant changes in trends were performed. In the European Union as a whole rates declined from 20.2 in 1987 to 13.5/100,000 in 2007 in men, and from 6.3 to 3.7/100,000 in women; European Union rates remained lower than USA, but higher than Japanese ones. In 2007, the highest male rates were in Lithuania (36.7/100,000), the Russian Federation (35.2), Ukraine (29.8), and Latvia (28.5), and the lowest ones in the Netherlands (6.2) and Sweden (6.9); the highest female rates were in the Russian Federation (11.3), Lithuania (9.7), Belarus, Latvia, and Ukraine (around 8), and the lowest ones in Switzerland (1.7), the UK, and Nordic countries (around 2). Mortality from motor vehicle crashes declined in northern and western European countries and - though to a lesser extent - in southern European countries, too. Mortality trends were also favourable in the Czech Republic and Poland since the mid 1990’s, whereas they were still upwards in Romania and the Russian Federation. No trend was observed in Hungary and Ukraine. Trends were consistent in various age groups considered. Thus, additional urgent and integrated intervention is required to prevent avoidable deaths from motor vehicle crashes, particularly in selected central and eastern European countries.