Shearwater diet during migration along the coast of Rio Grande do Sul,Brazil

The coastline of the state of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) is used annually as a migratory route by a number of seabird species. Thirteen surveys were carried out between July 1997 and July 1998 to obtain information on the diet of Puffinus gravis, Puffinus griseus, and Puffinus puffinus along the coast of Rio Grande do Sul. Sampling efforts focused on dead beach-cast specimens. One hundred twenty-one stomach content analyses were performed on P. gravis from a total of 238 specimens; 17 stomach content analyses were performed on P. griseus from a total of 54 specimens; and 25 stomach content analyses were performed on 25 P. puffinus from a total of 61 dead specimens. Cephalopods were the main prey found in the stomachs of the three species and were present in 96% of the P. gravis stomachs. The following cephalopods were observed: Ommastrephidae, Gonatus antarcticus, Gonatus sp., Lycoteuthis lorigera, Lycoteuthis sp., Histioteuthis sp., Cycloteuthis sp., Loligo plei, Loligo sanpaulensis, Sepiidae, and Argonauta nodosa. The latter was the most abundant species in the three species of Puffinus. The following fish were identified from otoliths: Porichthys porosissimus, Ctenosciaena gracilicirrhus, Paralonchurus brasiliensis, Cynoscion guatucupa, and Trichiurus lepturus. There was also a high incidence of synthetic materials such as plastic, polyethylene and rubber.     

Assessment of individual and mixed toxicity of bromoform,tribromoacetic-acid and 2,4,6 tribromophenol,on the embryo-larval development of Paracentrotus lividus sea urchin

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Water chlorination is the most widely used technique to avoid microbial contamination and biofouling. Adding chlorine to bromide-rich waters leads to...     

Removal of a red dye using noncommercial peroxidase extracted from rice bran

The present study investigates the application of a noncommercial peroxidase enzyme, which was extracted from rice bran, to decolorize wastewater that was simulating effluent from a textile manufacturer using a red dye in its coloration process.     

Patterns of biodiversity and habitat sensitivity in agricultural landscapes

Design of landscape is the process of the arrangement of spatial features with the objective of sustaining ecosystem services, and maintaining ecological functionality to meet societal needs. Along a gradient of cultivation intensity, the functional quality of agricultural landscape was explored and the relationships between landscape metrics and functional quality were analyzed, in order to make effective recommendations for landscape design aimed at sustainable land use schemes. The functional quality of landscape was calculated using the InVest model for 20 farm landscapes (North-Eastern Italy) where biodiversity (plant taxa) and sensitivity to disturbance (hemeroby) were used as model inputs. Results highlighted the importance of specific habitat types such as meadows and woodlands rather than other habitats for improving the biodiversity of agricultural landscapes. A high proportion of these habitats enhanced the functional quality of the landscape when the habitats were organized in large and not isolated patches in heterogeneous landscapes.     

Environmental Security: A Geographic Information System Analysis Approach—The Case of Kenya

Studies into the relationships between environmental factors and violence or conflicts constitute a very debated research field called environmental security. Several authors think that environmental scarcity, which is scarcity of renewable resources, can contribute to generate violence or social unrest, particularly within states scarcely endowed with technical know-how and social structures, such as developing countries. In this work, we referred to the theoretical model developed by the Environmental Change and Acute Conflict Project. Our goal was to use easily available spatial databases to map the various sources of environmental scarcity through geographic information systems, in order to locate the areas apparently most at risk of suffering negative social effects and their consequences in terms of internal security. The analysis was carried out at a subnational level and applied to the case of Kenya. A first phase of the work included a careful selection of databases relative to renewable resources. Spatial operations among these data allowed us to obtain new information on the availability of renewable resources (cropland, forests, water), on the present and foreseen demographic pressure, as well as on the social and technical ingenuity. The results made it possible to identify areas suffering from scarcity of one or more renewable resources, indicating different levels of gravity. Accounts from Kenya seem to confirm our results, reporting clashes between tribal groups over the access to scarce resources in areas that our work showed to be at high risk.     

Comparative analysis of regional water quality in Canada using the Water Quality Index

The Canadian Council of Ministers for the Environment (CCME) has developed a Water Quality Index (WQI) to simplify the reporting of complex water quality data. This science-based communication tool tests multi-variable water data against numeric water quality guidelines and/or objectives to produce a single unit-less number that represents overall water quality. The CCME WQI has been used to rate overall water quality in spatial and temporal comparisons of site(s). However, it has not been used in a comparative-analysis of exposure sites to reference sites downstream of point source discharges. This study evaluated the ability of the CCME WQI to differentiate water quality from metal mines across Canada at exposure sites from reference sites using two different types of numeric water quality objectives: (1) the water quality guidelines (WQG) for the protection of freshwater aquatic life and (2) water quality objectives determined using regional reference data termed Region-Specific Objectives (RSO). The application of WQG to the CCME WQI was found to be a good tool to assess absolute water quality as it relates to national water quality guidelines for the protection of aquatic life, but had more limited use when evaluating spatial changes in water quality downstream of point source discharges. The application of the RSO to the CCME WQI resulted in assessment of spatial changes in water quality downstream of point source discharges relative to upstream reference conditions.     

How deep is the footprint? A 3D representation

Depletion of natural capital stocks and use of natural capital flows are the central issues in the sustainability debate. Differentiation of these two components, considering natural capital and its limits, is important for planning and management of land use. This paper offers insights into this issue and proposes a new perspective of the Ecological Footprint (EF) in three dimensions, considering not only its size but also its depth: according to this viewpoint the footprint is not an area but a volume, although maintaining the same value as the one in two dimensions. Use of annual flows provided by the Earth is represented by the footprint size, expressed in global hectares (gha) and plotted in the (x,y) plane. Footprint depth represents the demand for extra land to meet human needs through depletion of stocks of natural capital. It is plotted on the z-axis. It can be seen as the number of years necessary to regenerate resources liquidated in 1 year (and to absorb the respective wastes) or as the number of planets necessary to support the inhabitants of the planet Earth. The evolution of these two components in the last five decades is studied and discussed.     

Bridging biogeochemical and food web models for an End-to-End representation of marine ecosystem dynamics: The Venice lagoon case study

The simultaneous accounting of effects of natural and anthropogenic changes within a common framework calls for the development of new comprehensive tools capable of integrating biological processes that span a huge range of scales, from viruses to fishes, in addition to their interactions with physical–chemical environmental properties, i.e. End-to-End models.     

Dynamic emergy evaluation of a fish farm rearing process

The environmental sustainability of a fish farm rearing process was examined by means of emergy analysis. Many emergy analyses integrate data for a whole year smoothing short term variations and sometimes losing meaningful information (aliasing). For this reason we developed a model for an instantaneous emergy evaluation in an aquacultural system so that transformities, efficiency and effort spent at each moment during the fish rearing activity could be calculated. By means of the model and dynamic emergy calculations it is possible to recognize step by step the importance of the various emergy contributions and verify where and when to modify the system to move toward optimum production of a sustainable product. By the application of the model we confirmed that the emergy trends in a fish farm installation follow wide oscillations during a year due to variations in both internal and external emergy contributions. Among the fluxes considered, those due to the introduction of fingerlings represented the highest contributions to the total emergy budget. Thus, to improve the sustainability of the analyzed system the amount, frequency and timing of these fluxes must be carefully considered. For this purpose, a comparison between two different fry introduction schedules was performed to evaluate differences in the efficiency of the rearing process.     

Economic assessment of microbial biodiesel production using heterotrophic yeasts

The production of biodiesel using oleaginous microorganisms is investigated as promising alternative to produce a truly sustainable and renewable transportation fuel. While the feasibility of this approach has been shown on the laboratory scale, a commercial scale implementation is to date inhibited due to economic restraints. In order to evaluate the current cost situation and to develop suggestions to reduce production related costs, a simple cost analysis of the proposed microbial oil production process has been carried out. For closed fermentation in large-scale fermenters a break-even price of 2,350 US$ t^–1 for microbial oil was calculated. In the context of a sensitivity analysis it was shown that especially alterations in capital cost can lead to overall cost reductions. Accordingly, an open pond cultivation approach was designed, cutting the cost for equipment almost in half and decreasing the break-even price to 1,723 US$ t^–1. However, these reductions are only feasible when stable biomass and lipid yields can be ensured in open-pond systems, because the sensitivity analysis identified these yield parameters as leading factors influencing the break-even price. Even under very optimistic assumptions, it was not possible to reduce the break-even price below that of conventional plant oils as competitive products. Therefore, economic feasibility of the process will probably only occur if on one hand considerable technical development and efficiency improvements of the production process are made while on the other hand plant and crude oil prices are continuously increasing.