类比法在圆明园防渗工程环评中的应用

生态系统以其复杂性、需长期监测的特点成为环境影响评价中的难点。文章采用了类比法,以圆明园防渗铺膜工程的生态影响评价为例,选取了铺膜1年的圆明园26#湖,铺膜3年的北京植物园湖,铺膜10年的中央党校湖,清淤未铺膜的颐和园昆明湖和未清淤未铺膜的密云水库作为类比对象,对水生生态系统中的底栖动物、浮游藻类、浮游动物和水生维管植物进行了类比,为圆明园防渗工程的生态影响评价和预测提供了有力的依据。实践证明,合理的类比法应用可以快速有效地对工程项目的生态影响进行评价。     

张家界国家森林公园地表水污染综合分析

随着旅游业的快速发展,张家界国家森林公园水环境保护、水污染治理及水资源利用问题已成为张家界旅游可持续发展中突出的问题.文章利用大量监测数据,对公园地表水污染状况进行模糊数学法综合评价,进行污染特征与污染规律分析,从而提出严格控制排污,科学规划水资源、严格控制景区客流量等对策及建议,以期为张家界国家森林公园水环境保护及张家界旅游业的持续健康发展提供决策参考.     

郑州市民运会期间大气PM2.5改善效果评估

利用2019年8月5日至9月30日大气污染物和颗粒物组分在线数据,评估郑州市少数民族运动会空气质量管控效果.根据政府管控措施的实施时间,将研究时期分为管控前(8月5～24日)、管控中(8月25日至9月18日)和解除管控后(9月19～30日).相较管控前,管控中PM_2.5平均浓度增加2.3μg·m^-3,解除管控后PM_2.5的浓度增加了11.7μg·m^-3,解除管控后PM_2.5浓度增幅高于管控中,表明管控措施对颗粒物有显著的减排效果.从颗粒物组分来看,研究期间郑州市主要组分依次是有机物、硝酸根、铵根、硫酸根和地壳元素.相比于管控前,管控期间PM_2.5组分中有机物和硝酸根占比分别上升3.9%和0.9%,硫酸根、铵根和地壳元素的占比下降了1.1%、 1.9%和2.2%.利用正定矩阵因子分解法解析颗粒物来源,结果表明二次硫酸、二次硝酸、二次有机气溶胶、机动车源、工艺过程源、扬尘和燃煤是PM_2.5主要来源.管控对一次源中的扬尘、燃煤和工业效果显著...     

北京公园水体中邻苯二甲酸酯类物质的测定及其分布特征

为了正确评估北京市公园水体受PAEs污染的程度,采集了北京11个公园湖水的水样,采用固相萃取-气相色谱联用技术检测了其中六种邻苯二甲酸酯类物质(PAEs)的含量,该方法加标回收率在73%～89.3%,RSD为5.9%～18.1%,检出限在0.40～4.58mg/L。实验结果为北京公园水体中总PAEs浓度在6.4～138.1μg/L,平均值为27.9μg/L,证明北京公园水体受到不同程度的PAEs污染,主要的污染物为邻苯二甲酸二丁酯(DBP)和邻苯二甲酸双(2-乙基己基)酯(DEHP),其中东南部以及西北部的公园污染较严重。分析了PAEs在公园湖水底泥中和水体中的分布特征,结果显示,PAEs在湖水底泥中的含量明显大于在水体中的含量。     

Development of inherent safety and health index for formulated product design

The numerous formulated products which are introduced to the market consist of chemical ingredients that may cause various safety and health hazards to the consumers. Therefore, it is extremely important to practice a systematic methodology to formulate products with acceptable safety and health performances. This work presents an index-based methodology to assess the safety and health hazards of the ingredients during the early formulation stage of product design. Hence, new inherent safety and health sub-indexes are introduced to improve the current safety and health hazards that are needed in formulated product design. The inherent safety and health sub-indexes are assigned with scores based on the degree of potential hazards. A higher score indicates a higher safety risk or severe health effect, and vice versa. The proposed methodology will greatly assist the users to identify the adverse safety and health effects caused by the ingredients. Hence, it is pivotal to eliminate or reduce the safety and health impacts from product usage. A case study on common ingredients used in the formulation of paint is presented on this study to describe the proposed method.     

The environmental dimension of national security: A test of systems analysis methods

The systems approach permits us to analyze national security as a cluster of interconnected elements, in which the environmental dimension appears to be the most important one. The environmental problem is divided into two main aspects: environmental security per se and the impact of environment on the overall status of a nation's security. It is argued here that the quality of life and health serve as both the main objective and the principal criterion of environmental security in a social system. Indices of these two factors are used in this article as indicators of the state of this type of security. They confirm that vast areas of Russia, the Ukraine, and Central Asia (especially the Aral Sea region) should be considered as presenting a substantial risk to local people and even producing global impacts on both natural and man-made systems. Environmental factors that destabilize national security are also divided into two groups: those that impact social systems directly and negatively (mainly natural disasters) and technological and sociopolitical agents that cause indirect impacts, in both war and peace time, as well as in the civil and military sectors of the economy. Developments in the former Soviet Union (the Commonwealth of Independent States) are used as an illustration of the consequences that such impacts may have on the status of national security.     

National parks: north of the border

This paper traces the history of attempts to introduce National Parks into Scotland. In so doing it identifies some of the alternatives that have been considered and adopted. Finally, the paper analyses the failure of the movement to introduce National Parks into Scotland.     

Risk Assessment of Riparian Plant Invasions into Protected Areas

Abstract:  Protected areas are becoming increasingly isolated. River corridors represent crucial links to the surrounding landscape but are also major conduits for invasion of alien species. We developed a framework to assess the risk that alien plants in watersheds adjacent to a protected area will invade the protected area along rivers. The framework combines species- and landscape-level approaches and has five key components: (1) definition of the geographical area of interest, (2) delineation of the domain into ecologically meaningful zones, (3) identification of the appropriate landscape units, (4) categorization of alien species and mapping of their distribution and abundance, and (5) definition of management options. The framework guides the determination of species distribution and abundance through successive, easily followed steps, providing the means for the assessment of areas of concern. We applied the framework to Kruger National Park (KNP) in South Africa. We recorded 231 invasive alien plant species (of which 79 were major invaders) in the domain. The KNP is facing increasing pressure from alien species in the upper regions of the drainage areas of neighboring watersheds. On the basis of the climatic modeling, we showed that most major riparian invaders have the ability to spread across the KNP should they be transported down the rivers. With this information, KNP managers can identify areas for proactive intervention, monitoring, and resource allocation. Even for a very large protected area such as the KNP, sustainable management of biodiversity will depend heavily on the response of land managers upstream managing alien plants. We suggest that this framework is applicable to plants and other passively dispersed species that invade protected areas situated at the end of a drainage basin.     

Susceptibility of a Northern Hardwood Forest to Exotic Earthworm Invasion

Abstract:  Numerous exotic earthworm species are colonizing northern hardwood forests of North America, where no native earthworms exist. Upon invasion, earthworms have been shown to alter the surface soil environment and plant populations and communities. We sought to identify land-use factors in the Ottawa National Forest (ONF), Michigan (U.S.A.), that contribute to earthworm invasion in forest dominated by sugar maple ( Acer saccharum Marsh.) so that the susceptibility to additional colonization could be evaluated. We sampled earthworm communities in Sylvania Wilderness Area, a unique old-growth hardwood forest, and nonwilderness sites influenced by recreational fishing, recent timber harvesting, or roads. All the nonwilderness sites contained one to five species of exotic earthworms. In contrast, only 50% of wilderness sites contained exotic earthworms, all of a single species. Nonwilderness sites also had thinner litter and duff layers, higher soil C and N content, and higher nitrogen mineralization potentials than Sylvania sites. Two central differences between Sylvania and nonwilderness sites were that all nonwilderness sites were in close contact with roads and had a history of timber harvest, whereas these factors were not present in Sylvania Wilderness Area. Using average rates of colonization, we constructed two geographic information system models to estimate the percentage of sugar maple on the ONF falling within a theoretical 100-year invasion distance of roads and of second-growth sugar maple as relative indices of susceptibility to invasion. Both models indicated high susceptibility to invasion, with 91.7% and 98.9% of sugar maple habitat falling within a theoretical 100-year invasion distance of roads or historical harvests, respectively.     

Response of Savanna Fire Regimes to Changing Fire-Management Policies in a Large African National Park

Abstract:  Approaches to fire management in the savanna ecosystems of the 2-million ha Kruger National Park, South Africa, have changed several times over the past six decades. These approaches have included regular and flexible prescribed burning on fixed areas and a policy that sought to establish a lightning-dominated fire regime. We sought to establish whether changes in management induced the desired variability in fire regimes over a large area. We used a spatial database of information on all fires in the park between 1957 and 2002 to determine elements of the fire regime associated with each management policy. The area that burned in any given year was independent of the management approach and was strongly related to rainfall (and therefore grass fuels) in the preceding 2 years. On the other hand, management did affect the spatial heterogeneity of fires and their seasonal distribution. Heterogeneity was higher at all scales during the era of prescribed burning, compared with the lightning-fire interval. The lightning-fire interval also resulted in a greater proportion (72% vs. 38%) of the area burning in the dry season. Mean fire-return intervals varied between 5.6 and 7.3 years, and variability in fire-return intervals was strongly influenced by the sequencing of annual rainfall rather than by management. The attempt at creating a lightning-dominated fire regime failed because most fires were ignited by humans, and the policy has been replaced by a more pragmatic approach that combines flexible prescribed burning with lightning-ignited fires.