Multimedia fate modeling and comparative impact on freshwater ecosystems of pharmaceuticals from biosolids-amended soils

This study modeled the impact on freshwater ecosystems of pharmaceuticals detected in biosolids following application on agricultural soils. The detected sulfonamides and hydrochlorothiazide displayed comparatively moderate retention in solid matrices and, therefore, higher transfer fractions from biosolids to the freshwater compartment. However, the residence times of these pharmaceuticals in freshwater were estimated to be short due to abiotic degradation processes. The non-steroidal anti-inflammatory mefenamic acid had the highest environmental impact on aquatic ecosystems and warrants further investigation. The estimation of the solid-water partitioning coefficient was generally the most influential parameter of the probabilistic comparative impact assessment. These results and the modeling approach used in this study serve to prioritize pharmaceuticals in the research effort to assess the risks and the environmental impacts on aquatic biota of these emerging pollutants.     

采煤塌陷地积水对土壤氮素矿化过程的影响

煤炭开采导致大面积的土地塌陷,使大量耕地出现常年积水或季节性积水,对塌陷地土壤氮素矿化过程产生一定影响。采集了某矿采煤塌陷地土壤样品,进行好气和淹水培养条件下间歇淋洗培养实验,研究了塌陷地积水对土壤氮素矿化过程的影响。经过62d的培养,40d左右氮素的矿化过程趋于稳定,淹水培养条件下土壤氮素最终累积矿化量为68.99mg/kg,约为好气培养条件的10倍,且淹水培养条件下土壤氮素矿化势可达69.472mg/kg,均矿化速率为5.210mg/(kg·d),说明淹水对土壤氮素矿化过程有显著的促进作用。将实验所得累积矿化量分别代入简单指数模型及双因子指数模型进行拟合,发现简单指数模型能有效模拟好气和淹水培养条件下土壤氮素矿化过程,并获得了2种培养条件下土壤氮素矿化过程的模型参数。     

Assisting Australian indigenous resource management and sustainable utilization of species through the use of GIS and environmental modeling techniques

Information on distribution and relative abundance of species is integral to sustainable management, especially if they are to be harvested for subsistence or commerce. In northern Australia, natural landscapes are vast, centers of population few, access is difficult, and Aboriginal resource centers and communities have limited funds and infrastructure. Consequently defining distribution and relative abundance by comprehensive ground survey is difficult and expensive. This highlights the need for simple, cheap, automated methodologies to predict the distribution of species in use, or having potential for use, in commercial enterprise. The technique applied here uses a Geographic Information System (GIS) to make predictions of probability of occurrence using an inductive modeling technique based on Bayes' theorem. The study area is in the Maningrida region, central Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory, Australia. The species examined, Cycas arnhemica and Brachychiton diversifolius, are currently being 'wild harvested' in commercial trials, involving sale of decorative plants and use as carving wood, respectively. This study involved limited and relatively simple ground surveys requiring approximately 7 days of effort for each species. The overall model performance was evaluated using Cohen's kappa statistics. The predictive ability of the model for C. arnhemica was classified as moderate and for B. diversifolius as fair. The difference in model performance can be attributed to the pattern of distribution of these species. C. arnhemica tends to occur in a clumped distribution due to relatively short distance dispersal of its large seeds and vegetative growth from long-lived rhizomes, while B. diversifolius seeds are smaller and more widely dispersed across the landscape. The output from analysis predicts trends in species distribution that are consistent with independent on-site sampling for each species and therefore should prove useful in gauging the extent of resource availability. However, some caution needs to be applied as the models tend to over predict presence which is a function of distribution patterns and of other variables operating in the landscape such as fire histories which were not included in the model due to limited availability of data.     

Comparison of models of simazine transport and fate in the subsurface environment in a citrus farm

Contamination of groundwater by agrochemicals is now widely recognized as an extremely important environmental problem. Modern agricultural practices involve the combined use of irrigation with the application of large amounts of agrochemicals to maximize crop yield. Due to flood irrigation and natural runoff, agricultural activities might generate soil, surface water and groundwater contamination problems and leaching of pesticides. Modeling of the transport and fate of pesticides, such as simazine, may help understand the long-term potential risk to the subsurface environment. This paper illustrates a comparative study via the use of three different pesticide transport simulation models and the applicability of those models in determining the groundwater vulnerability to pesticides contamination in a citrus orchard located at the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV). The three models used in the study are the pesticide root zone model-3 (PRZM-3), the pesticide analytical model (PESTAN) and integrated pesticide transport modeling (IPTM). The concentration values obtained from all three models are in agreement, and they show a decreasing trend from the surface through the vadose zone. The problem is how to use this information and, specifically, how to combine the testimony of a number of experts into a single useful judgment. With the aid of the fuzzy multiattribute decision making method, PRZM-3 is deemed as the most promising one for such precision farming applications.     

Estimating Forest Ecosystem Evapotranspiration at Multiple Temporal Scales With a Dimension Analysis Approach1

Abstract:  It is critical that evapotranspiration (ET) be quantified accurately so that scientists can evaluate the effects of land management and global change on water availability, streamflow, nutrient and sediment loading, and ecosystem productivity in watersheds. The objective of this study was to derive a new semi‐empirical ET modeled using a dimension analysis method that could be used to estimate forest ET effectively at multiple temporal scales. The model developed describes ET as a function of water availability for evaporation and transpiration, potential ET demand, air humidity, and land surface characteristics. The model was tested with long‐term hydrometeorological data from five research sites with distinct forest hydrology in the United States and China. Averaged simulation error for daily ET was within 0.5 mm/day. The annual ET at each of the five study sites were within 7% of measured values. Results suggest that the model can accurately capture the temporal dynamics of ET in forest ecosystems at daily, monthly, and annual scales. The model is climate‐driven and is sensitive to topography and vegetation characteristics and thus has potential to be used to examine the compounding hydrologic responses to land cover and climate changes at multiple temporal scales.     

Integrated Modular Modeling of Water and Nutrients From Point and Nonpoint Sources in the Patuxent River Watershed1

Abstract: We present a simple modular landscape simulation model that is based on a watershed modeling framework in which different sets of processes occurring in a watershed can be simulated separately with different models. The model consists of three loosely coupled submodels: a rainfall‐runoff model (TOPMODEL) for runoff generation in a subwatershed, a nutrient model for estimation of nutrients from nonpoint sources in a subwatershed, and a stream network model for integration of point and nonpoint sources in the routing process. The model performance was evaluated using monitoring data in the watershed of the Patuxent River, a tributary to the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, from July 1997 through August 1999. Despite its simplicity, the landscape model predictions of streamflow, and sediment and nutrient loads were as good as or better than those of the Hydrological Simulation Program‐Fortran model, one of the most widely used comprehensive watershed models. The landscape model was applied to predict discharges of water, sediment, silicate, organic carbon, nitrate, ammonium, organic nitrogen, total nitrogen, organic phosphorus, phosphate, and total phosphorus from the Patuxent watershed to its estuary. The predicted annual water discharge to the estuary was very close to the measured annual total in terms of percent errors for both years of the study period (≤2%). The model predictions for loads of nutrients were also good (20‐30%) or very good (<20%) with exceptions of sediment (40%), phosphate (36%), and organic carbon (53%) for Year 1.     

Inverse modeling of multicomponent reactive transport through single and dual porosity media

Compacted bentonite is foreseen as buffer material for high-level radioactive waste in deep geological repositories because it provides hydraulic isolation, chemical stability, and radionuclide sorption. A wide range of laboratory tests were performed within the framework of FEBEX (Full-scale Engineered Barrier EXperiment) project to characterize buffer properties and develop numerical models for FEBEX bentonite. Here we present inverse single and dual-continuum multicomponent reactive transport models of a long-term permeation test performed on a 2.5 cm long sample of FEBEX bentonite. Initial saline bentonite porewater was flushed with 5.5 pore volumes of fresh granitic water. Water flux and chemical composition of effluent waters were monitored during almost 4 years. The model accounts for solute advection and diffusion and geochemical reactions such as aqueous complexation, acid-base, cation exchange, protonation/deprotonation by surface complexation and dissolution/precipitation of calcite, chalcedony and gypsum. All of these processes are assumed at local equilibrium. Similar to previous studies of bentonite porewater chemistry on batch systems which attest the relevance of protonation/deprotonation on buffering pH, our results confirm that protonation/deprotonation is a key process in maintaining a stable pH under dynamic transport conditions. Breakthrough curves of reactive species are more sensitive to initial porewater concentration than to effective diffusion coefficient. Optimum estimates of initial porewater chemistry of saturated compacted FEBEX bentonite are obtained by solving the inverse problem of multicomponent reactive transport. While the single-continuum model reproduces the trends of measured data for most chemical species, it fails to match properly the long tails of most breakthrough curves. Such limitation is overcome by resorting to a dual-continuum reactive transport model.     

Identification of key parameters controlling dissolved oxygen migration and attenuation in fractured crystalline rocks

In the crystalline rocks of the Canadian Shield, geochemical conditions are currently reducing at depths of 500-1000 m. However, during future glacial periods, altered hydrologic conditions could potentially result in enhanced recharge of glacial melt water containing a relatively high concentration of dissolved oxygen (O2). It is therefore of interest to investigate the physical and geochemical processes, including naturally-occurring redox reactions, that may control O2 ingress. In this study, the reactive transport code MIN3P is used in combination with 2k factorial analyses to identify the most important parameters controlling oxygen migration and attenuation in fractured crystalline rocks. Scenarios considered are based on simplified conceptual models that include a single vertical fracture, or a fracture zone, contained within a rock matrix that extends from the ground surface to a depth of 500 m. Consistent with field observations, Fe(II)-bearing minerals are present in the fractures (i.e. chlorite) and the rock matrix (biotite and small quantities of pyrite). For the parameter ranges investigated, results indicate that for the single fracture case, the most influential factors controlling dissolved O2 ingress are flow velocity in the fracture, fracture aperture, and the biotite reaction rate in the rock matrix. The most important parameters for the fracture zone simulations are flow velocity in the individual fractures, pO2 in the recharge water, biotite reaction rate, and to a lesser degree the abundance and reactivity of chlorite in the fracture zone, and the fracture zone width. These parameters should therefore receive increased consideration during site characterization, and in the formulation of site-specific models intended to predict O2 behavior in crystalline rocks.     

Laboratory longitudinal diffusion tests: 2. Parameter estimation by inverse analysis

This study focuses on the verification of test interpretations for different state analyses of diffusion experiments. Part 1 of this study identified that steady, quasi-steady and equilibrium state analyses for the through- and in-diffusion tests with solution reservoirs are generally feasible where the tracer is not highly sorptive. In Part 2 we investigate parameter identifiability in transient-state analysis of reservoir concentration variation using a numerical approach. For increased generality, the analytical models, objective functions and Jacobian matrix necessary for inverse analysis of transient-state data are reformulated using unified dimensionless parameters. In these dimensionless forms, the number of unknown parameters is reduced and a single dimensionless parameter represents the sorption property. The dimensionless objective functions are evaluated for individual test methods and parameter identifiability is discussed in relation to the sorption property. The effects of multiple minima and measurement error on parameter identifiability are also investigated. The main findings are that inverse problems for inlet and outlet reservoir concentration analyses are generally unstable and well-posed, respectively. Where the tracer is sorptive, the inverse problem for the inlet reservoir concentration analysis may have multiple minima. When insufficient measurement data is collected, multiple solutions may result and this should be taken into consideration when inversely analyzing data including that of inlet reservoir concentration. Verification of test interpretation by cross-checking different state analyses is feasible where the tracer is not highly sorptive. In an actual experiment, test interpretation validity is demonstrated through consistency between theory and practice for different state analyses.     

基于灰建模的瓦斯含量多变量预测模型研究

研究了GM(1,N)、GM(0,N)瓦斯含量预测模型的数学原理,收集郑煤集团告成矿地质勘探期间及生产期间的瓦斯含量实测资料,获得16个可靠点,选取基岩厚度、新生界厚度、煤层厚度、煤层水分、煤层灰分、50m顶板含砂率6个因素作灰色建模预测的指标,分别建立了GM(1,6)和GM(0,6)瓦斯含量多变量预测模型。根据计算和评价结果,GM(1,6)和GM(0,6)瓦斯含量预测模型精度均能够满足工程精度的要求,说明利用灰色模型来预测瓦斯含量是可行的。由于前者精度略高于后者,故建议告成矿采用GM(1,6)模型来进行未知地区煤层瓦斯含量的预测。需要注意,由于模型没有考虑构造的影响,在实际预测时,还应根据构造对待预测区的影响关系和影响程度对模型的预测结果进行修正。