EFFECTS OF CLIMATE VARIABILITY ON RIVERS: CONSEQUENCES FOR LONG TERM WATER QUALITY ANALYSIS1

ABSTRACT: Associations between the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate pattern and temporal variability in flow and 12 water quality variables were assessed at 77 river sites throughout New Zealand over a 13‐year period (1989 through 2001). Trends in water quality were determined for the same period. All 13 variables showed statistically significant linear regression relationships with values of the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI). The strongest relationships were for water temperature (mean R²= 0.20), dissolved reactive phosphorus (0.18), and oxidized nitrogen (0.17). The association with SOI varied by climate region. The observed patterns were generally consistent with known ENSO effects on New Zealand rainfall and air temperature. Trends in water quality variables for the periods 1989 through 1993, 1994 through 1998, and 1989 through 1998 were reasonably consistent with trends in SOI, even when the influence of river flow was removed from the data. This suggests that SOI effects on water quality are not necessarily a direct consequence of changes in flow associated with rainfall variation. In addition, both Baseline (32 upstream) and Impact (45 downstream) sites showed similar trends, indicating that changes in management were not directly responsible. We conclude that interpretation of long term water quality datasets in rivers requires that climate variability be fully acknowledged and dealt with explicitly in trend analyses.     

Stream Temperature Patterns over 35 Years in a Managed Forest of Western Washington

Stream temperature changes as a result of forest practices have been a concern in the Pacific Northwest for several decades. As a result of this concern, stream protection requirements for forest lands were first adopted in the early 1970s and have become progressively more stringent. While there have been multiple studies examining the effects of stream protection buffers on water temperature, there are few studies examining temperature patterns over long periods on intensively managed forests. Water temperature in the upper Deschutes River watershed, Washington has been monitored since 1975 and represents one of the longest studies of water quality on managed forests in the Pacific Northwest. This data record, collected from basins of varying sizes, has enabled us to examine the combined effects of hydro‐climatic patterns and forest management on stream temperature. Effects of harvest conducted prior to buffer regulations were clearly identifiable and most pronounced on smaller streams. We were not able to detect any response on larger channels to more recent timber harvest where riparian buffers were required. This analysis also emphasizes that it is critical to account for changing climate when examining long‐term temperature patterns. We found that in many cases the temperature improvements associated with more stringent buffer requirements implemented over the last 35 years in the Deschutes watershed have been offset by warming climatic conditions.     

Impact of proposed changes in IESTI equations for short-term dietary exposure to pesticides from Australian and Codex perspective

ABSTRACT

In 2015 a scientific workshop was held in Geneva, where updating the four equations for estimating the short-term dietary exposure (International Estimated Short Term Intake, IESTI) to pesticides was suggested. The impact of these proposed changes on the exposure was studied by using residue data and large portion consumption data from Codex and Australia. For the Codex data, the exposure increased by a median factor of 2.5 per commodity when changing to the proposed IESTI equations. The increase in exposure was highest for bulked and blended food commodities (case 3 equations), followed by medium-sized food commodities (case 2a equations) and small- and large-sized food commodities (case 1 and case 2b equations). For the Australian data, out of 184 maximum residue limit (MRL) large portion combinations showing acute exposures below the acute reference dose (ARfD) with the current IESTI equations, 23 exceeded the ARfD with the proposed IESTI equations (12%). The percentage exceeding the ARfD was higher for the Australian MRL large portion combinations (12% of 184) than for those of Codex (1.3% of 8,366). However, the percentage MRL loss in the Australian dataset may not be representative of all pesticide MRLs since it concerns six pesticides only, specifically selected to elucidate the potential effects of the use of the proposed IESTI equations. For the Codex data, the increase in exposure using the proposed equations resulted in a small increased loss of 2.6% of the 1,110 MRLs estimated by the Joint FAO/WHO Meeting on Pesticide Residues (JMPR): 1.4% of the MRLs were already not acceptable with the current equations, 4.0% of the MRLs were not acceptable with the newly proposed equations. Our study revealed that case 3 commodities may be impacted more by the proposed changes than other commodities. This substantiates one of the conclusions of the Geneva workshop to gather information on bulking and blending practices in order to refine MRL setting and dietary risk assessment for case 3 commodities where possible.     

长三角地区农田土壤养分空间变异及养分综合评价

以浙江宁波三七市镇的一块面积为 2562 hm2 的农田为研究区域,运用地统计学与GIS相结合的手段和方法对其土壤养分的空间变异特征展开研究。结果表明,5种养分要素的空间变异函数曲线的理论模型符合指数模型;速效钾、有机质和pH值的C0/(C0+C)<25%,表现出强烈的空间相关性,碱解氮和有效磷的C0/(C0+C)为25%~75%,具有中等的空间相关性。通过Kriging插值并依据养分的分级标准,所得的空间变异图能很好地反映农田土壤养分的空间变异特征和丰缺状况,几种养分要素中,碱解氮、有效磷和有机质含量总体丰富,而速效钾的含量处于中低水平,pH值较低,土壤呈现酸性。利用主成分分析结合空间插值的方法,还可以对研究区的土壤养分的综合状况进行评价。研究结果可为当地以及长江三角洲同类型地区在科学施肥、实行养分的分区管理以及农业面源污染的控制方面提供一定的科学依据和借鉴参考。     

土壤养分的空间变异性及确定样本容量的研究

从澄城、杨陵两地田块均匀多点采取的土样测定结果表明,土壤有机质、硝态氮、铵态氮和水分具有很大的变异性,这种变异性不仅表现在水平方向,也表现在垂直方向,但不同养分在垂直方向上的变异规律不尽相同。因此,在一定精度要求和误差范围内,相同养分在不同土层中的样品容量也不完全相同。只有根据误差理论确定出每层所需的样品容量,才能保证不同土层间的测定结果具有相互可比性。这一研究结果,对指导合理取样和决定样品容量,准确评价不同土层的养分含量,以及研究养分的动态变化等具有一定的参考价值。     

Foraging in a variable environment: weather patterns and the behavioral ecology of baboons

We investigated the long-standing premise in behavioral ecology that the environment affects behavior and demography. We did this by evaluating the extent to which year-to-year variability in the behavioral ecology of a nonhuman primate population could be modeled from meteorological patterns. Data on activity profiles and home range use for baboons (Papio cynocephalus) in Amboseli, Kenya, were obtained over a 10-year period for three social groups: two completely wild-foraging ones, and a third that supplemented its diet with refuse from a nearby tourist lodge. The relationships across years among activity budgeting, travel distance, group size, and measures of temperature and rainfall patterns differed among the social groups. Although meteorological variation generally correlated with behavioral variation in the completely wild-foraging groups, different weather variables and direction of relationships resulted for each group. In addition, different relationships among variables were found before and after home-range shifts. The food-enhanced group spent half as much time foraging as did the other groups and therefore could be used to evaluate the relative extent to which foraging time was a limiting factor for resting and social time. Under their relaxed ecological conditions, the food-enhanced animals increased resting time much more than social time. These findings, combined with supplementary information on the population, lead us to suggest that baboons use a suite of interrelated responses to ecological variability that includes not only changes in activity budgets, but also home-range shifts, changes in the length of the active period, and changes in group size through fissions. Moreover, our results imply that group differences as well as interpopulational and interspecific differences in behavioral ecology provide significant sources of variability. Therefore, social groups rather than populations may be the appropriate unit of analysis for understanding the behavioral ecology of baboons and other highly social primates. The different patterns we observed among groups may have fitness consequences for the individuals in those groups and thereby affect population structure over time. Received: 18 February 1995/Accepted after revision: 6 January 1996     

城市污水处理厂运行稳定性评估方法初探

城市污水处理厂的运行稳定性，直接关系到其运行的成本和对环境的影响。然而，如何判断并改进污水厂的运行稳定性，尚缺乏深入的探讨。通过建立计算机辅助决策支持系统，引入统计学方法，探讨了城市污水处理厂运行稳定性的评估方法。污水处理厂运行稳定性的一个重要表征就是污水厂各工艺单元的各项指标和监测数值处于相对平稳的范围，因此，可以借鉴统计学的原理和方法，构建评估的指标和标准体系，对各常规监测指标长时段的监测数据进行统计分析，寻找时间序列的散布特征，判别工艺单元运行的稳定性，从而评估污水处理厂长期运行状况和趋势，为污水处理厂的管理与维护提供指导意见，改进其运行的稳定性。     

INFLUENCE OF WELL WATER QUALITY VARIABILITY ON SAMPLING DECISIONS AND MONITORING1

ABSTRACT: Local governmental agencies responsible for decisions in ground water quality management need not only data on ground water quality but they also must understand the relationship of accuracies and risks associated with this data as related to the number of wells to sample. In this report we address this problem by using the philosophical doctrines of probabilism and relativism with simple statistical procedures. This requires a reasonable estimate of the population variance in a quality parameter for a given management-unit area, and requires that the decisionmaker formulate constraints with an acceptable standard error of the sample mean and be willing to accept some level of probability of being Wrong. This technique is illustrated using a 21-year data base of well water chemical data in a 653 km² ground water quality study area in the San Joaquin Valley of California.     

Breeding site choice fails to explain interannual associations of female grey seals

Consistent, widespread fine-scale preferences for breeding sites may favour the emergence of intrasexual associations and hence sociality. Pairwise association was defined for a terrestrially breeding phocid seal in which intraseasonal colony mixing is limited and mothers spend only 3 weeks ashore breeding. Interannual associations may occur between pairs of breeding female grey seals at North Rona, Scotland because of pupping site fidelity, 90% return rates and limited variability in parturition dates that individual mothers show. Associations can occur when mothers are found together irrespective of location, or because of joint preferences for locations. Mothers were sedentary and were unlikely to interact if they are separated by >20 m. Using spatial and temporal association criteria, 160 of 176 of known mothers had intraseasonal associations with at least one other mother, with 14 of 126 (11.1%) of associations repeated in 2 years. The likelihood of female association in 2 years as a result of site fidelity, parturition date variation and pupping site quality was modelled. Interannual association between mothers that changed their pupping sites by up to the median observed pupping site fidelity (<40 m) was indistinguishable from our models predictions. However, the number of mothers that showed interannual association after displacements of >40 m from their previous years pupping sites was almost five times greater than the model predicted. We conclude that active association between adult female grey seals is not determined solely by habitat preference, and argue that examination of simple sociality in temporarily aggregating species can contribute significantly to socioecological models of social evolution.Communicated by F. Trillmich