Large technical systems serving the everyday needs of people, such as water supply systems, power grids or communication networks, are rich in accumulated metals. Over time, parts of these systems have been taken out of use without the system infrastructure being removed from its original location. Such metal stocks in hibernation thus constitute potential resource reservoirs accessible for recovery. In this paper, obsolete stocks of copper situated in the local power grids of two Swedish cities are quantified. Emphasis is also on economic conditions for extracting such “hibernating” cables. The results show that on a per customer basis, the two power grids contain similar amounts of copper, i.e. 0.04–0.05 tonnes per subscriber. However, the share of the copper stock that is in hibernation differs between the grids. In the larger grid of Gothenburg, almost 20% of the copper accumulated in the grid is no longer in use, while the obsolete share does not exceed 5% in the city of Linköping. For managers of local power grids, recovery of hibernating cables could be beneficial if integrated with other maintenance work on the grid. At the present price of copper, however, separate recovery of obsolete cables is not economically justified. 相似文献
EU's programme Clean Air for Europe (CAFE) is presently revising the policy on air quality which will lead to the adoption of a thematic strategy on air pollution under the Sixth Environmental Action Programme by mid-2005. For the abatement of surface ozone it is becoming evident that processes outside European control will be crucial for meeting long-term aims and air quality guidelines in Europe in the future. Measurements and modelling results indicate that there is a strong link between climate change and surface ozone. A warmer and dryer European climate is very likely to lead to increased ozone concentrations. Furthermore, increased anthropogenic emissions in developing economies in Asia are likely to raise the hemispheric background level of ozone. A significant increase in the background concentration of ozone has been observed at several sites in Northern Europe although the underlying causes are not settled. The photochemical formation of tropospheric ozone from increased concentrations of methane and CO may also lead to a higher ozone level on a global scale. Gradually, these effects may outweigh the effect of the reduced European ozone precursor emissions. This calls for a global or hemispheric perspective in the revision of the European air quality policy for ozone. 相似文献
This study investigated the degree to which human activities through urbanization influence heavy metal concentrations in a suburban landscape in Ankeny, IA. Residential areas from different years in nine time periods of development were identified from aerial photos. Soil cores were collected from the center of the front yard of 10 randomly selected homes. Cores were subdivided into 0- to 5-, 5- to 10-, and 10- to 20-cm increments from a composite of five cores. The soils were analyzed for organic C, pH, and total Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn. Results showed that organic C increased and pH decreased with time, and that there was a general decreasing trend in heavy metal concentrations from the pre-1939 period until 1983-1990, after which there was a sharp increase in the concentrations of most of the metals. The mean Cu concentration ranged from 21 mg kg(-1) for the pre-1939 time period of development to 14.9 mg kg(-1) for the recent period of development (2003-2005). Nickel concentrations increased significantly with depth with means of 21.3 mg kg(-1) at depth 0 to 5 cm, 22.5 mg kg(-1) at depth 5 to 10 cm, and 23.0 mg kg(-1) at depth 10 to 20 cm. The concentrations of heavy metals were significantly intercorrelated, except Zn, suggesting their coexistence as mineral constituents or common contamination source. The concentrations of Cu and Pb in some locations could be due to anthropogenic inputs or higher organic matter content in soils adjacent to older homes. There appears to have been a source that caused an increase in Cd, Cr, Co, Cu, Pb, and Ni concentrations in soil adjacent to homes built between 1983 and 1990. 相似文献
Bioassays with a non-target slug (Deroceras spp.) and chemical analyses were conducted using leaf tissue from already existing genetically modified insect-resistant
aspen trees to examine whether genetic modifications to produce Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxins could affect plant phytochemistry, which in turn might influence plant–herbivore interactions. Three major patterns
emerged. First, two independent modifications for Bt resistance affected the phytochemical profiles of leaves such that both
were different from the isogenic wild-type (Wt) control leaves, but also different from each other. Among the contributors
to these differences are substances with a presumed involvement in resistance, such as salicortin and soluble condensed tannins.
Second, bioassays with one Bt line suggest that the modification somehow affected innate resistance (“Innate” is used here
in opposition to the “acquired” Bt resistance) in ways such that slugs preferred Bt over Wt leaves. Third, the preference
test suggests that the innate resistance in Bt relative to Wt plants may not be uniformly expressed throughout the whole plant
and that leaf ontogeny interacts with the modification to affect resistance. This was manifested through an ontogenetic determined
increase in leaf consumption that was more than four times higher in Bt compared to Wt leaves. Our result are of principal
importance, as these indicate that genetic modifications can affect innate resistance and thus non-target herbivores in ways
that may have commercial and/or environmental consequences. The finding of a modification–ontogeny interaction effect on innate
resistance may be especially important in assessments of GM plants with a long lifespan such as trees. 相似文献
The Eulerian atmospheric tracer transport model MATCH (Multiscale Atmospheric Transport and Chemistry model) has been extended with a Lagrangian particle model treating the initial dispersion of pollutants from point sources. The model has been implemented at the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute in an emergency response system for nuclear accidents and can be activated on short notice to provide forecast concentration and deposition fields.The model has been used to simulate the transport of the inert tracer released during the ETEX experiment and the transport and deposition of 137Cs from the Chernobyl accident. Visual inspection of the results as well as statistical analysis shows that the extent, time of arrival and duration of the tracer cloud, is in good agreement with the observations for both cases, with a tendency towards over-prediction for the first ETEX release. For the Chernobyl case the simulated deposition pattern over Scandinavia and over Europe as a whole agrees with observations when observed precipitation is used in the simulation. When model calculated precipitation is used, the quality of the simulation is reduced significantly and the model fails to predict major features of the observed deposition field. 相似文献
Ambio - In the original published article, the sentence “Nevertheless, semi-natural forest remnants continue to be harvested and fragmented (Svensson et al. 2018; Jonsson et al. 2019), and... 相似文献
Deposition of PM(10) particles to several types of urban surfaces was investigated within this study. Antimony was chosen as a tracer element to calculate dry deposition velocities for PM(10), since antimony proved to be present almost exclusively in PM(10) particles in ambient urban air. During 18 months, eight sampling sites in Berlin and Karlsruhe, two cities in Germany, were operated. PM(10) concentrations and dry deposition were routinely sampled as two week averages. Additionally, leaf-samples were collected at three sites with tall vegetation. The obtained deposition velocities ranged from 0.8 to 1.3 cms(-1) at roadside sites and from 0.4 to 0.5 cms(-1) at the other sites. With reference to the whole canopy, additional deposition velocities of about 0.5 cms(-1) were obtained for leaf surfaces. As a consequence, it can be concluded that vegetation-covered areas beside streets show the highest potential to capture particles in urban areas. 相似文献
Many technologies in precision agriculture (PA) require image analysis and image- processing with weed and background differentiations.
The detection of weeds on mulched cropland is one important image-processing task for sensor based precision herbicide applications.
The article introduces a special vegetation index, the Difference Index with Red Threshold (DIRT), for the weed detection
on mulched croplands. Experimental investigations in weed detection on mulched areas point out that the DIRT performs better
than the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). The result of the evaluation with four different decision criteria
indicate, that the new DIRT gives the highest reliability in weed/background differentiation on mulched areas. While using
the same spectral bands (infrared and red) as the NDVI, the new DIRT is more suitable for weed detection than the other vegetation
indices and requires only a small amount of additional calculation power. The new vegetation index DIRT was tested on mulched
areas during automatic ratings with a special weed camera system. The test results compare the new DIRT and three other decision
criteria: the difference between infrared and red intensity (Diff), the soil-adjusted quotient between infrared and red intensity
(Quotient) and the NDVI. The decision criteria were compared with the definition of a worse case decision quality parameter
Q, suitable for mulched croplands. Although this new index DIRT needs further testing, the index seems to be a good decision
criterion for the weed detection on mulched areas and should also be useful for other image processing applications in precision
agriculture.
The weed detection hardware and the PC program for the weed image processing were developed with funds from the German Federal
Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). 相似文献
Habitat structure influences organism communities by mediating interactions between individuals and species, affecting abundance
and species richness. We examined whether variations in the morphology of soft-bottom plants affect their function as habitat
and whether complex structured plants support higher macroinvertebrate abundance and species richness. Three Baltic Sea plant
species were studied, together with artificial plants resembling each species. In a field collection, we found higher invertebrate
abundance on the morphologically more complex plants Myriophyllum spicatum and Chara baltica than on the structurally simpler plant Potamogeton perfoliatus. In a colonization experiment, we found the highest invertebrate abundance on artificial M. spicatum but found no difference between natural plants. Invertebrate taxon richness displayed no consistent relationship with plant
structural complexity. The results imply that plant morphology influences small-scale invertebrate distribution, partly supporting
the hypothesis that structurally complex plants harbour higher invertebrate abundance. 相似文献
The multi-scale approach to conserving forest biodiversity has been used in Sweden since the 1980s, a period defined by increased reserve area and conservation actions within production forests. However, two thousand forest-associated species remain on Sweden’s red-list, and Sweden’s 2020 goals for sustainable forests are not being met. We argue that ongoing changes in the production forest matrix require more consideration, and that multi-scale conservation must be adapted to, and integrated with, production forest development. To make this case, we summarize trends in habitat provision by Sweden’s protected and production forests, and the variety of ways silviculture can affect biodiversity. We discuss how different forestry trajectories affect the type and extent of conservation approaches needed to secure biodiversity, and suggest leverage points for aiding the adoption of diversified silviculture. Sweden’s long-term experience with multi-scale conservation and intensive forestry provides insights for other countries trying to conserve species within production landscapes.