Sulphurous air pollutants and exposure events of workers in thermal-mineral springs: a case study of Contursi Terme (Salerno,Italy)

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Thermo-mineral springs are widely spread over the volcanic areas of Salerno, a city in southern Italy. Although the water of thermal structures...     

The misperception of the use of ozone in the sanitation processes

Environmental Science and Pollution Research -     

Constructing a policy and institutional framework for an ecosystem-based approach to managing the Lower Amazon floodplain

A regional experiment in co-management is underway in the Lower Amazon that is developing the basic policy and institutional elements for an ecosystem-based approach to floodplain management. This initiative grew out of the grassroots movement of floodplain communities who, concerned with excessive commercial fishing pressure on local fisheries, took control of local lakes and implemented collective agreements regulating fishing activity. This paper describes the main elements of the evolving regional management system. This process has focused on four main dimensions of floodplain settlement and resource use: development of sustainable management systems for floodplain resources, policies and institutions for fisheries co-management, collective agreements for grazing cattle on floodplain grasslands, and a land tenure policy consistent with the objectives of the evolving co-management system. Over the last year INCRA, the National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform, has begun implementation of a comprehensive new land tenure policy that could resolve structural deficiencies in the existing co-management system and provide the basis for the ecosystem-based management of the Lower Amazon floodplain. Readers should send their comments on this paper to: BhaskarNath@aol.com within 3 months of publication of this issue.     

Evaluating the influence of nature connection and values on conservation attitudes at a tropical deforestation frontier

Inner phenomena, such as personal motivations for pursuing sustainability, may be critical levers for improving conservation outcomes. Most conservation research and policies, however, focus on external phenomena (e.g., ecological change or economic processes). We explored the factors shaping 9 conservation attitudes toward forest and wildlife protection among colonist farmers around an Amazonian deforestation frontier. Our data comprised 241 face-to-face quantitative surveys, complemented with qualitative insights from open-ended questionnaire responses and opportunistic semistructured interviews. To account for the full spectrum of possible inner motivations, we employed measures of nature connection (indicating biospheric motivation) and personal values organized around the traditionalism (traditionalist through to high openness to change) and universalism dimensions (egoistic through to altruistic motivations). We used averaged beta-binomial generalized linear models to assess the role of external factors (socioeconomic, sociodemographic, and environmental) and personal (inner) motivations on the variation in attitudes. Each attitude was modeled separately. The relative importance of each predictor was judged by the proportion of models where it appeared as significant. Proconservation views were expressed by the majority (at least 65%) of the respondents in 7 out of the 9 attitude models. The most consistent predictors were emotional nature connection and personal values (significant in 4–6 out of 9 models), rather than external phenomena (significant in 0–5 models). However, the poorest farmers had lower scores on the agreement with prioritizing nature over development (𝛽 = –0.52, 95% CI: –0.96 to –0.07). Qualitative data also indicated that economic barriers hinder forest conservation on farms. These results suggest that biospheric, traditionalistic, and altruistic motivations promote people's proconservation attitudes, but nurturing these latent motivations is unlikely to improve conservation outcomes if material poverty remains unaddressed. Integrating the inner–outer perspective into conservation thinking and practical interventions could foster environmental stewardship and increase human well-being.     

Understanding fungal potential in the mitigation of contaminated areas in the Czech Republic: tolerance,biotransformation of hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH) and oxidative stress analysis

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The study of the soil microbial community represents an important step in better understanding the environmental context. Therefore, biological...     

Saprotrophic soil fungi to improve phosphorus solubilisation and release: In vitro abilities of several species

Modern agriculture is dependent on phosphate rock (PR), which is a nonrenewable resource. Improvement of phosphorus (P) availability for crops in agricultural soils represents a key strategy to slow down the depletion of PR. The aim of this study was to identify potential P biofertilisers among saprotrophic fungal species. We tested 30 fungal strains belonging to 28 taxa (4 Zygomycota and 24 Ascomycota) and with different life strategies. The study showed that many saprotrophic fungi have the ability to mobilise P from insoluble forms according to a variety of mechanisms. Our results expand the pool of P solubilising fungal species, also suggesting a new solubilisation index and shedding light on parameters that could be basic in the selection of efficient soil P-biofertilisers fungi. Rhizopus stolonifer var. stolonifer, Aspergillus niger and Alternaria alternata were found to be the best performing strains in terms of amounts of TCP solubilisation.     

Investigations on historical monuments’ deterioration through chemical and isotopic analyses: an Italian case study

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - In this paper, we analysed the efflorescences present in the frescos of a monumental complex named S. Pietro a Corte situated in the historic centre...     

Semen quality as a potential susceptibility indicator to SARS-CoV-2 insults in polluted areas

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The epidemic of the new severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has impacted worldwide with its infectious spread and mortality...     

Stable carbon isotope ratio in atmospheric CO2 collected by new diffusive devices

In this paper, stable carbon isotope ratios (δ ¹³C) were determined in the atmosphere by using a Ca-based sorbent, CaO/Ca₁₂Al₁₄O₃₃ 75:25 w/w, for passively collecting atmospheric CO₂, in both field and laboratory experiments. Field measurements were conducted in three environments characterized by different carbon dioxide sources. In particular, the environments under consideration were a rather heavily trafficked road, where the source of CO₂ is mostly vehicle exhaust, a rural unpolluted area, and a private kitchen where the major source of CO₂ was gas combustion. Samplers were exposed to the free atmosphere for 3 days in order to allow collection of sufficient CO₂ for δ¹³C analysis, then the collected CO₂ was desorbed from the adsorbent with acid treatment, and directly analyzed by nondispersive infrared (NDIR) instrument. δ ¹³C results confirmed that the samplers collected representative CO₂ samples and no fractionation occurred during passive trapping, as also confirmed by an appositely designed experiment conducted in the laboratory. Passive sampling using CaO/Ca₁₂Al₁₄O₃₃ 75:25 w/w proved to be an easy and reliable method to collect atmospheric carbon dioxide for δ ¹³C analysis in both indoor and outdoor places.     

Local ecological knowledge and incremental adaptation to changing flood patterns in the Amazon delta

The need for understanding the factors that trigger human responses to climate change has opened inquiries on the role of indigenous and local ecological knowledge (ILK) in facilitating or constraining social adaptation processes. Answers to the question of how ILK is helping or limiting smallholders to cope with increasing disturbances to the local hydro-climatic regime remain very limited in adaptation and mitigation studies and interventions. Herein, we discuss a case study on ILK as a resource used by expert farmer-fishers (locally known as Caboclos) to cope with the increasing threats on their livelihoods and environments generated by changing flood patterns in the Amazon delta region. While expert farmer-fishers are increasingly exposed to shocks and stresses, their ILK plays a key role in mitigating impacts and in strengthening their adaptive responses that are leading to a process of incremental adaptation (PIA). We argue that ILK is the most valuable resource used by expert farmer-fishers to adapt the spatial configuration and composition of their land-/resource-use systems (agrodiversity) and their produced and managed resources (agrobiodiversity) at landscape, community and household levels. We based our findings on ILK on data recorded for over the last 30 years using detailed ethnographic methodologies and multitemporal landscape mapping. We found that the ILK of expert farmer-fishers and their “tradition of change” have facilitated the PIA to intensify a particular production system to optimize production across a broad range of flood conditions and at the same time to manage or conserve forests to produce resources and services.