Phosphorus Flows to and from Swedish Agriculture and Food Chain

Phosphorus flows in Swedish agriculture and food chain were studied by material flow analysis. The system studied included agriculture, food consumption, related waste and wastewater from private households and municipal wastewater treatment plants. Swedish farmland had net annual phosphorus inputs of ~12 600 metric tons (4.1 kg P ha⁻¹) in 2008–2010. The total import of phosphorus in food and feed to Sweden exceed imports of phosphorus in fertilizers. Despite strict animal density regulations relating to manure phosphorus content, phosphorus is accumulating on Swedish animal farms. The total quantity of manure produced greatly exceeds imported mineral phosphorus fertilizer and almost equals total phosphorus inputs to Swedish farmland.     

Analysing influencing factors of corporate environmental information collection,management and communication

Relevant and understandable environmental information about production and products is needed in any attempt to mitigate environmental impact from production, products, and consumption. This paper introduces an analytical framework for studying the drivers, barriers and enablers of corporate environmental information collection, management and communication. The framework is built up by two main parts. In the first, we sort out what corporate environmental information is and how to spot gaps in information collection, management and communication. The second part examines the stakeholders and company features that could constitute important influencing factors. The framework is intended to support qualitative and quantitative studies which aim to increase understanding of what shapes the flow of environmental information in companies and product chains.     

Impacts from control operations on a recreationally hunted feral swine population at a large military installation in Florida

Feral swine were targeted for control at Avon Park Air Force Range in south-central Florida to avert damage to sensitive wetland habitats on the 40,000-ha base. We conducted a 5-year study to assess impacts from control to this population that had been recreationally hunted for many years. Control was initiated in early 2009. The feral swine population was monitored from 2008 to 2012 using a passive tracking index (PTI) during the dry and wet seasons and using recreational hunter take rates from the dry season. All three indices showed substantial feral swine declines after implementing control, with indices leveling for the final two study years. Military missions and recreational hunting seasons impacted temporal and spatial consistency of control application, thereby limiting further impacts of control efforts on the feral swine population. The PTI was also able to monitor coyotes, another invasive species on the base, and detect Florida black bear and Florida panther, species of particular concern.     

Manufacturing actor’s LCA

Modern industrial environmental management encompasses life-cycle thinking. This entails considering not only the emissions and resource use of the company’s production processes, but also the environmental consequences of all processes related to a product’s life cycle. However, no single actor can influence the whole life cycle of a product. To be effective, analysis methods intended to support improvement actions should therefore also consider the decision makers’ power to influence.Regarding the life cycle of a product, there are at least as many perspectives on life-cycle thinking as there are actors. This paper presents an approach with which manufacturing decision makers can sharpen the focus in life-cycle assessment (LCA) from a conventional ‘products or services’ emphasis to a company’s manufacturing processes. The method has been developed by combining knowledge gained from earlier LCA studies with new empirical findings from an LCA study of an SKF manufacturing line.We demonstrate how system boundaries and functional units in an LCA can be defined when adding the perspective of a manufacturing decision maker to the product life-cycle perspective. Such analysis helps manufacturing decision makers identify improvement potentials in their spheres of influence, by focusing on the environmental consequences of energy and material losses in manufacturing rather than merely accounting for the contributions of individual stages of the life cycle to the overall environmental impact. The method identifies and directly relates the environmental consequences of emissions or raw material inputs in the product life cycle to manufacturing processes. In doing so, the holistic systems perspective in LCA is somewhat diminished in favor of the relevance of results to manufacturing decision makers.     

Optimizing line intercept sampling and estimation for feral swine damage levels in ecologically sensitive wetland plant communities

Ecological sampling can be labor intensive, and logistically impractical in certain environments. We optimize line intercept sampling and compare estimation methods for assessing feral swine damage within fragile wetland ecosystems in Florida. Sensitive wetland sites, and the swine damage within them, were mapped using GPS technology. Evenly spaced parallel transect lines were simulated across a digital map of each site. The length of each transect and total swine damage under each transect were measured and percent swine damage within each site was estimated by two methods. The total length method (TLM) combined all transects as a single long transect, dividing the sum of all damage lengths across all transects by the combined length of all transect lines. The equal weight method (EWM) calculated the damage proportion for each transect line and averaged these proportions across all transects. Estimation was evaluated using transect spacings of 1, 3, 5, 10, 15, and 20 m. Based on relative root mean squared error and relative bias measures, the TLM produced higher quality estimates than EWM at all transect spacings. Estimation quality decreased as transect spacing increased, especially for TLM. Estimation quality also increased as the true proportion of swine damage increased. Diminishing improvements in estimation quality as transect spacings decreased suggested 5 m as an optimal tradeoff between estimation quality and labor. An inter-transect spacing of 5 m with TLM estimation appeared an optimal starting point when designing a plan for estimating swine damage, with practical, logistical, economic considerations determining final design details.     

Relating manufacturing system configuration to life-cycle environmental performance: discrete-event simulation supplemented with LCA

To meet the increasing need for practical life-cycle thinking in manufacturing, this paper proposes a method that includes the life-cycle perspective in manufacturing decision making. This method combines discrete-event simulation (DES) – commonly used for the conceptual evaluation of manufacturing systems – with life-cycle assessment (LCA). This combination captures the dynamic interrelationships between manufacturing processes in order to analyse systemic responses to configuration changes, something static LCA modelling cannot do. The method evolved when a bearing production line at SKF was being examined to relate manufacturing decision making to environmental consequences. This was done using DES to investigate how parameters normally used to optimize traditional manufacturing system performance influence energy use and material losses in manufacturing systems. The environmental consequences of this material loss and energy use are further calculated using LCA methodology. Results indicate that while the combination of the two methods increases the data collection workload, it uncovers previously hidden environmental consequences of manufacturing decision making and introduces a way to assess an industrial actor’s manufacturing system using relevant LCA scenarios.     

Developing incineration process designs and remediation projects from treatability studies

The Bog Creek Farm CERCLA (Superfund) site in Howell Township, New Jersey, was extensively contaminated, allegedly with wastes from paint manufacturing. The site contained two types of incinerable wastes: contaminated soils and sediments. A remedial investigation and feasibility study (RI/FS) was conducted, leading to a recommendation to treat the most contaminated areas by incineration. This recommendation was converted into the selected approach through the Record of Decision (ROD) mechanism. Contaminants at the Bog Creek Farm site included a wide range of volatiles, semivolatiles, and heavy metals. The incineration approach chosen, therefore, had to remove the organics from the soil without creating additional problems associated with heavy metals emissions. In order to evaluate the incineration problem and develop an advisory conceptual design for its solution, Ebasco Services Incorporated performed extensive characterizations of the material. Such characterizations included performing proximate and ultimate analyses and determining other key physical, chemical, and thermodynamic properties of the soils and sludges. Energy and Environmental Research Corporation (EER) then performed treatability studies in its rotary kiln test incinerator. These treatability studies focused upon the rotary kiln, and the environment required for cleaning the soil. They assumed that contaminants in the vapor phase could be destroyed in the afterburner. Tests were conducted at bed temperatures of 1,000°F, 1,460°F, and 1,800°F. Samples were drawn from the kiln at intermediate times. Combustion regimes were therefore constructed for the treatment of Bog Creek Farm wastes, maximizing organic removal while managing the heavy metals problem. Ebasco then converted the results of the incinerability or treatability studies into an advisory conceptual design. This advisory conceptual design called for a kiln temperature of 1,600°F (bed temperature of 1,200°F) and a solids residence time in the kiln of 40 minutes. Additional data indicated that the afterburner could operate at 1,800°F in order to ensure destruction of the POHCs. Combustion chemistry fundamentals demonstrated that the minimum afterburner temperature required was 1,650°F. Ebasco converted this conceptual design into a performance specification to be used in the bid process, under the management of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The remediation was then put out to bid. Chemical Waste Management was the successful bidder. The incineration was successfully completed by August 1990; the system was then demobilized, as the site was remediated.     

Design and laboratory testing of a chamber device to measure total flux of volatile organic compounds from the unsaturated zone under natural conditions

To determine if an aquifer contaminated with volatile organic compounds (VOCs) has potential for natural remediation, all natural processes affecting the fate and transport of VOCs in the subsurface must be identified and quantified. This research addresses the quantification of air-phase volatile organic compounds (VOCs) leaving the unsaturated zone soil gas and entering the atmosphere-including the additional flux provided by advective soil-gas movement induced by barometric pumping. A simple and easy-to-use device for measuring VOC flux under natural conditions is presented. The vertical flux chamber (VFC) was designed using numerical simulations and evaluated in the laboratory. Mass-balance numerical simulations based on continuously stirred tank reactor equations (CSTR) provided information on flux measurement performance of several sampling configurations with the final chamber configuration measuring greater than 96% of model-simulated fluxes. A laboratory device was constructed to evaluate the flux chamber under both diffusion-only and advection-plus-diffusion transport conditions. The flux chamber measured an average of 82% of 15 diffusion-only fluxes and an average of 95% of 15 additional advection-plus-diffusion flux experiments. The vertical flux chamber has the capability of providing reliable measurement of VOC flux from the unsaturated zone under both diffusion and advection transport conditions.     

Modelling of spatial contaminant probabilities of occurrence of chlorinated hydrocarbons in an urban aquifer

In this study, a 3D urban groundwater model is presented which serves for calculation of multispecies contaminant transport in the subsurface on the regional scale. The total model consists of two submodels, the groundwater flow and reactive transport model, and is validated against field data. The model equations are solved applying finite element method. A sensitivity analysis is carried out to perform parameter identification of flow, transport and reaction processes. Coming from the latter, stochastic variation of flow, transport, and reaction input parameters and Monte Carlo simulation are used in calculating probabilities of pollutant occurrence in the domain. These probabilities could be part of determining future spots of contamination and their measure of damages. Application and validation is exemplarily shown for a contaminated site in Braunschweig (Germany), where a vast plume of chlorinated ethenes pollutes the groundwater. With respect to field application, the methods used for modelling reveal feasible and helpful tools to assess natural attenuation (MNA) and the risk that might be reduced by remediation actions.     

Interactive effects of soil acidity and fluoride on soil solution aluminium chemistry and barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) root growth

A greenhouse study was conducted to determine if concentrations of fluoride (F), which would be added to acid soils via P fertilisers, were detrimental to barley root growth. Increasing rates of F additions to soil significantly increased the soil solution concentrations of aluminium (Al) and F irrespective of the initial adjusted soil pH, which ranged from 4.25 to 5.48. High rates of F addition severely restricted root growth; the effect was more pronounced in the strongly acidic soil. Speciation calculations demonstrated that increasing rates of F additions substantially increased the concentrations of Al-F complexes in the soil. Stepwise regression analysis showed that it was the combination of the activities of AlF2(1+) and AlF(2+) complexes that primarily controlled barley root growth. The results suggested that continuous input of F to soils, and increased soil acidification, may become an F risk issue in the future.