Groundwater depth and elevation interpolation by kriging methods in Mohr Basin of Fars province in Iran

Prediction of groundwater depth and elevation is important in quantitative water management especially in arid areas. There are several basins in southwest of Iran, in Zagross Mountain, in which the water wells are distributed along a narrow elliptic ring band around the region. To find the most applicable interpolation method, both of the groundwater depth and elevation are predicted by different kriging methods. It is found that the groundwater elevation and depth can be predicted by different methods. Furthermore, it is found that the methods in which the trend is eliminated predicted the groundwater elevation and depth in central part of the region is with less standard error. Furthermore, the methods with no trend elimination, predicted the groundwater depths with less error near the water wells. Dividing the area to hydro-geologically homogeneous sub-areas improved the interpolation precision.     

Assessment of human health risks and pollution index for heavy metals in farmlands irrigated by effluents of stabilization ponds

Areas contaminated with heavy metals can pose major risks to human health and ecological environments. The aims of this study are to assess human health risk and pollution index for heavy metals in agricultural soils irrigated by effluents of stabilization ponds in Birjand, Iran. The results revealed that the levels of Cr, Mn, Zn, Fe, Cu, Cd, and Pb were in range of 70.3–149.65, 355–570, 31.15–98.45, 23,925–29,140, 22.75–25.95, 0.17–6.51, and 8.5–23.5 mg/kg in topsoils, respectively. Total hazard index values from heavy metals through three exposure routes for adults and children were 9.13E−01 and 1.10, respectively, indicating that there was non-carcinogenic risk for children. The total risk of carcinogenic metals (Cr, Cd, and Pb) through the three exposure routes for adults and children was 1.06E−04 and 9.76E−04, respectively, which indicates that the metals in the soil will not induce carcinogenic risks to these age groups. Pollution levels of heavy metals in soil samples including enrichment factor (EF), contamination factor (CF), pollution load index (PLI), and geo-accumulation index (Igeo) showed heavy metal contamination of agricultural soils. The results of the present study provide basic information about heavy metal contamination control and human health risk assessment management in the study area.     

A dynamic contaminant transport computational architecture (DCTCA) for radiological assessment of ecological systems

A novel methodology called dynamic contaminant transport computational architecture (DCTCA) is developed to help flexibility of constructing process structure for radiological assessment of ecological systems. The method tracks radionuclide movements in ecological systems by doing calculations on vectors and matrices. All environmental components in an ecosystem are both sources and receptors as they are media that pass radionuclides. The transport factor matrix is the transformation matrix from sources to receptors. The cubic transport model base (CTMB) in the architecture allows a number of transport models to be selected and applied to a single source-receptor transport process. CTMB stores those models in a cubic structure and has them available to be selected and form a combined model set to be used in scenarios.