scholarly journals Sediment Mining

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Homayoun Fathollahzadeh ◽  
Fabio Kaczala ◽  
Amit Bhatnagar ◽  
William Hogland

The main dilemma of contaminated sediments has been the proper management with reduced environmental footprints. Furthermore, by considering the fact that global warming and climate change may complicate the choice of management options, finding appropriate solutions become extremely critical. In the present work, mining of contaminated sediments to recover valuable constituents such as metals and nutrients is proposed as sustainable strategy, both through enhancing resilience of ecosystem and remediation. Contaminated sediments in the Oskarshamn harbor, southeast of Sweden were collected and analyzed through a modified sequential extraction in order to evaluate the feasibility of metals recovery. The results have shown that among different metals present in the sediments, Cu and Pb can be initially considered as economically feasible to recover. The shifting in the concept of dredging and further remediation of contaminated sediments towards sediment mining and recover of valuable metals can be considered in the near future as a sustainable strategy to tackle contaminated harbor/ports areas. However, it must be highlighted that short and long-term environmental impacts related to such activities should be addressed.

Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 1025 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maryam Beheshti ◽  
Ali Heidari ◽  
Bahram Saghafian

Climate change can cause serious problems for future hydropower plant projects and make them less economically justified. Changing precipitation patterns, rising temperatures, and abrupt snow melting affect river stream patterns and hydropower generation. Thus, study of climate change impacts during the useful life of a hydropower dam is essential and its outcome should be considered in assessing long-term dam feasibility. The aim of this research is to evaluate the impacts of climate change on future hydropower generation in the Karun-III dam located in the southwest region of Iran in two future tri-decadal periods: near (2020–2049) and far (2070–2099). Had-CM3 general circulation model predictions under A2 and B2 SRES scenarios were applied, and downscaled by a statistical downscaling model (SDSM). An artificial neural network (ANN) and HEC-ResSim reservoir model respectively simulated the rainfall–runoff process and hydropower generation. The projections showed that the Karun-III dam catchment under the two scenarios will generally become warmer and wetter with a slightly larger increase in annual precipitation in the near than the far future. Runoff followed the precipitation trend by increasing in both periods. The runoff peak also switched from April to March in both scenarios, due to higher winter precipitation, and earlier snowmelt, which was caused by temperature rise. According to both scenarios, hydropower generation increased more in the near future than in the far future. Annual average power generation increased gradually by 26.7–40.5% under A2 and by 17.4–29.3% under B2 in 2020–2049. In the far period, average power generation increased by 1.8–8.7% in A2 and by 10.5–22% under B2. In the near future, A2 showed energy deduction in the months of June and July, while B2 revealed a decrease in the months of April and June. Additionally, projections in the 2070–2099 under A2 exhibited energy reduction in the months of March through July, while B2 revealed a decrease in April through July. The framework utilized in this study can be exploited to analyze the susceptibility of hydropower production in the long term.


2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 239-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. McBean ◽  
H. Motiee

Abstract. In the threshold of the appearance of global warming from theory to reality, extensive research has focused on predicting the impact of potential climate change on water resources using results from Global Circulation Models (GCMs). This research carries this further by statistical analyses of long term meteorological and hydrological data. Seventy years of historical trends in precipitation, temperature, and streamflows in the Great Lakes of North America are developed using long term regression analyses and Mann-Kendall statistics. The results generated by the two statistical procedures are in agreement and demonstrate that many of these variables are experiencing statistically significant increases over a seven-decade period. The trend lines of streamflows in the three rivers of St. Clair, Niagara and St. Lawrence, and precipitation levels over four of the five Great Lakes, show statistically significant increases in flows and precipitation. Further, precipitation rates as predicted using fitted regression lines are compared with scenarios from GCMs and demonstrate similar forecast predictions for Lake Superior. Trend projections from historical data are higher than GCM predictions for Lakes Michigan/Huron. Significant variability in predictions, as developed from alternative GCMs, is noted. Given the general agreement as derived from very different procedures, predictions extrapolated from historical trends and from GCMs, there is evidence that hydrologic changes particularly for the precipitation in the Great Lakes Basin may be demonstrating influences arising from global warming and climate change.


Author(s):  
Fernanda Ilhéu

In past years, China recorded a fast sustainable economic growth with an estimated average GDP growth rate of 9.7% in the period of 1980-2008, turning China into the world’s second largest economy. With an export oriented economic model, China is the most attractive developing country for FDI flows, both short and long term. In this regard, China has been able to achieve a foreign exchange reserve of US$ 2.2 trillion, the world´s largest reserve currency. Around 50% of this huge reserve is being applied in American bonds, while the remaining supports Chinese health and social security systems, bank solvability, internationalization of their economy, investment in geostrategic positioning, and making foreign aid available to other developing countries. During the 2008 global crisis, China was able to resist better than other major world economies, benefitting from this downturn to implement policies to reduce its economic imbalances. One of these imbalances is the gap between Chinese FDI and OFDI, which is now progressively narrowing. In the near future, OFDI is expected to be larger than FDI, and in this paper, the authors research whether Chinese OFDI can be explained by existing theories or if a new theory is required.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward A. Byers ◽  
Keywan Riahi ◽  
Elmar Kriegler ◽  
Volker Krey ◽  
Roberto Schaeffer ◽  
...  

<p>The assessment of long-term greenhouse gas emissions scenarios and societal transformation pathways is a key component of the IPCC Working Group 3 (WG3) on the Mitigation of Climate Change. A large scientific community, typically using integrated assessment models and econometric frameworks, supports this assessment in understanding both near-term actions and long-term policy responses and goals related to mitigating global warming. WG3 must systematically assess hundreds of scenarios from the literature to gain an in-depth understanding of long-term emissions pathways, across all sectors, leading to various levels of global warming. Systematic assessment and understanding the climate outcomes of each emissions scenario, requires coordinated processes which have developed over consecutive IPCC assessments. Here, we give an overview of the processes involved in the systematic assessment of long-term mitigation pathways as used in recent IPCC Assessments<sup>1</sup> and being further developed for the IPCC 6<sup>th</sup> Assessment Report (AR6). The presentation will explain how modelling teams can submit scenarios to AR6 and invite feedback to the process.</p><p>Following discussions amongst IPCC Lead Authors to define the scope of scenarios desired and variables requested, a call for scenarios to support AR6 was launched in September 2019. Modelling teams have registered and submitted scenarios through Autumn 2019 using a new and secure online submission portal, from which authorised Lead Authors can interrogate the scenarios interactively.</p><p>This analysis is underpinned by the open-source software pyam, a Python package specifically designed for analysis and visualisation of integrated assessment scenarios<sup>2</sup>. Submitted scenarios are automatically checked for errors and processed using a new climate assessment pipeline. The climate assessment involves infilling and harmonization<sup>3</sup> of emissions data, then the scenarios are processed through Simple Climate Models, using the OpenSCM framework<sup>4</sup>, to give probabilistic climate implications for each scenario – atmospheric concentrations, radiative forcing and global mean temperature. The climate assessment accounts for updated climate sensitivity estimates from CMIP6 and WG1,s scenarios are categorized according to climate outcomes and distinguish between timing and levels of net-negative emissions, emissions peak and temperature overshoot. Scenarios are also categorized by other indicators, for consistent use across WG3 chapters, such as: population and GDP; Primary and Final energy use; and shares of renewables, bioenergy and fossil fuels.</p><p>The automated framework also facilitates bolt-on analyses, such as estimating the population impacted by biophysical climate impacts<sup>5</sup>, and estimates of avoided damages with the social cost of carbon<sup>6</sup>.</p><p>Upon publication of the WG3 AR6 report, all scenario data used in the WG3 Assessment will be publicly available on a Scenario Explorer, an online tool for interrogating and visualizing the data that supports the report. In combination, this framework brings new levels of consistency, transparency and reproducibility to the assessment of scenarios in IPCC WG3 and will be a key resource for the climate community in understanding the main drivers of different transformation pathways.</p><ol><li>Huppmman et al 2018, Nature Climate Change</li> <li>Gidden and Huppmann, 2019, Journal of Open Source Software</li> <li>Gidden et al 2018 Environ. Model. Softw</li> <li>Nicholls et al 2020</li> <li>Byers et al 2018 Environmental Research Letters</li> <li>Ricke et al 2018 Nature Climate Change</li> </ol>


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Hassan Bazazzadeh ◽  
Adam Nadolny ◽  
Seyedeh Sara Hashemi Safaei

The growth of urban population as the result of economic and industrial development has changed our place of living from a prosperous place to where the resources are carelessly consumed. On the other hand, long-term climate change, i.e. global warming, has had adverse impact on our resources. Certain resources are on the verge of depletion as the consequence of climate change and inconsiderate consumption of resources, unless serious measures are implemented immediately. The building sector, whose share in the municipal energy consumption is considerably high, is a key player that may successfully solve the problem. This paper aims to study the effects of climate change on the energy consumption of buildings and analyze its magnitude to increase the awareness of how construction can reduce the overall global energy consumption. A descriptive-analytical method has been applied to analyze valid models of energy consumption according to different scenarios and to interpret the conditions underlying current and future energy consumption of buildings. The results clearly show that the energy consumption in the building sector increasingly depends on the cooling demand. With that being said, we can expect the reduction of overall energy consumption of buildings in regions with high heating demands, whereas rising the energy consumption in buildings is expected in regions with high cooling demand. To conclude, the long-term climate change (e.g. global warming) underlies the increased energy consumption for the cooling demand whose share in total energy consumption of buildings much outweighs the heating demand. Therefore, to conserve our resources, urban energy planning and management should focus on working up a proper framework of guidelines on how to mitigate the cooling loads in the energy consumption patterns of buildings.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chenxi Hu ◽  
Chi-Yung Tam ◽  
Xinwei Li ◽  
Kangning Huang ◽  
Chao Ren ◽  
...  

Abstract The impacts of future urban development and global warming forcing on hourly extreme rainfall over the Pearl River Delta (PRD) area have been investigated, by dynamically downscaling General Circulation Model (GCM) outputs using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) at convection-permitting resolution, coupled with an Urban Canopy Model (UCM). Three downscaling experiments corresponding to different urban land cover (1999 and projected 2030) and climate (1951-to-2000 and 2001-to-2050 GCM simulations) were designed. Near-future climate change (up to 2050) and 1999-to-2030 urban development effects on PRD extreme precipitation were then examined. Results show that climate change and rapid urban development forcing have comparable positive effects on the intensity as well as heavy hourly rainfall probability over the PRD megacity. Global warming tends to increase heavy rainfall probability (from 40 to 60mm/hr) by about 1.3 to 1.8 times, but suppresses the frequency of light rainfall. Urban development increases urban rainfall probability within the whole range of intensity, with frequency for very heavy rainfall (> 90mm/hr) almost doubled. Overall, forcing due to rapid urban development plays an important role for projecting rainfall characteristic over the highly urbanized coastal PRD megacity, with impacts that can be comparable to global warming in the near future.


Author(s):  
N.V. Danilova

The signals of global warming are now being observed throughout the world. Data of hydrometeorological centres show a significant increase of temperature in many regions accompanied by intense frequency of dry periods. Some substantial and direct effects of climate change may be already noticed at present time. Over the next several decades they will be observed in agriculture. Increase of temperature and reduction of precipitation volumes will probably lead to decrease the level of yield. These changes can significantly affect the global food security. Ukraine is known for its fertile soil and agricultural products, so it has a huge agricultural potential, contributing, in fact, to the global food security. However, the observed weather changes, increase of average temperature and uneven distribution of rainfalls can result in sharp transformation of most of agricultural and climatic zones of Ukraine. According to international processes there is an urgent need for improvement of adaptation to climate change of some branches of national economy of Ukraine, including of agriculture. Expanding the range of types of millet used in agricultural production is an economically feasible process that should be implemented in view of significant climate changes resulting in global warming which is widely discussed in scientific literature. Rapid introduction in crop shifts of the millet that is able to withstand recurring periodic droughts, especially in the southern regions, is one of the ways allowing to overcome the consequences of such extreme conditions. Conditions of the southern regions are favourable for millet crop. Millet is one of the most drought-resistant and heat-resistant crops that can sustain heat injuries and seizures and this is very important for arid areas during dry years, when other crops significantly reduce the level of yield. We studied changes of agro-climatic resources and agro-climatic conditions for formation of millet productivity for various periods of time. The analysis of climate change trend was performed through comparing of data as per climatic scenarios A2 and A1B and of average long-term characteristics of climatic and agro-climatic indicators. The comparative description of millet productivity under the conditions of climate change as per average long-term data (1986-2005) and as per scenarios A2 and A1B of climate change (2011-2030 and 2031-2050) was also performed.


Author(s):  
Ngo Hoai Son ◽  
Nguyen Van Hoa

As severely affected by climate change, Ho Chi Minh City needs to focus on developing human resource for its climate change response policy. This is because human resource is a key factor fora successful response. The paper uses secondary data from the Department of Natural Resources and Environment of Ho Chi Minh City to analyze the current situation of human resources for climate change of the city, which is devided into 02 main groups as core and complementary groups. The data show that, although the core group is high qualified, it lacks staffs with deep expertise in policy and climate change. For the complementary group, the city has not focused on training in both short and long term. In order to improve the effectiveness of climate change response in the coming years, Ho Chi Minh City needs to implement at least 03 solutions: (01) recruiting additional staffs with expertise in policies and climate change; (02) promote training for the core personnels; and (03) statistics, build and implement in short and long-term training plans for complementary staffs.


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