scholarly journals Chemical Quality Status of Rivers for the Water Framework Directive: A Case Study of Toxic Metals in North West England

Water ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 649-666 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phil Rowland ◽  
Colin Neal ◽  
Darren Sleep ◽  
Colin Vincent ◽  
Paul Scholefield
Author(s):  
Ahad Nejad Ebrahimi ◽  
Farnaz Nazarzadeh ◽  
Elnaz Nazarzadeh

Throughout history, gardens and garden designing has been in the attention of Persian architects who had special expertise in the construction of gardens. The appearance of Islam and allegories of paradise taken from that in Koran and Saints’ sayings gave spirituality to garden construction. Climate conditions have also had an important role in this respect but little research has been done about it and most of the investigations have referred to spiritual aspects and forms of garden. The cold and dry climate that has enveloped parts of West and North West of Iran has many gardens with different forms and functions, which have not been paid much attention to by studies done so far. The aim of this paper is to identify the features and specifications of cold and dry climate gardens with an emphasis on Tabriz’s Gardens.  Due to its natural and strategic situation, Tabriz has always been in the attention of governments throughout history; travellers and tourists have mentioned Tabriz as a city that has beautiful gardens. But, the earthquakes and wars have left no remains of those beautiful gardens. This investigation, by a comparative study of the climates in Iran and the effect of those climates on the formation of gardens and garden design, tries to identify the features and characteristics of gardens in cold and dry climate. The method of study is interpretive-historical on the basis of written documents and historic features and field study of existing gardens in this climate. The results show that, with respect to natural substrate, vegetation, the form of water supply, and the general form of the garden; gardens in dry and cold climate are different from gardens in other climates.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7166
Author(s):  
Yukun Zhang ◽  
Songyang Li ◽  
Lifeng Tan ◽  
Jiayin Zhou

The Great Wall of China is more than a wall: it is an extensive cultural route. Pass cities, which are usually large defensive fortresses overseeing an entire fortified area, are an essential part of this heritage and are at the core of the Great Wall’s defense system. Juyong Pass was the closest Pass city to Beijing during the Ming Dynasty when the Great Wall reached its peak. It consisted of five regions—south, east, north, west, and central—that form three fortification levels: core castle, Bao city, and End facility. Based on the Juyong defense area military settlements database, this paper applied spatial analysis methods and found that more than half of the military’s resources for the whole defense area were focused on the western part of the wall, which formed another military core alongside Juyong Pass city. However, the current conservation strategy only focuses on Juyong Pass itself, neglecting the settlements in the western part, thereby destroying the integrity of the Great Wall’s heritage. By clarifying the distribution of cultural heritage in this area, we hope to encourage the preservation of many fortifications according to their authentic historical sphere of control and provide a reference for the sustainable integration of resources along the significant cultural routes of the Great Wall.


Author(s):  
Ioannis Souliotis ◽  
Nikolaos Voulvoulis

AbstractThe EU Water Framework Directive requires the development of management responses aimed towards improving water quality as a result of improving ecosystem health (system state). Ecosystems have potential to supply a range of services that are of fundamental importance to human well-being, health, livelihoods and survival, and their capacity to supply these services depends on the ecosystem condition (its structure and processes). According to the WFD, Programmes of Measures should be developed to improve overall water status by reducing anthropogenic catchment pressures to levels compatible with the achievement of the ecological objectives of the directive, and when designed and implemented properly should improve the ecological condition of aquatic ecosystems that the delivery of ecosystem services depends on. Monitoring and evaluation of implemented measures are crucial for assessing their effectiveness and creating the agenda for consecutive planning cycles. Considering the challenges of achieving water status improvements, and the difficulties of communicating these to the wider public, we develop a framework for the evaluation of measures cost-effectiveness that considers ecosystem services as the benefits from the reduction of pressures on water bodies. We demonstrate its application through a case study and discuss its potential to facilitate the economic analysis required by the directive, and that most European water authorities had problems with. Findings demonstrate the potential of the methodology to effectively incorporate ecosystem services in the assessment of costs and benefits of proposed actions, as well as its potential to engage stakeholders.


Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 827
Author(s):  
Omar Mologni ◽  
Eric D. T. Nance ◽  
C. Kevin Lyons ◽  
Luca Marchi ◽  
Stefano Grigolato ◽  
...  

Cable tensile forces in winch-assist harvesting have been investigated in order to assess the safety concerns of the technology. However, the literature is lacking, particularly in regards to the impact of winch design. In this study, a Summit Winch Assist tethering a feller-director on ground slopes up to 77% was monitored for four days. The cable tensile forces were simultaneously recorded at the harvesting and anchor machine at a frequency of 100 Hz. Cameras and GNSS devices enabled a time study of the operations and the recording of machine positions. Winch functionality and design were disclosed by the manufacturer and used for the interpretation of the results. The cable tensile forces reached 296 kN at the harvesting machine and 260 kN at the anchor machine. The slow negotiation of obstacles while moving downhill recorded the highest peaks, mainly due to threshold settings of the winch in the brake system activation. Lower but significant peaks were also recorded during stationary work tasks. The peaks, however, were limited to a few events and never exceeded the endurance limit of the cable. Overall, the study confirmed recent findings in cable tensile force analysis of active winch-assist operations and provided evidence of the underlaying mechanisms that contribute to cable tensile forces.


AMBIO ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Hammer ◽  
Berit Balfors ◽  
Ulla Mörtberg ◽  
Mona Petersson ◽  
Andrew Quin

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