Evolution of river pollutions under the influence of local hydro-climatic changes - the example of the Bienne River (Jura Mountain, France)

Author(s):  
Elie Dhivert ◽  
François Gibon ◽  
Karine Hochart ◽  
Bertrand Devillers

<p>In application of the EU Water Framework Directive, many actions have been undertaken in order to reduce pollution levels in river systems. However, for certain catchments, the resilience process is not occurring as expected. In the Bienne River basin, metals discharge has plummeted since the 1990s, following the implementation of a better industrial waste management, as well as an important industrial restructuring. Nevertheless, this river has been regularly affected by massive fish mortality over the 2012-2019 period. This phenomenon, never identified before, is becoming recurrent. Organic tissues sampled in dead fish contained high concentrations of metals in association with other toxics. In this context, this study introduces a transdisciplinary approach in order to: (i) analyse spatial and temporal evolutions of pollutions in the Bienne River, (ii) evaluate potential ecotoxicological impacts associated, (iii) identify interactions with local hydro-climatic changes. Metallic and organic pollutants were analysed over different stations and at multi-temporal scales, associating sedimentary archives, suspended matters and passive water samplers. These analyses highlight the impact on the river quality of both current and legacy pollutions, particularly during prolonged low-water periods and high discharge events. Ecotoxicological analyses emphasize a severe risk level in the case of polluted sediments remobilization, especially because of heavy metals and PAH contamination. Geochemical evidence of such remobilization events has been recorded over the last decade in a sedimentary core sampled in the downstream part of the Bienne River. Hydrological data recorded in the Bienne River gauging stations since 1971 attests of an important year-to-year variability, although changes in the river discharge distribution are ongoing. Data has shown a higher frequency of both the lowest and the highest outflows over the 2012-2019 period compared to the rest of the hydrological recording. Hydro-climatic variables coming from in-situ measurements and satellite data (GPM-IMERG6) has also shown significant modifications in the rainfall regime over this period, especially in the augmentation of dry spells and heavy rainfall episodes. Those modifications agree well with the discharge change observations. This study brings out knock-on impacts of combined geochemical, ecotoxicological and hydro-sedimentary issues on the fate of aquatic ecosystems, especially under the influence of local hydro-climatic changes and their implications on hydrological regimes. Those results aim at reducing uncertainties concerning the evolution of the river quality by highlighting such a tipping point for environmental conditions. In addition, such a study helps us to grasp the complexity of local stakes regarding the multiple interests of a wide range of stakeholders and policy makers involved on the field.</p>

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Supriya Tiwari ◽  
Rüdiger Grote ◽  
Galina Churkina ◽  
Tim Butler

High concentrations of ozone (O3) can have significant impacts on the health and productivity of agricultural and forest ecosystems, leading to significant economic losses. In order to estimate this impact under a wide range of environmental conditions, the mechanisms of O3 impacts on physiological and biochemical processes have been intensively investigated. This includes the impact on stomatal conductance, the formation of reactive oxygen species and their effects on enzymes and membranes, as well as several induced and constitutive defence responses. This review summarises these processes, discusses their importance for O3 damage scenarios and assesses to which degree this knowledge is currently used in ecosystem models which are applied for impact analyses. We found that even in highly sophisticated models, feedbacks affecting regulation, detoxification capacity and vulnerability are generally not considered. This implies that O3 inflicted alterations in carbon and water balances cannot be sufficiently well described to cover immediate plant responses under changing environmental conditions. Therefore, we suggest conceptual models that link the depicted feedbacks to available process-based descriptions of stomatal conductance, photosynthesis and isoprenoid formation, particularly the linkage to isoprenoid models opens up new options for describing biosphere-atmosphere interactions.


Author(s):  
Chuan Du ◽  
Handong Liang ◽  
Zhanping Li ◽  
Jie Gong

Microplastics (MPs) are emerging pollutants that exist in different environmental media. Because of their wide range and large potential environmental hazards, they have attracted widespread attention in recent years. At present, the research on MP is mostly concentrated on the water ecosystems, and the impact on soil ecosystems is less studied. In this study, 12 typical soil samples from southeastern suburbs of Baoding city were investigated and characterized by time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) combined with mass high resolution mode and positive and negative ion imaging mode. Four types of MPs, poly (propylene) (PP), poly (vinyl chloride) (PVC), poly (ethylene terephthalate) (PET), and poly (amide 6) (PA6), were quickly identified, of which PET and PA6 accounted for the largest proportion of both up to 30.2%; the particle size of the obtained MPs ranged from 0 to 35 μm, of which the proportion of <10 μm MPs was more than 26.3%, while that of 20–25 μm and 25–35 μm MPs was relatively small (17.83% and 9.3%, respectively). Risk assessment results of the MP in the soil showed that the risk level of MPs in the non-ferrous metal industrial parks and in concentrated with small workshops areas is relatively high, and attention should be paid to such areas. In addition, the study provides a reference method for the investigation and risk assessment of MPs in terrestrial soils, coastal beaches, and sediments.


Author(s):  
Maen Qaseem Ghadi ◽  
Árpád Török

Several studies have examined a wide range of accident risk factors affecting road safety. The purpose of this study is to examine the main traffic accident factors that affect the severity of road segments. The practical objective of the article is to assist specialists in identifying risk patterns both from a spatial and casualty point of view. To achieve the desired goals, accidents of a road network have been analyzed through three major steps; segmentation, black spot identification, and decision analysis. A new spatial clustering methodology has been used to divide accidents into smaller groups (or clusters) based on their spatial aggregations. The spatial characteristics are argued to be an important factor, in revealing the heterogeneity between accident data. Then, the empirical Bayesian has been applied to rank the resulted segments by severity level. During this step, the technique of decision rules has been applied to identify the main contributors to accidents in certain segments. The result shows that there is a significant relationship between the accident severity level and the traffic and geometrical characteristics (i.e. speed limits, average daily traffic, path shape) of road segments. The results also revealed that the closer the road to secure and non-hazardous road environmental conditions, the lower the risk level of the road segment.


2019 ◽  
Vol 01 (02) ◽  
pp. 1950009 ◽  
Author(s):  
ZAHARI ZLATEV ◽  
IVAN DIMOV ◽  
ISTVÁN FARAGÓ ◽  
KRASSIMIR GEORGIEV ◽  
ÁGNES HAVASI

The treatment of large-scale air pollution models is not only important for modern society, but also an extremely difficult task. Five important physical and chemical processes: (1) horizontal advection, (2) horizontal diffusion, (3) vertical exchange, (4) emission of different pollutants and (5) dry and wet deposition have to be united and handled together. This leads to huge computational problems which have to be treated on modern high-speed parallel architectures by using advanced numerical methods. The computational difficulties are vastly increased when such models are used in the investigation of the impact of climatic changes on high pollution levels that are often exceeding certain critical concentrations and, therefore, are becoming harmful for plants, animals and human beings. There are two major reasons for the great increase in computational difficulties: (a) it is necessary to run the discretized data on fine spatial grid models over very long time-periods consisting of many consecutive years and (b) different scenarios are to be used in order to investigate the sensitivity of the pollution levels to systematic variations of several carefully selected key parameters. How the major difficulties can be resolved is explained here. Furthermore, many results are presented in order to demonstrate the ability of the model to handle successfully the huge computational tasks by using fine space and time discretization and by applying a chemical scheme with many chemical species participating in several hundred chemical reactions. Our results indicate that the climatic changes will often lead to some increases in the pollution levels.


Author(s):  
Mengxin Xiao ◽  
Qiongzhen Wang ◽  
Xiaofei Qin ◽  
Guangyuan Yu ◽  
Congrui Deng

The characteristics of biogenic aerosols in urban area were explored by determining the composition, temporal distribution of saccharides in PM2.5 in Shanghai. The total saccharides showed a wide range of 15.2 ng/m3 to 1752.8 ng/m3, with the averaged concentrations were 169.8 ng/m3,300.5 ng/m3,288.4 ng/m3,688 ng/m3 in spring, summer, autumn, and winter, respectively. The concerned saccharides include anhydrosaccharides (levoglucosan and mannosan), which were higher in cold seasons due to the increased biomass burning, saccharide alcohols (mannitol, arabitol, sorbitol) and monosaccharides (fructose, glucose), which showed more abundant in warm seasons attributed to the biological emissions. By PMF analysis, four emission sources of saccharides were demonstrated, including biomass burning, fungal spores, soil suspension and plant pollens. Resolution of backward trajectory and fire points showed a process of high concentrations of levoglucosan. We found that concentrations of anhydrosaccharides showed relatively stable under different pollution levels while saccharide alcohols exhibited an obvious decrease, indicated that biomass burning was not the core reason of the heavy haze pollution, however, and high level PM2.5 pollution might inhibit effects of biological activities.


2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chalimah .

eamwork is becoming increasingly important to wide range of operations. It applies to all levels of the company. It is just as important for top executives as it is to middle management, supervisors and shop floor workers. Poor teamwork at any level or between levels can seriously damage organizational effectiveness. The focus of this paper was therefore to examine whether leadership practices consist of team leader behavior, conflict resolution style and openness in communication significantly influenced the team member’s satisfaction in hotel industry. Result indicates that team leader behavior and the conflict resolution style significantly influenced team member satisfaction. It was surprising that openness in communication did not affect significantly to the team members’ satisfaction.


2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-125

The present study concerns the impact of a change in the rainfall regime on surface and groundwater resources in an experimental watershed. The research is conducted in a gauged mountainous watershed (15.18 km2) that is located on the eastern side of Penteli Mountain, in the prefecture of Attica, Greece and the study period concerns the years from 2003 to 2008. The decrease in the annual rainfall depth during the last two hydrological years 2006-2007, 2007-2008 is 10% and 35%, respectively, in relation to the average of the previous years. In addition, the monthly distribution of rainfall is characterized by a distinct decrease in winter rainfall volume. The field measurements show that this change in rainfall conditions has a direct impact on the surface runoff of the watershed, as well as on the groundwater reserves. The mean annual runoff in the last two hydrological years has decreased by 56% and 75% in relation to the average of the previous years. Moreover, the groundwater level follows a declining trend and has dropped significantly in the last two years.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Mosolova ◽  
Dmitry Sosin ◽  
Sergey Mosolov

During the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers (HCWs) have been subject to increased workload while also exposed to many psychosocial stressors. In a systematic review we analyze the impact that the pandemic has had on HCWs mental state and associated risk factors. Most studies reported high levels of depression and anxiety among HCWs worldwide, however, due to a wide range of assessment tools, cut-off scores, and number of frontline participants in the studies, results were difficult to compare. Our study is based on two online surveys of 2195 HCWs from different regions of Russia during spring and autumn epidemic outbreaks revealed the rates of anxiety, stress, depression, emotional exhaustion and depersonalization and perceived stress as 32.3%, 31.1%, 45.5%, 74.2%, 37.7% ,67.8%, respectively. Moreover, 2.4% of HCWs reported suicidal thoughts. The most common risk factors include: female gender, nurse as an occupation, younger age, working for over 6 months, chronic diseases, smoking, high working demands, lack of personal protective equipment, low salary, lack of social support, isolation from families, the fear of relatives getting infected. These results demonstrate the need for urgent supportive programs for HCWs fighting COVID-19 that fall into higher risk factors groups.


Author(s):  
Sergei Soldatenko ◽  
Sergei Soldatenko ◽  
Genrikh Alekseev ◽  
Genrikh Alekseev ◽  
Alexander Danilov ◽  
...  

Every aspect of human operations faces a wide range of risks, some of which can cause serious consequences. By the start of 21st century, mankind has recognized a new class of risks posed by climate change. It is obvious, that the global climate is changing, and will continue to change, in ways that affect the planning and day to day operations of businesses, government agencies and other organizations and institutions. The manifestations of climate change include but not limited to rising sea levels, increasing temperature, flooding, melting polar sea ice, adverse weather events (e.g. heatwaves, drought, and storms) and a rise in related problems (e.g. health and environmental). Assessing and managing climate risks represent one of the most challenging issues of today and for the future. The purpose of the risk modeling system discussed in this paper is to provide a framework and methodology to quantify risks caused by climate change, to facilitate estimates of the impact of climate change on various spheres of human activities and to compare eventual adaptation and risk mitigation strategies. The system integrates both physical climate system and economic models together with knowledge-based subsystem, which can help support proactive risk management. System structure and its main components are considered. Special attention is paid to climate risk assessment, management and hedging in the Arctic coastal areas.


2019 ◽  
Vol 70 (10) ◽  
pp. 3738-3740

The Tonsillectomy in children or adults is an intervention commonly encountered in the ENT (Ear Nose and Throat) and Head and Neck surgeon practice. The current tendency is to perform this type of surgery in major ambulatory surgery centers. Two objectives are thus pursued: first of all, the increase of the patient quality of life through the reintegration into the family as quickly as possible and secondly, the expenses associated with continuous hospitalization are reduced. Any tertiary (multidisciplinary) sleep center must ensure the complete diagnosis and treatment (including surgery) of sleep respiratory disorders. Under these conditions the selection of patients and especially the implementation of the specific protocols in order to control the postoperative complications it becomes essential. The present paper describes our experience of tonsillectomy as treatment for selected patients with chronic rhonchopathy (snoring) and mild to moderate obstructive sleep apnoea. It was presented the impact of antibiotics protocols in reducing the main morbid outcomes following tonsillectomy, in our day surgery center. The obtained results can also be a prerequisite for the integrative approach of the patients with sleep apnoea who were recommended surgical treatment. Considering the wide range of therapeutic modalities used in sleep apnoea, each with its specific advantages and disadvantages, more extensive and multicenter studies are needed. Keywords: post-tonsillectomy morbidity, day surgery center, sleep disorders


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