Mineral Composition of Potted Cabbage (Brassica Oleracea Var. Capitata L.) Grown in Zeolite Amended Sandy Soil

Vegetables are essential components in human diets because they are rich in vitamins, minerals, and dietary fibre. There is a growing interest in human nutrition enhancement through vegetable consumption to reduce micro mineral deficiencies, especially in households with low buying power. A greenhouse pot experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of zeolite amendment on the mineral composition of cabbage (Brassica oleracea var. capitata L.), in relation to the soil chemical status. The experiment was carried out over two growing seasons (winter/spring) of 2018 and 2019. The treatments were in the ratios of 0:10, 1:9, 2:8, 3:7 zeolite to sandy soil, on a weight-to-weight basis. Zeolite improved soil chemical status (p < 0.05), except for soil iron (Fe) and phosphorus (P) contents. There was also a general improvement of macro minerals in cabbage with increased zeolite application, especially in the second season. Zeolite did not improve the micronutrients of the vegetable. This indicates that cabbage planted under zeolite amended soils provides no additional contribution to the fight against micronutrient deficiencies. However, zeolite showed potential for soil conditioning in soil macronutrients and soil pH.

Applying Limnological Feature-Based Machine Learning Techniques to Chemical State Classification in Marine Transitional Systems

On a global scale, marine transitional waters have been severely impacted by anthropogenic activities. Historically, developing human civilizations have often settled in coastal areas with about 2/3 of the human population inhabiting areas within 20-km range from coastal areas. Environmental management worldwide strives for sustainable development while minimizing impacts to ecosystem integrity and has resulted in several framework directives, management programs, and legislation compelling governments to monitor their coastal systems and improve environmental quality. Among the most significant anthropogenic impacts to these ecosystems are land reclamation, dredging, pollution (sediment discharges, hazardous substances, litter, oil spills, and eutrophication), unsustainable exploitation of marine resources (sand extraction, oil and gas exploitation, and fishing), unmanaged tourism activities, the introduction of non-indigenous species, and climate change. The multitude of stressors is not independent, and as such, the chemical status of marine systems has serious implications on its ecological status and needs to be addressed efficiently. Public monitoring databases provide a large amount of physico-chemical (nutrient, dissolved oxygen, and chlorophyll a concentration) and contaminant (trace metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) data for all Portuguese transitional systems (estuaries and coastal lagoons). These data are used to classify the chemical status (eutrophication and contamination level) of these ecosystems considering pre-defined classification thresholds, which facilitates communication to government authorities and management entities. Artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques provide an automated and efficient opportunity to improve simulation accuracy and further advance our understanding of environmental problems in estuarine and coastal waters when dealing with large environmental datasets. In the present work, we applied machine learning models, namely, linear discriminant analysis, classification tree, naive Bayesian, and support vector machine, to nutrient, dissolved oxygen, chlorophyll a, trace metals, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon concentrations to produce a chemical status classification of the Portuguese marine transition systems. This approach allowed us to efficiently classify in an automated way the transitional water’s chemical status within the pre-defined classification thresholds, producing numerical index values that can easily be communicated to the general public and managers alike.

Uncertainty of chemical status in surface waters

This article addresses the issue of estimating Pom—the probability of misclassifying the chemical status confidence of a water body status assessment. The main concerns of the authors were chemical quality elements with concentrations in water bodies which are close to or even smaller than the limit of quantification (LOQ). Their values must be set to half of this limit to calculate the mean value. This procedure leads to very low standard deviation values and unrealistic values of Pom for chemical indicators. In turn, this may lead to the false conclusion that not only is the chemical status good but also that this status assessment is perfect. Therefore, for a more reliable calculation of Pom, the authors suggested a modified calculation in which the value of half the LOQ for calculating the mean value was kept, but zero as the concentration value for the standard deviation calculation was adopted. The proposed modification has been applied to the Hierarchical Approach procedure for Pom estimation of the chemical status of Polish rivers and lakes. The crucial finding is that current chemical status assessments may be incorrect in the case of approximately 25% of river water bodies and 30% of lake water bodies categorised as good, and 20% of both types of water bodies classified as below good.

Towards a European denitrification concept for improved groundwater quality management and chemical status assessment

&lt;p&gt;Denitrification potential is an important parameter to know for adequate and efficient management and assessment of groundwater vulnerability and chemical status. Denitrification removes nitrate in groundwater, but the denitrification capacity is highly variable in space and time, and it may be used up with time. When linking pressure and impact the effect of partial or complete denitrification and denitrification capacity should be taken into account. In some areas, denitrification is seen as an advantage, allowing higher N release below soil without leading to a decrease of the groundwater quality and eventually concentrations in groundwater higher than the WFD and DWD threshold values, which EU member states have to establish to protect drinking water and groundwater dependent terrestrial and associated aquatic ecosystems. &amp;#160;&amp;#160;&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Within the GEOERA HOVER project, the aim was to assess the spatial extent and importance of denitrification. The studied cases permitted at a first step to highlight the heterogeneities of the approaches due to the variability of information obtained i.e. the likelihood of denitrification, depth and thickness of redox transition zone, complete denitrification status. The parameters used to define the denitrification vary also from one country to another based on a large set of redox sensitive ions (Eh, O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;, NO&lt;sub&gt;3&lt;/sub&gt;, NO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;, Fe, Mn, SO&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt;, CH&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt;, &amp;#948;&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt;O&lt;sub&gt;-NO3&lt;/sub&gt; et &amp;#948;&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt;N-&lt;sub&gt;NO3&lt;/sub&gt;, H&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;S or N&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;). Some of these parameters can be accessed by standard methods in most laboratories, used for groundwater quality monitoring, while others require specialized analysis and interpretations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Considering groundwater and hydrogeological data available in most of the EU countries, a simple method is proposed in order to classify the monitoring points into three classes: oxic, anoxic and mixed. After being tested in different well-known areas the method will be applied in various lithologies and hydrogeological contexts The proposed method will enable the development of European maps supporting groundwater quality management across Europe.&lt;/p&gt;

SEASONAL VARIATIONS OF THE ZAPADNA MORAVA RIVER WATER QUALITY

The water samples collected from four localities of the middle course of the Zapadna Morava River during 2020 were analyzed via the selected physico-chemical parameters with the aim to estimate the quality of surface water. According to the results of selected physico-chemical parameters (pH, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, chemical oxygen demand, biochemical oxygen demand), analyzed surface water show a good chemical status, while the values of nutrient content (nitrate, nitrite, ammonium ion, total phosphorus) indicated the poor chemical status especially at the locality 4 probably due to the outflow of wastewater from the city of Čačak as well as from the influence of the polluted water of the Čemernica River.

Chemical behaviours of Arsenium, Chromium, Mercury, Lead, and Strontium in aqueous system

Over the decades, the application of heavy metals and the expansion of civilization resulted in severe pollutions in aqueous solutions. The poor degradation of toxic heavy metal contaminants in hydrosphere undoubtedly posed a huge threat to environmental safety and biological health. In this review, as most common heavy metal pollutants, arsenium (As), chromium (Cr), mercury (Hg), lead (Pb), and strontium (Sr) were introduced in detail. The chemical behaviours, chemical status, biological toxicity, and migration of mentioned contaminants were summarized. This work highlighted and reviewed the basic information of five heavy metal pollutants, which provided a new direction of toxic heavy metal ion remediation.

The Northeast Atlantic is running out of excess carbonate in the horizon of cold-water corals communities

The oceanic uptake of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by human activities alters the seawater carbonate system. Here, the chemical status of the Northeast Atlantic is examined by means of a high-quality database of carbon variables based on the GO-SHIP A25 section (1997–2018). The increase of atmospheric CO2 leads to an increase in ocean anthropogenic carbon (Cant) and a decrease in carbonate that is unequivocal in the upper and mid-layers (0–2,500 m depth). In the mid-layer, the carbonate content in the Northeast Atlantic is maintained by the interplay between the northward spreading of recently conveyed Mediterranean Water with excess of carbonate and the arrival of subpolar-origin waters close to carbonate undersaturation. In this study we show a progression to undersaturation with respect to aragonite that could compromise the conservation of the habitats and ecosystem services developed by benthic marine calcifiers inhabiting that depth-range, such as the cold-water corals (CWC) communities. For each additional ppm in atmospheric pCO2 the waters surrounding CWC communities lose carbonate at a rate of − 0.17 ± 0.02 μmol kg−1 ppm−1. The accomplishment of global climate policies to limit global warming below 1.5–2 ℃ will avoid the exhaustion of excess carbonate in the Northeast Atlantic.