Analysis of Groundwater Quality in Jabal Sarage and Charikar Districts, Parwan, Afghanistan

This groundwater research is carried out groundwater quality in Jabal Sarage and Charikar Districts. The main objective of this research is to find out natural causes of drinking water contaminations (toxic elements and components), that are leaching from soluble arrangement of rocks,sediments and soil by surface water at the infiltration time, toward the groundwater. For completion this research I used two categories of water analysis; one is areal analysis, and another is laboratory analysis. In areal analysis ten wells have been recovered by this research in Jabal Sarage and Charikar Distracts, a number of Electro-Conductivity, water temperature,dissolved oxygen in water, Total Dissolved Soled (TDS) and the Resolved Salt in Water (SSW), determination Partible ground at areal complete. For laboratory works I used chemical device of Spectra- photo model. From comparing mean of chemical and physical parameters with standards.pH, K, Na, Mg, Cl, Fe, F, TH, Ca and SO4 all are normal and we can use them for drinking and irrigation waters. The challenges that I faced during this research are; absence of research in this area and lack of geological equipment’s.

Development of an integrated irrigation water quality index (IIWQIndex) model

There are many irrigation water quality indices used to assess water suitability, despite some of their limitations. Hence, it is imperative to develop a water quality index to evaluate the irrigation water more accurately. This study has aimed to emerge an Integrated Irrigation Water Quality Index (IIWQIndex) using the sub-index and aggregated equations. This proposed index model was considered to be improved and updated in four aspects: the verified desirable and permissible value of parameters, maximum hazard class, used a modified rating system of parameters, and diversified parameters were considered. The proposed IIWQIndex model classified irrigation water into five categories, i.e., rejection, poor, moderate, good, and excellent. This model assessed two types of water to justify the model by categorizing the irrigation waters. The calculated results showed that the index values were 75.77 and 36.51, and the water category fell under ‘good’ and ‘rejected’ for the calcite (Ca-HCO3) and sodic (Na-Cl) water, respectively. Besides, this index model satisfactorily evaluated different types of water datasets of eight geographic locations in the world. The study illustrated that the IIWQIndex evaluated values and water categories were rational and exhaustive to predict the suitability of irrigation water.

Acetaminophen Induces an Antioxidative Response in Lettuce Plants

Contaminants of environmental concern, like pharmaceuticals, are being detected in increasing amounts in soils and irrigation waters and can thus be taken up by plants. In this work, the uptake of acetaminophen (ACT) by lettuce plants was evaluated through a hydroponic experiment at different concentrations (0, 0.1, 1 and 5 mg L−1 ACT). The pathways related to oxidative stress induced by ACT were studied in lettuce leaves and roots at 1, 8 and 15 days after exposure. Stress indicators such as hydrogen peroxide and malondialdehyde (MDA) contents were analyzed, revealing increases in plants contaminated with ACT in comparison to control, confirming the occurrence of oxidative stress, with the exception of MDA in leaves. The enzymatic activities of catalase, superoxide dismutase, guaiacol peroxidase, ascorbate peroxidase and glutathione peroxidase, directly involved in the antioxidative system, showed significant differences when compared to control plants, and, depending on the enzyme and the tissue, different trends were observed. Glutathione reductase revealed a decrease in contaminated leaves, which may imply a specific impact of ACT in the glutathione cycle. Significant increases were found in the anthocyanin content of leaves, both with exposure time and ACT concentration, indicating an antioxidative response induced by ACT contamination.

Rethinking Rehabilitation: Application of the SOTE model to soil rehabilitation following salinity and sodicity induced degradation

<p>If not carefully managed, use of saline and sodic irrigation waters, a common practice in dryland regions, has the potential to cause significant harm to soils. Application of saline and sodic irrigation waters can lead to reductions in hydraulic conductivity, Ks, the mechanisms of which (e.g., slaking, swelling, clay dispersion) have been the focus of a vast body of scientific literature. The rehabilitation process, by contrast, is far less understood. Despite experimental evidence showing a significant degree of irreversibility, traditionally models have treated the degradation and rehabilitation processes as reversible. We demonstrate how this assumption obfuscates our ability to analyze the risk of long-term degradation and to estimate the resources and time required to rehabilitate. We achieve this by using the SOTE model — a minimalistic model that can be used to study dynamics of soil water content, salinity, and sodicity, as driven by irrigation practices and climatic conditions. Crucially, SOTE also accounts for the feedback between changing salinity and sodicity and soil Ks. This feedback includes irreversible changes in hydraulic conductivity, such that a soil’s history of degradation and rehabilitation informs its future state. We compare SOTE to existing models, which do not include hysteresis in Ks, and demonstrate that SOTE predicts more gradual rehabilitation of degraded soils, in line with the limited experimental evidence that has examined this question. For the test case of a degraded soil in a typical Mediterranean climate, SOTE forecasts that rehabilitation requires 50% more time and water resources, in comparison to models without hysteresis. This difference underscores the need to limit the risk of potential degradation, which SOTE also shows increases by 50% when hysteresis is accounted for. A sensitivity analysis indicates that SOTE is most sensitive to parameters connected to soil texture. The sensitivity analysis further indicates that our results are robust -- under all ranges of parameter values SOTE continues to forecast greater time requirements for rehabilitation and increased risk of soil degradation.</p>