Biological Resistance of Elm (Ulmus carpinifolia var. Umbelifera) Trees against Fungal Endophytes and White Rot Decay Fungi

Urban trees are one of the valuable storage in metropolitan areas. Nowadays, a particular attention is paid to the trees and spends million dollars per year to their maintenance. Trees are often subjected to abiotic factors, such as fungi, bacteria, and insects, which lead to decline mechanical strength and wood properties. The objective of this study was to determine the potential degradation of Elm tree wood by Phellinus pomaceus fungi, and Biscogniauxia mediteranae endophyte. Biological decay tests were done according to EN 113 standard and impact bending test in accordance with ASTM-D256-04 standard. The results indicated that with longer incubation time, weight loss increased for both sapwood and heartwood. Fungal deterioration leads to changes in the impact bending. In order to manage street trees, knowing tree characteristics is very important and should be regularly monitored and evaluated in order to identify defects in the trees.

Soil properties across a chronosequence of Ailanthus altissima in semiarid plantations

Afforestation is a main tool for preventing desertification and soil erosion in arid and semiarid regions of Iran. Large-scale afforestation, however, has poorly understood consequences for the future ecosystems in the term of ecosystems protection. The objective of the present study is to identify changes in soil properties following different intervals of planting of Ailanthus altissima (tree of heaven) in semiarid afforestation of Iran (Chitgar Forest Park, Tehran). For this purpose, sand, silt and clay ratios, bulk density, soil moisture, pH, electrical conductivity, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, calcium, sodium, total soil N, and total carbon was measured. Our study highlighted the potential of the invasive trees by A. altissima, to alter soil properties along chronosequence. Almost all soil quality attributes showed a declining trend with stand age. A continuous decline in soil quality indicated that the present land management may not be sustainable. Therefore, an improved management practice is imperative to sustain soil quality and maintain long-term productivity of plantation forests. Thinning activity will be required to reduce the number of trees competing for the same nutrients especially in a older stand to protect forest soils.

Phytoremediation of Special Metals in Emerging Industries

This project is carried out to assess the remediation effect on soil contaminated by molybdenum (Mo), one of heavy metals, through the use of an energy crop, sunflowers. This project explores the integration of phytohormones and chelates in the phytoremediation of soils contaminated by heavy metals, and further assesses the operational measures of remedying heavy-metal contaminated soil with sunflowers, in addition to the related environmental factors. Then the project explores phytohormones and heavy metals on the growth scenario explants (explants morphological analysis) through the experiment. The results indicate that GA3 can increase the growth rate of the plants. The average incremental growth of the heavy-metal-added-only group is 21.0 cm; of the GA3-added group it is 21.9 cm; of the EDDS-added group, it is 20.3 cm; of the GA3+ EDDS-added group, it is 21.7 cm. Compared with the conventional methods of phytoremediation, these integrated measures can actually spur the growth of plants.

Constructed wetlands review

Natural water purification system especially constructed has been commonly employed in Taiwan and worldwide nowadays. This paper has reviewed several papers written by the author.

Innovative agroforestry interventions for alternative economically viable livelihood development to support climate resilient mountain agriculture

Agroforestry holds the key in providing alternative economically viable livelihood development and to support mountainous farmers to adapt to climate change. Innovative agroforestry interventions integrating animal production, horticulture etc into cropping systems exist that can help farmers improve yields and build resilience for supporting livelihoods particularly among marginal communities. But, the lack of knowledge, technical know-how and other information among the farmers are major barriers in adoption of agroforestry. Millions of the farmers of mountainous regions are already wrestling with water scarcity, which would be more severe in climate change scenario. The Himalayan regions are have been considered to be highly sensitive to climate change. Indeed, Innovative agroforestry interventions have the potential to conserve natural resources, improve productivity and provide resilience to climate change. The present paper highlights the need for developing innovative agroforestry interventions to promote various alternate livelihood options through diversification, adoption of high yielding varieties and development of innovative products from forest resources. Of these spice based agroforetry, silvi-medicinal systems, Van silk cultivation, bamboo and ringal cultivation and development and use of farm resources based products like bamboo based composite structures, Seabuckthorn herbal tea, Ghingaroo juice (Crataegus crenulata) and incense products etc holds a promising potential to be explored as better options for future scenario.

Innovative piggery waste resources reusing-direct land application

One of the main sources of water pollution in Taiwan is piggery waste. With the major pollutants such as odors, BOD, TN and TS, waste from the piggery industry has been seriously affecting the environment in Taiwan. However, if this amount of waste is properly treated, it will bring great benefits and can be considered as a resource. Generally, wastewater from the piggery industry is treated in three stages: liquid soil, anaerobic digestion and then aerobic treatment. However, this process is difficult due to high cost and difficult operation. Therefore, a feasible method was to establish a centralized methane production facility for the treatment of piggery industrial waste. The products after treated like methane and fertilize are utilized as clean and environmentally friendly products. Methane can be used for cooking or electricity generation. This is a new direction suitable for sustainable development.

Taiwan unlawful remediation approach

Soil and groundwater remediation act has been enacted and executed since year 2000 in Taiwan. It has been ten good years till today where lots of remediation techniques progressively employed to improve Taiwan soil and groundwater resource quality. Regulatory agencies, academia, remediation consulting firms, on-site professional engineers all have contribute the proud ten years in terms of soil and groundwater clean-up contribution. However, some of technologies were un-environmental friendly even detrimental and damage to Taiwan precious soil and groundwater resources. In Article one of the current Taiwan soil and groundwater Act, it clearly stated that soil is a precious nature resources. Soil definitely is not a waste, shame on us most of current most commonly employed remediation are unlawful and merely aiming to save time and money consideration without any care to our land. Dig-and-dump and soil acid washing are damaged employed in almost every single local environment agency soil clean-up project. Lot of money, effort and time has been spent during past ten years. Most of the spending is not improving soil quality using Green approach.

On the betweenness centrality of trees, forests and cycles

Simple mathematical expressions are given for the betweenness centrality of nodes in trees, forests and cycles. As application, a centrality test is given for when a network might be a forest.

Pattern and Characterisation of Human casualties in Sundarban by Tiger attacks, India

A large number of people of the fringe areas of Sundarban enter into the forests every year and encounter with the tigers simply for their livelihood. This study attempts to examine the extent and impact of human-animal conflicts in the Sundarban Reserve Forest (SRF) area in West Bengal, India. An intensive study of the data of the victims (both death and injury) between 1999 and 2014 reveals that, fishermen crab collector, honey collectors and woodcutters are generally victimized by the tiger attack. Pre monsoon period (April to June) and early winter period (Jan to March) are noted for the two-peak periods for casualties. Maximum casualty occurs between 8-10 am, and 2-4 pm. Jhilla (21.1%), Pirkhali (19.72 %), Chandkhali (11.72%), and Arbesi (9.35%) are the four most vulnerable forest blocks accounting more than 60 per cent occurrence of incidences. 67.24 per cent of the tiger attack victims were residents of Gosaba followed by Hingalganja (15%) and Basanti, (9.76%). The vulnerability rating puts the risk of tiger attack to 0.88 for every 10,000 residents of Gosaba block followed by 0.33 at Hingalganj Block and 0.11 at Bansanti Block. The majority of the victims (68%) were found to be males, aged between 30 and 50 years.

The Improvement of Phytomediation on the Treatment Effectiveness of Heavy Metals with Energy Sunflower Plants with Calcium Peroxide and Phytohormones

Phytomediation is an environmentally friendly green rehabilitation technology that is often incorporated with an application to improve calcium peroxide and phytohormones required for the growth of agricultural plants with the expectation to improve the effectiveness of plant rehabilitation. This study mainly consists of two parts: (1) water culture experiment and (2) pot culture experiment. In the water culture experiment, we attempt to understand the influence of the addition of calcium peroxide, phytohormones (IAA and GA3) and a chelating agent on the growth of sunflower plants. From the growth, we are then able to know the effectiveness of the addition of phytohormones. However, in the pot culture experiment, when hormones and the chelating agent EDTA are introduced to different plant groups at the same time, if the nutrition in the water required by plants is not available, the addition of the hormone cannot negate the toxicity caused by EDTA. In terms of calcium peroxide, due to quick release of oxygen in water, this study fails to apply calcium peroxide to the water culture experiment. When the pot culture experiment is used to examine the influence of hormones at different concentration levels on the growth of sunflowers, GA3 10-8M is reported to have the optimal effectiveness, followed by IAA 10-8M; IAA 10-12M has the lowest effectiveness. According to an accumulation analysis of heavy metals at different levels, GA3 concentrates in leaves to transport nutrition in soil to leaves. This results in an excellent TF value of 2.329G of GA3 than 1.845 of the control group indicating that the addition of the hormone and chelating agent to GA3 increases the TF value and the chelating agent is beneficial to the sunflower plant. If we examine phytoattenuation ability, the one-month experiment was divided into three stages for ten days each. The concentration level of heavy metals in the soil at each stage dropped continuously while that of the control group decreased from 31.63 mg/kg to 23.96 mg/kg, GA3 from 32.09 mg/kg to 23.04 mg/kg and EDTA from 30.65 mg/kg to 25.93 mg/kg indicating the quickest growth period of the sunflowers from the formation of the bud to blossom. During the stage, the quick upward transportation of nutrition results in quick accumulation of heavy metals; the accumulated speed of heavy metals is found higher than that of directly planted plants. This study shows an improvement in the effectiveness of the addition of hormones on plant extraction and when rehabilitation is incorporated with sunflowers with the beginning bud formation, better treatment effectiveness can be reached.