Simulated climate change impact on summer dissolved organic carbon release from peat and surface vegetation: implications for drinking water treatment

Uncertainty regarding changes in dissolved organic carbon (DOC) quantity and quality has created interest in managing peatlands for their ecosystem services such as drinking water provision. The evidence base for such interventions is, however, sometimes contradictory. We performed a laboratory climate manipulation using a factorial design on two dominant peatland vegetation types (Calluna vulgaris and Sphagnum Spp.) and a peat soil collected from a drinking water catchment in Exmoor National Park, UK. Temperature and rainfall were set to represent baseline and future conditions under the UKCP09 2080s high emissions scenario for July and August. DOC leachate then underwent standard water treatment of coagulation/flocculation before chlorination. C. vulgaris leached more DOC than Sphagnum Spp. (7.17 versus 3.00 mg g−1) with higher specific ultraviolet (SUVA) values and a greater sensitivity to climate, leaching more DOC under simulated future conditions. The peat soil leached less DOC (0.37 mg g−1) than the vegetation and was less sensitive to climate. Differences in coagulation removal efficiency between the DOC sources appears to be driven by relative solubilisation of protein-like DOC, observed through the fluorescence peak C/T. Post-coagulation only differences between vegetation types were detected for the regulated disinfection by-products (DBPs), suggesting climate change influence at this scale can be removed via coagulation. Our results suggest current biodiversity restoration programmes to encourage Sphagnum Spp. will result in lower DOC concentrations and SUVA values, particularly with warmer and drier summers.

Anthropogenic nutrient sources and loads from a Mediterranean catchment into a coastal lagoon: Mar Menor, Spain

The Mar Menor is a coastal lagoon increasingly threatened by urban and agricultural pressures. The main watercourse draining into the lagoon is the Rambla del Albujón. A fortnightly campaign carried out over one annual cycle enabled us to characterize the treated urban sewage effluents and agricultural sources which contribute to the nutrient fluxes in the watercourse. Multivariate analysis provided information for establishing chemical signatures and for assessing the relative influence of the various sources on the water quality at the outlet. Mass balances were used to examine net gains and losses, and cross-correlations with rainfall to analyze climatic influence and control factors in the trends of the nutrient flux. The rainfall pattern was significantly cross-correlated with nitrate and phosphorus fluxes from agricultural sources, while fluctuations in the resident population explained the phosphorus flux trend in urban sources. 50% of dissolved inorganic nitrogen was from agricultural sources, while 70% of total phosphate and 91% of total organic carbon were from urban point sources. The net amounts of all the nutrients fell as a result of plant uptake and/or denitrification in the channel. The control of urban point sources (phosphorus-enriched) is suggested as a promptly action for improving the health of the coastal lagoon.

Water, irrigation and plant diseases

Irrigation is a major husbandry tool, vital for world food production and security. The purpose of this review is twofold:- firstly drawing attention to the beneficial and deleterious aspects of irrigation resulting from interactions with the microbial world; secondly, forming a basis for encouraging further research and development. Irrigation is for example, a valuable component in the control of some soil borne pathogens such as Streptomyces scabies, the cause of potato common scab and Fusarium cubense, a cause of banana wilt. By contrast, applying irrigation encourages some foliar pathogens and factors such as splash dispersal of propagules and the retention of leaf wetness are important elements in the successful establishment of disease foci. Irrigation applied at low levels in the canopy directly towards the stem bases and root zones of plants also provides means encouraging disease development. Irrigation also offers means for the direct spread of microbes such as water borne moulds, Oomycetes, and plasmodial pathogens coming from populations present in the water supply. The presence of plant disease causing microbes in sources of irrigation has been associated with outbreaks of diseases such as clubroot (Plasmodiophora brassicae). Irrigation can be utilised as a means for applying agrochemicals, fungigation. The developing technologies of water restriction and root zone drying also have an impact on the success of disease causing organisms. This is an emerging technology and its interactions with benign and pathogenic microbes require consideration.

Effect of chemical treatment on the mechanical properties, water vapour permeability and sorption isotherms of gelatin-based films

Proteins contain hydrophilic groups, which can bind to water molecules through hydrogen bridges, resulting in water vapour adsorption. An increase in the degree of cross-linking can be a method to improve the cohesiveness force and functional properties of protein-based films. Thus, the objective of this work was to evaluate the effect of chemical treatment of gelatin with formaldehyde and glyoxal on the mechanical properties, water vapour permeability (WVP) and water vapour sorption characteristics of gelatin-based films. Films were produced using gelatin, with and without chemical treatment. The formaldehyde treatments caused a significant increase in the tensile strength and a reduction in the WVP of films. The Guggenheim-Anderson-De Boer and Halsey models could be used to model the sorption isotherms of films. It was observed that an increase in temperature produced a decrease in water sorption, and the chemical modifications did not affect the monolayer moisture content. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Incidence of Listeria monocytogenes in Cheese Manufacturing Plants from the Northeast Region of Sao Paulo, Brazil

The incidence of Listeria monocytogenes in three cheese manufacturing plants from the northeastern region of Sao Paulo, Brazil, was evaluated from October 2008 to September 2009. L. monocytogenes was found in samples from two plants, at percentages of 13.3% (n = 128) and 9.6% (n = 114). Samples of raw and pasteurized milk, water, and Minas Frescal cheese were negative for L. monocyto genes, although the pathogen was isolated from the surface of Prato cheese and in brine from one of the plants evaluated. L. monocytogenes was also isolated from different sites of the facilities, mainly in non food contact surfaces such as drains, floors, and platforms. Serotype 4b was the most predominant in the plants studied. The results of this study indicate the need for control strategies to prevent the dispersion of L. monocytogenes in the environment of cheese manufacturing plants.

A Lagrangian identification of major sources of moisture over Central Brazil and La Plata Basin

[1] This work examines the main sources of moisture over Central Brazil and La Plata Basin during the year through a new Lagrangian diagnosis method which identifies the humidity contributions to the moisture budget over a region. This methodology computes budgets of evaporation minus precipitation by calculating changes in the specific humidity along back-trajectories for the previous 10 d. The origin of all air masses residing over each region was tracked during a period of 5 years (2000-2004). These regions were selected because they coincide with two centers of action of a known dipole precipitation variability mode observed in different temporal scales (from intra seasonal up to inter decadal timescales) and are related to the climatic variability of the South American Monsoon System. The results suggested the importance of the tropical south Atlantic as a moisture source for Central Brazil, and of recycling for La Plata basin. It seems that the Tropical South Atlantic plays an important role as a moisture source for Central Brazil and La Plata basin along the year, particularly during the austral summer. The north Atlantic is also an additional source for both regions during the austral summer.

Colony dehydration and water collection by specialized caste in the leaf-cutting ant Atta sexdens rubropilosa

Social organization enables leaf-cutting ants to keep appropriate micro-ecological nest conditions for the fungus garden (their main food), eggs, larvae and adults. To maintain stability while facing changing conditions, individual ants must perceive destabilising factors and produce a proper behavioral response. We investigated behavioral responses to experimental dehydration in leaf-cutting ants to verify if task specialization exists, and to quantify the ability of ant sub-colonies for water management. Our setup consisted of fourteen sub-colonies, ten of which were randomly assigned to different levels of experimental dehydration with silica gel, whereas the remaining four were controls. The ten experimental sub-colonies were split into two groups, so that five of them had access to water. Diverse ant morphs searched for water in dehydrated colonies, but mainly a caste of small ants collected water after sources had been discovered. Size specialization for water collection was replicable in shorter experiments with three additional colonies. Ants of dehydrated colonies accumulated leaf-fragments on the nest entrance, and covering the fungus garden. Behaviors that may enhance humidity within the nests were common to all dehydration treatments. Water availability increased the life span of dehydrated colonies.

Human Health Impacts of Contaminants Found in Local Drinking Water Supply

Many contaminants are currently unregulated by the government and do not have a set limit, known as the Maximum Contaminant Level, which is dictated by cost and the best available treatment technology. The Maximum Contaminant Level Goal, on the other hand, is based solely upon health considerations and is non-enforceable. In addition to being naturally occurring, contaminants may enter drinking water supplies through industrial sources, agricultural practices, urban pollution, sprawl, and water treatment byproducts. Exposure to these contaminants is not limited to ingestion and can also occur through dermal absorption and inhalation in the shower. Health risks for the general public include skin damage, increased risk of cancer, circulatory problems, and multiple toxicities. At low levels, these contaminants generally are not harmful in our drinking water. However, children, pregnant women, and people with compromised immune systems are more vulnerable to the health risks associated with these contaminants. Vulnerable peoples should take additional precautions with drinking water. This research project was conducted in order to learn more about our local drinking water and to characterize our exposure to contaminants. We hope to increase public awareness of water quality issues by educating the local residents about their drinking water in order to promote public health and minimize exposure to some of the contaminants contained within public water supplies.

A Harmonized Vocabulary For Water Quality

Interoperability of water quality data depends on the use of common models, schemas and vocabularies. However, terms are usually collected during different activities and projects in isolation of one another, resulting in vocabularies that have the same scope being represented with different terms, using different formats and formalisms, and published in various access methods. Significantly, most water quality vocabularies conflate multiple concepts in a single term, e.g. quantity kind, units of measure, substance or taxon, medium and procedure. This bundles information associated with separate elements from the OGC Observations and Measurements (O&M) model into a single slot. We have developed a water quality vocabulary, formalized using RDF, and published as Linked Data. The terms were extracted from existing water quality vocabularies. The observable property model is inspired by O&M but aligned with existing ontologies. The core is an OWL ontology that extends the QUDT ontology for Unit and QuantityKind definitions. We add classes to generalize the QuantityKind model, and properties for explicit description of the conflated concepts. The key elements are defined to be sub-classes or sub-properties of SKOS elements, which enables a SKOS view to be published through standard vocabulary APIs, alongside the full view. QUDT terms are re-used where possible, supplemented with additional Unit and QuantityKind entries required for water quality. Along with items from separate vocabularies developed for objects, media, and procedures, these are linked into definitions in the actual observable property vocabulary. Definitions of objects related to chemical substances are linked to items from the Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) ontology. Mappings to other vocabularies, such as DBPedia, are in separately maintained files. By formalizing the model for observable properties, and clearly labelling the separate concerns, water quality observations from different sources may be more easily merged and also transformed to O&M for cross-domain applications.

Optimized Water Demand Management Through Intelligent Sensing And Analytics: The WISDOM Approach

New business and technology platforms are required to sustainably manage urban water resources [1,2]. However, any proposed solutions must be cognisant of security, privacy and other factors that may inhibit adoption and hence impact. The FP7 WISDOM project (funded by the European Commission - GA 619795) aims to achieve a step change in water and energy savings via the integration of innovative Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) frameworks to optimize water distribution networks and to enable change in consumer behavior through innovative demand management and adaptive pricing schemes [1,2,3]. The WISDOM concept centres on the integration of water distribution, sensor monitoring and communication systems coupled with semantic modelling (using ontologies, potentially connected to BIM, to serve as intelligent linkages throughout the entire framework) and control capabilities to provide for near real-time management of urban water resources. Fundamental to this framework are the needs and operational requirements of users and stakeholders at domestic, corporate and city levels and this requires the interoperability of a number of demand and operational models, fed with data from diverse sources such as sensor networks and crowsourced information. This has implications regarding the provenance and trustworthiness of such data and how it can be used in not only the understanding of system and user behaviours, but more importantly in the real-time control of such systems. Adaptive and intelligent analytics will be used to produce decision support systems that will drive the ability to increase the variability of both supply and consumption [3]. This in turn paves the way for adaptive pricing incentives and a greater understanding of the water-energy nexus. This integration is complex and uncertain yet being typical of a cyber-physical system, and its relevance transcends the water resource management domain. The WISDOM framework will be modeled and simulated with initial testing at an experimental facility in France (AQUASIM – a full-scale test-bed facility to study sustainable water management), then deployed and evaluated in in two pilots in Cardiff (UK) and La Spezia (Italy). These demonstrators will evaluate the integrated concept providing insight for wider adoption.

Development Of Water Pollution Early Warning System For Oyster Harvesting Areas

The objective of this study is to develop a Pollution Early Warning System (PEWS) for efficient management of water quality in oyster harvesting areas. To that end, this paper presents a web-enabled, user-friendly PEWS for managing water quality in oyster harvesting areas along Louisiana Gulf Coast, USA. The PEWS consists of (1) an Integrated Space-Ground Sensing System (ISGSS) gathering data for environmental factors influencing water quality, (2) an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model for predicting the level of fecal coliform bacteria, and (3) a web-enabled, user-friendly Geographic Information System (GIS) platform for issuing water pollution advisories and managing oyster harvesting waters. The ISGSS (data acquisition system) collects near real-time environmental data from various sources, including NASA MODIS Terra and Aqua satellites and in-situ sensing stations managed by the USGS and the NOAA. The ANN model is developed using the ANN program in MATLAB Toolbox. The ANN model involves a total of 6 independent environmental variables, including rainfall, tide, wind, salinity, temperature, and weather type along with 8 different combinations of the independent variables. The ANN model is constructed and tested using environmental and bacteriological data collected monthly from 2001 – 2011 by Louisiana Molluscan Shellfish Program at seven oyster harvesting areas in Louisiana Coast, USA. The ANN model is capable of explaining about 76% of variation in fecal coliform levels for model training data and 44% for independent data. The web-based GIS platform is developed using ArcView GIS and ArcIMS. The web-based GIS system can be employed for mapping fecal coliform levels, predicted by the ANN model, and potential risks of norovirus outbreaks in oyster harvesting waters. The PEWS is able to inform decision-makers of potential risks of fecal pollution and virus outbreak on a daily basis, greatly reducing the risk of contaminated oysters to human health.

Harmonization Of Vocabularies For Water Data

Observational data encodes values of properties associated with a feature of interest, estimated by a specified procedure. For water the properties are physical parameters like level, volume, flow and pressure, and concentrations and counts of chemicals, substances and organisms. Water property vocabularies have been assembled at project, agency and jurisdictional level. Organizations such as EPA, USGS, CEH, GA and BoM maintain vocabularies for internal use, and may make them available externally as text files. BODC and MMI have harvested many water vocabularies alongside others of interest in their domain, formalized the content using SKOS, and published them through web interfaces. Scope is highly variable both within and between vocabularies. Individual items may conflate multiple concerns (e.g. property, instrument, statistical procedure, units). There is significant duplication between vocabularies. Semantic web technologies provide the opportunity both to publish vocabularies more effectively, and achieve harmonization to support greater interoperability between datasets. - Models for vocabulary items (property, substance/taxon, process, unit-of-measure, etc) may be formalized OWL ontologies, supporting semantic relations between items in related vocabularies; - By specializing the ontology elements from SKOS concepts and properties, diverse vocabularies may be published through a common interface; - Properties from standard vocabularies (e.g. OWL, SKOS, PROV-O and VAEM) support mappings between vocabularies having a similar scope - Existing items from various sources may be assembled into new virtual vocabularies However, there are a number of challenges: - use of standard properties such as sameAs/exactMatch/equivalentClass require reasoning support; - items have been conceptualised as both classes and individuals, complicating the mapping mechanics; - re-use of items across vocabularies may conflict with expectations concerning URI patterns; - versioning complicates cross-references and re-use. This presentation will discuss ways to harness semantic web technologies to publish harmonized vocabularies, and will summarise how many of the challenges may be addressed.

Drinking water as a risk factor to poultry health

In the poultry industry, the use of water with adequate physical, chemical and microbiological quality it is of fundamental importance. Since many birds have access to the same water source, quality problems will affect a great number of animals. The drinking water plays an important role in the transmission of some bacterial, viral and protozoan diseases that are among the most common poultry diseases. Important factors to prevent waterborne diseases in broiler production are the protection of supply sources, water disinfection and the quality control of microbiological, chemical and physical characteristics. Water is an essential nutrient for birds and therefore quality preservation is fundamental for good herd performance. The farmer may prevent many diseases in bird flocks by controlling the quality of the ingested water, will certainly result in decreased costs and increased profit, two essential aims of animal production nowadays.

The effect of incorporation of a Brazilian water treatment plant sludge on the properties of ceramic materials

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Análise experimental de blocos intertravados de concreto com adição de resíduos do processo de recauchutagem de pneus

Analysis of experimental interlocking blocks of concrete with addition of residues of process the tires retreading production. With the population growth in recent years, industry in general has adjusted itself to resulting demand. the industry of tire retreading generates residues that have been discarded without any control. this adds to environmental pollution and promotes the proliferation of vectors harmful to health, aiming to find an application for this type of residues, this study presents experimental results to interlocking concrete block pavements, with addition of residues tires, interlocking blocks were built up and we determined, through laboratory tests, the need to set the mark that provide greater return regarding analyzed characteristics, there are four types of dosage of concrete with residues tires. We accomplished tests of compression strength, water absorption and resistance to impact. Through the preliminary results, we verified that are satisfactory, confirming the possibility of applying this type of interlocking block in environments with low demand, which would bring the economy of natural sources of aggregates, beyond ecological benefits through the reuse of residues from retreading of tires.