The Yom River Basin is one of 25 river basins in Thailand. The Yom River Basin experiences perennial droughts and floods that heavily impact the agricultural sector. In order to reduce the impact, water management, including water level estimation, must be applied to critical basins like the Yom River Basin. An important task of management is the quantitative prediction of water levels. Four different modeling approaches were applied to forecast the average monthly water level (AMWL) data from four water level measurement stations for the wet season (May–October) and dry season (November–April) from 2007 to 2020. The forecast patterns obtained from the four approaches were similar to the observed historical values, except the upstream in wet season and downstream in dry season. Furthermore, the artificial neural network (ANN) approach overestimated forecasts for almost every station in both seasons. All four approaches were more accurate in the dry season than the wet season. This study proposed a forecasting method called dynamic seasonal regression (DSR), which was obtained by combining multiple linear regression (MLR) and the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model of the random error from MLR. DSR was more efficient than ANN, seasonal-ARIMA (SARIMA) and a hybridized SARIMA and ANN approach (SARIMANN). On average, for all stations in wet and dry seasons, DSR reduced RMSE by over 40.86%, 9.10% and 23.07% with respect to ANN, SARIMA and SARIMANN, and MAPE by over 35.01%, 13.02% and 15.96% with respect to ANN, SARIMA and SARIMANN. The RMSE of upstream was higher than the RMSE downstream in the wet season for all methods, and the MAPE of upstream was lower than the downstream in both seasons for all methods. Moreover, the RMSE of upstream was lower than the downstream in the dry season for all methods except the ANN method.

The insecticide chlordecone (CLD) was applied from 1972 to 1993 to banana fields in the French Antilles, which resulted in the long-term pollution of soils and the contamination of crops and water resources. We coupled two biophysical models describing CLD and soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics to determine the impact of a change of cropping system from banana to vegetable crops on the temporal pattern of CLD content in different soil types, and to assess how this might impact crop contamination and environmental pollution. The results indicated that a change of the cropping system when the CLD content in the topsoil (0–0.3 m) drops below the threshold (1 mg CLD kg⁻¹) established by local authorities to allow the cultivation of vegetable crops (e.g., cucumber, melon, watermelon, pumpkin), might cause crop contamination due to the presence of relatively high CLD levels in the subsurface layer (i.e., 0.3–0.6 m) of nitisols and ferralsols. The impact of changing the cropping system on the risk of environmental pollution depends on the time of that change, and it is much greater for vegetable crop systems established in the early 1990s following a financial crisis affecting the banana sector. This is linked to the progressive decline of SOC stocks caused by vegetable crop systems, which reduces CLD retention in the soil and increases CLD leaching. Overall, this study highlights the urgent need to include the monitoring of CLD in the subsurface layer and the dynamics of SOC stocks in current soil testing campaigns carried out on polluted soils in French Antilles.

Nowadays, urban framework, stressed by the growing anthropic pressure and its constantly evolving use requests is split by uneven structures, contexts, users and patchy needs, which come out to be inefficient and ineffective in access and management. This fact is directly connected both with morph-functional structure of urban texture and its continuous changing trends. The most important consequences of this situation are some negative effects that produce entropy, mistaken anthropic space uses, ecological networks decrease and most of all a substantial urban life quality reduction connected with mobility problems and non-resilient spaces’ use at the different plan scales. These elements make it necessary to restart thinking about environmental resources’ sustainable use and management. Universal design comes out to be a useful tool related to urban space planning strategies in terms of resilient choices and actions. Design for all plan approach also represents a good solution for matching people needs to urban environmental quality improvement. This idea is supported by the experience of a certain case study, that considers universal design application positive effects on open public space plan strategy in Oslo, together with an example of an active use of water to plan a sustainable public space in Rotterdam.

Bioremediation of alkylbenzenes, including toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes, was performed using fermentable aromatic sources and electron mediators by Bacillus cereus 301 in a limited oxygen state. The fermentation of small fermentable aromatic melanoids from cow manure as soluble humus hydrolysates or sugarcane molasses as saccharine, glucose and limited basal medium was compared. Thus, an evaluation model of exponential decline against a control was incorporated for interpretation of remedial data. The significance of the present strategy for constructing multivariant effects of electron donors could be objectively judged by pattern comparison with the short-term data analyzed. Thus, grafted aromatics as methyl- or ethylbenzene require much more microbial reaction time, even with mixed aromatic donors or stronger electron donors such as methanol in the original reduced medium, as indicated in the scatter chart. However, completion of the remedial time was needed by the kinetic simulation, and even low, smooth data were expressed. Among the exponential decay curves indicated, the carbon sources in the mix were favorably expressed. The smooth pattern indicated that fermentations with glucose and molasses showed lower remedial activity than melanoids or the indole series. The vigor increase was better for melanoid carbon in the initial fermentation of 24 h, while molasses increased later at 72 h and was more quenched by amending indole acetic acid (IAA) or indole expression. The molecular interaction of the electron mediator indole acetic acid in most trials indicated a quenched effect on toluene and ethylbenzene degradation, even when mixed with the original reducing medium, but expressed better with molasses in both kinetic simulations and growth effects. Thus, combining electron mediators such as IAA for Bacillus may offer a new degradation route for the metabolite alkylbenzene, which is worth further exploration for environmental aromatic waste remediation and combined restoration strategies.

Seeds of pea (Pisum sativum L. var. Alicia) were germinated for 5 d by soaking in distilled water or treated with cadmium and/or humic acid (HA). Interaction between humic acid and cadmium was previously discussed. However, the regulation of the humic acid / cadmium interaction during seed germination, the first crucial stage of the plant life cycle, need to be clarified. Seed germination is an important stage of the plant life, which is highly sensitive to surrounding medium changes, since the germinating seed is the first interface of material exchange between plant cycle and environment. Relationships among cadmium stress, HA-treatment, germination rate, and changes in reserve mobilization were studied. Cadmium disrupted the soaking process that was a major event of germination. Moreover, important solutes leakage due to Cd-treatment caused disorder in reserve mobilization from cotyledons to growing embryonic axes. The observed delay in germination rate and seedling growth after Cd-treatment could be explained, partially, by the disturbance in the mobilization of water and nutrients. NADH-and MDA-activities were considered as markers of oxidative stress. they were substantially increased after Cd-treatment compared with controls but decreased in presence of AH. Excessive NADH oxidase activities proved the install of oxidative stress in Cd poisoned seeds. We suggested an antagonist effect of Cd and HA on oxidative stress enzyme activities. Treatment of seeds with Cd and/or AH maintained a high level of guaiacol peroxidase activities during five days. The possible implication of GPOX against Cd toxicity and the improvement of the antioxidant system after AH treatment proved an important implication of these findings during germination.

This study focuses on the possibilities to abate greenhouse gas emissions in the value chain of plastics with special emphasis on efficiency improvements in the virgin plastics production and to recycle or reuse/regenerate plastics from waste streams. The study is restricted to the plastics and their intermediates produced in annual quantities over 20 million tons (Mt) on global scale. The chemicals and polymers considered include intermediate feedstocks ammonia, methanol, ethene and propene, polyolefins polyethylene and polypropylene, and other included polymers are polyester, polyamide and acrylic fibres, polyvinylchloride, polyethylene terephthalate, polyurethane resin and polystyrene. Improved efficiency in the virgin plastic value chain has the potential to reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 531 Mt CO₂eq /y, provided that all of the current global production is upgraded to meet the European Union’s best benchmarked facilities. These improvements would mean a 15.4% reduction of all global chemical sector emissions. The evaluation of probability for all global production facilities to reach the EU benchmarked values is excluded as unclear. Increasing the global recycling rate of plastics from the current 18% to 42% would reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 142.3 Mt CO₂eq /a, provided that the segregation of recyclable materials is improved, and that incineration is not increased. These downstream improvements would mean a 4% reduction of all global chemical sector emissions and reduce the accumulation of plastics not only on land but also in the oceans.

The contribution aims to highlight the relationship between the business economy applied to viticulture and the ecosystem. The concepts of ecosystem services and viticultural biodiversity are seen in order to provide a new perspective for the development of a more sustainable business management. The work contributes to enriching the economic literature by introducing the relationship between ecosystem and business. The new perspective helps to place the company within the wider ecological-social system, favoring a more consistent interpretation of the relationship of exchange (impact and dependence) of resources with nature. The work proposes a methodology for calculating the ecosystem service rendered by the vineyards cultivated in the Sicilian hills. The conceptual scheme and the methodology adopted highlight the value of the ecosystem service. Certainly, for the future, it is necessary to create business models where ecosystem services find a remuneration as the entrepreneur is led to adopt cultivation practices in this sense only if he finds a remuneration from the public or private sector. Ecosystem services are important to protect the landscape and the environment. The paper proposes a land management method that respects the environmental balance. This approach leads to long-term value creation at both the micro and macroeconomic levels.

A fundamental step for safety assessment is the study and modeling of the radionuclide transfer through the environment up to reach and expose population to risk. In this vein we are working to provide a reliable and flexible computational framework which can be used for both retrospective and prospective calculations of radiation doses and human health effects, resulting from both routine and uncontrolled releases of radionuclides to the environment and from pre-existing environment contamination. The goal is to provide a multipurpose computational tool to be used for siting facilities, environmental impact statements, and safety analysis reports. The code can handle: external exposure from finite or infinite atmospheric plumes; external exposure from contaminated soil, sediments, and water; external exposure from special geometries; and internal exposures from inhalation, inadvertent intake of soil, consumption of terrestrial foods, aquatic foods, drinking water, and animal products.