Linking land to ocean: Flux and fate of water and sediment from the Yangtze River to the East China Sea

Although precipitation and runoff for the entire Yangtze River watershed have changed little since 1950, the increase of runoff in Yangtze southern sub-basin has been much larger than that of precipitation, reflecting decreased temperatures and evapotranspiration, In contrast, the marked decreases in runoff in northern Yangtze have been due mainly to increased water consumption. Since the 1980s, the Yangtze sediment load has declined dramatically, and 2004 loads at Yichang (just below the Three Gorges Dam - TGD) and Datong (lower stream) were only 12% and 33% of those in the 1950s and 60s, reflecting precipitation decline, landuse change, and most importantly, construction of \u3e50,000 dams. Following the impoundment of the TGD, annual sediment load at Yichang dropped by 164 million tons (mt), but in the preceding 16 years it had decreased by ∼300 mt/yr. Future dams and diversions will decrease the load to \u3c100 mt/yr, thereby endangering the Yangtze coasts. Sediments on the inner shelf of the East China Sea reflect illite-dominated mud from the Yangtze River in the north as well as sandy silt and fine sand (low feldspar/quartz and low K-feldspar/plagioclase) from small mountainous rivers draining Taiwan to the south. Both sediments are significantly different from muds derived from the Yellow (smectite-rich) and Min (kaolinite-dominated) rivers. Grain-size distribution further confirms that ∼25% of coarse sediments in northern Taiwan Strait (south of 26??N) are Taiwan-derived. Along the inner shelf, an elongated (800 km) mud wedge, ∼40 m thick at the 30-m isobath, overlies a transgressive sand layer; the mud wedge thins offshore to \u3c2 m at 80-m isobath. Four acoustic facies can be delineated: late-Pleistocene, Transgressive System Tract (TST), and early and late High-Stand System Tracts (HST). The thin (\u3c3m) and acoustically transparent TST is only located between 40- and 90-m isobaths south of 30??N. In contrast, early (2-11 ka BP) and late (0-2 ka BP, more opaque) sigmoidal HSTs are widely distributed shallower than 70- and 50-m isobaths, respectively. The average Yangtze sediment flux between 2 and 11 ka BP was 215 mt/yr, but increased to 330 mt/yr after 2 ka BP, primarily reflecting increased deforestation and agriculture

Determination of Fate of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs)in Water, Air, Soil/Sediment at Serokai River. a Tributary of Kinta River, Perak Darul Ridzuan

The main objective of this project is to perform a study on the existence of 7 Carcinogenic Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon (PAHs) in 3 major environmental media primarily consists of water, air soil/sediment. To achieve the primary objective, several procedures are applied to perform analysis of water, soil/sediment and air samples to proof on the existence and study the distribution and interaction of the 7 Carcinogenic PAHs in 3 major environmental media stated and to focus on the application of software-generated model to predict and demonstrate the distribution and interaction of the 7 Carcinogenic PAHs which are harmful to human health and comes from multiple combustion of carbon-containing fuels sources

Navigational Risk of Inland Water Transportation: A Case Study in the Songhua River, China

Compared with ocean transportation, inland waterway transportation (IWT) has issues such as a low configuration standard of navigation equipment, insufficient crew knowledge and skills, and the relatively more complex hydrographic environment of inland waterways. To recognize and quantify the risk of IWT, this study proposes a novel risk assessment method. Firstly, text mining by Python is applied to recognize the risk influential factors (RIFs) from marine accident investigation reports (MAIRs), and a risk evaluation hierarchy system is established. Secondly, a risk assessment model which integrates failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), a belief rule-based Bayesian network (BRBN) and evidential reasoning (ER) is proposed to quantify the risk level of influential factors. Finally, a case study of the Songhua River was carried out to verify the feasibility and practicality of the established risk evaluation index system and research methods. The targeted preventive measures are proposed to improve the safety of IWT. This study shows that misobservation and poor safety awareness are the most important human factors affecting the safety of IWT, whereas the organizational factors have relatively low risk priority. It is suggested that stakeholders should strengthen the assessment of crew members and improve their ability to recognize hazards

Compensating for Natural Resource Damage Caused by Vessel-Induced Marine Oil Pollution: Comparing the International, U.S., and Chinese Regimes

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Evaluation of water quality using TOPSIS method in the Zaringol Stream (Golestan province, Iran)

In order to evaluate water quality condition, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), dissolved oxygen (DO), temperature, pH, turbidity, total suspended solid (TSS), phosphate (PO-4), nitrate (NO-3) and fecal coliform were measured seasonally from 9 sites from November 2009 to August 2010 in Zaringol Stream. Water quality condition was estimated using TOPSIS method. Comparison of TOPSIS values in different sampling stations showed the minimum (0.230) and maximum values (0.604) are in points 1 and 5 respectively. According this result, point 1 had the best water quality condition and point 5 had the lowest quality. Also, Seasonal results of TOPSIS values showed that the maximum value was found in spring. Discharge of effluents from land uses located along the stream specifically, trout farms and starting agricultural activity and production process in spring and summer are most important reasons for decreasing of water quality. TOPSIS estimates values ≤0.5 for almost stations and seasons. It shows Zaringol Stream has an average water quality.  

Determination of Fate of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs)in Water, Air, Soil/Sediment at Serokai River. a Tributary of Kinta River, Perak Darul Ridzuan

The main objective of this project is to perform a study on the existence of 7 Carcinogenic Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon (PAHs) in 3 major environmental media primarily consists of water, air soil/sediment. To achieve the primary objective, several procedures are applied to perform analysis of water, soil/sediment and air samples to proof on the existence and study the distribution and interaction of the 7 Carcinogenic PAHs in 3 major environmental media stated and to focus on the application of software-generated model to predict and demonstrate the distribution and interaction of the 7 Carcinogenic PAHs which are harmful to human health and comes from multiple combustion of carbon-containing fuels sources

Spatiotemporal green water dynamics and their responses to variations of climatic and underlying surface factors: A case study in the Sanjiang Plain, China

The Sanjiang Plain (SJP), located at the confluence reaches of the Heilong, Songhua, and Wusuli Rivers in Northeast China. his study aimed to quantify the effects of varying climate and land-use/land-cover (LULC) dynamics on green water (GW) over the SJP during two distinctive periods (i.e., pre-2000 and post-2000), when synergetic effects of increased precipitation and temperature and rapid development of agriculture occurred. This assessment used the distributed eco-hydrological model ESSI-3. Multivariable and multi-objective calibration approaches (i.e., discharge, evapotranspiration, and terrestrial water storage anomaly) were used to ensure the high accuracies of the model outputs. New hydrological insights for the region: This research concluded that GW flow and GW storage in the SJP evidently increased after 2000 compared with before. Across the SJP, GW flow and GW storage responded differently to climate changes and LULC dynamics during pre-2000 and post-2000 period

Modeling Water Resource Systems under Climate Change: IGSM-WRS

Through the integration of a Water Resource System (WRS) component, the MIT Integrated Global System Model (IGSM) framework has been enhanced to study the effects of climate change on managed water-resource systems. Development of the WRS involves the downscaling of temperature and precipitation from the zonal representation of the IGSM to regional (latitude-longitude) scale, and the translation of the resulting surface hydrology to runoff at the scale of river basins, referred to as Assessment Sub-Regions (ASRs). The model of water supply is combined with analysis of water use in agricultural and non-agricultural sectors and with a model of water system management that allocates water among uses and over time and routes water among ASRs. Results of the IGSM-WRS framework include measures of water adequacy and ways it is influenced by climate change. Here we document the design of WRS and its linkage to other components of the IGSM, and present tests of consistency of model simulations with the historical record.The Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science under grants DE-FG02-94ER61937, DE-FG02-93ER61677, DEFG02- 08ER64597, and DE-FG02-06ER64320; the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under grants XA-83344601-0, XA-83240101, XA-83042801-0, PI-83412601-0, RD-83096001, and RD- 83427901-0; the U.S. National Science Foundation under grants SES-0825915, EFRI-0835414, ATM-0120468, BCS-0410344, ATM-0329759, and DMS-0426845; the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration under grants NNX07AI49G, NNX08AY59A, NNX06AC30A, NNX09AK26G, NNX08AL73G, NNX09AI26G, NNG04GJ80G, NNG04GP30G, and NNA06CN09A; the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under grants DG1330-05-CN-1308, NA070AR4310050, and NA16GP2290; the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration under grant 06-C-NE-MIT; the Electric Power Research Institute under grant EPP32616/ C15124; and a consortium of 40 industrial and foundation sponsors (for the complete list see http://globalchange.mit.edu/sponsors/current.html)

Impact-based probabilistic modeling of hydro-morphological processes in China (1985–2015)

Hydro-morphological processes (HMP, any natural phenomenon contained within the spectrum defined between debris flows and flash floods) pose a relevant threat to infrastructure, urban and rural settlements and to lives in general. This has been widely observed in recent years and will likely become worse as climate change will influence the spatio-temporal pattern of precipitation events. The modelling of where HMP-driven hazards may occur can help define the appropriate course of actions before and during a crisis, reducing the potential losses that HMPs cause in their wake. However, the probabilistic information on locations prone to experience a given hazard is not sufficient to depict the risk our society may incur. To cover this aspect, modeling the loss information could open up to better territorial management strategies. In this work, we made use of the HMP catalogue of China from 1985 to 2015. Specifically, we implemented the Light Gradient Boosting (LGB) classifier to model the impact level that locations across China have suffered from HMPs over the thirty-year record. We obtained six impact levels as a combination of financial and life losses, whose classes we used as separate target variables for our LGB. In doing so, we estimated spatial probabilities of certain HMP impact, something that has yet to be tested in the natural hazard community, especially over such a large spatial domain. The results we obtained are encouraging, with each of the six impact categories being separately classified with excellent to outstanding performance (the worst case corresponds to a mean AUC = 0.862, whereas the best case corresponds to a mean AUC of 0.915). The good predictive performance our model produced suggest that the cartographic output could be useful to inform authorities of locations prone to human and infrastructural losses of specific magnitudes.</p

Forest Management, Conflict and Social-Ecological Systems in a Changing World

Conflicts in forest management are unavoidable because of the large temporal and spatial scales characteristic of forests ecosystems and the large number of actors involved. Forests are multifunctional ecosystems par excellence, and it can be hypothesized that current public policies, and especially those labeled as societal transitions, can affect this widespread holistic management goal. In this Special Issue, the different contributions by the authors raise the questions of how different types of conflicts arise and what alternatives exist to solve those conflicts. The Issue contains examples from both temperate and tropical forests and addresses, for instance, conflicts arising from REDD+ programs, the declaration of new protected areas, the complexity of negotiating carbon offset targets, the loss of local knowledge because of demographic trends, and meeting biodiversity and biomass targets simultaneously, among others. We present a general typology of sources of conflicts because of two dimensions: a vertical dimension represented by bottom-up versus top-down approaches and a horizontal dimension arising by ecosystem extent and ownership boundaries. Awareness that new policies can be a source of unexpected conflicts calls for precaution while testing new ‘transition’ approaches