Quantifying the regional water footprint of biofuel production by incorporating hydrologic modeling

A spatially explicit life cycle water analysis framework is proposed, in which a standardized water footprint methodology is coupled with hydrologic modeling to assess blue water, green water (rainfall), and agricultural grey water discharge in the production of biofuel feedstock at county-level resolution. Grey water is simulated via SWAT, a watershed model. Evapotranspiration (ET) estimates generated with the Penman-Monteith equation and crop parameters were verified by using remote sensing results, a satellite-imagery-derived data set, and other field measurements. Crop irrigation survey data are used to corroborate the estimate of irrigation ET. An application of the concept is presented in a case study for corn-stover-based ethanol grown in Iowa (United States) within the Upper Mississippi River basin. Results show vast spatial variations in the water footprint of stover ethanol from county to county. Producing 1 L of ethanol from corn stover growing in the Iowa counties studied requires from 4.6 to 13.1 L of blue water (with an average of 5.4 L), a majority (86%) of which is consumed in the biorefinery. The county-level green water (rainfall) footprint ranges from 760 to 1000 L L-1. The grey water footprint varies considerably, ranging from 44 to 1579 L, a 35-fold difference, with a county average of 518 L. This framework can be a useful tool for watershed-or county-level biofuel sustainability metric analysis to address the heterogeneity of the water footprint for biofuels

Adapting Livestock Production Systems to Climate Change in Nepal: Challenges and Opportunities

To assess climate change impacts and identify challenges and opportunities for livestock climate change adaption, we conducted a comprehensive study in the Thulokhola watershed of Nuwakot district in Nepal from June 1, 2011 to January 31, 2013. We established nine community livestock groups (CLGs) consisting of 51 members and trained the CLG members in daily livestock record keeping and monitoring surface water quality. Monthly fecal samples from 50 cattle, 50 goats, and 50 buffaloes were collected for the determination of gastrointestinal parasites. Soil and fodder samples were also collected and analyzed. Group discussions, Participatory Rural Appraisals, and full-fledged household survey of 97 households were done. A survey of 41 water sources in the watershed was also conducted. While 85.3 % of the water sources have either dried up or decreased in flow in recent years, drought conditions had great toll on agricultural production. Prevalence rates of helminthes on goats, cattle, and buffalo was 53.8%, 31.32%, and 23.52%, respectively, and animal deaths were remarkably high. Declining pregnancy rates on livestock along with waning supply of fodder and forages and poor soil quality were additional major problems. Although local communities have undertaken several measures including adding new breed, destocking, purchasing fodder and forages, and planting grasses for livestock climate change adaptation, the problems of animal health, breeding conditions, soil fertility, forest degradation, increasing women workload, and water shortages were largely unaddressed. Opportunities for livestock climate change adaptation in Nepal include agroforestry intervention, groundwater utilization, rainwater harvesting, enhancing feed efficiency, and community capacity-building

Identifying land use and land cover (LULC) change from 2000 to 2025 driven by tourism growth: A study case in Bali

Bali has been open to tourism since the beginning of the 20 th century and is known as the first tourist destination in Indonesia. The Denpasar, Badung, Gianyar, and Tabanan (Sarbagita) areas experience the most rapid growth of tourism activity in Bali. This rapid tourism growth has caused land use and land cover (LULC) to change drastically. This study mapped the land-use change in Bali from 2000 to 2025. The land change modeller (LCM) tool in ArcGIS was employed to conduct this analysis. The images were classified into agricultural land, open area, mangrove, vegetation/forest, and built-up area. Some Landsat images in 2000 and 2015 were exploited in predicting the land use and land cover (LULC) change in 2019 and 2025. To measure the accuracy of prediction, Landsat 8 OLI images for 2019 were classified and tested to verify the LULC model for 2019. The Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) neural network was trained with two influencing factors: elevation and road network. The result showed that the built-up growth direction expanded from the Denpasar area to the neighbouring areas, and land was converted from agriculture, open area and vegetation/forest to built-up for all observation years. The built-up was predicted growing up to 43 % from 2015 to 2025. This model could support decision-makers in issuing a policy for monitoring LULC since the Kappa coefficients were more than 80% for all models

Environmental footprint family to address local to planetary sustainability and deliver on the SDGs

The number of publications on environmental footprint indicators has been growing rapidly, but with limited efforts to integrate different footprints into a coherent framework. Such integration is important for comprehensive understanding of environmental issues, policy formulation and assessment of trade-offs between different environmental concerns. Here, we systematize published footprint studies and define a family of footprints that can be used for the assessment of environmental sustainability. We identify overlaps between different footprints and analyse how they relate to the nine planetary boundaries and visualize the crucial information they provide for local and planetary sustainability. In addition, we assess how the footprint family delivers on measuring progress towards Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), considering its ability to quantify environmental pressures along the supply chain and relating them to the water-energy-food-ecosystem (WEFE) nexus and ecosystem services. We argue that the footprint family is a flexible framework where particular members can be included or excluded according to the context or area of concern. Our paper is based upon a recent workshop bringing together global leading experts on existing environmental footprint indicators

Trends in the availability of the vulture-toxic drug, diclofenac, and other NSAIDs in South Asia, as revealed by covert pharmacy surveys

SummaryThe catastrophic declines of three species of ‘Critically Endangered’ Gyps vultures in South Asia were caused by unintentional poisoning by the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) diclofenac. Despite a ban on its veterinary use in 2006 (India, Nepal, Pakistan) and 2010 (Bangladesh), residues of diclofenac have continued to be found in cattle carcasses and in dead wild vultures. Another NSAID, meloxicam, has been shown to be safe to vultures. From 2012 to 2018, we undertook covert surveys of pharmacies in India, Nepal and Bangladesh to investigate the availability and prevalence of NSAIDs for the treatment of livestock. The purpose of the study was to establish whether diclofenac continued to be sold for veterinary use, whether the availability of meloxicam had increased and to determine which other veterinary NSAIDs were available. The availability of diclofenac declined in all three countries, virtually disappearing from pharmacies in Nepal and Bangladesh, highlighting the advances made in these two countries to reduce this threat to vultures. In India, diclofenac still accounted for 10–46% of all NSAIDs offered for sale for livestock treatment in 2017, suggesting weak enforcement of existing regulations and a continued high risk to vultures. Availability of meloxicam increased in all countries and was the most common veterinary NSAID in Nepal (89.9% in 2017). Although the most widely available NSAID in India in 2017, meloxicam accounted for only 32% of products offered for sale. In Bangladesh, meloxicam was less commonly available than the vulture-toxic NSAID ketoprofen (28% and 66%, respectively, in 2018), despite the partial government ban on ketoprofen in 2016. Eleven different NSAIDs were recorded, several of which are known or suspected to be toxic to vultures. Conservation priorities should include awareness raising, stricter implementation of current bans, bans on other vulture-toxic veterinary NSAIDs, especially aceclofenac and nimesulide, and safety-testing of other NSAIDs on Gyps vultures to identify safe and toxic drugs.</jats:p

Prevalence of JC Virus in Chinese Patients with Colorectal Cancer

BACKGROUND: JCV is a DNA polyomavirus very well adapted to humans. Although JCV DNA has been detected in colorectal cancers (CRC), the association between JCV and CRC remains controversial. In China, the presence of JCV infection in CRC patients has not been reported. Here, we investigated JCV infection and viral DNA load in Chinese CRC patients and to determine whether the JCV DNA in peripheral blood (PB) can be used as a diagnostic marker for JCV-related CRC. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Tumor tissues, non-cancerous tumor-adjacent tissues and PB samples were collected from 137 CRC patients. In addition, 80 normal colorectal tissue samples from patients without CRC and PB samples from 100 healthy volunteers were also harvested as controls. JCV DNA was detected by nested PCR and glass slide-based dot blotting. Viral DNA load of positive samples were determined by quantitative real-time PCR. JCV DNA was detected in 40.9% (56/137) of CRC tissues at a viral load of 49.1 to 10.3×10(4) copies/µg DNA. Thirty-four (24.5%) non-cancerous colorectal tissues (192.9 to 4.4×10(3) copies/µg DNA) and 25 (18.2%) PB samples (81.3 to 4.9×10(3) copies/µg DNA) from CRC patients were positive for JCV. Tumor tissues had higher levels of JCV than non-cancerous tissues (P = 0.003) or PB samples (P<0.001). No correlation between the presence of JCV and demographic or medical characteristics was observed. The JCV prevalence in PB samples was significantly associated with the JCV status in tissue samples (P<0.001). Eleven (13.8%) normal colorectal tissues and seven (7.0%) PB samples from healthy donors were positive for JCV. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: JCV infection is frequently present in colorectal tumor tissues of CRC patients. Although the association between JCV presence in PB samples and JCV status in tissue samples was identified in this study, whether PB JCV detection can serve as a marker for JCV status of CRC requires further study

Global Monthly Water Scarcity: Blue Water Footprints versus Blue Water Availability

Freshwater scarcity is a growing concern, placing considerable importance on the accuracy of indicators used to characterize and map water scarcity worldwide. We improve upon past efforts by using estimates of blue water footprints (consumptive use of ground- and surface water flows) rather than water withdrawals, accounting for the flows needed to sustain critical ecological functions and by considering monthly rather than annual values. We analyzed 405 river basins for the period 1996–2005. In 201 basins with 2.67 billion inhabitants there was severe water scarcity during at least one month of the year. The ecological and economic consequences of increasing degrees of water scarcity – as evidenced by the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo), Indus, and Murray-Darling River Basins – can include complete desiccation during dry seasons, decimation of aquatic biodiversity, and substantial economic disruption

Building consensus on water use assessment of livestock production systems and supply chains: outcome and recommendations from the FAO LEAP partnership.

The FAO Livestock Environmental Assessment and Performance (LEAP) Partnership organised a Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to develop reference guidelines on water footprinting for livestock production systems and supply chains. The mandate of the TAG was to i) provide recommendations to monitor the environmental performance of feed and livestock supply chains over time so that progress towards improvement targets can be measured, ii) be applicable for feed and water demand of small ruminants, poultry, large ruminants and pig supply chains, iii) build on, and go beyond, the existing FAO LEAP guidelines and iv) pursue alignment with relevant international standards, specifically ISO 14040 (2006)/ISO 14044 (2006), and ISO 14046 (2014). The recommended guidelines on livestock water use address both impact assessment (water scarcity footprint as defined by ISO 14046, 2014) and water productivity (water use efficiency). While most aspects of livestock water use assessment have been proposed or discussed independently elsewhere, the TAG reviewed and connected these concepts and information in relation with each other and made recommendations towards comprehensive assessment of water use in livestock production systems and supply chains. The approaches to assess the quantity of water used for livestock systems are addressed and the specific assessment methods for water productivity and water scarcity are recommended. Water productivity assessment is further advanced by its quantification and reporting with fractions of green and blue water consumed. This allows the assessment of the environmental performance related to water use of a livestock-related system by assessing potential environmental impacts of anthropogenic water consumption (only ?blue water?); as well as the assessment of overall water productivity of the system (including ?green? and ?blue water? consumption). A consistent combination of water productivity and water scarcity footprint metrics provides a complete picture both in terms of potential productivity improvements of the water consumption as well as minimizing potential environmental impacts related to water scarcity. This process resulted for the first time in an international consensus on water use assessment, including both the life-cycle assessment community with the water scarcity footprint and the water management community with water productivity metrics. Despite the main focus on feed and livestock production systems, the outcomes of this LEAP TAG are also applicable to many other agriculture sectors