Community Ecology and Capacity: Advancing Environmental Communication Strategies among Diverse Stakeholders

1. Introduction Many socioeconomically and geographically diverse communities in the United States have been challenged by occurrences of environmental contamination and the related complex public health issues. The investigations associated with such concerns have traditionally been the responsibility of governmental agencies. Communities facing potential environmental exposures often believe that government-based environmental agencies are not adequately addressing their concerns regarding risk, thus resulting in their misunderstanding and distrust of the regulatory process. A schism develops whereby the community perceives that government is either not doing enough to address their concerns and/or are being influenced by the relevant industry. The governmental agencies involved perceive that the community possesses an inaccurate or irrational perception of the potential risks. As a result, a stressful relationship often arises. Recommendations for effective risk communication have been developed and published (Covello & Sandman, 2001; Hance et al., 1989; Sandman, 1989). Research has also demonstrated the importance of developing relationships among stakeholders and its impact on information delivery and reception (ATSDR, 2004). Given that stakeholder groups perceive risk differently, it is imperative for each group to appreciate the viewpoints of all involved to engage in effective dialog (Park et al., 2001; Tinker et al., 2001). Cox (2006) defines environmental communication as “…the pragmatic and constitutive vehicle for our understanding of the environment as well as our relationships to the natural world; it is the symbolic medium that we use in constructing environmental problems and negotiating society’s different responses to them.” Although opportunities for public participation in environmental assessments have greatly increased, the environmental communication process among key stakeholders needs further evaluation (Charnley & Engelbert, 2005; McKinney & Harmon, 2002). The purpose of this chapter is to describe an evaluative process to develop and propose recommendations that could improve the environmental communication that occurs among diverse stakeholders, such as an environmental regulation and protection agency, waste disposal and energy producing facilities, community activists and the general public. Two case studies will be presented; the first describes the management of environmental permitting decisions in several disparate communities; and the second describes the management and perception of health risks from a single-owner waste-to-energy facility in two distinct communities. To accomplish this goal, this chapter will: 1.) examine how a state environmental agency and waste disposal and energy producing facilities describe their environmental communication experiences regarding various permitting operations and the risk perceptions of the impacted communities; 2.) identify effective communication methods; 3.) discuss the strengths and limitations of these activities; and 4.) propose recommendations for practitioners to advance environmental communication strategies among these key stakeholders

Generalized qudit Choi maps

Following the linear programming prescription of Ref. \cite{PRA72}, the $d\otimes d$ Bell diagonal entanglement witnesses are provided. By using Jamiolkowski isomorphism, it is shown that the corresponding positive maps are the generalized qudit Choi maps. Also by manipulating particular $d\otimes d$ Bell diagonal separable states and constructing corresponding bound entangled states, it is shown that thus obtained $d\otimes d$ BDEW's (consequently qudit Choi maps) are non-decomposable in certain range of their parameters.Comment: 22 page

Determination of NMR T2 cut-off for clay bound water in shales: A case study of Carynginia Formation, Perth Basin, Western Australia

Low-field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) has proved to be a valuable tool for the petrophysical characterization of conventional reservoirs, but its effective application to unconventional reservoirs is still under research. Pore structure characterization of shales is particularly challenging due to the complexity of the pore network and the small size of pores.Using low-field NMR, we performed transverse relaxation (T2) experiments on samples from the Perth Basin, Western Australia. The samples were initially saturated with KCl brine to obtain the total NMR porosity and T2 distribution, then centrifuged and finally oven-dried at increasing temperatures. T2 spectra were also acquired after centrifuging and heating the samples. Our results indicate that most of the transverse relaxation occurs below 3ms in saturated samples and that a conventional centrifuge cannot remove water from the smaller pores, making the commonly accepted clay bound water cut-off unsuitable for shales. Furthermore, the results from NMR experiments performed on the oven-dried shale samples suggest that the water content remains relatively constant after heating them above 65°C. The calculated T2 cut-off for clay bound water is between 0.22 and 0.26ms for the samples studied.The methodology presented in this paper can be replicated in other formations to find a suitable T2 value for clay bound water, which can be a good indication of potentially producible porosity and can also be used for permeability estimation

Extraction and determination of organosulfur compounds in water samples by using homogeneous liquid-liquid micro-extraction via flotation assistance-gas chromatography-flame ionization detection

A new method was developed for the preconcentration and determination of organosulfur compounds (OSCs) in water samples using homogeneous liquid-liquid microextraction via flotation assistance (HLLME-FA) and gas chromatography (GC) with flame ionization detection (FID). Toluene at microliter volume level and acetone were used as an extraction and a homogeneous solvent, respectively. In this research, a special extraction cell was designed to facilitate collection of the low-density solvent extraction. No centrifugation was required in this procedure. Using air flotation, extraction solvent was collected at the conical part of the designed cell. The effects of the different variables on the efficiency of the extraction such as kind and the volume of extraction and homogeneous solvents, ionic strength and extraction time were studied and optimized. Under the optimum conditions, linearity of the method were in the range from 0.25 to 200 µg L-1 with limit of detections (LODs) (S/N = 3) were in the range from 0.05 to 0.4 µg L-1. HLLME-FA is a fast, simple and efficient method for the determination of organic sulfur compounds in aquatic samples. KEY WORDS: Homogeneous liquid-liquid microextraction, Flotation assistance, Organosulfur compounds, Gas chromatography, Water samples Bull. Chem. Soc. Ethiop. 2014, 28(2), 195-204DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/bcse.v28i2.

Intelligent sequence stratigraphy through a wavelet-based decomposition of well log data

Identification of sequence boundaries is an important task in geological characterization of gas reservoirs. In this study, a continuous wavelet transform (CWT) approach is applied to decompose gamma ray and porosity logs into a set of wavelet coefficients at varying scales. A discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is utilized to decompose well logs into smaller frequency bandwidths called Approximations (A) and Details (D). The methodology is illustrated by using a case study from the Ilam and upper Sarvak formations in the Dezful embayment, southwestern Iran. Different graphical visualization techniques of the continuous wavelet transform results allowed a better understanding of the main sequence boundaries. Using the DWT, maximum flooding surface was successfully recognised from both highest frequency and low frequency contents of signals. There is a sharp peak in all A&D corresponding to the maximum flooding surface (MFS), which can specifically be seen in fifth Approximation (a5), fifth Detail (d5), fourth Detail (d4) and third Detail (d3) coefficients. Sequence boundaries were best recognised from the low frequency contents of signals, especially the fifth Approximation (a5). Normally, the troughs of the fifth Approximation correspond to sequence boundaries where higher porosities developed in the Ilam and upper Sarvak carbonate rocks. Through hybridizing both CWT and DWT coefficient a more effective discrimination of sequence boundaries was achieved. The results of this study show that wavelet transform is a successful, fast and easy approach for identification of the main sequence boundaries from well log data. There is a good agreement between core derived system tracts and those derived from decomposition of well logs by using the wavelet transform approach