Sustainable drainage system site assessment method using urban ecosystem services

The United Kingdom's recently updated approach to sustainable drainage enhanced biodiversity and amenity objectives by incorporating the ecosystem approach and the ecosystem services concept. However, cost-effective and reliable methods to appraise the biodiversity and amenity values of potential sustainable drainage system (SuDS)sites and their surrounding areas are still lacking, as is a method to enable designers to distinguish and link the amenity and biodiversity benefits that SuDS schemes can offer. In this paper, therefore, the authors propose two ecosystem services- and disservices-based methods (i.e. vegetation structure cover-abundance examination and cultural ecosystem services and disservices variables appraisal) to aid SuDS designers to distinguish and link amenity and biodiversity benefits, and allow initial site assessments to be performed in a cost-effective and reliable fashion. Forty-nine representative sites within Greater Manchester were selected to test the two methods. Amenity and biodiversity were successfully assessed and habitat for species, carbon sequestration, recreation and education ecosystem services scores were produced,which will support SuDS retrofit design decision-making. Large vegetated SuDS sites with permanent aquatic features were found to be most capable of enhancing biodiversity- and amenity-related ecosystem services. Habitat for species and recreation ecosystem services were also found to be positively linked to each other. Finally, waste bins on site were found to help reduce dog faeces and litter coverage. Overall, the findings presented here enable future SuDS retrofit designs to be more wildlife friendly and socially inclusive

Lepidocrocite-like ferrititanate nanosheets and their full exfoliation with quaternary ammonium compounds

Efficient methods for the synthesis of layered structure nanomaterials (nanosheets), their complete exfoliation (delamination) into the layers of atomic thickness and design of organic-inorganic nanohybrids present important stages toward development of improved polymer-based nanocomposites and pillared heterostructures with potential application in purification technologies such as photocatalysis. A rapid and efficient exfoliation process of protonated layered ferrititanates with lepidocrocite-like structure and formation of organic-inorganic nanohybrids is performed starting from the nanosheets composed of only a few host layers and nanometric lateral dimensions using quaternary ammonium compounds. These nanosheets are initially synthesized from a highly abundant precursor through an alkaline hydrothermal route. We demonstrated that climethyldioctadecylammonium cations strongly interact with the exfoliated single host layers (075 nm thick) providing thermal stability (-500 "C) to the as-prepared organic-inorganic nanohybrid over the temperature range commonly applied for the processing of thermoplastic nanocomposites. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved