Maurice Violette Correspondence

Entry is a handwritten biographical sketch from the Augusta, Maine, author of Le Club Calumet Incorporated: Semi-Centennial Celebration History, 1922-1972, Fifty Years of Progress and The Franco-Americans

Collection of human and environmental data on pesticide use in Europe and Argentina: Field study protocol for the SPRINT project

Current farm systems rely on the use of Plant Protection Products (PPP) to secure high productivity and control threats to the quality of the crops. However, PPP use may have considerable impacts on human health and the environment. A study protocol is presented aiming to determine the occurrence and levels of PPP residus in plants (crops), animals (livestock), humans and other non-target species (ecosystem representatives) for exposure modelling and impact assessment. To achieve this, we designed a cross-sectional study to compare conventional and organic farm systems across Europe. Environmental and biological samples were/are being/will be collected during the 2021 growing season, at 10 case study sites in Europe covering a range of climate zones and crops. An additional study site in Argentina will inform the impact of PPP use on growing soybean which is an important European protein-source in animal feed. We will study the impact of PPP mixtures using an integrated risk assessment methodology. The fate of PPP in environmental media (soil, water and air) and in the homes of farmers will be monitored. This will be complemented by biomonitoring to estimate PPP uptake by humans and farm animals (cow, goat, sheep and chicken), and by collection of samples from non-target species (earthworms, fish, aquatic and terrestrial macroinvertebrates, bats, and farm cats). We will use data on PPP residues in environmental and biological matrices to estimate exposures by modelling. These exposure estimates together with health and toxicity data will be used to predict the impact of PPP use on environment, plant, animal and human health. The outcome of this study will then be integrated with socio-economic information leading to an overall assessment used to identify transition pathways towards more sustainable plant protection and inform decision makers, practitioners and other stakeholders regarding farming practices and land use policy

Maurice Violette Correspondence

Entry is a handwritten biographical sketch from the Augusta, Maine, author of Le Club Calumet Incorporated: Semi-Centennial Celebration History, 1922-1972, Fifty Years of Progress and The Franco-Americans

Rain reconstruction from various weather- related data sets using logistic regression : Methodology and applications

Knowledge of rain exposure is necessary for computing the effect of rainfalls on both the injury accident's occurence and on the driver's behaviour. Different meteorological data sources, each of them having its advantages and drawbacks, have to be matched before being used for that purpose. A statistical approach (the logistic regression technique) has been retained, which aims at reconstituting the relevant information related to rainfall, even at places which can be remote from the meteorological measurement stations. It consists in combining various meteorological sources, such as both human and sensor-based data collection. The analysis is based on a 6 minutes time scale, rather than on the usual hour time scale. The available weather information is used, after a learning phase, to model the probability rainfalls occur during each 6 minutes period. This methodology is applied to estimate the risk of injury accident due to rain, on the French main and country roads in Haute-Normandie. This method allows to compute the risk during rain and to compare it with the risk during clement weather condition. The risk during rainfalls is estimated at 21.9 accidents per 100 millions vehicle whereas the risk during normal weather conditions is estimated at 10.4. Therefore, the average added risk due to rain is estimated at 2.1 and at 2.4 in case of bends, and these results are consistent with other related results

Adeed risk in case of rain: some recent results for France

International audienceThis paper provides some results demonstrating the impact of rain on road safety for France. The risk of injury accident and the added risk in case of rain are estimated for several types of injury accidents which occurred in France for the period 1995-2008. Estimations cover the whole of France, in average and according the category of network and element of the road. These results are relevant as they will contribute to implement specific road safety measures. The risk of injury accident in case of rain is defined as the number of injury accidents per vehicle-kilometre by rainy conditions. The added risk in case of rain is defined as the ratio of the risk of injury accident by rainy conditions divided by the risk of injury accident by no rain. As the number of vehicle kilometres is partly unknown, the rain duration is used in this paper in the place of the number of vehicle-kilometres by rainy conditions. An approximation of the added risk is thus derived. For computing these estimations, two data sources related to injury accidents and rain duration were used: the BAAC (the French Injury Accident File) and Météo-France. In addition, the changes in the added risk in case of rain over the period 1995-2008 are described with the help of time series analysis techniques. The results are commented in relation with more detailed results obtained for the Haute-Normandie region in France, and recommendations for improving the computation method are given

Added risk by rainy weather on the roads of Normandie-Centre region in France : Some elements for the French IRCAD-SARI traffic monitoring and information system for drivers and operators

The project IRCAD-SARI, funded by the French Ministry of Transport, will experiment on some rural roads in France a warning sign system during adverse weather conditions. The safety stake is assessed by computing the added-risk in case of adverse weather conditions, and especially in case of rain on bends. The method for estimating rain exposure takes into account several types of meteorological information, and the additional weather information of the accident database. The traffic database, when available, enables to drop the approximate assumption that traffic is not correlated with rain. A method for computing the added risk due to rain is proposed and some related results are given in this paper

3-D modelling of salt and heat transport during the 248 m.y. evolution of the Paris basin : diagenetic implications

International audienceA 3-D model of the Paris basin was constructed to reconstitute its 248 m.y. geologic history from the Trias to the present. The model is based on detailed stratigraphic and lithographic data from about 1,100 petroleum drillings. Its scale is regional and it covers a surface area of 700,000 km(2), which exceeds the present extent of the basin in order to allow the paleogeographic evolution of the European plate to be taken into account. The geological history is simulated with the numerical model NEWBAS from the Ecole des Mines de Paris. The model simulates sedimentation, erosion, compaction, fluid flow and processes of solute and heat transport. The objective of this article is to demonstrate the value of this type of modelling for estimating and quantifying the role of fluid circulation in geological processes. Studies of diagenetic cements in the Dogger and Keuper aquifers in the Paris basin have often led their authors to consider the involvement of regional fluid circulation. These studies provide estimates of paleotemperature and paleosalinity which impose constraints on the modelling but the latter may, in turn, contribute to date the events and estimate the relevant processes. By reconstructing heat and salt transport, as proposed in this article, it is therefore possible to define the influence of hydrodynamics on these processes. The history of heat and salt in the basin is shown at various stages on a representative NW-SE cross-section of a present-day flow line which is also valid for Tertiary times. We demonstrate that the role of hydrodynamics may be predominant for salt transport by gravity-driven flow, which explains the salinity increase in the Keuper aquifer and the role of the Bray fault in the salinisation of the Dogger. Although the heat transport is dominated by the conductive component, it is also influenced by the hydrodynamics with a possible convective cooling effect when the head in the aquifers increased at the end of the Tertiary erosion period. This may partly explain the higher temperatures, deduced from fluid inclusions in the Keuper, at the end of the chalk deposition as compared to present ones. According to our simulations, the early Tertiary is the period most compatible with the diagenetic observations for thermal (maximum burial and convective cooling effect) and chemical reasons (topography allowing migration of brines in the Keuper and the Dogger)

Contribution of a three-dimensional regional scale basin model to the study of the past fluid flow evolution and the present hydrology of the Paris basin, France

International audienceA basin model was built to simulate in three dimensions the 248 Myr geological history of the Paris basin, France, i.e. sedimentation, erosion, compaction heat and fluid flow. This multidisciplinary study was based on a detailed stratigraphic database of more than 1100 well logs together with a hydrodynamic database of 1000 data (heads and permeabilities). The region covers a maximum surface area of 700 000 km(2). The NEWBAS code of the Ecole des Mines de Paris was used in order to simulate compaction and heat and fluid flow. Three examples of the use of this model are given to illustrate different features of the geological functioning of the basin. (i) By modelling processes such as sedimentation, compaction, fluid and heat flow, the model provides estimates of the hydraulic conductivity fields within one order of magnitude from observations at the regional scale. This permeability field can reproduce the present-day observed pressures and fluxes in the basin. (ii) Observed excess pressures in the main aquitards are considered as possible consequences of the geological history of the basin. The calculated excess pressures are small and stay within the range of the measured values, between 0 and 2.75 MPa, close to the pressures in the aquifers. However, the weak excess pressures measured in the Callovo-Oxfordian sequence in the eastern part of the basin are not reproduced by the model. Mechanisms other than compaction disequilibrium must be invoked. (iii) This model also calculates regional-scale palaeofluid flow whose value is currently arbitrarily assumed by geochemists when studying diagenetic processes. Hence, it provides a hydrologic background for diagenetic models. The cementation in the western Keuper reservoirs was investigated. Topographically driven flow during tectonic inversion periods, e.g. the Lower Cretaceous and Early Tertiary, is shown to be a plausible cause of brine migrations. This brine displacement would then explain the high salinities recorded in the fluid inclusions trapped in the Keuper cements. The conditions for the migration would have been most favourable at the time of the maximum burial, i.e. the Early Tertiary and not the Early Cretaceous as previously suggested

A Field Study ProtoCol for Collection of Human and Environmental Data on Pesticide Use in Europe and Argentina

Current farm systems rely on the use of Plant Protection Products (PPP) to secure high productivity and control threats to the quality of the crops. However, PPP use may have considerable impacts on human health and the environment. A study protocol is presented aiming to determine the occurrence and levels of PPP residues in plants (crops), animals (livestock), humans and other non-target species (ecosystem representatives) for exposure modelling and impact assessment. To achieve this, we designed a cross-sectional study to compare conventional and organic farm systems across Europe. Environmental and biological samples were/are being/will be collected during the 2021 growing season, at 10 case study sites in Europe covering a range of climate zones and crops. An additional study site in Argentina will inform the impact of PPP use on growing soybean which is an important European protein-source in animal feed. We will study the impact of PPP mixtures using an integrated risk assessment methodology. The fate of PPP in environmental media (soil, water and air) and in the homes of farmers will be monitored. This will be complemented by biomonitoring to estimate PPP uptake by humans and farm animals (cow, goat, sheep and chicken), and by collection of samples from non-target species (earthworms, fish, aquatic and terrestrial macroinvertebrates, bats, and farm cats). We will use data on PPP residues in environmental and biological matrices to estimate exposures by modelling. These exposure estimates together with health and toxicity data will be used to predict the impact of PPP use on environment, plant, animal and human health. The outcome of this study will then be integrated with socio-economic information leading to an overall assessment used to identify transition pathways towards more sustainable plant protection and inform decision makers, practitioners and other stakeholders regarding farming practices and land use policy

A Field Study ProtoCol for Collection of Human and Environmental Data on Pesticide Use in Europe and Argentina

Current farm systems rely on the use of Plant Protection Products (PPP) to secure high productivity and control threats to the quality of the crops. However, PPP use may have considerable impacts on human health and the environment. A study protocol is presented aiming to determine the occurrence and levels of PPP residues in plants (crops), animals (livestock), humans and other non-target species (ecosystem representatives) for exposure modelling and impact assessment. To achieve this, we designed a cross-sectional study to compare conventional and organic farm systems across Europe. Environmental and biological samples were/are being/will be collected during the 2021 growing season, at 10 case study sites in Europe covering a range of climate zones and crops. An additional study site in Argentina will inform the impact of PPP use on growing soybean which is an important European protein-source in animal feed. We will study the impact of PPP mixtures using an integrated risk assessment methodology. The fate of PPP in environmental media (soil, water and air) and in the homes of farmers will be monitored. This will be complemented by biomonitoring to estimate PPP uptake by humans and farm animals (cow, goat, sheep and chicken), and by collection of samples from non-target species (earthworms, fish, aquatic and terrestrial macroinvertebrates, bats, and farm cats). We will use data on PPP residues in environmental and biological matrices to estimate exposures by modelling. These exposure estimates together with health and toxicity data will be used to predict the impact of PPP use on environment, plant, animal and human health. The outcome of this study will then be integrated with socio-economic information leading to an overall assessment used to identify transition pathways towards more sustainable plant protection and inform decision makers, practitioners and other stakeholders regarding farming practices and land use policy