Averting biodiversity collapse in tropical forest protected areas

The rapid disruption of tropical forests probably imperils global biodiversity more than any other contemporary phenomenon¹⁻³. With deforestation advancing quickly, protected areas are increasingly becoming final refuges for threatened species and natural ecosystem processes. However, many protected areas in the tropics are themselves vulnerable to human encroachment and other environmental stresses⁴⁻⁹. As pressures mount, it is vital to know whether existing reserves can sustain their biodiversity. A critical constraint in addressing this question has been that data describing a broad array of biodiversity groups have been unavailable for a sufficiently large and representative sample of reserves. Here we present a uniquely comprehensive data set on changes over the past 20 to 30 years in 31 functional groups of species and 21 potential drivers of environmental change, for 60 protected areas stratified across the world’s major tropical regions. Our analysis reveals great variation in reserve ‘health’: about half of all reserves have been effective or performed passably, but the rest are experiencing an erosion of biodiversity that is often alarmingly widespread taxonomically and functionally. Habitat disruption, hunting and forest-product exploitation were the strongest predictors of declining reserve health. Crucially, environmental changes immediately outside reserves seemed nearly as important as those inside in determining their ecological fate, with changes inside reserves strongly mirroring those occurring around them. These findings suggest that tropical protected areas are often intimately linked ecologically to their surrounding habitats, and that a failure to stem broad-scale loss and degradation of such habitats could sharply increase the likelihood of serious biodiversity declines.Keywords: Ecology, Environmental scienc

Dust Characterization and Source Apportionment at an Active Surface Mine in West Virginia

Human exposures to environmental agents occur primarily through inhalation, ingestion, and dermal absorption. The relevant exposure pathways for coal mining will depend on a number of factors including; physical and toxicological properties of suspected agent, mining practices, and mode of agent transport. There is increasing evidence that the major transport route to Appalachian coal mining communities is fugitive dust transported from surface mine sites. However, the extent of exposure and resulting risk is unknown. As a result, site specific data is necessary to evaluate potential exposures from dust generated as a result of coal mining activities. The objective of this study is to characterize potential health risk associated with exposure to the dust collected from an active surface mine in West Virginia. Dust monitoring and sampling was conducted at an active surface mine in West Virginia. Real-time dust monitoring device (DustTrak DRX Aerosol Monitor 8534) was used to measure PM1, PM2.5, PM10, and Total PM mass and size fractions. Dust monitoring was conducted for overburden and coal loading operations, and trucks at the haul roads. In addition, dust samples associated with drill cuttings, cóal haul roads, overburden haul roads, wheel loader for shale overburden, and rope shovel operations were collected from various areas in the mine. Dust samples collected from the mine underwent particle size analysis and collection of ingestible and respirable size fractions followed by elemental analysis. The chemical data combined with the monitoring data allowed for exposure due to dust exposure to be calculated using standard risk equations. Using the same default values for exposure frequency, exposure duration, and averaging time; exposure due to background soil and dust was calculated in order to estimate risk of disease incident in non-coal mining communities. The 95th percentile PM10 concentrations at 9-11m from the various mining practices were 0.12, 0.084, 0.62 and 0.43 mg/m3 for coal road trucking (truck-coal), wheel loader, overburden trucking (truck-overburden), and rope shovel operations respectively. Results indicate that even with an extreme scenario; 95th percentile air particulate concentrations 9-11 m from the mining operation, 365 days/year for 70 years, exposure to constituents via inhalation accounts for a relatively small portion of total exposure when everyday incidental ingestion of native soil is considered. Dust generated from an active WV coal mine did not account for a majority of exposure to constituents that could potentially result in health effects. Rather, default USEPA values for calculating ingestion exposure suggest that everyday residential exposure to native WV soil may account for more than 70% of the total exposure to the 18 inorganic constituents quantified in this study