Search results for " Salinity"
showing 10 items of 141 documents
The effect of saline water on Phillyrea angustifolia L. seedlings
2013
Water limitations in the Mediterranean areas are very common and the use of saline water for plant irrigation is becoming a necessity. Salinity generally affects plant growth and physiological processes, and can eventually lead to leaf injuries and plant death. For these reasons, the selection of salt tolerant species is a priority for landscaping purposes in the Mediterranean areas. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of saline water on Phillyrea angustifolia plant performance. Seventy-five rooted cuttings were grown in the greenhouse in 4-liter pots and irrigated for 5 months with saline water at different NaCl concentrations for two consecutive years. In 2010, 45 plant…
A method for soil moisture probes calibration and validation of satellite estimates
2017
Graphical abstract
Evaluation of Permeate Quality in Pilot Scale Membrane Distillation Systems
2019
In this work, the salinity of permeate obtained with membrane distillation (MD) in pilot scale systems was analyzed. Experiments were performed with three different spiral-wound commercial modules, one from Solar Spring with 10 m2 surface membrane area and two from Aquastill with 7.2 and 24 m2. Intermittent operation meant that high permeate conductivity was measured in the beginning of each experiment, which was gradually decreasing until reaching a constant value (3&ndash
Comparison between two MBR pilot plants treating synthetic shipboard slops: effect of salinity increase on biological performance, biomass activity a…
2015
The paper reports the main results of an experimental campaign carried out on two bench scale pilot plants for treatment of synthetic shipboard slops. In particular, two membrane bioreactors (MBRs) with submerged configuration were analyzed. One MBR pilot plant (namely, Line A) was fed with synthetic shipboard slop and was subjected to a gradual increase of salinity. Conversely, the second MBR pilot plant (namely, Line B) was fed with the same synthetic shipboard slop but without salt addition, therefore operating as a “control” unit. Organic carbon, hydrocarbons and ammonium removal, kinetic constants, extracellular polymeric substances (EPSs) production and membranes fouling rates have be…
Contrasting shell growth strategies in two Mediterranean bivalves revealed by oxygen-isotope ratio geochemistry: The case of Pecten jacobaeus and Gly…
2019
International audience; High-resolution stable-isotope ratio data (delta O-18, delta O-18) were used to study growth strategies of two bivalve species, Pecten jacobaeus (calcitic shell) and Glycymeris pilosa (aragonitic shell) from the North Adriatic Sea. The principal objectives of this study were to identify the period of the year when the growth line is formed in the shell of two target species, to identify the main growing season of these two species, to identify the environmental drivers of shell growth, and to evaluate the potential applicability of delta O-18 and delta O-18 values for the reconstruction of environmental variability. Samples were collected from the North Adriatic Sea …
Freshening of the Mediterranean Salt Giant: controversies and certainties around the terminal (Upper Gypsum and Lago-Mare) phases of the Messinian Sa…
2021
The late Miocene evolution of the Mediterranean Basin is characterized by major changes in connectivity, climate and tectonic activity resulting in unprecedented environmental and ecological disruptions. During the Messinian Salinity Crisis (MSC, 5.97-5.33 Ma) this culminated in most scenarios first in the precipitation of gypsum around the Mediterranean margins (Stage 1, 5.97-5.60 Ma) and subsequently > 2 km of halite on the basin floor, which formed the so-called Mediterranean Salt Giant (Stage 2, 5.60-5.55 Ma). The final MSC Stage 3, however, was characterized by a "low-salinity crisis", when a second calcium-sulfate unit (Upper Gypsum; substage 3.1, 5.55-5.42 Ma) showing (bio)geochemica…
Grasslands and Shrublands of the Mediterranean Region
2020
The Mediterranean Region extends to the 1.6% of the world’s land surface and more than the half of the Mediterranean-type ecosystems of the world. The remarkable species richness in the Mediterranean Region mainly originates from an exceptional habitat diversity and the presence of several natural barriers facilitating the segregation and differentiation of local taxa and biocoenoses. In this article, we deal with the habitats characterized by grasslands and shrublands that clearly show the adaptations to what could be called “the Mediterranean syndrome”, i.e., the intrazonal Mediterranean grasslands and shrublands (MG&S). The main driving forces of the adaptive radiation and high biodi…
The age of vines as a controlling factor of soil erosion processes in Mediterranean vineyards
2018
Abstract Vineyards incur the highest soil and water losses among all Mediterranean agricultural fields. The state-of-the-art shows that soil erosion in vineyards has been primarily surveyed with topographical methods, soil erosion plots and rainfall simulations, but these techniques do not typically assess temporal changes in soil erosion. When vines are planted they are about 30 cm high × 1 cm diameter without leaves, the root system varies from 2 to over 40 cm depth, and sometimes the lack of care used during transplanting can result in a field with highly erodible bare soils. This means that the time since vine plantation plays a key role in soil erosion rates, but very little attention …
Multiple stressors in Mediterranean coastal wetland ecosystems : Influence of salinity and an insecticide on zooplankton communities under different …
2021
Temperature increase, salinity intrusion and pesticide pollution have been suggested to be among the main stressors affecting the biodiversity of coastal wetland ecosystems. Here we assessed the single and combined effects of these stressors on zooplankton communities collected from a Mediterranean coastal lagoon. An indoor microcosm experiment was designed with temperature variation (20 °C and 30 °C), salinity (no addition, 2.5 g/L NaCl) and the insecticide chlorpyrifos (no addition, 1 μg/L) as treatments. The impact of these stressors was evaluated on water quality variables and on the zooplankton comunity (structure, diversity, abundance and taxa responses) for 28 days. This study shows …
Recent trends of SST in the Western Mediterranean basins from AVHRR Pathfinder data (1985-2007)
2011
Climate change in the Mediterranean region cannot be understood without taking into account changes in the Mediterranean Sea, which is an important source of moisture and heat for the Mediterranean climate system. Many research papers have been published in the last two decades increasing our knowledge about long-term trends and inter-annual variability of temperature and salinity in the Western Mediterranean. Although recent changes have been better documented, there remain uncertainties because different results are obtained depending on the period of time analyzed or the geographic region selected. This paper analyses the regional, seasonal and decadal variability of sea surface temperat…