Search results for "Environmental engineering"
showing 10 items of 2674 documents
Regionalizing rainfall at very high resolution over la Réunion island using a regional climate model.
2014
Abstract Regional climate models (RCMs) should be evaluated with respect to their ability to downscale large-scale climate information to the local scales, which are sometimes strongly modulated by surface conditions. This is the case for La Réunion (southwest Indian Ocean) because of its island context and its complex topography. Large-scale atmospheric configurations such as tropical cyclones (TCs) may have an amplifying effect on local rainfall patterns that only a very high-resolution RCM, forced by the large scales and resolving finescale processes, may simulate properly. This paper documents the capability of the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) RCM to regionalize rainfall…
Lead concentrations in feathers and blood of common blackbirds (Turdus merula) and in earthworms inhabiting unpolluted and moderately polluted urban …
2006
9 pages; International audience; Despite the dramatic decrease of atmospheric lead (Pb) concentrations in urban areas of most industrialised countries, we hypothesised that urban common blackbirds (Turdus merula) may still be contaminated by Pb concentrations of toxicological concern due to transfer from soil through the food chain. We sampled blackbirds and earthworms, one of their main preys, in Besan?, a middle-size city of Eastern France (where atmospheric Pb concentrations decreased from 0.5 microg/m(3) in 1987 to nearly 0 in 2002) and in a rural reference site. Lead concentrations were determined in the tissues of the different functional groups of earthworms (anecic, epigeous and end…
SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater anticipated COVID-19 occurrence in a low prevalence area
2020
Preprint disponible en http://hdl.handle.net/10261/209125
Profiles and seasonal distribution of airborne fungi in indoor and outdoor environments at a French hospital
2009
International audience; A one-year prospective survey of fungal air contamination was conducted in outdoor air and inside two haematological units of a French hospital. Air was sampled with a portable Air System Impactor. During this period of survey, the mean viable fungal load was 122.1 cfu/m(3) in outdoor air samples, and 4.1 and 3.9 cfu/m(3) in samples from adult and pediatric haematology units, respectively. In outdoor samples, Cladosporium was the dominant genus (55%) while in the clinical units, Penicillium sp. (23 to 25%), Aspergillus sp. (15 to 23%) and Bjerkandera adusta (11 to 13%) were the most frequently recovered airborne fungi. The outdoor fungal load was far higher in autumn…
Occurrence of selected antibiotics and antiretroviral drugs in Nairobi River Basin, Kenya.
2015
In this paper, we investigated the occurrence of three antibiotics (sulfamethoxazole, trimethoprim and ciprofloxacin) and three antiretroviral (lamivudine, nevirapine and zidovudine) drugs in the Nairobi River Basin, Kenya. The analytical procedure involved extraction using solid phase extraction followed by liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (SPE-LC-ESI-MS/MS). In this study, 40 sites were selected for sampling, including 38 sites along the rivers and 2 wastewater treatment effluent sites. All the studied compounds were detected with sulfamethoxazole having the highest detection frequency of 97.5% and ciprofloxacin had the lowest at 60%. The results show…
The results of the vine varieties reconversion measures in the North-Eastern Romania / Résultats de la mesure de reconversion des cépages dans le Nor…
2016
The vine varieties reconversion measure is one of the many benefits that the Romania's integration to the European Union brings to the wine sector. This study aims to analyze the results of this measure during 2007–2015 in the Romania's North-East Region. From the Vineyard Plantation Register, the plots noble vine parcels of each department were divided into two groups: those who existed in the field in before and those converted during the period. The surface of each group was classified first, based on the color of the grapes and secondarily, based on the pair international varieties – non international varieties. The conversion affected 3 of 6 departments. In Iasi, where the proportion o…
Effect of pH and nitrite concentration on nitrite oxidation rate
2011
The effect of pH and nitrite concentration on the activity of the nitrite oxidizing bacteria (NOB) in an activated sludge reactor has been determined by means of laboratory batch experiments based on respirometric techniques. The bacterial activity was measured at different pH and at different total nitrite concentrations (TNO 2). The experimental results showed that the nitrite oxidation rate (NOR) depends on the TNO 2 concentration independently of the free nitrous acid (FNA) concentration, so FNA cannot be considered as the real substrate for NOB. NOB were strongly affected by low pH values (no activity was detected at pH 6.5) but no inhibition was observed at high pH values (activity wa…
Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction Due to Improvement of Biodegradable Waste Management System
2014
Abstract To reduce emissions of greenhouse gas (GHG) from landfills, the European Union (EU) Landfill Directive 1999/31/EC requires that there be a progressive decrease in the municipal biodegradable waste disposal. The main problem of waste management (WM) in Latvia is its heavy dependence on the waste disposal at landfills. The poorly developed system for the sorted municipal waste collection and the promotion of landfilling as a major treatment option led to the disposal of 84% of the total collected municipal waste in 2012, with a high biodegradable fraction. In Latvia, the volume of emissions due to activities of the WM branch was 5.23% (632.6 CO2 eq.) of the total GHG emissions produc…
Measurement methodology for greenhouse gas emissions from storage of forest chips–A review
2015
Abstract Research on greenhouse gas emission related to solid biofuels has focused mainly on the emissions from end use and the production chain. GHG emissions from the storage of forest chips have not received much attention in recent literature. In order for EU emission reduction targets to be fully understood, emissions from solid biofuel storage needs to be better described. Usually emissions from chip piles have been modelled using studies from organic waste composting but these two materials can differ appreciably; for example the C/N-ratio and moisture content. Herein, previous studies on greenhouse gas emissions from forest chips piles during storage are reviewed. The objective is t…
First nation-wide estimation of tobacco consumption in Spain using wastewater-based epidemiology
2020
Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has become a very useful tool to monitor a population's drug consumption or exposure to environmental and food contaminants. In this work, WBE has been applied to estimate tobacco consumption in seven Spanish regions. To this end, 24 h composite wastewater samples were taken daily for one week in 17 wastewater treatment plants, covering altogether a population of ca. 6 million inhabitants. The samples were treated by enzymatic deconjugation and the wastewater content of two human-specific nicotine metabolites (namely, cotinine and trans-3′-hydroxycotinine) was measured to estimate the daily consumption of nicotine. The population-weighted average nicotine…