Search results for "forest"
showing 10 items of 3780 documents
Organochlorine Compounds in the Environment
1988
Recent pollution by organochlorine compounds (OCs) has been found to cause ecological damage, initially by causing declining populations. Poisoning of animals having high OC levels was often found to be similar to poisoning of man and animals in dioxin accidents. Dioxin toxicity has been shown to occur from structural binding of the toxin to a cytosolic receptor, and this action has been extended to many planar and coplanar aromatic OCs which are released into the environment from pesticide uses, dumping of chlorophenol wastes, chlorobleaching of pulp, chlorodisinfection of water, and combustion of OCs or chloride-containing materials. More efficient combustion has been developed to restric…
Short-term low-severity spring grassland fire impacts on soil extractable elements and soil ratios in Lithuania
2017
Abstract Spring grassland fires are common in boreal areas as a consequence of slash and burn agriculture used to remove dry grass to increase soil nutrient properties and crop production. However, few works have investigated fire impacts on these grassland ecosystems, especially in the immediate period after the fire. The objective of this work was to study the short-term impacts of a spring grassland fire in Lithuania. Four days after the fire we established a 400 m2 sampling grid within the burned area and in an adjacent unburned area with the same topographical, hydrological and pedological characteristics. We collected topsoil samples immediately after the fire (0 months), 2, 5, 7 and …
Assessment of the possibility of using deciduous tree bark as a biomonitor of heavy metal pollution of atmospheric aerosol
2019
The aim of the research was to assess the possibility to use deciduous tree bark in the biomonitoring of urban areas. The tree bark taken from various deciduous tree species growing in the Opole Province (south-western Poland) was used for the research. The bark was collected from tree trunks in the period of June 2–26, 2017. Concentrations of the heavy metals were determined in the barks by flame atomic absorption spectrometry (FAAS). On the basis of the research, it was determined that type of tree, distance from pollution source, elevation off the ground and the side of trunk from which bark was sampled all influence the research results. A comparison of the values of coefficient of vari…
Determining exhaust fumes exposure in chainsaw operations
2016
Abstract The objective of this study was to investigate the inhalation exposure of forest operators to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and total xylenes) contained in the exhaust fumes released from chainsaws and to suggest possible countermeasures. The study was carried out in four silvicultural treatments (coppice clearcut, conifer thinning, conifer pruning, and sanitary cut), using three types of chainsaw fuel (normal two-stroke petrol mix and two alkylate fuels). Eighty personal air samples were collected; IOM samplers combined with Amberlite XAD-2 sorbent tubes were used for collecting PAHs and Radiello® samplers were used for BTEX. Resu…
Potentially toxic elements in fen peatland soils located near lignite-fired power plants in Central Poland
2021
Abstract The Grojec Valley (GV) peatland area in Central Poland is located close to lignite-fired power plants, which could be sources of potentially toxic elements (PTE). The aims of this study are: (1) to determine the effect of the lignite-fired power plants on soil pollution, (2) to evaluate pollution indices and magnetic susceptibility methods for determining the origin and distribution of PTE in soils, and (3) to demonstrate the importance of appropriate geochemical background (GB) selection for pollution studies in peatland soils. In order to comprehensively assess the soil pollution, four pollution indices (calculated using various types of GBs), and the mass-specific magnetic susce…
The contamination legacy of a decommissioned iron smelter in the Italian Alps
2018
The economically important activity of metal processing can tend to contribute to the degradation of the environment. Smelting is an important source of contaminants, dispersing large quantities of potentially toxic elements (PTE) and coproducts into the environment. Soils in the vicinity of smelters frequently contain high concentrations of PTE. In terms of the quantities processed, the major PTE are iron (Fe), aluminium (Al), copper (Cu), lead (Pb), manganese (Mn), and zinc (Zn); of these Cu, Pb and Zn are, potentially, highly hazardous elements. The general problem addressed by this study is to determine if the PTE concentration in the soils of an area downwind from a decommissioned iron…
Carbon and nitrogen stabile isotope ratio and heavy metals in Leccinum aurantiacum in a hybrid aspen plantation in agricultural land
2020
Edible mycorrhizal fungi can be harvested in the fourth year after establishment of a hybrid aspen plantation in previous agricultural land at hemiboreal conditions. It is important to understand the role of fungi in element cycling at the ecosystem level as well as the amounts of elements, including heavy metals, that are accumulated in fruitbodies of edible fungi in the context of food safety. Therefore we evaluated the carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratio and content of heavy metals (Cr, Pb, Mn, Ni, Cd, Cu and Zn) in Leccinum aurantiacum (Bull.) Gray in a juvenile hybrid aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx. × Populus tremula L.) plantation in agricultural land initially fertilised with …
Machine Learning Regression Approaches for Colored Dissolved Organic Matter (CDOM) Retrieval with S2-MSI and S3-OLCI Simulated Data
2018
The colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM) variable is the standard measure of humic substance in waters optics. CDOM is optically characterized by its spectral absorption coefficient, a C D O M at at reference wavelength (e.g., ≈ 440 nm). Retrieval of CDOM is traditionally done using bio-optical models. As an alternative, this paper presents a comparison of five machine learning methods applied to Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 simulated reflectance ( R r s ) data for the retrieval of CDOM: regularized linear regression (RLR), random forest regression (RFR), kernel ridge regression (KRR), Gaussian process regression (GPR) and support vector machines (SVR). Two different datasets of radiative t…
Dynamic Animal Populations in Managed Forests: Species Ecological Requirements and Sustainable Harvesting
2015
Forest management has altered forested environments and provoked stress to many natural habitats and biodiversity. The goal of biodiversity management is the long-term persistence of populations in human-modified environments. We demonstrate a spatio-temporal modeling approach to address the relationship between various management objectives and population persistence in the long-term in a commercial forest landscape. We used the flying squirrel (Pteromys volans), the three-toed woodpecker (Picoides tridactylus) and the long-tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatus) as example species. They are all forest species but they have distinctly different habitat requirements. In the model, forest growth, f…
Random forests, a novel approach for discrimination of fish populations using parasites as biological tags.
2008
Due to the complexity of host-parasite relationships, discrimination between fish populations using parasites as biological tags is difficult. This study introduces, to our knowledge for the first time, random forests (RF) as a new modelling technique in the application of parasite community data as biological markers for population assignment of fish. This novel approach is applied to a dataset with a complex structure comprising 763 parasite infracommunities in population samples of Atlantic cod, Gadus morhua, from the spawning/feeding areas in five regions in the North East Atlantic (Baltic, Celtic, Irish and North seas and Icelandic waters). The learning behaviour of RF is evaluated in …