Survival and Sustainability

Many soil sites in industrialized areas are contaminated with high concentrations of heavy metals. These pollutants are highly accumulated to ecosystem and human body and cause serious ecotoxical effects. To remove heavy metals from the soil, a potential strategy is the ecologically sound, safe, and cost effective rhizoremediation using the symbiotic relationship of plants and microbes in the rhizosphere.

Serratia

sp. K1RP-49 was isolated from the rhizoplane of the barnyard grass (

Echinochloa crus-galli

) which had grown in oil contaminated soil.

Serratia

sp. K1RP-49 could produce various organic acids such as oxalic acid (174 mg l

−1

), maleic acid (137 mg l

−1

), citric acid (15 mg l

−1

), malic acid (2 mg l

−1

), formic acid (117 mg l

−1

), acetic acid (79 mg l

−1

), and succinic acid (203 mg l

−1

). The pH of the culture broth was decreased due to the accumulation of these organic acids. This bacterium could produce a indole acetic acid and a siderophore(s). The K1RP-49 had a moderate resistance of Pb. The results of root elongation assay indicated that the growth of radicular root of maize could be enhanced by the inoculation of

Serratia

sp. K1RP-49.

The politics and the underlying reasons for the recuperation of a Scandinavian wolf population are increasingly contested. According to the official policy, wolves shall be guaranteed place in the Swedish fauna. The conflict regarding whether Sweden should host a wolf population polarises between on the one hand, views and understandings as regards biodiversity and sustainable development, and on the other hand, perspectives expressing that local traditions and livelihoods are at stake as a result of wolf occurrence in the landscape. The diverging environmental imaginaries at play in the debate can be seen as constitutive of spatial indifferences. States’ and nature conservation organisations’ desires to implement measures understood to provide conditions for the survival of the wolf are counterbalanced by local actions groups and community residents who struggle to maintain the conditions for the conservation of summer pasturing agriculture, continued and unchanged opportunities to perform hunting with sporting dogs and other recreational activities such as mushrooming and the picking of berries. Considered not only by themselves as of high natural and cultural value, the European Union like wisely appoint that small-scale ways of farming are important to maintain for the upkeep of the landscape and the promotion of conditions guarding the survival of the values associated with these ‘agri-environmental’ habitats.

Water is a must need for the life and none of the living creatures could exist without it. But, in meantime water could became a cause of some diseases and the death. With the social society development, improvement of the well-being and increase of the number of the residents in our planet, also the individual and economical need for the water is increased. The permanent human being is used only to take things from the nature not to contribute to the “nature”. However human egoism in rapport with nature and the vital environment, which is exploited without control and without any care can destroy the entire ecosystems. All of this is returned to the humans and seen in their life and health. The aim of this paper was analysis and determination of heavy metals like Cu, Zn, Cd, and Pb in water samples of different prophiles from Ohrid Lake. Studied water samples were taken in different locations and different depths (0, 20, 40, 75, 100 and 150 m). The presence of toxic heavy metals in food chain was studied in fish species – Belbica (

Alburnus

alburnus alborella

de Filippi). Determination of analysed heavy metals was done using Atomic Absorption spectroscopy using a Perkin Elmer 370 A and 370 flame – air acetylene and AAS Peyunicam 926 model.

The Algerian steppe has become for a few years the theatre of an ecological and climatic imbalance. The intense degradation for this fragile medium (stranding wind erosion, overgrazing, clearing, salinisation … .) inducing the turning into a desertification require a better comprehension in order to see how to fight against this plague and to adapt an adequate installation to him. Thus, this work lies within the scope of the follow-up of the phenomenon of the turning into a desertification on a space with the heart of the high Oranian southern steppe plains, in fact the area of Mecheria. Techniques of numerical cartography, since the satellite image processing until the geographic information systems (SIG) for the realization of the charts sets of themes, being able to highlight this calamity. The use of the approaches based on the exploitation of the satellite data multi dates (1998 and 2004) of the sensor Thematic Mapper (TM) of Landsat 5 permitted us to obtain a gathering of an interpretative photo maps and vegetation index which, in their turn, helped us to see the changes arrived in the medium, copiously regressive that progressive.

In this paper we have emphasise that sustainable tourism depends on community involvement and participation, communities should benefit from sustainable tourism, tourism is closely linked to the preservation of a healthy environment, which in turn is an essential element of tourism development and helps to raise public awareness on some biodiversity issues. An assessment of the inter-linkages biological diversity and tourism was endorsed. This included consideration of the economic importance of tourism and its interrelationship with the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity, as well as the potential impacts of tourism on biological diversity, including economic, social and environmental impacts. The management process comprises ten steps for management of sustainable tourism and biodiversity: (1) Baseline information and review; (2) Vision and goals; (3) Objectives; (4) Review of legislation and control measures; (5) Impact assessment; (6) Impact management; (7) Decision making; (8) Implementation; (9) Monitoring; (10) Adaptive management. Also we analyse the biological diversity in Albania, especially in Narta and Dukati lagoons.

Nearly all kind of activities on coastal areas need water data. These data are mostly provided by water authorities who are also responsible for the tide gauge. These gauges are located on various positions and for different purposes. Despite today’s possibility of remote control systems, tide gauges have to controlled and maintained by technicians, which means that this has a time and costly effect. Therefore investigations have been undertaken to find methods and tools which can the network optimize without the loss of information. There are various methods which can be used to find the best network. Most methods are using the required accuracy of the network purpose, the installation and the maintenance cost to find the optimized network under the given constrains. The methods are quiet well used on networks on inland waters. For coastal waters and especially with tidal influence the established methods are sparse. The allocation of tide gauges on coastal area depends mainly on the behaviour of the water surface. The physical processes which are in involved can be described and used by numerical models. But numerical models are not always present at every authority. Therefore a new method was required which only uses water level data. The new method is based on the Meshless Method were weight functions play a major role. The area of investigation is divided in sub domains were the tide gauges are the associated nodes. The paper describes the new method show an example.

Three shrub species—

Genista versicolor

,

Reseda complicata

and

Thymus serpylloides

subsp. s

erpylloides

—endemic of the Sierra Nevada (Spain) and used in the process of replanting the ski slopes of this zone have been studied with the aim of improving their germinative capacity. This work presents the results from a laboratory experiment conducted at three different temperatures (15, 20 and 25°C), studying the effect on germination percentage and rate after the application of certain plant-growth regulators: Inabarplant IV, Ethrel, benzyladenine, and gibberellic acid 3. From the results, it can be concluded that the three species studied present different optimal germination temperatures: 15°C for

G. versicolor

, 25°C for

R. complicata

and 20°C for

T. serpylloides.

With respect to the phytoregulators treatments, both in

G. versicolor

as well as

T. serpylloides

, the action of the benzyladenine was notable at 10 ppm and 25°C, which prompted an increase of 114 and 49% over their respective controls. In the case of

R. complicata

seeds, the treatments were generally more effective. Thus, Ethrel at 10 and 100 ppm improved the germination indices by 60 and 76%, respectively, benzyladenine at 10 ppm registered a 60% improvement, and GA

3

at 100 ppm a 60% improvement, in all cases at 25°C, the optimal temperature for seed germination in this species.

The influence of shading, irrigation and weeding on survival, growth and morphology of 1-year

Quercus castaneifolia

seedlings was studied in north of Iran. The seedlings were grown under eight treatments including full-light versus artificial shading, irrigation versus non-irrigation and weed presence versus weed removing at three replicates. At the end of the first growing season seedling survival in all treatments was 100%. Weed removing had positive effect on height, diameter growth, slenderness coefficient and leaf area of

Q. castaneifolia

. Irrigation enhanced diameter growth and leaf area, and shading increased leaf area. Irrigation had no significant effect on plant growth where the weed was removed. In weed plots seedlings growth and leaf area were greater in shading than in full-light. The results indicated that for 1-year

Q. castaneifolia

seedlings, weeding, in contrast to irrigation, is an essential factor. Where the weed competition is a difficulty, plantation with higher stem length should be applied.

The rangeland managers, by understanding the importance and role of diversity in sustainable exploitation of rangelands, paid much attention to evaluation of plant relative frequency. This has been worked out in this research. As there is the probability that social and economic factors dominate the ecologic importance of this procedure (biodiversity conservation) and plant diversity is endangered by the kind of use, which in this research, was carried out in part of Alborz rangelands of Iran, the plants of the region were investigated as follows based on regional conditions: Endangered (EN), Vulnerable (VU), Low Risk (LR), (IUCN: International Union Conservation of Nature, classification system was used). In this research the following botanical structure of 375 plant species were recognized: Poaceae: 12%, Papilionaceae: 26%, Rosaceae: 12%, Lamiaceae: 24%, Asteraceae: 17% and other species: 9%. Based on comparison of Critical areas with Reference areas, the highest plant species decrease, in the first place is from family Poaceae for excessive animal grazing and then from Papilionaceae as forage and industrial plants and Finally from Lamiaceae as medicinal, industrial and fragrant plants. It seems that endangered condition and change in plant structure can be controlled by rangeland management, but change in rangeland use for development along with ecosystem degradation are the main threat and danger for plant diversity destruction in the region.

Medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) have become a part of traditional system of medicines and have gained importance, more so in today’s world. According to the estimate of World Health Organization (WHO), about 80% of the population of developing world are making use of traditional medicines. The medicinal plants have been used for widespread purposes since ancient times in countries particularly India, China, Greece, Persia etc. In India, according to a report of AICEP, Anthropological Survey of India, 1994, it is estimated that over 7,500 species of medicinal plants are used for therapeutic uses. The major floral species which are widely used as medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) include

Ephedra gerardiana

Wall.,

Rauvolfia serpentina, Swertia chirata

,

Aconitum heterophyllum

Wall. ex Royle,

Rhododendron anthopogon

D. Dun.,

Peganum harmala L. etc.

The widespread use of these medicinal plants for both internal consumption and export purposes have led to their large-scale exploitation, resulting in loss of biological diversity (both at genetic and species level). Most of the medicinal plants like

Rauvolfia serpentina

,

Gentiana kurro

,

Alpinia galanga

,

Saussurea lappa

have become endangered and threatened. Overexploitation along with lack of initiatives from government bodies, absence of proper management systems and loss of traditional knowledge are some of the factors responsible for rapid biodiversity loss. Indigenous people and biodiversity complement each other and the former has played an important role in conservation of biodiversity since time immemorial. The rural communities over the period of time have gathered a pool of indigenous knowledge/know-how for cultivation of the medicinal plants and their propagation. In the meantime, the importance of local knowledge systems in conservation and preservation of the germplasm of medicinal plants have also attained global significance. In India, various programmes on medicinal plants and their conservation based on traditional knowledge are being carried out by the local people, Non Government Organizations (NGOs), Community Based Organizations (CBOs) at various grass root levels such as the districts and villages. Though an unorganized sector, the local people are playing their role in the propagation as well as conservation of the medicinal plants through the application of the concepts of herbal gardens and local “mandis” (markets). There is a need to strengthen these linkages and build upon the indigenous knowledge base of the local people through proper documentation and building of a strong database. This paper deliberates upon the importance (therapeutic, ecological and economic) of medicinal plants and threats to their biodiversity. The communication also describes the details of some of the local efforts, which are being carried out at local levels in India for conservation of medicinal plants through the use of indigenous knowledge of traditional medicines. The paper also highlights the need to integrate indigenous knowledge into national policies and strengthen the participation of the indigenous communities in order to harness maximum potential of medicinal plant biodiversity along with sustainable management of these resources.

The mixed beech forests (

Fagus orientalis

) are the most important industrial forests with the highest degree of naturalness in Hyrcanian forest, Iran. These forests commonly dominate by shade tolerance species with irregular uneven age stand structure. The aim of this study was to analyze the stand structure and spatial pattern in order to identify specific structural patterns. We investigated the stand structure and spatial pattern of trees in mixed Beech forest in the Shastkolate Educational Forest to examine the coexistence strategies of different species. Data was collected from an 16 ha permanent plot on an 400 × 400 m quadrate area that divided to 64 micro-quadrate (50 × 50 m). We mapped all stems >7.5 cm in diameter at breast height (dbh) on permanent plot. The stand contained nine woody plant species and 4,901 living stems with a combined basal area of 32.8 m

2

ha

−1

. The density of living trees >7.5 cm dbh averaged 291.7 ha

−1

. The six main species were divided into two groups based on density and stand structure. Group A (

F. orientalis, Carpinus betulus and Parrotia persica

) had higher density than group B, as well as reverse J or L-shaped dbh distribution of live stems. Species in group B (

Alnus subcordata, Acer velutinum and Diospurus lotus

) had bell-shaped dbh distributions. Species in group A have clump spatial distribution pattern in all layers but clump intensity is more than in under storey layer and size of patch clump is small in this group. This phenomenon for group A may explaining by having numerous coppice, sucker and patch regeneration in the under storey layer. Middle storey and under storey stems of the six major tree species were patchily distributed throughout the plot but for Alder and Maple species common pattern in canopy layer was complete spatial randomness. The distribution of Beech and Hornbeam trees were negatively associated with other species. These results suggest species differences in favorable canopy condition. Differences in life history strategies and site preferences may explain the coexistence of these species.

This research presents an approach to modeling nutrient/food-chain interactions in a stratified lake, which gives a general picture of the eutrophication level for lake Prespa and shows general trends of the trophic state of this aquatic ecosystem. Man – made eutrophication, in absence of control measures, provides much faster than the natural phenomenon and is the major reason for pollution of lake Prespa. The model presented provides informations on temporal resolution of eutrophication effects that is extremely useful to water quality managers. This study also provides a means to identify nutrient and light limitation, which is a critical step in controlling eutrophication. The specific nature of the lake has been taken account and embodied in the model. The adequacy of the simulation is assessed by experimental measurements in the lake. The results taken are encouraging.

The ecological starting point for crop health requires knowledge of what is in the soil (microbes, insects, weed seeds, etc.), methods to prevent herbicides resistance build up in the crop, and knowledge to maximize the plants ability to defend itself. The focus of most current crop production practices is weed control with little effort applied by herbicides. Cropping practices that degrade soil and limit genetic diversity contribute to increasing weed populations. A field experiment was initiated at Malkandher Research Farm, NWFP (North West Frontier Province) Agricultural University, Peshawar during Rabi 2005–2006 to figure out the tolerance of different wild oats (noxious weed) biotypes to herbicides. The experiment was laid out in randomized complete block design under a split-plot arrangement, with three replications. The experiment comprised of four wild oats biotypes assigned to the main plots, while 3 herbicides along with a weedy check (Sencor, Isoproturon, Affinity and Weedy check treatment) were kept in sub-plots. The Ghaznavi-98 variety of wheat in a sub-plot size of 5 × 1m

2

was planted on November 13, 2005. The data were recorded on tillers plant

−1

, wheat spikes m

−2

, number of grains spike

−1

, 1,000 grain weight (g), biological yield (t ha

−1

), grain yield (t ha

−1

) and the protein content (%) in grain. The statistical analyses of data exhibited non-significant differences for tolerance of biotypes to herbicides in all the morphological and agronomic traits, while herbicides and their interaction with biotypes were significant for all the traits examined except wheat plant height. As a consequence of phytotoxic effect on weeds, the herbicides increased grain yield and yield components. The herbicide Affinity out yielded rest of the herbicides. In general, the highest grain yield was harvested in Affinity treated plots across all the wild oats biotypes. The interaction of biotypes with the herbicides exhibited a differential competitive ability or tolerance to different herbicides. It is thus recommended that judicious thinking is desired to control different biotypes infesting farmers’ fields because wild oat (

Avena fatua

L.) is one of the most troublesome weeds in the weed community. The Pakistani prairies are a semiarid region prone to soil erosion, and appears to be an appropriate site to adopt conservation tillage practices. Due to the environmental concerns and the development of herbicide resistance, it would be desirable to integrate all aspects of crop management systems, rather than solely rely on herbicides, to manage wild oat problems.

Comparison of cold-shock treatments (at 4°C for 48 and 96 h) of pepper buds with a control (not subjected to cold treatments) has no effect on the production of embryo from cultured pepper anthers. The effects of cold shock treatments were not changed when the

l

-proline was added to the induction medium (40, 125 and 500 mg L

−1

). Cold treated anthers showed a lower response or non response than control anthers. Regeneration frequency did not appear to be affected by the presence of

l

-proline in the induction medium. The highest numbers of embryos (12.5 embryos/100 anthers) were obtained from the control anthers that were cultured on induction medium, MS medium, containing 4 mg L

−1

naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) and 1 mg L

−1

benzyladenine (BA) and activated charcoal without

l

-proline.

The increases in doses of nitrogen fertilization decreased the depressing effect of the used herbicides and stimulated their biological degradation. The bacteria, microscopic fungi and cellulose decomposing microorganisms took part in the biological herbicide degradation process during the first days of application of herbicides, whereas the actinomicetes and microbes, utilizing nitrogen, took part at the later phases of the process. The observed soil chemical changes and the ratio between the main groups of soil microorganisms had a temporary effect and did not influence negatively the maize development.

Carbon dioxide concentration in atmosphere is actively increasing since industrial revolution (1800) from 285 ppmv to 378 ppmv in 2005. Carbon dioxide efflux from soil due to floral and faunal respiration in soil, called soil respiration, is the second largest source of increasing concentration of CO

2

in atmosphere. Soil respiration produces almost 11 times more carbon dioxide in atmosphere than that produced due to fossil fuel burning [18]. Microorganisms are the most abundant biotic group in soil and huge amount of CO

2

is evolved from soil due to bacterial and fungal respiration. The present study investigated soil respiration and distribution of bacteria and fungi in the soil. The study was conducted in semi arid (subtropical) climate around New Delhi in India. Two different sites (Aravali Biodiversity Park and Yamuna Biodiversity Park) with ecologically different soil and vegetation conditions were studied. Three different locations were selected at each site and at each location CO

2

efflux and microbial population were measured at three depths, topsoil (0–5 cm depth), midsoil (15–20 cm depth) and Deep soil (40–45 cm depth). Higher soil activity was found at Yamuna Biodiversity Park (YBP) having profuse ground vegetation, sandy soil with high organic matter and moisture content than Aravali Biodiversity Park (ABP) having scares vegetation, rocky area and dry soil with low organic matter content. Higher soil respiration is recorded in the surface and mid soil at YBP than ABP. However the soil respiration rate was slightly more in deep soil at ABP. In most of the cases soil respiration was found increasing from surface soil to deeper soil till 50 cm depth. Rate of soil respiration is highly correlated (

R

2

= 0.7) to fungal population. Our study suggests that soil respiration process is a function of bacterial and fungal abundance in the soil. However, fungal population is more responsible for CO

2

evolution in atmosphere from soil than bacterial population. Better understanding of soil respiration process can help in reducing CO

2

emission and carbon sequestration process.

Sustainability evaluation with an updated version of MESMIS Framework has been conducted in 5 organic farms in Tuscany, characterised by different management approach. The real differences is, indeed, determined by motivations that explain how the landscape, the work structure and the cultural heritage are organized, giving the present assessment of the Tuscan rural world.

Tourism should be evaluated as a sustainable progress tool to obtain the continuity in the areas which acquires cultural heritage and natural values. It is observed that, the two important visual features in tourism are the environmental characteristics and the architectural characteristics of the accommodation buildings that belong to cultural heritage. Environmental protection conception and returning back to nature also affected the architecture. Today, people that have a certain intellectual and cultural level, prefer and look for environmentally interrelated facilities that are peculiar to that district, that are completely in nature, that are providing an interactivity with the local people, and have cultural heritage, rather than facilities that have a common architectural style, that have a good comfort of a luxury hotel and that are indented and self-sufficient. These kinds of facilities are mostly developed by Small Sized Tourism Firms (STF) and Micro Entrepreneurs/Very Small Sized firms. The STF’s are obtained from a lot of different source. Most of them are developed by special investors using small capitals. Some others, especially micro entrepreneurs/very small sized firms are mostly owned and ran by a family. In this study, evaluation of the sustainability on cultural heritage and environmental factors in architecture from a tourism point of view and the characteristic features and design approaches of the STF’s that are already located in or might be located in Ayvalik historical city center are analysed.

It is largely recognised that the Mediterranean and its landscape symbolises a cultural heritage for the world as a whole. It represents the place where different countries with different languages and cultures converge. Today all this culture and history seems clearly threatened by extensive desertification phenomena. This paper focuses on the role played by the gastronomic landscape and local traditional food into the process of Mediterranean cultural landscape making and conservation. By conceptualising local traditional food as a part of the entire cultural heritage of a place, the intend here has been to discuss how traditional knowledge, particularly traditional food and food processing, can both environmentally and culturally preserve the identity of a place. The rediscovering of typical agri-food products can guarantee the protection of landscape quality both from an aesthetic and an environmental point of view. It implies the reorganisation of productive systems through the adoption of traditional techniques. In fact, differently from the conventional products, the traditional ones belong to the historical memory of a territory and they have particular characteristics linked to geographical factors, quality of raw materials and processing techniques. This implies that there is a strict relationship between agri-food products and local community heritage and identity. The paper investigates the capacity of typical agri-food products to safeguard and sustain landscapes in a environmental fragile context. The approach leaded to a development of an empirical model validated through a case study located in Southern Italy (Costiera Amalfitana – Campania region), an outstanding example of Mediterranean landscape, with exceptional cultural and natural scenic values resulting from its peculiar topography and historical evolution and with a vital gastronomic heritage.

Although modellers have established the type of climate expected in Europe over the coming century, they have not been concerned with the combination of meteorological variables most important to building damage. We have identified the climatic parameters most likely to be critical for architectural surfaces and structures. They have been loosely grouped as: (1) Temperature derived parameters – range, freeze thaw, thermal shock (2) Water derived parameters – precipitation, humidity cycles, time of wetness (3) Wind derived parameters – wind, wind driven rain, sand and salt. We also looked at pollution derived parameters such as SO

2

, NO

2

, elemental carbon and pH, but neglect these in this analysis which focuses on a European situation with much reduced air pollution forecast for the future. As expected a future Europe will experience less frost damage to porous stone, although higher temperatures can enhance fungal growth on wood. Drier summers seem likely to increase structural problems from desiccated soils and salt weathering of porous stone. Our work hint at likely heritage management strategies for the future.

Side which is one of the oldest settlements in the Mediterranean Region is a sub settlement located within the boundaries of the province of Antalya with the Taurus Mountains to the north, the Mediterranean to the south and the Manavgat River to the east which was known as Pamphylia in antiquity. The settlement was established on a peninsula about 1 km long in southeast direction having 350–400m wide. Due to its special location, Side was the only harbour city of Pamphylia region and became an important harbour and commercial centre in antiquity. Side which is 70 km from Antalya and 7 km from Manavgat town can be reached both by land, sea and air. In the ancient language of Side, “Side” meant pomegranate which was also the amblem of the city in ancient times. This fruit was depicted on the city coinage from about 500 BC till to Roman imperial times [8]. The historical background of the settlement dates back to the second half of the 7th century BC and according to Strabo, Side was founded by the inhabitants of Kyme – Aliaga, İzmir. Side reached the climax of its glory in the 2nd century and the first half of the 3rd century AD. So, the most magnificent buildings in the settlement were erected during this phase of the Roman Era and Side became a metropolis. In the middle of the 4th century, an inner city wall was constructed across the narrowest part of the promontory which caused the abandonment of the north eastern part of the peninsula. During the 5th and 6th centuries, the settlement extended beyond its original limits. In the 7th century, Arab pirates began to damage the city and the settlement was destroyed in the 9th and 10th centuries resulted with the emigration of the inhabitants. So, by the 12th century, it was completely abandoned and ruined also as the result of several earthquakes. The Seljuks, dynasties and Ottomans were not inhabited Side so that no remains of these periods are to be found in the settlement. The buildings survived were covered by sand and weeds in time. In 1895, Turkish immigrants from Crete established a small village spreading over the peninsula called Selimiye and integrated to the whole area. In recent years, along the coast, as a hot tourism spot, Side was noticable with its tourism potential and unhealthy construction activities giving harm to the existing rich urban pattern. Side is an impressive coastal settlement both reflecting the macroform of an antique settlement and Turkish vernacular architectural qualities forming a unique cultural landscape area with its flora and typical Mediterranean dune and maquis vegetation combined with the antique landscape of the peninsula. However, the quality of the townscape and the coastal landscape of the area is eroding rapidly day by day under the constraints of dense tourism activities and defective land uses. In this article, Side will be presented with its historical, archeological and natural qualities. The development of the settlement through history and changes in landscape will be given. Then, its problems and potentials defined by site analysis studies will be emphasized and conservation issues of cultural landscapes will be discussed both in general and in Side case.

Today while the discussions are more concentrated on the reduction of environmental resources, the sustainability concept is gaining importance especially in today’s architectural developments. The acceleration in the building activities on North Cyprus creates the discussion of continuity in both natural resources and the cultural heritage of the island. Due to the lack of a conservation master plan, the traditional/vernacular environments of North Cyprus are under the threat of these rapid unplanned developments. Sustainable approaches include the adaptive re-use of existing building stock especially if this building stock is worth preserving since it is the reflection of a multi-cultural accumulation of different sovereignties

1

through many centuries; and since it is the result of design principles that are evolved and developed through centuries, according to the environmental factors in addition to the cultural ones. The unique vernacular environment of the Island bears the potential to be learned from the tried, developed and evolved architectural solutions. For centuries, the Cypriots have benefited from both conscious and unconscious design criteria in shaping their living environments. Evaluating those decisions in the light of today’s discourse, sustainable identity of these environments can be emphasized in terms of locality, energy and resource efficiency of the building materials. In the light of right design decisions on location, orientation and formation; appropriateness to the natural and cultural environment has been achieved. The vernacular environments, as well as the previously untouched coastline of North Cyprus can be destroyed by the unplanned new constructions, causing demolishment in the vernacular environments as well as the flora and fauna of the island. As demand increases in the area, an interest in modernization, densification or reconstruction of existing traditional environments may come to a reversible level. In this study, it is aimed to discuss the survival of these unique rural vernacular environments of North Cyprus through sustainable tourism implementations.

Coastal zones are subject to both socio-economical concerns with respect to their tourist attraction, and also to environmental concerns since they are under the threat of water quality deterioration and water scarcity. This study overviews the environmental principles of sustainable tourism along sensitive coastal areas and its application to a small island is discussed through a detailed wastewater management study conducted in Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). The study comes out with a proposed discharge limitation for the protection of sensitive areas involving nutrient restrictions and adapted wastewater characteristics from the values obtained in Turkey from previous research. Water consumption figures and pollution profiles from certain facilities are determined and specific pollution loads for tourism areas are assessed considering the occupancy rates. In the designation of suitable wastewater treatment technology emphasis is put on nutrient removal and also to advanced treatment technologies which will further enable wastewater recycle and reuse. Further concern is the monitoring of compliance along with legislation, administration and public awareness.

Medical wastes are of public health concern in both developed and developing countries being costly in disposal and carry risks of infection or physical injury and of exposure to potentially harmful pharmaceuticals. This study aimed to determine the knowledge and attitudes of intern doctors and emergency nurses in a university hospital and conducted in Gazi University Hospital in April 2006. One hundred and thirty one intern doctors and 27 emergency nurses are targeted to be reached for March–April 2006 period. A questionnaire form was filled out for each participant. Nurses have undergone training programs on medical wastes and waste segregation (50.0%) significantly more than the intern doctors (19.3%). The knowledge of the medical wastes that must be disposed in “red coloured plastic sacks” were known by almost all (98.6% of intern doctors, 100.0% of emergency nurses) participants (

p

> 0.05). Wastes which must be disposed in “blue coloured plastic sacks” and “black coloured plastic sacks” were known better by nurses (85.0 and 85.0%) than intern doctors (60.5 and 58.2%) (

p

< 0.05). Intern doctors and emergency nurses are found as a group of high risk and the appropriate training programs in terms of timing and content will be effective.

Most large construction projects are accompanied with a plethora of impacts which either increase or reduce different utilities. A fall in the environmental utility, which is usually among the consequences of construction projects in the long run, arises from three different sources: mismanagement of projects, the nature of the development and lack of efficient methods for accurately measuring and estimating environmental externalities of projects. To compensate for such losses and to balance the total utility of the society, economic instruments can be used for the environmental management of projects. Developing countries’ governments are searching for sustainable development instruments. Such instruments, which are usually economic in nature, bring about a combination of economic and environmental policies. Economic instruments can be divided into the two distinct categories entitled Property Rights Approach (Coase Theory) and Government Policies, each having diversified approaches and instruments in their subcategories. The present study investigates the advantages and limitations of the above-mentioned instruments, thus allowing their appropriate applications. Based on such findings, the projects’ clients – usually the governments – would be able to select suitable economic instruments for preventing, mitigating and compensating for the fall in the environmental utility according to the type and nature of a given project.

The possibility of cancellation of the territorial ecological limits for brown coal mining in North Bohemian Region (Podkrushnohori coal field) was a subject of wide speculation during the whole year 2005. The territorial ecological restrictions for individual mines and dumps determine the limits which should not be exceeded during strip mining and waste dumping activities. These limits are determined to protect the regional communities against the coalface front expansion and to respect the sanitary zones between the outskirts of the villages and the prospective utmost edges of the mine. These limits were established after the “Velvet Revolution” in the Czech Republic of 1991. Their aim was to prevent the further devastation of the landscape and exhaustion of the non-renewable natural recourses in the region. The speculations about the cancellation of the limits arouse on the basis of refinement of the State Energy Policy of the Czech Republic. The discussion about the national fuel and energy balance, about the possibilities and hazards of the nuclear energy and renewable power sources use and about the power intensity of the Czech economy intensified at the same time. The authors of the paper discuss the possible environmental impacts of the cancellation of eco-limits, its influence on the economic situation in the Czech Republic and in the region itself, as well as social consequences of the respective decision.

In this research the quantity of tourism information and acquaintance was studied for tourism development effects on different environmental parameters in Namak Abrood, a recreational area of Iran. Findings showed that the tourists had a variety of views about the tourism activities’ effects on environmental factors. Generally, they evaluated these effects with the low and medium quantities. Study of responders’ education degrees also showed that the different individuals, aside from their education degrees, had almost similar views. From the views of tourists, the relation between quantity of chargeability and the actions of different groups (tourists, managers and institutions of tourism development and local people) was considered insignificant in decreasing of environmental quality. According to their views, all involved groups in tourism development had the same share in the decrease of environmental quality. Results from this study showed a decrease in psychological expectation level of individuals using a limited area for recreation, and also showed an increase of tourism psychological carrying capacity. On this basis (63.4 ± 8.06) present of responders, suggested 5–20 family (20–80 person) for recreational use of land with an area of one hectare, that was very higher than the current standard psychological carrying capacity of Iran (7 persons, about 2 family per hectare).

In 2005 the European Commission mandate CEN to prepare test methods with which construction products can be tested with respect to the potential release of dangerous substances to water, soil and to indoor air. A horizontal approach is considered the best route for such test development. Horizontal approach means that it is product independent and consists of the development of a test method applicable for different products used in a certain scenario. This action will satisfy the needs resulting from Essential Requirement n° 3, on Hygiene, Health and Environment, as specified in the Construction Products Directive. In this context, the aim of the work presented here is to study the release mechanisms and the parameters which could influence the leaching of pollutants from construction products towards soil and water, in order to provide information for the development of a horizontal test. The research has been carried out on monolith products, based on three types of matrices: concrete, wood and metal (zinc). For the concrete products, one of the choice criteria was the presence of trace metals (e.g. chromium VI); the wood products are pertinent candidates for our study because of the preservation treatment, which by definition is toxic for some form of life (biocidal substances are used for the treatment); as for the zinc based products, research on contributions of the different sources of urban run-off pollution, showed a very high concentration of zinc (up to 6 mg/L in a catchment in Paris) in roof run-off. Also, this source represents a very high percentage among other urban run-off pollution sources (92% from roof vs. 8% from yard and street run-off).

Ecological and economic intentions often compete in today’s business world. So far, companies rarely accept the responsibility for external effects, i.e. the gap between ecological and economic costs. Although the European and National legislations are forcing the internalization of these costs (the recovery costs should be afforded by the original equipment manufacturers), the social responsibility of the enterprises and the environmental performances are also important issues, as well as to which extend governmental institutions and local municipalities should be involved in planning and performing the reverse process. The study considers the effects of the European Directives on electrical/electronic equipment waste and restriction of use of certain hazardous substances (WEEE – Directive 2002/96/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 January 2003 on waste electrical and electronic equipment and RoHS – Directive 2002/95/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 January 2003 on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment), both influencing the electrical and electronic products market. It analyzes the impact of the recovery legislations on companies’ behaviour and end-of-life/end-of-use products disposal and it wants to stress the existing severe gap between the efforts made by producers in order to design and manufacture recyclable products and the existing recycling technologies. The analysis is based on considerations derived from interviews conducted in manufacturing companies operating in the medical devices, IT and mobile communications sectors, collective schemes agencies, governmental institutions, plastics producers and municipalities within Denmark.

Nowadays, together with the globalization fact, an effort is given to rebuild the environment. These models have been developed without taking natural and ecological corruption in to consideration. They just take into account the economical growth, leading to economical and cultural demolition. In order to balance economical development and ecology, a sustainable development must be reassured. If real estate development projects are investigated, one usually observes that the balance between urbanization and sustainability is not protected. Since the importance of land and land management has not been understood well, those implemented projects without required pre-evaluations have caused problems in terms of urbanization and urban economy. In this study, Formula One (F1) Istanbul Park Circuit real estate development project is evaluated considering relation of urbanization and sustainability. Evaluation of the project was made in terms of economy, changes in land use types, effects on real estate prices and contributions to the benefits of society. The changes of land use types were monitored using the time series of high-resolution satellite data, namely QUICKBIRD and IKONOS. Change detection methods were used for the analysis of ∼ 50 km

2

area. Results show that 2,826 ha of the area, mainly having agricultural field land use types, appears to be open to urbanization. 1,268 ha area of green land including endemic vegetations is, under pressure of uncontrolled urbanization.

This paper presents results of analysis of land use changes in Nigeria, using the integrated bio-economic spatial model. Land use change is currently gaining global attention of researchers and policy makers, given the social, economic and environmental implications of land use and landscape changes. Understanding current land use situation and changes and projecting likely effects of current land use is important for sustainable development. Data for this study include social, economic, soil, crop production, vegetative and other relevant data. The data came from both primary and secondary sources. Data were also sourced from expert knowledge. Spatial maps of soil characteristics, land use patterns, vegetative cover, population density and rainfall patterns were produced. The maps show wide variations in spatial characteristics of the variables considered across the state. The results of gross margin analysis indicate that some particular crop combinations show better economic prospect than others. While the results from the study so far have been revealing, the analysis is still inconclusive, given that this is a progress report. The next phase of the study is to analyse the ecologic implications of current land use (or farming systems) in the study area and examine the trade-off between economic and ecologic factors.

The concept of green marketing is wide covering different aspects of business strategy and policy making. Green marketing puts together issues of sustainable development, such as recycling concerns, material re-use or eco-efficiency with the promotion of products by the conventional marketing policy. The purpose of this paper is to establish how the adoption of green marketing could be an effective tool for improving the market share in Bulgaria following the example of the Italian case. The adoption of eco-label brand or the fulfilling of other environmental certifications could enable to the small medium enterprises (SMEs) to become more competitive in the EU market. We try to explain how a changing view about the environmental aspect could represent an opportunity to snap it up in shorter-medium time.

The number of cancer cases has been deliberately increasing both in Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities in Cyprus. The presence of various carcinogens in the environment is suspected to be the major cause of this increase. The main aim of this study was to identify the heavy metal contamination in Cyprus soil, mainly lead, cadmium and arsenic that are involved in cancer development. The collaborative investigations were accomplished by Cancer Research Fund (CRF) in North Cyprus (NC) and Frederick Institute of Technology in South Cyprus (SC). To achieve an analytical distribution, 260 composite soil samples (140 from NC and 120 from SC) were investigated for the presence of heavy metal contamination. The soil samples were obtained from Güzelyurt Bostancı, Yuvacık, Lefkoşa, Karpaz, Alevkayası, Kırnı and Mesarya in NC and from Dhali, Sotira, Omodos, Acheilia, Polis and Evrychu in SC. The results showed that the amount of lead in the mentioned areas was within the range of 5.7–224.9 ppm in NC and 4.7–121.7 ppm in SC. The cadmium content ranged between 0.2–1.89 ppm in NC and 0.2–0.59 ppm in SC. Arsenic was measured to be between 0.2–18.5 ppm in NC and 2.8–22.5 in SC. Since the limit of lead contamination in soil is determined to be 400 ppm by EPA, all the analyzed areas in Cyprus can be said to be safe and fit for agriculture. However, compared to SC higher concentrations were found in NC that may be due to the use of leaded petrol. Arsenic is another carcinogen that is implicated in cancers of skin, bladder, liver, lung, and prostate and diseases of heart and brain. Because of its various disease causing effects, the widely adopted limit of arsenic contamination is determined to be 10 ppm. The results of soil investigation indicate presence of high arsenic concentrations in majority of the samples showing contamination in the entire island. Cadmium is well known to have a triggering effect on the development of breast cancer. Since the contaminating concentration for cadmium was determined to be 1 ppm (EPA), the analyses imply a threat for NC only. The current study presents the results of heavy metal analyses in Cyprus soil and illustrates the areas with lead, cadmium and arsenic contaminations in the island. These data will enlighten the farmers for choosing the right place for agriculture. In addition to this, it will alert the related official authorities to take precautions for the removal of the contaminants and prohibit the use of agents that cause the respective contamination. In the long run, these will help increasing the health conditions of the both communities living in the island.

The concept of sustainable development for a meaningful human survival is now well documented. Among a large number of different components that can help achieve this highly desirable goal is the pivotal role that “Science and Technology” will play in our future. Among different disciplines of science which in recent times have achieved revolutionary breakthrough “Biotechnology” clearly is one. The multiple applications of “Biotechnology” include “Environment” as one area that constitutes an aspect that merits special attention. The newly acquired techniques involving use of microorganisms, manipulation of genetic material and bioremediation are closely related to the sustainable development. The examples of developing countries with special focus on Pakistan will be given to list the future challenges and possible solutions for achieving the well defined goals of human survival and sustainability. An attempt will be made to discuss the importance of both physical and biological environment as these relate to future human survival.

The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate the perceptions and intended applications of ecotourism in Eastern Europe. This is placed within the context of past tourism patterns under state socialism, current issues of the transition and restructuring and likely future trends in the region for the tourism generally and environmentally sensitive tourism development in particular. The political and economic changes which have characterized Eastern Europe in generally and Albania and Macedonia in particularly, since 1989 have exerted a number of influences on patterns of international tourism to, within and from the region. Sustainable forms of tourism are a relatively new concept for these countries, although past practices did see the restriction of tourists’ mobility, albeit not necessarily for environmental reasons. These countries are vulnerable to tourism fashion changes, which are themselves sensitive to the instability and myriad problems besetting the region. In spite of this, the region’s cultural and environmental diversity provides the potential for substantial market segmentation. Targeting niche markets- ideally high spending groups with minimal adverse impacts and season- extending activities – should emphasise the significance of “green” forms of tourism. The region’s substantial heritage potential and natural protected areas can be used to considerable educational as well as economic advantage to the region.

Soil grounds are several billion times more susceptible to earthquake disaster than rocky grounds. The probability of any soil to be liquefied is several billion times greater than that of even an extremely weak rock in case of fully saturated. Any rock, ranging from extremely weak to strong rock, is not susceptible to liquefaction even at submerged state. Shear strength of a saturated soil under dynamic condition approaches zero whereas the reduction in strength of the saturated rock is practically negligible. In another saying, the ratio of shear strengths [

τ

=

c

+

σ

n

′

tan

φ

] of saturated rock over soil goes to infinite. Similarly, the ratio of modulus of elasticily [

E

,

kPa

] of saturated rock over soil tends to go infinite too. Turkey is a country over which many micro plates are moving relative to each other. The North Anatolian (NAF), East Anatolian (EAF), and Ecemiş fault (EF) are the three major strike-slip faults that cause destructive earthquakes only in soil grounds. The fourth distinct one is the gravity fault (graben) system prevailing in the Aegean region, which is less destructive due to lower energy storage capacity. All of the active fault systems comprise fertile farm fields and extend their limits with time. Such soil grounds form lowlands rich in groundwater and mineral. However, such soil lands are exposed to earthquake catastrophe. Furthermore, the lowlands are not good human health. Most of the viruses and bacteria can grow up. That is the main reason why such lands have to be preserved for farming and should be closed to settlement. The strike slip faults are, in general, coincident with the former suture zones bearing numerous polished sub-vertical discontinuities. These planes have great potential to act as a strike slip fault plane. San Andreas Fault in USA, Kobe Fault in Japan, and Dead Sea Fault extending from Jordan to Turkey are the typical examples. The recurrences of earthquakes create fertile low lands with shallow groundwater table. Such medium favors liquefaction, plastic deformation, rupture, sand ridges and cones, and magnification of the amplitude. An earthquake becomes more destructive in the cases of shallower groundwater table (

z

< 20 m) and thicker soil mantle (

t

> 20 m). Hence, one may conclude that rocky grounds are favorable for construction whereas soil grounds should be reserved for agricultural activities.

Earthen buildings are highly vulnerable to the destructive action of earthquakes, as is tragically revealed by the considerable damage and loss of life that takes place during earthquakes occurring in areas where construction with earth is prevalent. Although many historical earthen monuments have survived strong earthquakes, contemporary vernacular dwellings built with earth have shown extremely poor response in recent earthquakes. Many persons, most of them very poor, have lost their lives due to the collapse of their weak and fragile houses. It is urgent, therefore, to find simple technical solutions to improve the seismic performance of earthen buildings. This paper first describes the seismic response of traditional, unreinforced earthen buildings. It then presents some of the reinforcement techniques developed over more than 35 years of research carried out by the Catholic University of Peru. Finally, it briefly outlines the challenges involved in the dissemination of economical and safe construction techniques, in order to mitigate the risk of earthen buildings in seismic areas.

Three major types of land use in Huanuco (central province in Peru) are discussed on the basis of cartographical and socioeconomical data, document reviews, and field surveys. This traditional agricultural region has critical importance for being the gateway for timber transportation from the eastern mountainous tropical forests where also extensive coca plantations forced human emigration, land abandonment, and deforestation. An optimal land use map was built by overlaying four maps of biophysical characteristics and delineated cultivated areas from a Landsat TM image using ILWIS gis software. In Peru, ancient agricultural systems still coexist with the intensification of commerce. Property types, rates of land use changes, as well as the use of and the number of farms, are discussed. The type of land use varies periodically among each district within the province. State policies not fully structured indicate a poor understanding of the real needs of the Andean society. From now on they must combine elements of tradition, central planning, and markets.

Energy is a burning problem of present era. The conventional centralized energy distribution network accounts for high transmission losses (ranging from 9 to 20% at times). The energy consumption in residential structures accounts considerably high than other buildings, also it is a recurring ever cost increasing phenomena. It is very difficult to remain in the city and save energy beyond a certain limit without compromising the present day materialistic lifestyle by the city dweller households. Also the factor of polluting the environment by using conventional fossil fuels for energy generation accounts for a disastrous future. The concept of ‘self sufficient housing’ is to develop a self-contained commune with a building unit designed to cater the needs of approximately 15–20 families. The provisions will be made in these housing to enable the inhabitants to produce their own energy, grow their own agricultural produces for food, recycle all the resources/waste. These units will be essentially located in rural/countryside areas. The building will be planned in such a way that it will use non-conventional/renewal energy sources totally and will not use any form of external energy source. The building will be planned in such a way that it will use non-conventional & renewal energy sources totally and will not use any form of external energy source like electrical grid network or fossil fuels, etc. The main objective of this research is to develop suitable architectural designs for self-sufficient housing units incorporating the necessary infrastructures, like equipment of energy generation.

Higher costs of crude oil on world market, as well as awareness about negative environmental impact related to conventional diesel fuel utilization, are creating favourable economic conditions for production expansion and greater application of alternative fuels. Natural gas could be converted through Fischer-Tropsch synthesis technology process, dating from the beginning of the last century, to alternative form of fuel named Gas to Liquid (GTL) which can be utilized in all recent diesel engines. GTL has lower emissions in comparison to fossil diesel and it is characterized with higher cetane number which is measurement of the fuel ignition quality. Furthermore, additional advantage is that the existing infrastructure for fuel transportation and distribution could be used without any significant changes, either for pure GTL or blend with diesel. In compliance with present and future EU directives, concerning greenhouse gases reduction and decrement of imported crude oil dependence, Gas to Liquid technology imposes as one of the alternative fuels for utilization in transportation sector.

This review is aimed to introduce historical background for the sustainability concept development for energy, water and environment systems. In the assessment of global energy and water resources attention is focussed in on the resource consumption and its relevancy to the future demand. In the review of sustainability concept development special emphasize is devoted to the definition of sustainability and its relevancy to the historical background of the sustainability idea. In order to introduce the sustainability measurement the attention is devoted to the definition of respective criteria. There have been a number of attempts to define the criterions for the assessment of the sustainability of the market products. Having those criterions as bases, it was introduced a specific application in the energy system design. Demonstration of the multi-criteria sustainability measurement of the energy system options based on the selected number indicators, namely: efficiency, economic, environmental and social indicators.

More than half of the world’s population relies on dung, wood, crop waste or coal to meet their most basic energy needs [15]. In 1992, 24 million tones of charcoal were consumed worldwide. Developing countries account for nearly all of this consumption, and Africa alone consumes about half of the world’s production. Charcoal production has increased by about a third from 1981 to 1992, and is expected to increase with the rapidly growing population in the developing world. Despite the cooking advantages of charcoal and charcoal’s ranking on the cooking ladder, this preliminary review suggests that charcoal may be far more damaging to the environment than the less preferable biomass fuels, biomass residues and fuelwood [3]. This study indicates that charcoal is problematic from energy, environmental and social perspective and is likely to be used as long as the feedstock supply and the demand from impoverished people in the developing world exist. The potential environmental problems associated with charcoal use are exposure of users to high carbon monoxide concentration levels during cooking and emission of relatively large quantities of nitrogen oxides. As a consequence of the fast-growing energy requirements and the increasing use of low-grade domestic fuels, air pollution has increased considerably in recent years in Africa [14].

Oxygen transfer and power requirement with rotor speed has always been a central topic for design and scale-up of surface aerators. Present study develops design curves correlating the oxygen transfer coefficient, power per unit volume and rotor speed. Based on the design curves, energy conservation by using right sized circular tank surface aerators has been discussed and demonstrated that it is economical to use a big sized circular tank surface aerator rather than using multiple numbers of smaller sized circular tank to aerate the same volume of water.

This article intends to present some considerations about electricity generation with 30 kW (ISO) microturbines, using biogas generated by a sewage treatment process at SABESP (Basic Sanitation Company of São Paulo State), located in Barueri, Brazil. This project, pioneer in Latin America, is being accomplished together with BUN – Biomass Users Network of Brazil (proponent), in association with CENBIO – Brazilian Reference Center on Biomass (executer), with patronage of FINEP/CT-ENERG (financial backer), by means of CONVENTION No: 23.01.0653.00, regarding to ENERG-BIOG Project – “Installation and Tests of an Electric Energy Generation Demonstration Unit from Biogas Sewage Treatment”. The study is being held at Barueri Sewage Treatment Plant. This plant operates with anaerobic digestion process, which has as mainly products biogas (composed mainly by methane) and sludge. Currently, part of the methane produced is burnt in a boiler being used to increase the digesters temperature and so, the process efficiency. The methane remnant is burnt in flare to reduce the impacts caused by gases emissions. An alternative to burn it in flare is the biogas conversion into electricity through engines or microturbines. This paper describes the proposed system to convert biogas in electricity and heat using microturbine. Thus, this article presents some technical, financial and environmental project results, related to the exploitation of sewer biogas for power generation, as well as more details about purification, compression and electricity generation systems (biogas microturbine), used in the facility. It is possible to conclude that the purification system projected takes care of the fuel specifications, demanded by the microturbine, but the costs analysis on using microturbines are not positive when compared with a conventional generator of equal power. Until the present moment, the data obtained will serve to baseline for the accomplishment of future environmental impact comparative studies, between engines (Otto – Cycle) and microturbines.

In last 10 years there was significant rise in transportation fuel consumption in Europe from 180 Mt in 1985. to 270 Mt in 2004., with gasoline representing 40% and diesel 60%. To decrease dependence upon imported fossil fuels, EU aim is to introduce biodiesel in share of 5.75% in transportation sector until 2010. and finally 8% until 2020. Because of limited production potential from some EU countries, today and in near future, large quotas of import would be required. Biodiesel is often called clean, ecological and renewable alternative fuel, but with present land-intensive methods of production it could easily be named as one of the most dangerous sources of energy for Earth’s ecosystem. Main threat from large scale biofuels utilization comes from deforestation of land that is needed for cultivation of crops. Every year large areas of rainforests in South East Asia and South America are irretrievably lost due to increasing demand. Combustion of wood and oxidation of peat during drying emits enormous quantities of CO

2

into the atmosphere which is contrary to biodiesel appellation as “CO

2

balanced fuel”. Unlike conventional crops that are used for production of biodiesel (rapeseed, soybean, palm etc.), possible production from algae would significantly lower unit of land needed for biofuel production. Contemporary researches give some estimation of about 25 times greater yield than palm plantation and 100 times over rapeseed, which is common biodiesel production crop in EU. Regarding lately high world oil prices, greater investment in researches upon algae, as a new source of biofuel, are bringing technological solutions for economically production start-up.

In the present study, combustion mechanisms, thermal kinetics, and phases of combustion were investigated for untreated pine and treated MDF, plywood and particleboard samples. Waste wood samples were combusted in air at 10, 20 and 30

°

C/min heating rates in TGA. As a result of TG analysis, thermal decomposition of treated samples was observed at lower temperatures as compared to the untreated pine sample because of the catalyzing effects of the chemicals in the samples. Therefore, there were less flammable products, lower weight losses in the main oxidation region, decrease in the max. weight loss temperatures and formation of more char for treated samples as compared to untreated pine sample. In other words, chemicals used during production of these samples lead to decrease in the combustibility of the treated samples. Thermal kinetic constants for the samples were calculated by using Coats Redfern and Broido Methods. In order to find out the mechanisms responsible for the oxidation of the waste wood samples, six solid state mechanisms of Coats Redfern Method were tested.

In the current work, several types of solar collectors, i.e. parabolic, cylindrical, and mirrors, were designed and fabricated. The aim of this study is to integrate the optimum collector with Stirling engine in Malacca city, Malaysia. Stirling engine was designed using CATIA software. The solar collectors were tested for several sunny days and the temperature in the focus point was measured. Comparing the experiment results shows that mirror solar collector introduces highest temperature among others, which was about 190

°

C. According to that temperature, the Stirling engine has been designed in bore piston dimension of 50 mm. Alpha Stirling engine type was selected for this purpose, which may run in this range of temperature.

Corchorus olitorius

L. (Molokhia) (Tiliaceae), collected from the Doğanci, Güzelyurt, Northern Cyprus, infusion and extracts with different polarities have been studied for their polyphenolic contents and antioxidant activities. Total phenolic content was determined spectrometrically according to the Folin-Ciocalteu method and calculated as gallic acid equivalents (GAE). Antioxidant activitiy was studied in an aqueous emulsion system of β-carotene and linoleic acid by measuring the absorbance of the samples. The free radical-scavenging properties were also evaluated against 2,2-diphenyl-1-picryhydrazyl radical (DPPH

•

). Results were compared those of an synthetic antioxidant, BHT. Antioxidant effects were correlated with the total amount of phenolic compounds contained in the extracts. In all these cases higher antioxidant activity was seen in the samples with higher phenolic content.

This chapter discusses the current situation of solid waste management in healthcare centers in Palestine. The monthly estimated quantity of solid waste produced by the healthcare centers in Palestine was 472.9 tons. There is very little separation of solid waste in primary healthcare centers (38.1%) as compared to secondary healthcare centers (71%). Only 17.3% of the healthcare centers in Palestine perform treatment of their solid waste. The place of final disposal of healthcare waste is an unsanitary dumping site owned by the local authority, and is used by 87.2% of the healthcare centers. Collection, storage and disposal of healthcare waste constitutes an environmental problem that poses an important health risk and calls for immediate attention and intervention. Healthcare centers have inadequate refuse collection services, lack of storage and disposal facilities. Special efforts should be made to improve the healthcare management in an effective and integrated manner.

In the past decade, a growing interest of scientific researches has indicated that the air within the buildings can be more seriously polluted than the outdoor air. Indoor pollution has increased due to variety of factors including the construction of more tightly sealed buildings, the use of synthetic finishes and furnishings, and the use of chemically formulated personel care products. The presence of the sources that release gases or particles into the air are the main causes of indoor pollution in buildings, and in this context in hospital buildings. The indoor pollution bounds the indoor air quality (IAQ). To identify sustainable IAQ of the hospitals, the determinants of IAQ such as “indoor pollutants”, “indoor pollutant sources”, “indoor pollutant removal mechanisms”, and “the health effects of indoor pollutants” are discussed within the context of indoor pollution in the current paper. Furthermore, a comprehensive approach to hospital building design dealing with the sustainability criteria from cradle to grave process is presented.

The basic resources of microelements that are essential for human life are food materials. However, in larger or lower amounts, they may become more important and critical. They may be accumulated in biological systems and become a significant health hazard. Biochemical and physical adaptation of microorganisms are related to geophysical properties and the environmental factors in the habitat around. Therefore many research activities have been done about microelements and their effect on ecosystem. In the Republic of Azerbaijan specialized research activities have been carried out since 1950s. This study was carried out in the Kuba – Khachmas and Sheki – Zaqatala regions where endemic goiter is a critical health disease. In order to compare the effect of microelements, their level in a blank region, Apsheron peninsula, was also investigated. 160 samples of consumed food materials in the regions were collected from farms, factory and household meal and nursery schools. Iodine, fluorine, copper, cobalt, manganese, zinc and Molybdenum levels were determined for each samples. Although a large range between minimum and maximum levels for almost each microelement were observed, the results showed that the soil character in the studied areas had microelement levels below required amount for vital activities.

Konya Province has the largest agricultural lands among the other provinces in Turkey and thus it has been named “food store of Anatolia” as far as agricultural production is concerned. However, the climate around Konya Province is semi-arid and thus irrigation of the agricultural lands is not usually adequate. In other words, many towns around Konya have to draw waters, for irrigation, from lower quality sources including municipal wastewaters. With the application to land of large volumes of minimally pretreated wastewater, it is evident that considerable potential for adverse health effects exists. Microbiological pollution could occur from food crop contamination, pathogen-laden aerosols [2], ground water pollution or surface water pollution. A case study was carried out with the principal objective to investigate entrobacteria as an indicator of microbiological pollution in vegetables collected from public markets of three central towns in the province of Konya. The work was conducted upon 20 specimens representing 10 different varieties of vegetable samples taken from the main public markets of Konya city. The results were summarized as follows: (1) The distribution of total coliform bacteria on the vegetable specimens ranged from 12 to 50%. (2) The highest incidence of coliform bacterial pollution was found with parsley (approx. 100%) and it was followed by watercress, lettuce, radishes, green onions, carrots, cabbage, cucumber skin, tomatoes and green pepper (33–39%) specimens, respectively. (3) Among the markets from which the vegetable samples were collected, the highest incidence of the microbiological pollution in terms of the coliform distributions was detected with the Ilgın market and it was followed by the Beysehir and Doğanhisar markets respectively. (4) The incidences of the pathogenic bacterial pollution found with the vegetable specimens were generally very low when compared to coliform bacterial distribution detected from the specimens, and the genera of the pathogenic bacteria isolated from the vegetables were as follows:

Proteus

sp.,

Salmonella

sp. and

Shigella

sp. (5) The findings indicated that the presence of fecal pollution of the vegetables which were supposed to be eaten fresh in the region. (6) The “scalding” was found to be the most effective method to disinfect the vegetables studied among the four treatments tested then it was followed by the treatments of “washing with a bactericide” and “washing with a detergent” respectively [1–9].

In this study, two economically important rivers of Turkey, Gediz and Buyuk Menderes are studied to determine their environmental pollution levels. Soil samples are analysed using graphic-furnace atomic absorption spectroscopy for the trace metals Cu, Co, Cr, Mn, Zn, Pb and Ni. The results show that the pollution levels are significant especially for Pb, Cr, Ni in the Gediz River and Cr, Zn, Co in the Buyuk Menderes river. Factor analysis technique, which is some of the statistical analyses, was used in order to explain relation between the elements.

Pesticides and nitrites which could be available in foods are generally investigated individually, although they could be found in foods together and exhibit combined health effects. In this study we aimed to determine the combined effects of endosulfan which is a commonly used pesticide and

N-

nitroso-

N-

methylurea (NMU) which is a prototype for mammary tumor development in Sprague Dawley rats and could be formed in brine foods or also in body from nitrites which is commonly used in meat. Ninety female Sprague Dawley rats had been used. Animals were divided three groups which consisted 30 animals. The first group took a single dose endosulfan intraperitoneal (ip) on 19th day and a single dose NMU ip on 21 day, the second group took endosulfan by their drinking waters for the first 60 days of their life and a single dose NMU ip on 21 day, and the third group took only a single dose NMU ip on 21 day. Animals were controlled for their general health status, mammary mass develeopment, daily water consumption and weekly weight gain. At the end of the study rats were examinated carefully under anesthesia, and tissue samples were prepared from their mammary glands and intraabdominal organs. Tissue samples taken from mammary glands, liver and kidneys were histopathalogically examined. It was determined a statistically significant hepatomegally in the second group when we compared to other groups (

p

< 0.05). No animals developed mammary tumors. On the macroscopic examination and manual palpation of intraabdominal region, it was showed that solid tumors in kidneys as a ratio of 76.7% of the animals in the second group (bilateral in 1,3% of them, the others are unilaterally and 70% of the unilateral tumors are in the left kidneys while the rest of them are right localized). Also it was found that in the first group, 13.4% of the animals developed unilateral kidney tumors. The third group which had been applied only NMU developed no kidney or liver pathalogy macroscopically. As a result it was considered that a diversity which is named as “genetic shift” could be developed in our animal research center and because of this shift we could not developed NMU induced mammary tumors in our Sprague Dawley rats. But it has been showed that long term endosulfan expose has resulted in kidney tumor development for the first time. Because of the genetic shifting mentioned above, it should be tested whether this experimental animal cancer model is limited for our research center or not by obtaining sprague dawley animals from different centers. Interactions of living style, environmental factors and genetic properties in the development of cancer and its necessary to control all of three factors in order to reduce cancer frequency in public showed that the importance of interdiciplinary collaboration and public education. Consumers and appliers should be educated about using pestices, and healthy and safety food production and concumption should be considered as one of the primary subjects in public health studies.

Sulfonamide residues are proven to be reduced in raw chicken meat after heat treatment but in processed chicken balls it is yet to be done. The objective of the study was to determine the optimum heat treatment condition for the reduction of sulfonamide residues in production of acceptable quality chicken balls. Three heat treatment processes; boiling, deep-frying and microwaving were consecutively applied on chicken balls pre-fortified at raw stage with four types of sulfonamides (SAs) namely sulfadiazine (SDZ), sulfamethazine (SMZ), sulfamethoxazole (SMX) and sulfaquinoxaline (SQX). Boiling process was carried out at 3, 6 and 9 min with temperature of 80, 90 and 100

°

C. Boiling of chicken balls at 100

°

C for 6 min was found to be the most acceptable in appearance and were brought to deep frying process with temperature of 170, 180, and 190

°

C and time of 3, 6, and 9 min. For deep-fried chicken balls, temperature of 180

°

C for 6 min was found to be the most acceptable in appearance and was used for microwaving process at power of 100, 250, and 440 W for 20, 40, and 60 s. For boiling, both factors (time and temperature) had significant reduction for all SAs (

p

<0.05). The same went for deep-frying process; time and temperature had caused significant reduction for all SAs (

p

<0.05). For microwave process, both factors (time and power) also showed significant reduction for all SAs (

p

<0.05). SDZ was reduced up to 62% after application of the three cooking methods continuously. For SMZ the reduction was 52%. Meanwhile, 62% and 55% of reduction were observed for SMX and SQX respectively. The sequence of reduction on SAs residues for all cooking methods was deep-frying > boiling > microwave. The results would be guidance for industries and consumers to reduce risk of sulfonamide residues by heat treatments.

Concerns of increased risk from tritium intakes by humans have been claimed in the past years. The arguments concerning radiobiological efficiency assessment, longer retention in human body, and the DNA’s hydration shell are analysed in this paper. A biokinetic model for tritiated water and organically bound tritium retention in human body is used, based on a common approach for mammals using energy and hydrogen metabolism and tested separately with animal experiments. Extension to humans considers the increased role of brain, food quality and unique growth patterns of humans. Various ages and genders for Caucasians are considered. For an intake of tritium in organic forms in the diet, the retention for the female of about a factor 2 compared with ICRP recommendations. Effective dose coefficients are determined to be about a factor of 2–3 higher than those of the ICRP.

Recent experiences with highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza have given the world its first advance warning that another influenza pandemic may be imminent. Given the serious consequences of past pandemics, this advance warning has stimulated a search for ways to prevent such an event from occurring through preparedness, rapid response and containment. The rapid response and containment strategy aims to stop, or at least slow the spread of pandemic influenza at the source of its emergence in order to minimize global morbidity and mortality.

In the framework of the paper the incidence of infant methemoglobinemia in Cluj county, Romania was evaluated from medical records. The incidence rate ranged from 42 to 239 per 100,000 live births between 2000 and 2004. Bottle-babies less than 4 months are the age group most at risk of acquired methemoglobinemia. Well water was the main source of nitrate, though early incorporation of vegetable juices and table food into infant diet were also incriminated. Some recommendations for the management of methemoglobinemia in this area are described: introduce a low nitrate water supply scheme specially for infant feeding, education program for mothers to increase duration of breast feeding, further studies on long-term development effects on infants.

West Nile is an insect-borne flavivirus which can cause serious, life-altering and even fatal diseases. It has been detected in at least 48 species of mosquitoes, over 250 species of birds, and at 18 mammalian species, including humans. The most serious manifestation of West Nile Virus (WNV) infection is fatal encephalitis in humans and horses, as well as mortality in certain domestic and wild birds. Approximately one in 150 infections results in severe neurological illness. Given our incomplete and evolving knowledge of the ecology and public health impact of WN virus, as well as the efficacy of control efforts, the virus will remain an important public health challenge in the next years all round the world. The purpose of this study is to understanding how and why the WNV epidemics occurred, by the evaluation of epidemiological, ecological, clinical and potential risk factors that can lead to epidemic manifestation. This information will be both interesting and useful in order to developing a global surveillance and effective control strategies for preventing the spread of WNV.

Water is life, for people and for the planet. The supply and demand for improved water plays a paramount role in the analyses of community health. The general objective of this study is to investigate whether improved water supply reduces incidents of water-borne disease and that access to latrines and water for washing reduces incidents of sanitary/hygienic-related disease, enhancing peoples’ livelihood as a result. Arising from the dearth of knowledge on rural water supply services in Kenya, this study intends to show the extent to which rural households participate in decision-making about improved water supply, assess their choices of water supply, and identify the likelihood of exclusion from the use of improved water sources among the rural households. The study proposes to use the Ordinary Least Squares Method in the analysis to verify the hypothesis that greater access to water supply will provide more available time for individuals (mostly women), to utilize in other endeavors that can influence the economic welfare (or wellbeing), and improve overall health and basic sanitation of the community.

The indoor environment can be very polluted with pollution levels indoors higher than those outdoors, particularly so when there are combustion processes associated with cooking heating or smoking and poor ventilation. About half the world’s population have to rely for cooking; and associated space heating on simple household stoves using unprocessed solid fuels that have high emission factors, with the consequence that they are exposed to high levels of health-damaging air pollutants. Cooking may produce very high concentrations of particulate matter particularly when biomass is used as fuel. Tobacco smoke may add to the pollution and these together cause considerable human ill health world-wide. Many pollutants directly affect the respiratory and cardiovascular systems and the severity varies according to the intensity and the duration of exposure. The health status of the population exposed varies with some people at greater risk than others. Several chemicals found in the indoor environment are classed as carcinogens although at the levels found the probability that they will cause cancer is extremely low. This is not to lessen the problem. In a 1987 study, the US Environmental Protection Agency ranked indoor air pollution fourth in cancer risk among the 13 top environmental problems analysed.

The empiric data used in this work were gathered within a broader research called

Further preschool teacher and junior grade teacher education for environment

which was approved by the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of the Republic of Croatia in 2001. The investigation was implemented on the sample of 283 preschool teachers and 202 junior grade teachers and was aimed at determination of their education practice and needs for future education for environment and its sustainable development. In addition, the purpose was to test whether there are differences between the mentioned professional profiles of educational employees. The results indicate that there are statistically significant differences concerning evaluation and that past practice of education for environment is, in several segments, dependent on a professional profile. What was also determined is a single-factor structure of the contents needed for future education and development of skills and abilities within the context of education for sustainable development. Looking at the whole, the research results indicate that, with certain cautiousness, it is possible to determine single approaches in evaluation of practice of nursery school teacher and junior grade teacher education for environment. It is also possible to determine the educational needs which are to a large extent mutually similar concerning the development of skills and abilities but to a lesser extent different concerning the evaluation of content selection in education for sustainable development. The authors draw attention to the educational employees, the significance of recognising their educational needs, taking the critical view of past practice and creating a new education for sustainable development of the environment for them.

This study presents significant spatial and temporal aspects of solid waste management on a case study conducted at the Istanbul Metropolitan area, where existing models of waste management have significant limitations due to limitations of handling spatiality and temporality. Since the decision making process should be performed over time and across space, remote sensing technology provides mature solutions. In order to analyze the changes IRS 1C PAN (5×5 m spatial resolution and dated 2000) and the IKONOS MS (4×4 m spatial resolution and dated 2004) images have been used. For the landfill areas, Istanbul Metropolitan area currently involves two sites, 1/5000 scaled map and both satellite images were overlaid in order to visualize the differences between reserved area and used area of the landfill. In order to analyze the flow direction of landfill areas towards watershed areas a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) was constituted and analyses were performed. The spatial and temporal changes of the two landfill areas were detected and results were discussed.

In the past decade and a half the question as to whether the environment itself deserves protection in addition to human health has come up quite often. Do the environmental laws reflect moral concerns? The answer must be ‘yes’, for without some basis in principle individual laws are no more than mere reactions to individual perceived problems lacking coherence, and likely to result in anomalies. The position of stewardship which is primarily human centered, accepts the need for a degree of resource conservation and environmental management based on notions of sustainable development and intergenerational equity. Moral issues do play an important role but by no means decisive, part in the creation and formulation of the law. The concept of sustainable development is an acceptable moral basis for environmental protection and regulation for many people. Our ethics can only be human centered. The concept of nature’s rights is no more than a fiction. Many human centered values are capable of being elaborated in ways which benefit environmental protection, although these may result only in the protection of aspects of the environment that are considered for human wellbeing.

EU’s water framework directive (EU-WFD) demand geographical grouping of the administrative bodies in EU according to river basins [12]. In this paper we follow the implementation process in Sweden. The theoretical perspective is based on organizational theories, influenced by new institutionalism and sociology of translation. The study is based on observations of meeting between authorities and other actors in the west part of Sweden but also interviews with various actors taking part in the process. This paper shows that, this far, ways of working in order to establish cooperation differ among different local areas, e.g. the councils have adjusted their work depending on their interpretation of the existing situation in their own council. I claim that in one way we could say that old ways of acting, institutionalized action nets according to Czarniawska’s vocabulary, are questioned. New actions are taken in the field, replacing or complementing old actions. Actors try to see what actions that are needed, make sense of action taken and defend actions.

Australia covers a large area, but its inhabitants live mostly in large European style cities on the coast. A large percentage of the population were born in other countries, and most Australians are descended from immigrants. While it is easy to argue that Australians must develop a sense of place if they are to understand and care about certain environmental issues, it is much more difficult to resolve what kinds of outdoor experiences Australians should have, what should be learned from such experiences, and how those experiences – and therefore that knowledge – should be distributed in the population. Where should Australians go, and what should they do when they get to there, to better understand environmental sustainability, in a country with so many environments? The paper argues that the situation in Australian can help illustrate some of the problems facing environmental sustainability when everyday life for much of a population is far removed from the sites of many environmental concerns and issues. As such, the case of Australia highlights both the potential importance of environmental education, and some limitations to universalist approaches to environmental sustainability.

Although Turkey is living with serious economical, social and political problems and trying to cope with big crisis incoming in every 3–4 years, TV programs such as ‘Somebody is watching us’ (Biri bizi gözetliyor), ‘I’m getting married’ (Ben evleniyorum), ‘Second spring’ (İkinci bahar), ‘Be my bride’ (Gelinim olur musun?), ‘Pop Star’ (Pop star), ‘Academy Turkey’ (Akademi Türkiye), ‘Super Lady’ (Süper lady) are very popular and watching by large amount of people with great interest. This is a conflicting condition and should be evaluated and questioned elaborately. What are the main reasons of providing these kinds of programs to the public over and over? What are the main consequences of imposing degenareted culture to the public through these kind of programs, in the short and long term? How media is placed among popular culture, mass culture and cultural imperialism. In this study, the answers of these questions are trying to seek with a critical manner and several proposals are presented.

Environmental education and communication (EEC) includes a broad range of teaching methods, topics, audiences, and media channels all of which will be useful in moving our world toward sustainability. Experts in many nations have worked over the last 30 years to provide distinct definitions, guides, objectives, and standards that will help educators develop and evaluate effective programs. The North American Association for Environmental Education, for example, has developed four sets of guidelines for developing materials, for preparing environmental educators, for teaching youth, and for developing non-formal environmental education programs [12]. These guidelines are being converted into certification programs to help improve the profession. The majority of these resources, guidelines, and programs are designed for educators of youth. Indeed, the opportunities to influence the school curriculum and teacher preparation programs attract us to work with ministries of education to institutionalize environmental education. In these nations we have a chance to influence how youth perceive their environment and the skills they bring to decisions about sustainability. Where federal programs are not likely, out-of-school programs for youth through clubs and community centers offer substantial environmental education options. Youth-based environmental education programs provide information, build understanding, and improve skills needed for working together to achieve sustainability.

The current ecological crisis is a matter of urgent global concern that seeks global solutions and sincere cooperation of nations and all parties of the human community: experts, policymakers, organizations and publics. The relevant solution, however, sought to be found associated with a precise identification and clear vision of root causes which, consequently, guide to the development of valid theories that capable to address the issue from its various dimensions. Although the distinguished scholars of various disciplines across the glob have been suggesting solutions of different kinds to the problem, they agree that the major part of environmental crisis comes from human actions. However, more significantly, scholars are in agreement that human actions are determined by his ideas and beliefs. This factor obviously identifies the strategic approach to deal with our ecological crisis; that is to rebuild our ideas and beliefs towards nature, i.e. reconstruction of the worldview. This work examines this hypothesis which asserts that the environmental crisis which experienced by mankind today are mainly due to his world view; i.e. misconception of the true relationship between man, nature and the ultimate truth. The study focuses on philosophical foundations of man- nature relationship, with objective of providing useful insights and perspectives that might contribute to uncover the root causes of our environmental crisis; and to establish a new united vision that capable to maintain the indispensable friendship of man and nature. To achieve these goals the study shall focus on the view that both man and nature are creatures of one Creator. However, nature has been made to serve man, not as a machine dominated by human, but as “Amanah” or “Trust” which capable for utilization not destruction. Nature, according to this concept, has two main functions: to serve man in his physical needs, and to guide him morally to the right path, i.e. towards discovery of the Creator and His great wisdom in the natural phenomena.

Turkey, located between Europe and Asia, have been an important “Energy Corridor” for the transmission of the Middle East, Caspian area and Asia Country’s rich oil and natural gas resources to the Mediterranean thanks to projects like BTC (Bakü – Tbilisi – Ceyhan Pipeline Project). In this study, public consultation and involvement in during planning and construction of BTC Project was evaluated. The main objective of public participation is to provide support from all interested stakeholder and to be successful in the project in terms of both socio-economic and environmental issues. In order to attain this objective, the contributions of participation on the energy project have been mentioned in many studies. Public participation is a key step to improving and maintaining environment. But often it comes too late or not all. In this article it was studied whether changing point of view of local public on environmental effects of this project after this project was opened to run on 13 July 2006. Also it was analyzed the trend of public participation strategies and the encountered problems in Turkey.

Corporate actors like institutions, corporations, governments, companies, organizations, political parties, universities, NGOs, states, interest groups, associations and all other supra-individual collectives play a key-role for the socialization of human beings and for the creation of the reality we believe in and live with. The creation of these realities within our socialization leads to different matrices forging our self-understanding and influencing our behavior, lifestyle, ideals, goals and conducts. “Wirklichkeit” – actualitas – as a term going beyond the significance of reality, is a creation/invention of the human brain and also the most important building blocks of our world-views base their existence only on agreements between individual human actors: Corporate actors are considered as legal persons within our juridical systems, seem to be acting as independent entities, outlast the single actors steering them from within and have a vast impact on our lives, but in the end they only persist due to the fact that there is a common consent about their necessary existence. Different theories, mostly within sociologic frames, approach the role supra-individual entities fill out in our societies but do hardly take into account the gap between individual und corporate actors. The “Extended View” as “real theory” in the sense of Einstein’s logics classifies corporate actors as para-autonomous actors with clearly defined abilities and structures. On behalf of this theory a step to understand in an emergent way the creation of social structures as human social matrices and the characterization of supra-individual collectives within and in constant relation with these matrices is tried to be made.

This is the deniable truth that public relations applications increased by aiming to political propagandas as the day passed in Turkish Republic of North Cyprus as in world. The difficult questions are formed which is need to be replied about how much reached to its aim of these applications, how much created an opposite reaction and how much it persuasive became. The aim of this study is explaining with examples by stressing the effect in the time of environmental awareness of public relations applications. Public relations is the process of applications in carefully of continual and planned efforts by developing relations by having a goal of providing power and support of related people and groups by defining its aims and facilities of an organization. The applications which was done far from in an unplanned and fixed program and out from logic of honest public relations as it will make a problem come alive in reaching to the target at the same time it caused to opposite reaction and became misleading element for the people.

In the last two decades, tourism has led to a drastic conversion of the wetlands into settlement areas in the surroundings of Fethiye town located in the Mediterranean region of Turkey. The coast of Fethiye Bay abounds in coastal wetlands, riparian corridors, marshes, forested wetlands, swamps and grasslands that need urgent conservation. In addition to tourism activities, pollution resulting from residential and agricultural areas, urbanization, and other activities are threatening the wetland ecosystems in the area. The transformation of wetlands has resulted in a loss of biodiversity. The wildlife, notably many water birds are under a threat of extinction. These biotopes need to be monitored at short time intervals, as changes in the wetlands are rapid and serious due to these factors. Accurate and timely information will play a vital role in supporting decision making and effective sustainable management of these wetlands. In this connection the ground based survey for monitoring purpose is not entirely well-suited because of transportation difficulties as well as the working conditions. On the other hand, satellite data can provide an effective tool for mapping and monitoring of these areas. While high resolution satellite imageries including Ikonos and Quickbird generally provide detailed vegetation mapping, medium resolution satellite imageries including Landsat and Spot have been widely used for detecting the changes during definite time intervals. The aim of this study is to detect the changes in the wetlands between 1990–2001 along the coast of Fethiye and its inland parts by means of multitemporal Landsat data.

The Northern Nile Delta coastal zone in Egypt has unique environmentally sensitive conditions. The area contains a coastal lagoon protectorate El Burullus lagoon which is the landing for immigrant birds from Europe. The area contains several urban features such as an international highway, a port and some towns. Several stressors occur in the area. These are reflected by the sea level rise problem ranging between 1.2–1.3 mm/yr. The problem is magnified by land subsidence, sea water intrusion and shoreline erosion. Despite the stress, the Northern Nile Delta coastal zone is exerting severe changes. Those changes are both natural and anthropogenic causing environmental degradation of the area. This paper aims at conducting an analysis for the changes occurring and their causes. The area is studied during a period of 13 years during which major development decisions took place. Two multi-date satellite imageries, Landsat-5TM and Landsat-7 ETM+ acquired in 1987 and 2000 were used. The rectified images were classified to produce the Land use/Land cover maps and a Matrix function is applied to detect and quantify the changes that occurred in each class. A model was used to discriminate the accretion and erosion zones of the shoreline. The results of the study show that the study area is undergoing both anthropogenic and natural changes. The most significant changes are reflected in the transformation of the wetlands either to water bodies used as fish farms or dried up for urbanization amounting to 23.4 km

2

or for land reclamation amounting to 25.5 km

2

. Eroded shoreline amounted to 6.87 km while accreted shoreline amounted to 7.97 km during the study period. The use of Remote Sensing and geographic information system techniques provided an integrated vision for understanding the various trends and patterns of changes in the study area.

Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM) data have been used in this study for mapping the terrain characteristics of the Egyptian territory. The 30 arc second (=900 m) resolution data is found to be the most suitable for the national scale mapping. The Egyptian political boundary was used to clip USGS GTOPO_U30 topo data Digital Elevation Model (DEM) for the Egyptian terrain. Using the DEM produced by the SRTM, different GIS layers were created using the ARC/G1S 9.0 software. These layers include all the necessary base map layers for terrain analysis, namely Contour, Elevation zones, Slope angle, Aspect, Hillshade, Drainage network and basins. Each layer map gives a clear idea about one parameter of the terrain as elevation zone map explains the topography distribution, highest and lowest altitudes. Slope angle map shows the distribution of sleep and gentle slope areas in Egypt. Aspect map explains the direction of the land slope differentiating as example areas facing north from others facing south. Hillshade map classifying Egyptian terrain into areas with more or rare shade, Maps of the drainage network and basins outlines the Egyptian terrain into different drainage basins regarding the surface runoff and consequently point out areas vulnerable to flash flood hazard and others with more probability for ground water supply. A rather new idea of creating an active, desktop for the Egyptian terrain is established. This active desktop gives the values of five parameters for a chosen point by using the cursor These terrain five parameters include values of X. Y, Z, slope angle and Aspect. The study of terrain characteristics is essential for strategic Planning and pre-planning decisions. Unveiling the land potentials and constraints, the terrain characteristics related to surface analysis and GIS cartographic modeling is a decision support tool.

Solid Waste Management (SWM) is one of the major environmental problems in many municipal towns and cities throughout the world. In most of the cases, municipal authorities are struggling to find the best method to manage their residents’ wastes. Approximately 3,500–4,000 metric tons of solid waste is generated in Dhaka City. Nearly 50% of generated solid waste is collected and dumped as crude landfill. The rest of the generated wastes remain uncollected and create serious environmental hazard in Dhaka City and uninhabitable situation/dismal for its dwellers. However, a little research works are conducted to find the appropriate solution of the problem. Recently, Waste Concern (Non Government Organization) takes initiative to tackle the problem employing composting technique in a small community such as Mirpur in Dhaka. Wastes are collected as house-to-house basis by rickshaw van. Subsequently, the inorganic parts are sorted out from the waste and organic parts are converted into compost (organic fertilizer) using windrow type aerator. In this study, the applicability of composting operation is studied in terms of technical, economical, social and environmental aspects as an alternative option of solid waste management. Also, a thorough investigation is carried out among the house owners/dwellers on environmental condition due to application of such method. Primary result indicates that this method is technically sound, environmentally safe, cost effective and socially viable.

The River Krishna in Andhra Pradesh is typical receiving water body for urban and rural runoff. The river shows strong seasonal dependence for various constituents and the water quality deteriorates sharply as municipal and Industrial wastes are joining the River Krishna. The important characteristic associated with the pollution of the river is the slightly reduction of self-purification process over a stretch of about 85 km. A chemical mass balance approach has been used for measuring changes in the concentration and/or load to the river, which in turn calculates the transport of pollutants. The mass balance calculations conducted for certain water quality constituents indicated that additional inputs are needed to account for the observed differences in load along the river. The sources may include non-point sources of pollution due to agricultural activities, sediment remobilization or entrainment, ground water intrusion or a combination of these sources. Mass balance calculations over a 4 years period indicate that pollutants are retained in the sediments of the investigated 85-km long reach of the stream (2,500 kg of Potassium, 40,000 kg of Sodium, 25,000 kg of Chloride, 2,000 kg of Fluoride and 2,000 kg of Silicates). Other pollutants such as Calcium, Magnesium and Sulphate appear to retained and washed-out, depending on leading rates and local stream conditions. The retained pollutants represent a substantial part of the total mass transport through the stream (10–75%). Almost 80% of the transported Potassium is retained within the stream sediment. Subsequently, the deposited pollutants represent a potential pollutants source.

Clinoptilolite adsorption capacity as a natural matter of the copper (II) ions from artificial polluted water was investigated in this study. In the experimental studies, zeolite mineral which is 25–140 mesh size was used by activating with 0.1 M HCl, and copper ion removal efficiencies were determined. Experiences that were under batch condition were studied at different pH values, temperatures and shaking speeds. In the studies, at different pH’s; maximum efficiency was found as about 87% at pH 5. Similarly, experiments were carried out at different temperature values, and the maximum efficiency was obtained at 30°C. The efficiency obtained under these conditions is 89.95%. The highest copper removal efficiency was obtained at 200 rpm, and the removal efficiency was measured as 89.62%.

Biosurfactants improve the removal of some recalcitrant pollutants in contaminated water and soil. The production and usage of man-made chemicals in industry has led to the entry of any xenobiotics into the environment. One such group of xenobiotics is chlorinated phenols. In this study, the treatment performance of 4-chlorophenol (4-CP), which is one of the most recalcitrant chlorophenols, was investigated using a biosurfactant added activated sludge bioreactor system with changing sludge retention time. Glucose was used as co-substrate and the COD concentration was kept constant during the experiments. JBR 425 rhamnolipid was used as biosurfactant. A control reactor (without biosurfactant; R1) and a test reactors (with biosurfactant addition; R2 and R3) were used in parallel tests. Three lab-scale continuous reactors were run in parallel with the same chemical oxygen demand (COD) and 4-CP loading rates. COD, 4-CP removal efficiencies and biomass concentrations with varying sludge age (3–25 days) were investigated. The effects of food to mass (F/M) ratio on the COD and 4-CP removal efficiencies were also investigated in the reactors. Operation at a sludge age of 3 days resulted in more than 77% COD and 46% 4-CP and 81% COD and 63% 4-CP removals in R2 and R3, while it resulted 61% COD and 19.15% 4-CP removals in R1.

The main concern of every industry is the clean and green production. In spite of all the efforts to achieve this goal the byproducts which are sometimes considered as waste are always a problem. In silk industry the pupa which is a protein rich material in many places is considered as waste. In this work silkworm pupa has been used as a natural adsorbent for the removal of cationic and acid dyes from textile industry waste water. The amino acid nature of the pupa provided a reasonable capability for dye removal. Equilibrium adsorption isotherms were investigated. The adsorption equilibrium data were analyzed by using various adsorption isotherm models and the results showed that the adsorption behavior of the dye could be described reasonably well by either Langmuir or Freundlich models. The characteristic parameters for each isotherm have been determined. The adsorption was dependent on the pH of the solution because of the ionization of amino and acid groups existing on the surface of the adsorbent. Results showed that silkworm pupa not only can be used as an effective natural source for adsorbent but also has a desirable adsorption capability for the removal of dyes from colored wastewater. Chitin and chitosan has been extracted from silk pupa and their properties have been investigated. The silk worm pupa has been treated with HCl and NaOH to extract chitin and then treated with 50% NaOH under nitrogen atmosphere to convert it in to chitosan. Results show that it contains up to 6% chitin. The degree of deacetylation of chitosan obtained determined by FTIR was 82%.

Exhaust gases pollution is one of the most important environmental threats; therefore its detailed study is of great importance. Rapid and cheap methods have been developed recently which is shown the dimensions of distribution of the heavy metal pollution, one of them being based on soil-magnetic parameters. These methods are cheaper and less time-consuming against chemical methods. In the present paper, it was examined the use of soil magnetic susceptibility methods designed to assess the degree of pollution in the samples taken from the soil surface of side of heavy traffic roads. Heavy metal pollution at near highways were tried to show by field and laboratory magnetic susceptibility measurements. These measurements were made to find out the distribution of heavy metallic elements deposited from exhaust gases in area near the high way. The first field was selected form west of Trabzon; the other one is west of Erzurum. When these areas were selecting, it was paid attention to little variation sediments homogeneity. Then taken samples from these areas were used to take laboratory susceptibility and geochemical measurements. The samples (taken Portland cement to be homogeny) exposed to exhaust gases, which were diesel, gasoline and gasoline containing lead for showing the changing with time. Geochemical results confirmed that near highway had relatively low magnetic susceptibility values, whereas sediments away from the highway exhibited relatively high magnetic susceptibility levels consistent with normal background geology. It is concluded that using low field magnetic susceptibility measurements could provide heavy metal pollution distribution at near highway.

Environmental pollution is a major concern for many countries due to increasing amounts of solid waste production, the release of dangerous gases into the atmosphere during fossil fuel combustion, and the lack of effective waste management policies. A major component of solid waste is waste paper with cellulose, a glucose polymer as the major building block. Waste paper can be recycled for a limited number of times before the quality of fibers deteriorate to such an extent that it can’t be used anymore in the paper making process. When reaching this stage used paper becomes part of solid waste and is described as waste paper that is mostly dumped or burnt, both contributing towards environmental pollution with the loss of a major resource of renewable energy as the cellulose component is also destroyed. Cellulase enzymes have the ability to hydrolyze cellulose into glucose and the cellulase from

Penicillium funiculosun

and

Trichoderma viride

were used to bioconvert the cellulose component of news paper, foolscap paper, filter paper and office paper into fermentable sugars. Cellulase enzymes are complex systems and their multi-component nature has been verified by separating it into various components by means of DEAE-Sephadex A-50 column chromatography. Glucose released during treatment of the different paper materials with cellulase were identified and quantified by High Pressure Liquid Chromatography (HPLC).

Textile industry involves several processes generated large quantities of wastewaters. These effluents have some properties such as strong color due to residual dyes, recalcitrance due to the presence of compounds such as dyes, surfactants and sizing agents or high salinity, high temperature and variable pH. Remediation by a combination of various physical, chemical and biological techniques of these effluents requires due to their complex and bioresistant characters. Ultrasonication is one of the advanced oxidation processes which are degradation method of organic compounds. It has the potential for use in environmental remediation due to the formation of highly concentrated oxidizing species. In this study, the decolourization of Reactive Red 2 (RR2), Reactive Blue 4 (RR4) and Basic Yellow 2 (BY2) were studied in the first step by continuous ultrasonic irradiation at 20 kHz and in the second step by microbial. The maximum decolourizations were found as 97, 89 and 46% for RR2, RB4 and BY2, respectively by an ultrasonic/ microbial combined method.

In this study, 36 small-scale wastewater purification systems effluents and 36 wells from sparsely populated and agricultural areas located in Pirkkanmma, Western Finland were analyzed during summer and fall 2006 by HPLC-SEC- (High Performance Liquid Size Exclusion Chromatography) coupled with on-line UV and fluorescence detector. In addition DOC (Dissolved Organic Carbon) of wastewater samples and wells nitrate concentration of the wells were determined. Two UV detection wavelengths, 224 and 254 nm respectively two excitation/emission wavelengths: 270 nm/355 nm (tryptophan-like fluorescence) and 270 nm/310 nm (tyrosine-like fluorescence) were used for detection. Wastewater leaching into the wells was not identified by tyrosine- and tryptophan-like fluorescence detection in whole-water samples. HPLC-SEC-UV at 224 and 254 nm was useful in indicating increased humic content and increased NO

3

, which could be caused by wastewater leaching.

A batch adsorption system using cotton stalk as a bioadsorbent was investigated to remove methylene blue from aqueous solution. The system variables studied include adsorbent particle size, initial dye concentration and adsorbent dose. Based on the isotherm data obtained from the fittings of the adsorption kinetics, the Freundlich model (Regression coefficient

R

≈ 0.99) appears to fit the adsorption better than the Langmuir model (Regression coefficient

R

≈ 0.89). The Freundlich and Langmuir monolayer capacity had a mean values of 1.29 l/g and 1.054 mg/g, respectively.

In this study the removal of free cyanide from aqueous solutions by air oxidation and adsorption was investigated. Effects of air and pure oxygen, and catalyst on the rate and extent of the removal of cyanide were studied. It was found that the oxidative removal of cyanide by air/oxygen was very limited although it tended to improve in the presence of pure oxygen and catalyst such as activated carbon and copper sulphate. In the presence of continuous aeration, the non-oxidative removal of cyanide was correlated with a decrease in pH effected apparently by the transfer of carbon dioxide from air phase into the medium. The removal of cyanide by adsorption on activated carbon (AC), nut shell (NS) and rice husk (RH) was also examined. Adsorption capacity of activated carbon was shown to be significantly enhanced via impregnation of activated carbons with metals such as copper (AC-Cu) and silver (AC-Ag). In the column tests, the breakthrough capacity of adsorbents was found to be in an increasing order of RH<AC<AC-Cu<<AC-Ag.

The main objective of this work was to determine the impacts of various backwash scenarios on fouling in a pilot-scale submerged membrane bioreactor (MBR) aerobically treating domestic wastewater. A total of seven different backwash scenarios were tested. The degree of membrane fouling was determined employing the flux-step method and using the resistance-in-series model for each backwash scenario. Fouling rates and total membrane resistances generally decreased with more frequent backwashing; decreasing of filtration duration improved fouling control. A higher rate of fouling was observed above critical flux for all scenarios. As the backwashing scenarios approached to “no-backwash-continuous filtration”, permeabilities deviated more from linearity indicating a higher degree of fouling. At a flux of 20 L/m

2

-h, fouled membrane resistance was reduced by 1.63-fold with 9 min 45 s of filtration followed by 15 s of backwash compared to continuous filtration. The negative impacts of filtration duration on total membrane resistances were more pronounced than the positive impacts of backwash duration, i.e., as the ratio of filtration/backwash duration increased resistances also increased linearly (

R

2

: 0.96). The strong correlation found among this ratio and the total membrane resistance suggests that the use of this ratio may be an effective tool in the optimization of fouling control in submerged MBRs employing routine backwashing. Scenarios 4 (9 min 55 s of filtration followed by 5 s of backwash) and 5 (9 min 45 s of filtration followed by 15 s of backwash) were found to be optimum based on fouling control and net daily volume of permeate production. The reversible fouling caused mainly by pore blocking and cake layer was effectively removed by these filtration/backwash scenarios as long as the operating flux was less than the critical flux.

Nitric oxide is an acid rain precursor and participates in the generation of photochemical smog through ozone production. In addition, nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas. Thus, the reduction of emissions of nitrogen oxides is currently a major environmental issue. In this study, Sweet sorghum was chosen as the energy plant. Combustion experiments of lignite and lignite-sweet sorghum mixtures were carried out in a fluidized bed system. The fuel-feeding ratio was set such that the thermal output of the system remained constant. Addition of Sweet sorghum to the lignite reduces the pollutant concentration. The results were supported by experimental results.

As a result of its high inert COD content (approximately 250 mg/l accounting for 63% of the total COD) and the possibility to evoke antibiotic resistance, Ceftriaxone sodium antibiotic formulation effluent (molecular formula = C

18

H

16

N

8

Na

2

O

7

S

3

) requires an additional treatment process preferably as chemical pretreatment along with the biological one to meet the discharge standards. The present study dealt with the effect of applying ozonation and the H

2

O

2

/O

3

process (perozonation) as a partial pretreatment stage to the mentioned antibiotic formulation effluent. 20 min of ozonation at a rate of 1500 mg/(l·h) removed 48% COD, whereas a COD removal efficiency of 53% could be achieved via perozonation in the presence of 31 mM H

2

O

2

. Ozonation completely eliminated the inhibitory effect of the effluent towards activated sludge, however at the same time it also resulted in an increase in acute toxicity towards the marine microalgae

Phaeodactylum tricornutum.

On the other hand, by perozonation a considerable reduction in the inhibitory effect of the studied effluent towards heterotrophic biomass was achieved, unfortunately perozonation also increased the toxicity of the effluent towards the marine microalgae.

Lignosulphonates are known as biologically-difficult-to-degrade, multi-purpose macromolecules that potentially may create toxicity problems in biological activated sludge treatment systems and/or in receiving water bodies. In the present experimental work a commercial lignosulfonate formulation (COD = 320 mg/g; BOD

5

= 8 mg/g) frequently being used as an auxiliarly chemical in the cotton and polyester dyeing process was subjected to ozonation (≈ 3 g O

3

/COD

o

) at different pH (6 and 12) and ozone doses (1,400 and 5,300 mg/h) to improve its biodegradability and reduce its toxicity. Experimental findings have indicated that ozonation of lignosulphonates is a rather kinetically limited process. 20 min ozonation of lignosulfonate at a dose of 1,400 mg/h and an initial pH of 12 resulted in an 8-fold decrease in acute toxicity (EC

50

= 3−4% v/v) towards the micralgae

Phaedactylum tricornutum

) and 50% reduction in its inert COD content (COD

o

= 600 mg/L). COD-based molecular size distribution indicated that the lignosulphonate formulation was cleaved to low-molecular-weight COD fractions after ozonation under the above mentioned conditions.

We have been developing non-traditional methods of the identification of pollutants, using various hydrobionts as biological objects and the study of the mechanism of toxic action of xenobiotics. The experiments were carried out with using of

Daphnia magna.

D. magna

is a Crustacean in the order of Cladocera. This aquatic animal extensively used as a test organism in aquatic toxicology due to their small size, short life cycle and amenability to lab culture.

D. magna

is the most sensitive test-object in relation of different pollutants among all known biological objects including experimental animals. Experiments were performed with a 2-days old culture of

D. magna

. The toxicity of xenobiotics was determined by the value of LC

50

, a concentration of the compounds causing death to 50% of hydrobionts during incubation with toxicants for 24 hours. In the first stage of the work, toxicity of organophosphates (Dipterex, DFP, DDVP, Paraoxon, Malathion, Malaoxon), carbamates (Aminostigmine, Physostigmine, Sevine), heavy metals (Hg, Pb, Cu, Co, Cd, Cr, As, Al), organochlorines (Aldrin, Dieldrin, Endrin, Aroclor, DDT, Lindane, PCBs etc.) and pyrethroids (Cypermethrin, Fenvalerate, Deltamethrin, Permethrin, Allethrin, Resmethrin, Phenothrin, Kadethrin, Cyphenothrin) was determined. The effects of a number of antagonists on the toxicity of xenobiotics were studied. At the first time we discovered that in experiments to

D. magna

some muscarinic cholinoreceptor blockers (atropine, glipine, pediphen etc.) reduced the toxic effect of organophosphates and carbamates. In the case of heavy metals the chelating agents (EDTA, Dithioethylcarbamate, Unithiolum, Sodium thiosulphuricum, l-Aspartic acid) were effective, for certain organochlorine poisonings – anticonvulsive drugs (diazepam, phenobarbital). In the case of pyrethroid’s poisonings the antagonist of glutamate receptor (ketamine), DOPA receptors (haloperidole) and blocker of calcium channel (nimodipine) reduced the toxicity of xenobiotics. As far as these antidotes have a specific treatment action only against definite classes of pollutants, we have elaborated the sensitive express-methods of bioidentification of pollutants.

Conventional methods using for removing heavy metals from waste water such as ion change, sedimentation, electrochemical and membrane processes, active carbon adsorption, evaporization and solvent extraction methods have high preliminary investments and operation costs. Furthermore, after the physicochemical refinement processes, subsidiary pollutants which are harmful to the environment occurs. Because of these reasons, biosorption processes improvement studies have been speeded up. Biosorption processes are the methods that are used for absorbing heavy metals from waste water by using biological substances. Using proper biomass is a cheaper process than those mentioned above. Moreover, the operation is easier than these processes. Many studies in the literature, it was determined that heavy metals were held on the surface of the dead bacteria, fungi and alga. In this study, it was also aimed to find out the capacity of heavy metal biosorption found in waste water by active sludge biomass which contains a number of bacteria, protozoa, fungi and rotifer kinds. Biosorption studies are carried out with batch technique. In this extent, the solutions which include chrome (VI) are used and optimum conditions on which biomass is successful in biosorpting these metals. The IR spectra’s of raw sludge and Cr

+6

charged biomass were taken for determine the effective functional groups on the adsorption. And for the biosorption process, kinetics and isotherm studies were also conducted. Finally, it was determined that biosorption can be explained with second degree kinetic and isotherm datum is compatible with Freundlich and Langmuir’s isotherm modal.

Phytoremediation, the use of plants for environmental restoration, is an emerging cleanup technology. To exploit plant potential to remediate soil and water, contaminated with a variety of compounds, several techniques have been established. In the present study, a pot experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of chromium-contaminated soil on growth attributes in sunflower. Three different levels of chromium i.e. 20, 40 and 60 mg kg

−1

were applied to three varieties of sunflower (G-3, G-9 and G-59). The results of morphological and yield parameters were recorded at crop maturity. The data showed that germination was affected by increasing chromium level as well as root and shoot length were decreased with increase in chromium concentration. A gradual decrease was observed for various morphological parameters like root fresh and dry weights, shoot fresh and dry weights and plant height with increase in chromium level. A comparison among chromium treatments obtained a significant decrease in yield parameters as achenes/capitulum, achenes/plant and 100 achenes weight in three varieties. Chromium significantly absorbed by roots but its transport to other parts of plants was slow and chromium uptake in seeds was very much lower than roots and shoots.

Due to potential risks of hazardous materials to human beings and to environment, numerous research has been initiated to investigate their removal, control, transportation and monitoring. The major organic pollutants in the subsurface environment are pesticides, PCBs, PAHs, organic liquids (LNAPLs, DNAPLs), and organic sludges/solids. The removals of these compounds are difficult due to poor solubilities of these compounds in aqueous phase. In addition, the rate limited solubilization makes the problem even more complicated. Since the traditional remediation methods were unsuccessful in cleaning up most contaminated fields, new novel methods have been investigated. Surfactants have been used in soil remediation processes to improve removal of pollutants from soil and groundwater due to their unique properties like micelle formation. Surfactants are a class of natural and synthetic chemicals that promote the wetting, solubilization, and emulsification of various types of organic and inorganic contaminants. They are utilised within chemical–physical technologies like in situ soil flushing and ex situ soil washing for remediation of unsaturated zone and pump and treat for aquifer remediation. There are many other investigations on surfactant enhanced remediation technologies including bioremediation and electro kinetic remediation. In this study, the use of surfactants in remediation technologies is discussed. Their advantages and disadvantages for wider applications are outlined.

The comparison of wet anaerobic digesters fed with differently sorted organic fraction of municipal solid waste (OFMSW) was carried out by co-digestion approaches to the primary sludge taken from Kayseri municipal wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) located in the Central Anatolian Region of Turkey. The WWTP was designed in two stages. The second mesophilic anaerobic digester is planned to be constructed after 20 years in the second stage. In this study, the construction of the second digester and a pre-treatment unit for municipal solid waste were proposed in the current stage for co-digestion purposes. Two alternatives were proposed using different solid waste contents in the co-digesters. In order to provide the required solid content, some amount of the treated wastewater was recycled to each digester together with the primary sludge. Although the existing collection method was assumed to be characterized as mechanical sorted (MS-OFMSW) (Option 1), source sorted (SS-OFMSW) alternative was also evaluated in the study (Option 2). The total energy demand of Kayseri WWTP was reported as around 42,300 kWh per day. Utilizing the energy produced by the digester, only 30% of the total energy demand and all of the heat energy demand including administration building can be covered. Thus, the aim was to evaluate how energy production would be increased by the application of co-digestion of OFMSW together with the primary sludge in Kayseri WWTP. Results indicated that the best operational condition in the cases of organic loading rate (OLR), hydraulic retention time (HRT) and energy recovery could be provided using 10% solid content in each co-digester for both options. According to the approach in Option 1, almost 77% of the total energy demand could be covered by applying co-digestion of MS-OFMSW together with the primary sludge and 200 m

3

treated wastewater recycle. On the other hand, almost 100% energy recovery could be obtained when co-digestion approach (Option 2) was performed according to SS-OFMSW together with the primary sludge at 150 m

3

treated wastewater recycle. Significant amounts of sludge cakes (anaerobic compost) were produced after co-digestion and aerobic composting could be considered as an appropriate post treatment alternative. Co-digestion of OFMSW and sewage sludge may be an attractive alternative for sustainable management of two separate waste streams produced at large amounts in the developing countries.

The study of the environmental impact of natural and anthropogenic events forms the essence of environmental pollution considerations. The nature of the polluting species as well as their time distributions are of primary importance with respect to identifying the polluting sources. Sediments are the most frequently used materials in such studies. Sediments act as the ecological memories of the environments of their formation. Besides classical chronological methods, radiochronological methods developed recently gave a big impetus to environmental pollution studies. One of the key radioisotopic technique is to utilize

210

Pb, a product of the

235

U radioactive series to date the last 200 years of the sediments. A number of supporting indicators are also utilized. One of them being anthropogenic

137

Cs which is used as a time-marker. Large amounts of

137

Cs radioactivity was released to the environment during 1954–1963, in time of the most intense atmospheric nuclear arms testing and again in 1986 during the Chernobyl nuclear accident. These intense

137

Cs activities form time-markers throughout sediment cores corresponding to their release years. During our studies extending over several years we have used radiochronological methods in dating several sediment cores from Zurich and Constance Lakes in Switzerland from east coast of Spain, Sea of Marmara, from the Black Sea region, Southern coast of Turkey and from North Cyprus. The distribution of several elemental concentrations of importance in pollution considerations along sediment cores were also determined. These studies allowes proposing time frames to pollution events and help inqueries in tracing possible sources of pollution.

The LIFE 02ENV/RO/000461 project is dedicated to the research of the flora and invertebrate fauna in downtown Bucharest, the city area most affected by intense car traffic and the consequent air pollution. The pilot zone is represented by three public parks (Izvor, Cismigiu and Unirea Parks). The zoological samples were collected from the herbaceous layer, from native and ornamental plants and from the soil, according to a transect method, from those park areas closest to the polluted downtown. The preliminary results revealed a change in invertebrate biodiversity. Some of the dominant species in the herbaceous layer are represented by

Frankliniella intonsa, Haplothrips niger

,

Bagnalliella yuccae

(Ord. Thysanoptera)

Oulema melanopus

and

Labidostomis longimana

(Ord. Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae). The Curculionidae species are present in the centre of the parks, the edges being populated with Apionidae species (Ord. Coleoptera). In the soil, Lithobiomorpha were more frequent than the other orders of centipedes. The Acari:

Parasitus beta, Rhodacarellus pespicuus

(Mesostigmata),

Glycypagus

sp. (Prostigmata) and

Tectocepheus sarekensis, Ceratozetes minutissimus

(Oribatida) and

Cyphoderus bidenticulatus

,

Protaphorura quadrioculata

(Collembola) are characteristic species. Could the dominant species be bioindicators of air pollution? A significant part of the project is dedicated to the study of heavy metal concentrations in those invertebrate species that act as bioindicators responding to the condition of the urban environment.

The concentrations of heavy metals (Pb, Cd, Fe, Ni and Zn) in 21 different honey samples collected from 21 different farms in Yozgat, Turkey, were determined by ICP-OES after microwave digestion. It is observed that metal concentrations in honey samples ranged between 0.06 and 0.139 μg g

−1

for Cd 0.03 and 1.20 μg g

−1

, for Zn 0.035 and 1.690 μg g

−1

, for Pb 0.006 and 2.332 μg g

−1

for Ni and 0.703 and 8.150 μg g

−1

for Fe. Although, the honey samples were in good quality, they were not free of heavy metals. It is interesting that the stations in which the metal concentration is maximum within the examined honey samples are near the settlement regions where the traffic and industry is especially intensive. According to these results; it is concluded that the heavy metal concentrations in honey samples excluding some stations which are close to the settlement regions are in acceptable borders.

Textile industry wastewater is an important pollution source that contains high concentration of inorganic and organic chemical species. Clay minerals are useful due to their chemical and mechanical stability, high surface area and structural properties. Diatomite is a pa1e-coloured, soft, lightweight sedimentary rock composed principally of silica microfossils of aquatic unicellular algae. Diatomite can be used as an adsorbent in wastewater treatment due to its unique combination of physical and chemical properties such as highly porous structure, low density and high surface area. Naturally occurring low cost diatomite as an adsorbent offers great potential for removing dyes from industrial wastewater. The aim of this work is to evaluate the removal of direct orange-46 from aqueous solution using manganese conditioned diatomite. The results from isotherm studies were evaluated with different isotherm models. The constants and correlation coefficients of these isotherm models for the present system were calculated and compared.

This paper presents a general overview of current municipal waste management in Gümüşhane Province. Both the drawbacks of present disposal method are discussed and solution proposals are submitted. The solid waste samples, one sample in every week and total fifty two samples in a year, were taken from the municipal solid waste open dumping area during a year, 2004 March-2005 February. Compostable organic parts of the samples, separated from the mixed municipal solid waste, were analyzed in order to determine the suitability of composting for the disposal of municipal solid wastes in Gümüşhane. The moisture content, C/N ratio and pH for all samples were determined and evaluated. The values with high moisture content being 78% (74% in spring, 83% in summer, and 78% in autumn and 77% in winter), relatively low C/N ratio being 21.6/1 (22.2/1 in spring, 16.2/1 in summer, 23.7/1 in autumn and 27.5/1 in winter), and low pH being 4.73 (5.50 in spring, 4.25 in summer, 4.45 in autumn and 4.72 in winter) disclose that composting of the organic wastes aren’t suitable.

In this research, the adsorption behaviors of two important fission product radionuclides (

137

Cs and

133

Ba) onto sodium form of insolubilized humic acid (INaA) were investigated as a function of time, cation concentration and temperature, utilizing radiotracer method. The resulting data was fitted well to the Freundlich and Dubinin-Radushkevich (D-R) isotherms. Thermodynamic constants such as; free energy (Δ

G

ads

), enthalpy (Δ

H

ads

), entropy (Δ

S

ads

) of adsorption were determined. Temperature change didn’t effect sorption processes significantly. Best fitting kinetic models were found for a better understanding of adsorption mechanisms. It was found that Ba

2+

was adsorbed five times more than Cs

+

onto structurally modified humic acid and kinetic studies indicated that adsorption behaviors of both ions obey the pseudo second order rate law. The effect of pH changes on adsorption was also examined and optimum pH range was found in the range of pH 6–8. FTIR and solid state carbon nmr (

13

CNMR) spectroscopic techniques were used to understand the structural changes during insolubilization process. Quantitative determination of adsorption sites was carried out using potentiometric titration method and the resulting data was treated by using appropriate Gran functions.

The fate of antibiotic residues in the manure of treated animals is of considerable concern because of the potential development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the environment. The objective of this study was to determine the fate of chlortetracycline (CTC) during the anaerobic digestion of manure from medicated calves. Five beef calves were medicated for 5 days with 22 mg/kg/day of CTC. Manure samples collected from calves prior to and after medication were diluted 5-fold with water, loaded into triplicate 1 l anaerobic digesters and incubated at 35°C. Approximately 75% removal of buffer extracted CTC was achieved in 33 days by anaerobic digestion, yielding a half-life of about 18 days. Although the levels of buffer extracted CTC epimer, 4-epi-chlortetracycline (ECTC), declined during anaerobic digestion, buffer extracted and water soluble CTC metabolite, iso-chlortetracycline (ICTC), concentrations increased. In addition, water soluble ECTC levels also increased during anaerobic digestion. Because degradation products distributed more towards the water phase compared with the parent CTC, the degradation products present in digested manure slurry will be the ones potentially encountered in water.

Technological development brought a number of advantages and conveniences to the modern life, but also brought many problems, environment pollution above all. Although a number of methods for water refining are already developed, there is still a demand to find a more efficient, cheaper and ecologically more acceptable sorbents. Possibility of using bentonite as naturally occurring material for methylene blue (MB) removal from its aqueous solutions was investigated in this paper. Characterization of starting material has been conducted by chemical analysis, XRD, particle size analysis, and N

2

physisorption at –196°C. The influence of the acidity of the initial MB solution on bentonite sorption characteristic was examined. Equilibrium sorption isotherms were determined. It was shown that with increase of pH and temperature the amount of sorbed MB increases.

Recently, the investigations have focused on the study of aquatic macrophytes as promising candidates for pollutant uptake and biological indicators of heavy metals in aquatic systems. Macrophyte-based treatments such as constructed wetlands appear to be highly competitive among the existing secondary treatment methods. Vegetation is important components of constructed wetlands designed to treat metal contaminated water. Waste effluents are characterized by substantial variations in pH values, and may have different heavy metal ions at variety concentration range. In this study, the effects of pH (4.5–8.0), temperature (15–35°C) and concentration (0.1–10.0 mgPb/L) on the bioremoval capacity of duckweed

Lemna minor

were investigated. The amount of biomass obtained in study period on dry basis, the concentrations of Pb(II) in tissue and in medium, and net uptake of Pb(II) by

Lemna

have been determined in different conditions. The percentages of Pb(II) uptake ratios were calculated for each condition. It was found that bioaccumulated Pb(II) concentrations and the maximum percentage removal were obtained at pH 4.5 and at 30°C. It was found that the concentration of Pb(II) in the plant biomass gradually increased with increase in concentration of Pb(II) in culture medium, but opposite trend was observed for the percentage of Pb(II) uptake.

The oxygen uptake rate, (OUR), may be regarded as one of the most significant modeling tools for the understanding and interpretation of behavior of complex microbial cultures sustained under aerobic conditions. The wastewaters investigated in this study were obtained from a tannery and a chemical plant producing asetilsalisilikat, (ASS). The scope of the study, involved aside from conventional characterization, an assessment of significant kinetic and stoichiometric coefficients for chemical plant and tannery wastewaters and their mixtures, by using respirometric measurements. Results have shown that the addition of pharmaceutical effluents having a biodegradable character on tannery wastewaters would not therefore cause any negative effect on the biodegradability of tannery wastewaters.

Production of drinking water through seawater desalination using reverse osmosis (RO) membranes is becoming increasingly attractive especially in coastal areas with limited freshwater sources. However, one challenge in such conventional desalination RO plants is the difficulty of meeting boron standards in product waters. Therefore, most of the current desalination plants employ additional treatment steps including pH adjustment of feedwater, dilution of RO permeate with other sources, ion exchange post-treatment of RO permeate, and/or double-pass staging for permeate. All these further treatment options increase the cost of desalination. Although membrane manufacturers have been developing modified RO membranes with enhanced boron removal capacities such membranes still should be improved from operational flux and pressure perspectives. The main objective of this work was to determine the impacts of operational conditions (membrane pressure, cross-flow velocity and flux) and water chemistry on boron rejections using two commercial RO membranes specified for enhanced boron removal (TorayTM UTC-80-AB and FilmtecTM SW30HR). A lab-scale cross-flow flat-sheet configuration test unit (SEPA CF II, Osmonics) was used for all RO experiments. Seawater samples were collected from the Mediterranean Sea, Alanya-Kızılot shores, south Turkey. For all experiments, mass balance closures were between 91 and 107%, suggesting relatively low loss of boron on membrane surfaces during 14 h of operation. Boron rejections were relatively constant (a maximum change of ±3%) during the 14 h of operation period for all experiments, suggesting that steady state dynamic membrane conditions were immediately achieved within couple hours. Boron rejections obtained with Toray and FilmTec membranes at pH of original seawater (8.2) and at other various operating conditions ranged between 85 and 92%, resulting in permeate boron concentrations of about 0.2–0.9 mg/L. On the other hand, for both membranes, much higher boron removals were achieved at a pH of 10.5 (>98%), resulting in permeate boron concentrations less than 0.1 mg/L. The charged boron species are expected to be dominant at pH values >9.24 (pKa of boric acid) compared to the neutral boric acid. Therefore, as expected, both membranes exhibited higher boron rejections at a pH of 10.5. Salt rejections (as measured by conductivity) were generally 97–99% at both pH values. Boron rejections were independent of feed water boron concentrations up to 6.6 mg/L. For each membrane type, permeate fluxes at constant pressure were generally lower at pH of 10.5. The ranges of permeate fluxes measured in all experimental conditions were 11–15, 13–17 and 19–21 L/m

2

-h for 600, 700 and 800 psi (41, 48 and 55 bar) pressures, respectively, after an operation period of 14 h. For all experimental conditions, permeate fluxes gradually decreased during the 14 h operation although a leveling off was observed after 12 h. At constant membrane pressure of 800 psi and pH of 8.2, feed flowrate thus the cross-flow velocity (0.9 and 0.5 m/s) did not exert any significant impact on boron rejection.

This study deals with respirometric modeling of biodegradation of complex organic matter generated from a chemical industry. Evaluation with a multi-degradation model indicated that organic matter in raw wastewater has four types of biodegradable components having different biodegradation characteristics. The model evaluation of batch respirogram indicated that the acclimated biomass exhibited a delayed response after the addition of raw wastewater to endogenous biomass. The delayed phase was characterized by Haldane type inhibition kinetics. The inhibitory effect of raw wastewater was also supported by standard toxicity test result yielding EC50 at 1.5% dilution.

The objective of this research is to investigate the possibility of using ultrafiltration blended cellulose acetate (CA) and polyethersulfone (PES) membranes in the treatment of palm oil mill effluent (POME). Thus, series of distinctive formulations such as pure CA and blended CA/PES using N, N-dimethylformamide (DMF) as solvent were formulated and prepared by phase inversion method. The blended membranes were initially subjected to the separation of BSA and then POME. The performances of these membranes were evaluated in terms of pure water and permeate flux, percentage removal of total suspended solids (TSS), chemical oxygen demand (COD) and biochemical oxygen demand (BOD). Blending of 19% CA, 1% PES and 80% of DMF solvent were discovered as the best membrane formulation. The morphology of the blended membranes produced were analyzed using scanning electron microscope (SEM).

This study deals with the rehabilitation of waste water treatment plant (WWTP) of Sakhnin city in Israel. To increase low removal efficiency of the facultative pond (FP) and seasonal reservoir (SR) of the WWTP, different kinds of reactors having different operating conditions were established by the name of two tasks such as intermittent trickling bio filters (ITBFs) and concrete tunnels, respectively. According to the evaluation of the results, it was observed that ITBFs and tunnel units contribute to reasonable removal capacity on sCOD, TSS, NH

3

-N and PO

4

-P parameters. When it is considered establishing a full scale treatment plant to rehabilitate FP and SR units of available WWTP, this study will be able to a guide for decision makers.

In this study, cotton boll was used as an adsorbent for the removal of the Mn (II) ions from the aqueous solutions. The adsorption process was carried out in a batch process and the effects of contact time (2–24 h), adsorbent dosage (1–20 g/l), initial pH (2.0–6.0), initial metal ion concentration (20–100 mg/l) and temperature (20–40°C) on the adsorption were investigated. Maximum adsorption capacity was determined at pH 5.0 and adsorbed Mn(II) ion concentration was increased with increasing adsorbent concentration and contact time. The isothermal data of cotton boll could be well described by the Langmuir equations and the Langmuir monolayer capacity had a mean value of 5.20 mg/g. Experimental results indicated that the pseudo-second order reaction model provided the best description of the data with a correlation coefficient 0.9898. The results of the study indicate that cotton boll can use as an effective low-cost adsorbent for the removal of the Mn(II) ions from the aqueous solutions and also Mn(II)-contaminated waters and wastewaters.

The electrochemical treatment of textile dye wastewater containing Levafix Blue CA, Levafix Red CA and Levafix Yellow CA reactive dyes was studied on iron electrodes in the presence of NaCl electrolyte in a batch electrochemical reactor. The wastewater was synthetically prepared in relatively high dye concentrations between 400 and 2,000 mg/L. The effects of initial dye concentration, electrolyte concentration and current density on dye removal, turbidity removal and pH change were studied at 28°C reaction temperature. In the study, complete dye removal and effective turbidity removal achieved; the rate of dye removal obtained as Levafix Yellow CA>Levafix Blue CA>Levafix Red CA at all reaction conditions. The flow pattern was analyzed, mass transfer coefficients and mass fluxes were evaluated. At optimized conditions, mean energy consumption were calculated as 8.3, 9.0 and 7.7 kWh/kg COD removed for Levafix Blue CA, Levafix Red CA and Levafix Yellow CA reactive dyes, respectively.

A mathematical modeling of bioconversion of domestic wastewater sludge for cellulase enzyme production was constructed based on the ideal batch mode. The mathematical models was based on the mass balance equation and focused particularly on the biomass, substrate and product rate of reaction. The biomass, substrate and product considered in this project were glucosamine, reducing sugar and cellulase enzyme respectively. The optimal conditions of pH, temperature, inoculum size, substrate concentration, co-substrate concentration and agitation speed were maintained during the simulation. The MATLAB simulation has been done by using modified Monod equation and modified kinetic equations for biomass, substrate and product. The results showed that higher product yields would be achieved when optimal conditions of parameters were held constant, the time constraints was 10 days and 95% of confidence level had been achieved which determined the range of validity of k’s values for these models. This study also involved the quantitative analysis and qualitative analysis graphically for validation of models.

The treatment of the H-acid containing in wastewater by wet peroxide oxidation (WPO) and catalytic wet peroxide oxidation (CWPO) was studied in a 0.5 L autoclave. It were investigated that the effects of temperature, pH, dosage of hydrogen peroxide and the types of catalyst on the oxidation process and the degradation efficiency. The results showed that H-acid which have stable structure at lower pressure and temperature can be degraded by WPO, and 62.0% of COD and 98.7% color removal were attained at the conditions of 110°C, 0.5 MPa, initial pH = 5.0 and theoretical dosage of peroxide when the initial concentration of H-acid containing water was 10 g/L. With catalyst Cu/Ni, 92.0% of COD and 99.9% color removal were obtained in the CWPO process under the same reaction conditions.

Ambient ozone measurements were conducted from the beginning of May 2003 to the end of October 2004 in the forested areas of west Mediterranean mountains of Turkey. The ozone concentrations were estimated using a passive sampling method from the bottom of the valley (altitude 10 m) to the top of the mountain (1950 m) over 20 sites distributed all over the study area. Active continuous measurements of ozone were done at one of the monitoring site and helped to calibrate the concentrations of ozone obtained by passive method. The results indicated that ozone concentrations were in the range of 19−410 μg m

−3

, the yearly average of ozone was 89.37±71.25 μg m

−3

. Generally, maximum ozone concentrations were measured at high altitude stations (1950 amsl) during the spring and summer season, and minimum concentrations were measured at the locations near to the road traffic. The sypmtoms of probable ozone injury in the vicinity of passive ozone samplers were examined by collecting needle and leaf samples from the main native plants. According to the visual inspection of leaves and measurement of photosentetic pigments of control and symptomatic leaves, out of 41 species of native plants, 11 species were identified as potential bioindicators of ozone. Ozone concentrations in the west Mediterranean part of Turkey appear to be high enough and of sufficient duration to cause foliar injury on a wide variety of native plants.

Bagasse ash from the local sugar mills of NWFP (Pakistan) has been analyzed both physically and chemically. The moisture, ash contents, loss on ignition (LOI), volatile matter and calorific value have been determined. The qualitative and quantitative analysis was carried out by x-ray flourimeter (XRF) and carbon sulfur detector. The physical parameters were determined by thermogravemetric analyzer (TGA) and bomb calorimeter. The bagasse was also analyzed for ash and moisture contents which were found to be 3.66 and 9.47% respectively. The bagasse ash was found to consist of 86.69% ash, 13.45% loss on ignition (LOI) and 50 kcal/kg calorific value. The chemical constituents of bagasse ash were found to comprise of SiO

2

, Al

2

O

3

, Fe

2

O

3

, CaO, MgO, Na

2

O, K

2

O, carbon and sulfur.

This study deals with the kinetic and equilibrium modeling of adsorption of the commercially important reactive azo dyes, Black B (C.I. Reactive Black 5), Red 3BS (C.I. Reactive Red 239) and Yellow 3RS H/C (C.I. Reactive Yellow 176) onto a Turkish zeolite mineral. To increase the adsorption capacity of the zeolite, the surface of natural samples was modified with a typical quaternary amine surfactant hexadecyltrimethylammonium bromide (HTAB). A series of batch adsorption tests were carried out at 298 K and the pseudo-first–order, pseudo-second-order kinetic models and intraparticle diffusion model were used to evaluate the kinetic data. The pseudo-second-order model provided excellent kinetic data fitting (

R

2

> 0.997) for these three dyes. The free energy changes Δ

G

for dye adsorption onto HTAB-zeolite were calculated. The negative values of Δ

G

indicate that the adsorption process is spontaneous and thermodynamically favorable. The Freundlich and Langmuir equations were also applied to describe the equilibrium isotherms for three reactive dyes and isotherm constants were determined. The Langmuir model agrees very well with experimental data while the adsorption behavior of all reactive dyes is favorable (0<

R

L

< 1).

Water Quality Index has been calculated in this paper for the municipal water of Attock city. This calculation was carried out using recent water quality data collected from thirty sampling station. For the calculation of water quality index, six parameters were taken in account pH, Total Dissolve Solids, Dissolved Oxygen, Electrical Conductivity, Nitrates and Sulphate. The calculated values of WQI for thirty sampling stations range from 109.2 to 142.1. The average value is found to be 127.56. The value of water quality index exceeds 100, the upper limit for drinking water at all sampling stations. It was due to high Total Dissolve Solids, Dissolved Oxygen and Nitrates in municipal water. The present study reveals that the municipal water of Attock City needs some treatment in order to get fit for the human consumption and also to avoid some health hazardous also.

Oxidation of a spent reactive dye bath containing a mixture of Remazol brand dyes as well as two main inorganic additives was carried out using ozone and decolorization was obtained in a relatively short time (10–30 min) and ozone utilizations were between 329 and 1609 mg. The spent dye bath oxidation could not be represented by any simple kinetics. Ozonation kinetics and decolorization character was evaluated using synthetic samples with dyes and assisting chemicals. Synthetic Dye Sample decolorization was achieved in 90 s with ozone utilization of 32 mg. NaCl addition decelerated the decolorization rate and increase the ozone utilizations. Na

2

CO

3

addition resulted in high pH and alkalinity and changed the mechanism of ozonation process as well as decolorization reactions yielding a better oxidation than that of the sample containing only NaCl.

Rapid inustriliazation and usage of heavy metals in industrial process have resulted in an unprecedented increase in the flux into groundwater and industrial effluents. The removal of heavy metal ions from industrial wastewaters using defferent adsorbents is currently of great interest. Adsorption by red mud is investigated as possible alternative to the conventional methods of copper removal from aqueous synthetic and industrial effluents. In this study, various factors such as particle size, red mud/solution ratio, contact time and initial concentration for copper removal using red mud are taken into account, and promising results are obtained. The results indicate that the red mud can be successfully employed for the removal of Cu

2+

in a wide range concentrations.

Tropical forests are a key part of debates on climate change science and policy because of the prospect of large areas of Amazonian forest not surviving projected climate changes under “business as usual” scenarios, the substantial contributions that deforestation and other landscape modifications make to climate change, and the potential role of efforts to counter deforestation as part of a strategy to mitigate climate change in the coming decades. Because half of the dry weight of the trees in a tropical forest is carbon, either deforestation or forest die-off releases this carbon in the form of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO

2

) and methane (CH

4

), whether the trees are burned or simply left to rot. Tropical forests are vulnerable to projected changes in precipitation and temperature. These changes could therefore threaten the biodiversity of these forests and the traditional peoples and others who depend upon the forests for their livelihoods. Also threatened are the environmental services supplied by the forests to locations both near and far from the forests themselves. Greenhouse-gas emissions provoked by forest die-off due to climate change are part of a potential positive feedback relationship leading to more warming and more die-off. The Amazon forest is a focus of concern both because of the particularly severe impacts of climate changes predicted for this area and because the vast extent of this forest gives it a significant role in either intensifying or mitigating future climate change (see: http://philip.inpa.gov.br).

In coastal areas, nearly all kinds of engineering and other activities are dependent on information about the sea level. Furthermore, the sea level is one of the most important parameters for studying climate processes. There are many tide gauges along the European coasts which have been operated for long time. These tide gauges are usually part of a national tide gauge network and designed for national purpose. In Europe and many other regions of the world, a considerable proportion of the population lives and work at the coast or near the coast. Therefore the need for information on sea-level data has developed during the last decades both for scientific and non-scientific application. To overcome the problem of dealing with different national networks, the European Sea Level Service (ESEAS) was established in 2001. This paper describes the objectives, tasks and products of the ESEAS and the organisational structure of the European Sea Level Service. Moreover, the current activities and the relation to other organisation are discussed.

An upper level atmospheric teleconnection between grid points: 0°, 55°N; 10°E, 55°N (North Sea) and 50°E, 45°N; 60°E, 45°N (northern Caspian) was identified. This teleconnection, referred as the

North Sea-Caspian Pattern (NCP)

is evident at the 500 hPa level. The

NCP

is more pronounced during winter and the transitional seasons. An index

(NCPI)

measures the geopotential heights differences between the two poles of the

NCP

. Time series of the

NCPI

are presented and analysed. A calendar of all months according to their belonging to

NCP(−), NCP(+)

or normal conditions during the analysis period (1958–1998) was prepared. The associated anomaly circulation during either

NCP(−)

or

NCP(+)

conditions was defined and their impact on the regional temperature and precipitation regimes in Greece, Turkey and Israel is analysed. At all stations and in all months, temperature values were significantly higher during the

NCP

(−) as compared with the

NCP

(+). Furthermore, apart from very few exceptions, the absolute monthly mean maximum and monthly mean minimum values were obtained during the

NCP

(−) and the

NCP

(+) phases, respectively. The maximum impact of the

NCP

on mean air temperature was detected in the continental

Anatolian Plateau

, where the mean seasonal differences are above 3.5°C. This influence decreases westwards and southwards. The influence on the rainfall regime is more complex. Regions exposed to the southern maritime trajectories, in Greece and in Turkey, receive more rainfall during the

NCP

(−) phase, whereas in the regions exposed to the northern maritime trajectories, such as

Crete

in Greece, the

Black Sea

region in Turkey, and in all regions of Israel, there is more rainfall during the

NCP

(+) phase. The accumulated rainfall differences between the two phases may be over 50% of the seasonal average for some stations.

Although in the past great attention has been devoted to coastal stabilization, the effect of aquatic vegetation on wave characteristics (damping and retardance etc) is still not well known. In this context an experimental study was performed in an irregular wave flume to explore the effect of reeds (phragmites australis) on wave damping and retardance. Further for a given vegetated area the effect of wave characteristics (i.e. wave height, wave period and wave steepness) on wave damping and retardance were discussed. Real reeds (phragmites australis) with diameter less than 5 mm were employed throughout the experiments for the emergent case. A dimensionless number was introduced to characterize both the vegetated area magnitude and the effect of the vegetation on wave damping and retardance.

This paper evaluated the effect of sludge history on the efficiency of aerobic sludge stabilization. The fate of excess sludge in activated sludge systems is closely related to the nature of biomass sustained in the system. The composition of biomass greatly affects stabilization performance. In this study, the impact of sludge history was investigated for different sludge ages in the range of 1–35 days in a system treating typical domestic sewage. A biochemical model was adopted to define particulate COD components for selected sludge ages. For each selected sludge age, the progress of aerobic stabilization was evaluated in terms of the same parameters for a period of 30 days. Model simulation indicated that the active fraction of the biomass (

X

H

) varied between 0.13–0.40 depending on the sludge age of the systems at the beginning of the stabilization period. It also showed that the nature of the biomass corresponding to a selected sludge age was a key factor determining the stabilization efficiency.

The current study is an attempt to link the morphological and EBPR-related physiological traits of a propionate-fed aerobic granular biomass with the EBPR performance of the system. A lab-scale SBR was started up by the aerobic granular EBPR biomass taken from an acetate-fed SBR and the inoculum was acclimated to propionate as the sole C-source. Mechanical-mixing applied during 2-h of anaerobiosis at the head of the cycle was the main source of shear (

v

SMix

; 7.6 cm/s), thus hydraulic selection pressure, and feeding the system under anaerobic conditions for 1 h at the head of the cycle, as well as supplying ortho-P in the influent (COD:P=12.8 mg COD/mgPO

4

-P) were the main metabolic-selection pressures ensuring the dynamic formation, maintenance, and stability of the aerobic semi-granular EBPR biomass (

d

gra

; 1.41 mm) with superior settling properties and compactness (SVI≤50 mL/g), and promoting the selection of anaerobically C-storing (>95% anaerobic COD-removal), aerobically slowly growing and P-removing organisms –the PAOs- in the system, resulting in an acceptable level of EBPR performance (78% EBPR efficiency). The biomass was considerably diverse with various morphotypes being present (rods, filaments, tetrads/sarcina-like cells, coccoid-clusters, diplo-coccoids, and elongated rod-shaped cells unique for the system). Phenotypic characterization via chemical-staining and conventional light-microscopy revealed the presence of the PAOs cycling their intracellular poly-P and PHB inclusions between the anaerobic and aerobic phases. Tetrads/sarcina-like cells (TFOs) resembled the GAOs morphologically but not phenotypically. Elongated rod-shaped cells (PUBs), which had the ability to anaerobically utilize propionate and store it as PHB, were speculated to be either GAOs or functionally less efficient PAOs. Microbiological observations were qualitative, rather than quantitative, yet they found to correlate to an extend with the observed biochemical performance of the system.

Tank cascade irrigation system (TCIS) is a water management practice developed in order to match the nature of the rainfall and landscape in the dry zone of Sri Lanka. The series of interconnected tanks in this system serves multiple functions, including irrigation. This study was carried out to investigate the water quality variation in a tank cascade system and study the role of hydrophytes found in the upper periphery (

Thaulla

). The Malagane Tank in the northwestern intermediate zone of Sri Lanka was selected for the study. Fairly high levels of nutrients and metal concentrations were recorded in the upstream paddy fields and main inflow of the tank. The concentrations of most of the chemical parameters were showed a decreasing trend while passing the

thaulla

area which is one of the most important hydrologic regime in a tank system. However, the runoff from the either sides of the tank has polluted the lake water particularly during the rainy season. The hydrophytes in the

thaulla

area play a major role in the hydrology of the tank system.

Focusing on the problem of forecasting flood, the goal of this study is to investigate Flood Index (FI) during flood events. Such a flood index based on effective precipitation is utilized to estimate flood index from two floods over Fars province from October 25 to November 15 in 1986 and December 20 to January 20 in 1992–1993. Daily precipitation on Shiraz station from January 1975 to December 2002 is examined to calculate indices and to compare with result. FI is calculated by considering precipitation and produces the Available Water Resources Index (AWRI) by precipitation. Comparisons of validation results from FI and AWR with observed flood over two events are purposes. This study reveals FI to be promising tool for warning flood.

Large amount of raining water is transferred to reception resources in urban areas due to the increased impermeable surfaces. Urban catchments water is that produced by precipitating or snow melting considered as one the most important non-point source pollutants. Good management of treatment works requires an understanding of the First-Flush phenomenon of wet weather in urban drainage systems. In this study, having discrete sampled the output drainage of 13 precipitation events in one of Isfahan catchments during autumn/winter, 2002/2003, 10 qualitative/quantitative parameters were measured assessing general quality and the First-Flush curves were drown for each pollutant parameters. The results showed that primary elution much occurred for nitrates, biological oxygen demand and chemical oxygen demand in comparison to other pollutants and the major pollution amount can be eradicated through controlling the primary drainage volume.

Development of an irrigation farming and intensive water use in water catchments areas of Kura basin river of Azerbaijan has increased consumption to fresh water, which is supplied only by small mountain rivers. Most of water resources of small mountain rivers of Kura basin are completely consumed by the enterprises of industry and agriculture. Waste of the water resources of small rivers bring to the “loss of rivers” as an element of landscape in the Small Caucasus region. In lower part of Kura river basin within the Azerbaijan during the shallow season of year the river flow is completely absent. To prevent such condition on the mountain rivers needs to reserve a part of the river flow, that is to say, reserve “ecological flow” in the riverbeds. Ecological flow is such a quantity and condition of the flow, in which is vital for aquatic organisms, quarantines increase for them, sufficient for transporting all solid materials and sediments. In other words, the ecological flow maintains the river ecosystem as a part of an environment. To quarantine of these conditions are needed enough quantity, quality and strong watercourse speed in the riverbeds. The complex assessment of the ecological flow needs systematical and complex hydrological, biological and ecological investigations and stationary observations on the watersheds. As a result of long-term investigations, new methodic, which gives a possibility to calculate ecological flow for mountain rivers is proposed. For sufficient situation of hydroecological safety, ecological flow is needed to estimate for points of concentration of rivers. Points of concentration in many small rivers are situated very far from the river mouthes and consequently, stationary hydrological observations do not reflect hydroecological situations in the mountain rivers. By the offered methodic it is possible to estimate ecological flow for all year period. By this methodic the ecological runoff is estimated not only for water gauge stations, but also for a mouthes of small rivers. The index of a relativity of a ecological flow is developed. It has been revealed, that the interrelation between recordable and ecological flows defines an ecological situation in river ecosystem. Such interrelation may be called relative hydroecological factor of flow (CREF). Relative ecological factor of the water is an indicator of ecological situation in the river for any period. If the CREF value is higher than the unit is, then the danger of ecological crises in the river ecosystem does not exist, because, for an exchange of substances and energy in the river there is enough water. If CREF value is lower than the unit, then insufficient water flow is observed in the river.

Natural-climatic conditions of Uzbekistan, the limited area of lands suitable for cropping and limited water resources force to search more effective and useful ways of water-land resources usage. An anthropogenic desertification brings to complication of the problem above. About 15% of a crop is lost because of a unsuccessful ameliorative condition of the lands. This situation is more serious in the lower reaches of the Amu Darya river. Efficiency of the irrigated lands in Karakalpakstan 4.5 times lower than in the country, in the Khorezm area – 1.4 times. The parameters of disease connected to water quality have grown and there is a sanitary-and-epidemiologic condition get worse frequently. Alongside with the general problems, situation can be complicated with water shortage and a drought. Hydrological mode of the Amu Darya River is not stability. Extreme situations such as flood (1994, 1995 is observed, 2003–2004) and dry become more frequent (2000, 2001). In the Amu Darya river basin limited water division is carried out to manage of water distribution taking into account water quality. The structure of water consumption in a lower reaches of Amu Darya is various. In the Khorezm area the agriculture consumes 97.5% from the taken water, for municipal services − 1.8, fish economy − 0.7%. We have developed an information-program complex which includes:

•  Model of water resources management

•  A database

•  User interface

The model allows calculating various scenarios of the Amu Darya river water resources management considering its quantity and quality in imitation and optimization modes.

Develi Closed Basin is located at the south-western side of Erciyes Mountain, in the Central Anatolia. Sultansazligi Wetland is located in Develi Closed Basin, which is one of the seven important wetlands of Turkey and the second important bird habitat of Turkey. Sultansazligi is also known as one of the most important wetlands of the Eastern Europe and the Middle East. In the recent years, this wetland faced with the water shortage and salinity, due to the climatic change and irrigation return flow with the high salt content. There is an intensive irrigation around the marsh with abundant use of water due to the wild flooding. In this study, the water budget of Develi Closed Basin is computed and the uncertainties faced during the water budget computations are introduced. Uncertainties of the Develi Closed Basin water budget computations; can be summarized as the unknown hydrological parameters such as missing flow data, infiltration index of the soil, evapotranspiration from the reedfield, insufficient flow and precipitation data.

This paper presents a comprehensive framework for determining the interaction between transport, land-use and environmental impacts, where the developed concepts were tested using a case study. Two bridges, connecting Europe in Asia and their peripheries, and one of the alternatives of the newly planned third bridge at the Istanbul Metropolitan area were selected. The constructed transportation infrastructures had drastically changed the land-use profile and still have negative impacts on environment. After exploring the interaction systematically, possible impacts of the new bridge were investigated in this study. In order to detect changes and to predict the potential impacts, former land-use, transport infrastructure data were integrated with satellite images retrieved in 1963, 1987, 1992, and 2002. A four kilometers band was created referencing the center-line of the highway and this process was repeated for all satellite data. The land-use classes for exploring the interaction were settlement, transportation infrastructure, green land and forest, water and barren land. Within this range, the images were classified and results were compared statistically, in order to analyze the impact of transportation infrastructure. In order to explore the interaction between transport, land-use and environment, a spatio-temporal conceptual data model was designed to project the impacts of the newly planned third bridge. The results show that, easy accessibility caused by the development in transportation infrastructures created an attraction in this region and urban areas expanded rapidly. In year 1987, where the construction of the second bridge was recently begun, the 23% of the selected band was determined as settlement. In the year 1992, after the second bridge was full in operation, the percentage of the settlements was increased 12% only within a period of 5 years. In order to estimate the impacts of third bridge to the study area, the second bridge feet at the Asian side was selected. According to the classification results of the year 1963, the settlement class retrieved showed an increase of 339.5%, where 44.2% decrease was detected in the green areas. By means of the shortly described methodology and achieved results, integrated data collection and analysis was highly emphasized and the new proposed framework might be used effectively for aiding authorities and decision-makers to better understand the main causes of interaction, to inform them of the changing conditions and monitoring similar projects elsewhere.

Water supply resources are groundwater and surface water bodies currently used or intended for prospective use. Water used from identified water bodies shall meet relevant qualitative objectives and resulting requirements on water quality and quantity according to its purpose of use. Water resources protection should be viewed as a integrated protection of quality and quantity of sustace and ground water, including natural curative springs and minerals waters. For water resources protection the protection zones with limited agricultural use and other activities are designated according to the valid legislation. The paper deals with issues relating to water quality and quantity protection.

E-waste is a new term coined in the market of hazardous substances. It has taken a new bourgeoning route since the boom of IT. The problems regarding the transportation, handling and disposable have to be tackled at the earliest else it might cause detrimental effects on environment. Presently in India there is no distinct and lucid regulation(s) regarding e-waste management. We are looking for one stop solution! In the present paper, we have put forth some of the Technical and E-Management Strategies that can be implemented by adopting 3 R’s policy – reduce, recovery and recycle.

The

Most Expectable Rainfall Regime

-

MERR

in a certain region is composed of various parameters regarding the rainfall regime in that region. Two stations in the Mediterranean basin, Valencia and Larnaca, were used as an example of the diversity of the rainfall regime and its extremes. The present study examines several parameters of the

MERR

, such as: the rainfall

TOTAL,

the

Date of Accumulated Percentage- DAP,

the

Rainy Season Length

-

RSL

, the

Number

of

rain-spells- NRS,

the

Rain-spells Yield- RSY,

the ratio between the

Average

rainfall and its

Median- AMED

and the relationship between the precipitation and number of the rain-spells. The study shows that Larnaca’s rainfall regime is less extreme as compared with the regime in Valencia. In addition, the rainfall regime in Larnaca suits the definition of a Mediterranean climate better than that of Valencia. Therefore the

Rainfall Regime Uncertainty

-

RRU

is higher there.

We investigate the behaviour and fate of pesticides in soil and groundwater in one of the most vulnerable site of Bangladesh, name Rangpur sadar thana. Leaching Potential Index (LPI) of sixty nine sites is calculated and one most vulnerable site is selected. Six soil samples are collected from different depths of soil and analysed for pesticide residues using Gas Chromatograph (GC) and High Performance Liquid Chromatograph (HPLC). Tests are carried out for most recently used pesticide fenitrothion as well as other pesticides of organophosphorous, carbamate and organochlorine group. No peak is detected in chromatograms which resembles to the retention time of these pesticides. The transport behaviour of pesticides for the chosen site is also investigated by MODFLOW to forecast on the contamination potential of different pesticides. Simulation results reveal that low persistent pesticides fenitrothion and malathion are environment friendly, as percentage remaining is very small in different depths. In contrast diazinon, chlorpyrifos, cypermethrin of organophosphorous; carbofuran and carbaryl of carbamate; and heptachlor and endosulfan of organochlorine pesticides could reach groundwater because their percentage remaining in the groundwater level is high. However, this study revealed that due to the general use of low persistent organophosphorous pesticides there is no significant contamination in soil and groundwater of Rangpur sadar thana.

Insects are the most diverse group of organisms and are 3/4th of all described forms of life. Potentially they are highly indicative of environmental change through close adaptation to their environment. Migratory insect species are at the verge of extinction owing to increasing trend in global warming. Insect fauna also represent the majority of links in the community food chain and they likely have the largest biomass of the terrestrial animals. While the positive values of the insect fauna is remarkably more than that of their negative values. They act as pollinators and bio-control agents in the agro-ecosystem and have batter impact for the development of sustainable agriculture. Thus, knowledge about them is fundamental to study the environment. One to three million insects species are identified worldwide while 2,000 from Pakistan. Out of which more than 954 species from 10 orders are identified/explored by the “Insect Biodiversity and Biosystematics Lab”, Department of Agri-Entomology, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan. Of the described species in the order Orthoptera (Grasshoppers, Crickets, 279), Odonata (Dragonflies, 130), Lepidoptera (Moths and Butterflies, 82), Diptera (Syrphids, Fruitflies, Clypterate species 187), Homoptera (Aphids, Whiteflies, 65), Thysanoptera (Thrips, 52), Neuroptera (Antlion, Chrysopids, 42), Dictyoptera (Mantids, 32), Hemiptera (Reduviid & Anthocorid Bugs, 11) and Hymenoptera (Braconids, 17). The abundance of bee forage plants throughout the year determines the growth of honey bee colonies and hence the productivity of bee farming. Pakistan is endowed with more than700 plant species. Out of which entomophilous crops cover 7.3 million hectares of land and forest more than 10 million hectares which can support 0.4–0.5 million honey bee colonies. Despite fairly abundant floral sources and quite suitable climatic conditions for keeping bees in the country, honey production (1000 tonnes) from 3,00,000 colonies is much below to its exploitable potential. All of this work has been completed by students M.Sc/Ph.D theses research and many students are working on different groups of insect fauna and their biodiversity. Eleven species of scrabid beetles (Coleoptera) have been identified recently on molecular level by DNA characterization. Many other identified species specimens, are placed in the departmental insectarium, which are not mentioned in this report.

The content of 16 organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) was determined in the surface zone (0–5 cm) of soil and sediment samples, taken from different locations in the city of Novi Sad, capitol of Vojvodina Province (North of the Serbia) covering residential and commercial area, recreational and arable zone. The total organochlorine pesticides concentration in soil varied from 2.63 to 31.78 μg/kg dry matter, while the level in sediment was 10.35 μg/kg dry matter. Maximum content of identified individual organoclorine pesticide in soil samples was 10.40 μg/kg dry matter for p,p-DDE in the market garden and 6.31 μg/kg dry matter for p,p’-DDT in sediment of the Danube River, although their application is restricted in Serbia. Data were compared with the ones found for soils and river sediments throughout the world, and with limit values set by soil and sediment quality guidelines. Also, correlation between the levels of certain pesticides and soil characteristics (organic matter, pH and clay content) was investigated.

An experiment was conducted to examine the ability of Oyster mushroom to grow on tomato tuff mixed with wheat straw. Six treatments were examined including the control, which contained 90% wheat straw with the fixed additives (wheat bran and gypsum). After inoculation and incubation, transparent plastic bags were used for cultivation. Three days were needed for pinheads to start appearing, and then between 3–7 days were needed for the maturity of the basidiomete. Several growth parameters were examined including incubation, primordial induction and fructification period, earliness, average weight of individual basidiomata, average yield for each treatment, diameter of the pileus, Biological Efficiency (BE%). In addition, proximate analyses for protein, crude fat, crude fiber, ash, carbohydrates, minerals and moisture were performed. The best performance was obtained by adding 30% tomato tuff to the basal growing medium which gave the highest yield (417–478 g/bag), average weight (21–29 g/cap), average cap diameter (9.2–10 cm/cap) and BE% (84–96%). Carbohydrates and protein content were high in

Pleurotus

basidiomete, fiber was high too but not as high as carbohydrates and proteins. Ash content was moderate, while fat content was low. For mineral contents in mushrooms, the trend was the same in all treatments. Both macroelements K and P were high in their concentrations when compared with other minerals in all treatments. Sodium was moderate in its concentration, while both Mg and Ca were found at low concentrations, but Mg was relatively higher than Ca. For microelements, both Fe and Zn were relatively high compared with other minerals like Cu and Mn, which were found at very low concentrations.

Rhizome extract of “C” and seed extract of “N” were tested in the laboratory for their effects on feeding, development, mortality, reproduction and oviposition of

Crocidolomia pavonana

(Fabricus) (Lepidoptera; Pyrallidae) on broccoli. Antifeedant activity of “C” and “N” biopesticides were tested against fourth instar

C

.

pavonana

larvae in leaf-disc choice and no-choice tests. The results show that under the choice condition, the treatment with 1% and 1.25% “C” biopesticide for 24 h or 48 h, reduced feeding by the test larvae on broccoli leaves by more than 90%. Under the same condition, reduction in feeding after 24 h caused by treatment with 0.12% and 0.2% “N” biopesticide was recorded as 86.7% and 95.8% respectively. In the no-choice test, the treatment with 1% and 1.25% “C” biopesticide reduced feeding by 61.8% and 74.2% respectively after 24 h and by 70.6% and 77.7% after 48H. Under no-choice conditions “N” biopesticide at concentrations from 0.025% to 0.2% was not effective in deterring the test larvae from feeding on treated leaves. In the testing to evaluate the effects of test biopesticides on reproduction and longevity of

C

.

pavonana

, fourth instar larvae were offered treated leaves for 48 h, then their development was followed until adult emergence. The duration of fourth instar and pupal period of the survivors, as well as the fecundity and longevity of the resulting adults, were recorded. Oviposition-deterring activity on

C

.

pavonana

of “C” and “D” biopesticides was tested against gravid females of

C

.

pavonana

(5-8 days post emergence) on broccoli seedlings in choice and no-choice tests.

The quantity of herbage intake by sicilo-sarde dairy ewes, under a rotational grazing system, was determined by the method of count bite. Measurements were taken on a mountainous area of Béja (northern west of Tunisia) being the pasture mainly constituted by herbaceous species, especially of the graminaceous ones, its composition as well as bite weight and rate were estimated. Grazing time was around 7 h per day. Average ewes dairy production was around 0.8 kg per day (0.4–1.3 kg). All ewes were supplemented by avena hay ad labitum, and 0.35–0.70 kg of concentrate. Concentrate feed consisted of a mixture of barley, wheat bran, and soybean meal. The results obtained show that biting rate varies between dairy ewes according to their milk production, and pasture availability. The average pasture consumption varied between 420 and 640 g/day. Pasture consumption increases with the level of production and concentrate in the diet. Individual intake variability was also observed, and can be related to other zootechnical factors such as age and weight of the animals.