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ROBOT-ASSISTED RADICAL LAPAROSCOPIC PROSTATECTOMY WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY BAPTIST MEDICAL CENTER WINSTON-SALEM, NC 00:00:08 ANTHONY ATALA, MD: I would like ...

CERN Document Server

CERN earns "Nature & Economie" label for green land management

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Seasonal Allergic Rhinitis

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Jun 6, 2011 ... Sick leave is earned at a rate of 4 hours per pay period. ... The Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) is a three-tiered pension plan ...

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... earns money through receiving protection funds from embattled ... relationship between the TTP and LI ... relevant considering that Pakistan's military is ...

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Chewing up the Forest: Bark-Eating Beetles Provide Timber for Forest Fires. Droughts in California allow bark beetles to lay eggs into sapless trees, ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) is interested in assessing the potential economic impacts of its portfolio of subprograms on national employment and income. A special purpose version of the IMPLAN input-output model called ImBuild II is used in this study of all 21 Building Technologies Program subprograms in the EERE final FY 2005 budget request to the Office of Management and Budget on February 2, 2004. Energy savings, investments, and impacts on U.S. national employment and earned income are reported by subprogram for selected years to the year 2030. Energy savings and investments from these subprograms have the potential of creating a total of 396,000 jobs and about $5.6 billion in earned income (2003$) by the year 2030.

UK PubMed Central (United Kingdom)

BackgroundApproximately 25% of ischemic stroke patients awaken with neurological deficits. In these patients, in whom the time from symptom onset is uncertain, brain imaging is a...Full Text Available

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... mass of gray gas by thermal radiation; An experimental study of the turbulent wake behind a cone at M = 5; Heat transfer augmentation by steady ...

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With reference to three hypotheses on the causes of forest decline, the manifold uses of forest decline surveys are demonstrated. Hypothesis no. 1: Forest disease from high-voltage transmission lines; hypothesis no. 2: Forest disease as the consequence of damage from micorrhizas; hypothesis no. 3: Radioactivity as the cause of the increased incidence of forest disease. (orig./MG)

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

An international conference on forestry research presented papers on topics including forest mensuration, growth and yield; growth/yield relationships; design, performance, and evaluation of experiments; forest resource inventory and monitoring techniques; forest management, planning, and managerial economics; forestry and rural development in developing countries; forestry in sustainable economic development; conceptual advances in multiple-use forestry evaluations; economic evaluation of forest damages; supply and demand of roundwood and forest industry products; forestry and rural development in industrialized countries; analysis and evaluation of forest policies; forest institutions and organizations; biological and economic considerations when harvesting young thinning stands; applied sector modelling; and structural changes of the ...

Science.gov (United States)

Ts presentation, available online as a printable PDF, discusses the global effects of deforestation. It contains the following three pages:an overview of the reasons people have cut forests and how the direct destruction of forests is the primary reason for today's massive extinction of speciesa world map that shows the global forest cover 8,000 years agoa world map that shows the significantly smaller remaining frontier forests as of 1997?intact natural forest ecosystems that are relatively undisturbed and large enough to maintain all of their biodiversity.

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Jun 16, 2011 ... Results indicated that fuel loadings averaged 24.05 Mg ha 1 in 2004–2006. Forest litter decreased from wetter to drier forest life zones. ...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

In this article we derive longitudinal impedance and wake function for an undulator setup with arbitrary undulator parameter, taking into account a finite transverse size of the electron bunch. Earlier studies considered a line density-distribution of electrons instead. We focus our attention on the long-wavelength asymptote (compared with resonance wavelength), at large distance of the electron bunch from the undulator entrance compared to the overtaking length, and for large vacuum-chamber size compared to the typical transverse size of the field. These restrictions define a parameter region of interest for practical applications. We calculate a closed expression for impedance and wake function that may be evaluated numerically in the most general case. Such expression allows us to deriv...

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... to the north of the Qinling, through mixed deciduous broad-leaved forest at lower mountain elevations, and conifer forest at ... ...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Forest gap models have been used widely in the study of forest dynamics, including predicting long-term succession patterns and assessing the potential impacts of climate change on forest structure and composition. However, little effort is devoted to predict forest dynamics in the high elevation areas, although they have the sensitive response to global climate change. In the present study, based on a modified height-diameter function, we developed a new version (FAREAST-GFSM) of the forest patch model, FAREAST for simulating the changes of subalpine forests. The observed data from the Gongga Mt. Alpine Station were also used to test model precision. With the improved performance of FAREAST-GFSM, we explored the impact of three warming scenarios on subalpine forest on the eastern Tibetan ...

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especially since your attack several years ago. I was wondering, in the wake of WikiLeaks, what the Estonians can help the U.S. with in terms of developing an - as...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

In this article we derive longitudinal impedance and wake function for an undulator setup with arbitrary undulator parameter, taking into account a finite transverse size of the electron bunch. Earlier studies considered a line density-distribution of electrons instead. We focus our attention on the long-wavelength asymptote (compared with resonance wavelength), at large distance of the electron bunch from the undulator entrance compared to the overtaking length, and for large vacuumchamber size compared to the typical transverse size of the field. These restrictions define a parameter region of interest for practical applications. We calculate a closed expression for impedance and wake function that may be evaluated numerically in the most general case. Such expression allows us to derive an analytical solution for a Gaussian transverse and longitudinal bunch shape. Finally, we study the feasibility of current-enhanced SASE schemes (ESASE) ...

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... (v) Import onto or keep on Wake Island any plant or animal not indigenous to the island, other than military working dogs or a guide dog for the blind or visually-impaired accompanying its owner; or (w) Import or bring onto or...

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S.M. Goltz; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Forest Ecosystem Dynamics Project ...

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Not Available

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A small cable yarding system for accumulations of slash on forested land and overstocked non-productive stands is described.

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Soil acidification via acid precipitation is recognized to have detrimental impacts on forest ecosystems, which is in part associated with the function of ethylene released from the soil. However, the impacts of acidification on the cycling of ethylene in forest soils have not been fully taken into consideration in global change studies. Forest topsoils (0?5 cm) under four temperate forest stands were sampled to study the effects of a pH change on the emissions of ethylene and carbon dioxide from the soils and concentrations of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) released into the soils. Increasing acidification or alkalinization of forest soils could increase concentrations of DOC released into the soils under anoxic and oxic conditions. The ethylene emission from these forest topsoils could s...

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Traditional farmers and harvesters of non-timber forest products in Peten treat the forest in ways that conserve and regenerate its resources. They believe no one owns the forest outright. Humans share it with other life forms and therefore no one has the right to monopolize or destroy forest resources. Traditional Peteneros find a use for almost everything in the forest, and believe it neither smart nor proper to use a given area for a single purpose, for example, to clear an area of all trees and devote it exclusively to a cattle pasture. In the traditional system most medicinal plants, basic foodstuffs, fuelwoods and construction materials are taken from the bosque (secondary forests within walking distance of human settlements). Peteneros` sustainable use of bosques eases pressure on the monte (primary forests). In the monte Peteneros` ...

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Stretch-Out and Extended Low Power Operation is two particular operating modes applied for nuclear electricity generation. The relevant safety analysis and the impacts on plant operation are well illustrated, as well as some operation experiences earned in Daya Bay nuclear power station. The safety analysis and plant practice show that Stretch-Out operation and Extended Low Power Operation are operable in Daya Bay nuclear power station

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A compartment model, including removal of organic matter in a forest ecosystem, is developed to describe matter cycling and net CO{sub 2} flux of the ecosystem especially of managed forests. The model consists of five carbon stocks: atmosphere, foliage, woody matter, underground matter, and dead organic matter in the soil. Employing appropriate values of ecophysiological parameters in the model and simulation of man-made sugi (Cryptomeria japonica D. Don) plantation forests shows that these forests have high growth potential with a maximum total phytomass of over 750 t ha{sup -1} in dry matter basis. When the typical pattern of thinning regime for sugi plantation forests in Japan is applied to the present model, the simulated forest biomass developments compare well with mensuration data from various forestry sites. The CO{sub 2} balance between the sugi ...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Although a large number of different organisations offer various forest education programmes within Germany, specific information (i.e., sectoral and programme content and provision at a state level) is lacking. This study used a survey of all 61 forest education organisations (43 respondents) in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, to evaluate its forest education sector, with a specific focus on the organisations, demand for its services, forest educational programmes and framework conditions. Input from expert interviews was also used to develop recommendations. The study indicates that, especially with children as the main target group, many non-formal programmes are offered to support the formal environmental education sector and to promote leisure activities in the forest. Y...

CERN Document Server

In this article we derive longitudinal impedance and wake function for an undulator setup with arbitrary undulator parameter, taking into account a finite transverse size of the electron bunch. Earlier studies considered a line density-distribution of electrons instead. We focus our attention on the long-wavelength asymptote (compared with resonance wavelength), at large distance of the electron bunch from the undulator entrance compared to the overtaking length, and for large vacuum-chamber size compared to the typical transverse size of the field. These restrictions define a parameter region of interest for practical applications. We calculate a closed expression for impedance and wake function that may be evaluated numerically in the most general case. Such expression allows us to derive an analytical solution for a Gaussian transverse and longitudinal bunch shape. Finally, we study the feasibility of current-enhanced SASE schemes (ESASE) ...

Science.gov (United States)

Sep 1, 2011 ... Title: THINEX - an expert system for estimating forest harvesting productivity and cost. Author: LeDoux, C. B.; Gopalakrishnan, B.; Pabba, R. S. ...

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... verges of a two-lane highway in continuous Jarrah Eucalyptus marginata forest of south-western Australia. Midway during this ... Birds were recorded from the beginning of continuous Jarrah Eucalyptus marg...

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... be rare or absent as leaves in the forest litter. The differences between the amount of leaf and ... the relative proportions of leaf species in a forest litter when compared with standing biomass has sig...

UK PubMed Central (United Kingdom)

Background and AimsThere has been little previous work on the toughness of the laminae of monocots in tropical lowland rain forest (TLRF) despite the potential importance of greater...Full Text Available

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World - USGS visual identity mark and link to main Web site at http://www.usgs.gov/ GEOLOGY OF THE OCOEE WHITEWATER CENTER, CHEROKEE NATIONAL FOREST Ocoee Whitewater Center logo...

UK PubMed Central (United Kingdom)

The diversity of litter ant assemblages in evergreen, deciduous and Shola evergreen (Shola) forest vegetation types of the Wayanad region of the Western Ghats was assessed employing conventional and...Full Text Available

KoreaScience (Korea)

Full Text Available

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This coverage describes forest practices and habitat conditions in the Hoh Usual and Accustomed Areas....

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Since 1983, about 600 research projects received a total of DM 250 million public funds for the following tasks: - Development of scientific fundamentals for monitoring and observation of forest decline and its ecological and economic consequences. - Investigation of the cause-effect relationship of forest damage, with particular regard to the involvement of the various compartments of the forest ecosystem and to the contribution of different pollutants. - Development of the scientific fundamentals required for forestry measures to accompany the air pollution abatement measures. The investigations comprised both laboratory and field tests. The findings and conclusion are summarized. (orig./MG).

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Sleep after learning is often beneficial for memory. Reinstating an environmental context that was present at learning during subsequent retrieval also leads to superior declarative memory performance. This study examined how post-learning sleep, relative to wakefulness, impacts upon context-dependent memory effects. Thirty-two participants encoded word lists in each of two rooms (contexts), which were different in terms of size, odour and background music. Immediately after learning and following a night of sleep or a day of wakefulness, memory for all previously studied words was tested using a category-cued recall task in room one or two alone. Accordingly, a comparison could be made between words retrieved in an environmental context which was the same as, or different to, that of the ...

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Possible causes of forest damage are discussed. Mapping of affected areas by various workers resulted in dissimilar pictures. Release of radioactive rare gases, aerosols, tritium and carbon-14 seems unlikely to have a significant influence on forest damage. Influence of radioactive fallout, ozone formation by high-voltage transmission lines and synergistic effects is also found to be negligible.

Science.gov (United States)

Quantification of the downed woody materials that comprise forest fuels has gained importance in Caribbean forest ecosystems due to the increasing incidence and severity of wildfires on island ecosystems. Because large-scale assessments of forest fuels have rarely been conducted for these ecosystems, forest fuels were assessed at 121 US Department of Agriculture forest service inventory plots on Puerto Rico, Vieques, and the US Virgin Islands. Results indicated that fuel loadings averaged 24.05 Mg ha(-1) in 2004-2006. Forest litter decreased from wetter to drier forest life zones. These island forests showed a paucity of coarse woody fuels (CWD) (2.91 Mg ha(-1)) and relatively greater quantities of smaller-sized fine woody fuels (FWD) (10.18 Mg ha(-1) for FWD and 10.82 Mg ha(-1) for duff/litter) when compared to ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Herbivores and pathogens impact the species composition, ecosystem function, and socioeconomic value of forests. Herbivores and pathogens are an integral part of forests, but sometimes produce undesirable effects and a degradation of forest resources. In the United States, a few species of forest pests routinely have significant impacts on up to 20 million ha of forest with economic costs that probably exceed $1 billion/year. Climatic change could alter patterns of disturbance from herbivores and pathogens through: (1) direct effects on the development and survival of herbivores and pathogens; (2) physiological changes in tree defenses; and (3) indirect effects from changes in the abundance of natural enemies (e.g. parasitoids of insect herbivores), mutualists (e.g. insect vectors of tree pathogens), and competitors. Because of their short life cycles, mobility, reproductive ...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

? Introduction Old-growth forests on Changbai Mountain are economically and ecologically important but have been fragmented outside Changbai Mountain Biosphere Reserve. The trend of forest landscape degradation on Changbai Mountain threatens forest sustainability and biodiversity conservation in the region. Previous studies have focused mainly on the structure and function of protected forests but have ignored managed forests outside the reserve border. ? Objectives In this paper, deforestation processes are studied for two forestry enterprises, namely Baihe and Lushuihe Forestry Bureaus, with different socioeconomic structure due to their differences in proximity to Changbai Mountain Biosphere Reserve, which attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists each year. Baihe?s income comes from b...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Forest restoration efforts should aim at creating landscapes with a balanced array of forest stands at varying successional stages, thus providing habitat for a wealth of species and multiple ecosystem services. In most high-mountain ecosystems of South America, long-term livestock rearing activities that include fires, browsing, and trampling have delayed or stopped forest succession resulting in simplified landscapes. To determine appropriate restoration goals for Polylepis australis mountain forests of Central Argentina, we established 146 plots of 900 m2 plots throughout five river basins with different historic livestock stocking rates. In each plot, we measured tree heights, canopy cover, estimated age of oldest tree, volume of standing and fallen dead wood, fern cover, and abundance...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Conversion of tropical forests to oil palm plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia has resulted in large-scale environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity and significant carbon emissions. For both countries to participate in the United Nation's REDD (Reduced Emission from Deforestation and Degradation) mechanism, assessment of forest carbon stocks, including the estimated loss in carbon from conversion to plantation, is needed. In this study, we use a combination of field and remote sensing data to quantify both the magnitude and the geographical distribution of carbon stock in forests and timber plantations, in Sabah, Malaysia, which has been the site of significant expansion of oil palm cultivation over the last two decades. Forest structure data from 129ha of research and inventory p...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Plants release secondary metabolites into the soil that change the chemical environment around them. Exogenous abscisic acid (ABA) is an important allelochemical whose role in successional trajectories has not been examined. We hypothesized that ABA can accumulate in the soil through successional processes and have an influence on forest dynamics. To this end, we investigated the distribution of ABA in forest communities from early to late successional stages and the response of dominant species to the gradient of ABA concentrations in three types of forests from northern to southern China. Concentrations of ABA in the soils of three forest types increased from early to late successional stages. Pioneer species? litters had the lowest ABA content, and their seed germination and seedling ea...

Wastenet

... The relation between turbulence structure and a scalar detected using a new statistical test for the change in fractal dimension of a time-series, Department of Geography, University of Durham Workshop on Coherent Structures in Rivers Keylock C.J., Nishimura K., Nemoto M., Ito Y. 2006. The wake structure from fractal fences: implications for the control of turbulent suspensions, Warwick Turbulence ...

Science.gov (United States)

Data on the postfire dynamics of soil properties in the foci of Siberian moth population outbreaks are considered. It has been shown that controlled fires set in pest-defoliated forests result in the loss of approximately 75% of carbon and 50% of nitrogen from the forest litter through their emission into the atmosphere and in the enrichment of the upper soil horizons with potassium and phosphorus (this concerns both total and movable forms). Microbiological processes in the organogenic horizon undergo significant transformation, the density of microarthropods decreases, and the abundance of mites becomes hundreds of times lower. PMID:15354965

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although additional research is needed to corroborate such findings. Key words: Avicennia germinans; disturbance; downed wood; Everglades National Park; Hurricane Andrew;...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Purpose The mangroves of New Caledonia, in the south Pacific, act as a buffer between a lagoon of more than 20,000?km2 and the island, which is characterized by ultramafic rocks and lateritic soils that are exploited for their richness in heavy metals. We will provide a better understanding of the redox conditions, and of heavy metal distributions in mangroves receiving shrimp farm effluents. Materials and methods Samples were collected from four areas defined in terms of vegetation composition: a salt flat, an Avicennia marina forest, in which effluents are released; a Rhizophora stylosa forest, and a dead Rhizophora forest. They were collected during times of maximum effluent release. Some measurements on pore water were also done during a period without effluent. Cores (70?cm deep) were...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Leaf litterfall, litter decomposition and nutrient return through litterfall of three dominant species, i.e. Quercus serrata, Schima wallichi and Lithocarpus dealbata were studied in different months throughout the year to assess the input and release of nutrient in the forest soil of a sub-tropical mixed oak forest of Manipur, northeastern India. Oaks in northeastern region of India are economically important species for the production of Tasar silk. The monthly litterfall ranged from 25.6 g?m?2 (July) to 198.0 g?m?2 (February) and annual litterfall was 1093.8g?m?2 in the forest site. At initial month (on November 3), the concentrations of N and C were the highest in L. dealbata, followed by Q. serrata and lowest in S. wallichi, whereas lignin and cellulose concentrations at initial month...

Science.gov (United States)

Sep 1, 2011 ... We estimate the avoided fuel treatment cost for 10 ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) stands on the Umatilla National Forest in the Pacific ...

Science.gov (United States)

Features: FOREST, DEFORESTATION, RIO JAMARI Geographic Region: BRAZIL .... Features: DEFORESTATION, TIERRAS BAJAS DEFORESTATION Geographic Region: BOLIVIA ...

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

English 1 Feb 2009 [1 p.] United Kingdom Didion, Markus Kupferschmid,

Science.gov (United States)

... data on pollen from red maple, birch, beech, ash, oak, hemlock and elm trees isolated from cores of ...

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Fuel treatments are being implemented on public and private lands across the western United States. Although scientists and managers have an understanding ... ...

Science.gov (United States)

The vortex-excited dynamics of a uniform pivoted cylinder in uniform and sheared flow was investigated experimentally. The experiments were numerically simulated using a diffusive Van der Pol oscillator model developed by Balasubramanian & Skop recently. Salient features of the experimental investigations and the numerical simulations are presented here. Comparisons between the experimentally recorded and numerically predicted structural response to vortex-excited vibrations, power spectral density measurements of near-wake velocity fluctuations and lock-in ranges are made. A comparison of the numerical predictions and the experimental data reveals good agreement.

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

The difficult economic circumstances with which almost the whole world had to contend, brought serious financial crisis in many countries. South Africa also had its own share of serious problems. Despite this situation, Transvaal Consolidated Land and Exploration Company, Limited, showed on increase in earnings of 24 per cent per share. The reason for this lies mainly in two areas. Firstly the company acquired the mining related business of Rand Mines, Limited. Included in the acquisition was a partfolio of shares mainly in the company's associated gold and uranium mining companies and additional shares in its listed coal mining subsidiaries. Secondly, the average gold price realised by producers in rand terms, was considerably higher than in the previous year. Consolidated profit attributable to members increased by 52 per cent to R82,6 million.

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

This paper summarizes the long and meaningful relationship between the University of Lowell (UL) and Yankee Atomic Electric Company (YAEC) in the area of nuclear thermal hydraulics. The UL has actively interacted with YAEC for many years. Many UL graduates from the nuclear program as well as health physics and other disciplines are employed by YAEC. Furthermore, many students have worked for YAEC on a part-time basis through summer employment or the coop program. Several graduate students have completed their thesis work under the joint direction of UL and YAEC personnel, and some faculty members have had consulting and research contracts with the company. At the same time, YAEC employees have taken advantage of the graduate program offered by UL and have earned advanced degrees. Some YAEC personnel have taught courses at UL and have served on the industrial advisory committees.

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The purpose of the study is to analyze the economic impacts that are likely to result from promulgation of the proposed best practicable control technology (BPT), best available technology economically achievable (BAT) and Best Conventional Technology (BCT) effluent limitations and standards on placer mining in the United States. The results of the economic impact analysis will help establish pollution control regulations that are economically achievable. The analysis examines how each of four alternative pollution control technologies affects the financial viability of placer mines in the United States. The impacts examined include reduced profitability, production cutbacks, mine closures, and employment and earning losses, as well as impacts to the local economies.

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

There has been growing international consensus on issues related to child labour - evident in various declarations, platforms, conventions, programmes of action etc. Child labour is the economic exploitation of children, or performance of any work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development. Poverty is the principal cause of child labour. Mostly the children work to support their families and also for their own survival. Paradoxically, however, child labour further aggravates the poverty syndrome as it usually deprives the children of education and opportunity to acquire skills for developing earning potentials. Other causes of child labour include family indebtedness, the lack or poor quality of schooli...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Large-eddy-simulations are performed for the heat transfer and the wake flow of a thin rotating disk subjected to an outer parallel passing stream of air. Above a critical value for the angular velocity of the disk, heat transfer augmentation sets on. This is strongly related to a flow instability that leads to a periodic vortex generation at the counter-moving disk side. The resulting phenomena are captured by the classical Landau model. For higher angular velocities the wake becomes fully turbulent, and here the transition to turbulence seems to be very abrupt. In this regime, a periodic vortex generation is observable at the co-moving disk side, too. (orig.) [German] Grobstruktur-Simulationen werden fuer die Waermeuebertragung und die Nachlaufstroemung fuer eine duenne rotierende Scheibe in einem aeusseren parallelen Luftstrom durchgefuehrt. Oberhalb eines kritischen Wertes fuer die Rotationsgeschwindigkeit setzt eine Verstaerkung der ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Lectures were held on forest and wood management, the forest as an energy source and the emission problem of wood combustion, future emission limitating regulations for wood firing, influence of firing technique on air pollution abatement and constructive and operational air pollution abatement measures with manually and continuously fuelled furnaces.

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Global climate policy initiatives are now being proposed to compensate tropical forest nations for reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD). These proposals have the potential to include developing countries more actively in international greenhouse gas mitigation and to address a substantial share of the world's emissions which come from tropical deforestation. For such a policy to be viable it must have a credible benchmark against which emissions reduction can be calculated. This benchmark, sometimes termed a baseline or reference emissions scenario, can be based directly on historical emissions or can use historical emissions as input for business as usual projections. Here, we review existing data and methods that could be used to measure historical deforestation and forest degradation reference scenarios including FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations) national ...

Wastenet

...org/ (1 vote) defends the native forest ecosystems and communities of the Southeast United States which are threatened by industrial scale clearcutting to feed chip mills Added: Jan. 20, 2001 | Rate It Don't Buy SFI http://www.dontbuysfi.com/home/ (2 votes) campaign to show the \\

UK PubMed Central (United Kingdom)

Nitrogen-fixing microbial populations in a Douglas fir forest on the western slope of the Oregon Cascade Mountain Range were analyzed. The complexity of the nifH gene pool (nifH...Full Text Available

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The forest products industry is the third largest economic sector in Alberta, producing pulp and paper, dimensional lumber, paneling, and value added products, providing some 40,000 jobs . 'Value added' is a key component of expanding economic activity within the forest products sector. Wood residues can play a key role in obtaining more value from forest resources by providing new products, serving as feedstock to energy and chemical production, and playing a role in agriculture and land reclamation. One of the principal roles of the Forest Products Development Branch of the Alberta Economics Department is to encourage the development of the industry by creating new uses for these materials and developing awareness of the scope of the resource. Distances to markets, economic competition from conventional energy sources and coordination of research efforts are substantial barriers to ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

During the next 100 years, the mean annual temperature is expected to be 1-6 deg C higher than at present. It is also expected to be accompanied by a lengthening of the thermal growing season and increased precipitation. Consequently, climatic change will increase the uncertainty of the management of forest ecosystems in the future. In this context, this research project aimed to outline the ecological and silvicultural implications of climatic change with regard to (1) how the expected climatic change might modify the functioning and structure of the boreal forest ecosystem, and (2) how the silvicultural management of the forest ecosystem should be modified in order to maintain sustainable forest yield under changing climatic conditions. The experimental component of the project concerned first the effect that elevating temperature and elevating concentration of atmospheric carbon have on the ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Ground level ozone concentrations, in combination with the prevailing climate, at the estate Oestads Saeteri in southwestern Sweden were estimated to reduce the yield of wheat and potato ranging between 5% and 10%. Occasionally, in years with the highest ozone concentrations and/or climatic conditions favoring high rates of ozone uptake to the leaves, yield loss levels above 10% may occur. Based on simple extrapolation, these ozone-induced reductions of crop yields at Oestads Saeteri represent a potential total annual yield loss in Sweden in the range of 24.5 million Euro for wheat and 7.3 million Euro for potato, respectively. A simulation of forest growth at Oestads Saeteri predicted that prevailing mean ozone exposure during 1993-2003 had the potential to reduce forest growth by 2.2% and the economic return of forest production by 2.6%. Using this value for extrapolation to the national level, the potential annual ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The aim of this case study is to analyse the socio-economic effects of forest fuel supply and use chains. Two of the four cases are rural district heating plants. In Perho, the co-operative organisation of forest owners maintains the fuel supply and operates the plant. In Ruukki, the local forestry association supplies forest chips to the plant. These medium-scale plants use small-sized trees from young thinning stands as their main fuel. The trees are felled manually. The other two cases are large power plants. Alholmens Kraft's new power plant in Pietarsaari aim to use 250 000 solid-m3 of forest chips annually. The logging residues are hauled to the plant as bales using traditional timber harvesting equipment or as bulk material. At young thinning stands the trees are harvested using an accumulating feller buncher. The Toppila I and II power plants in the city of Oulu used about 36 000 ...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

This study evaluated woody biomass from logging residues, small-diameter trees, mill residues, and urban waste as a feedstock for cellulosic ethanol conversion in Mississippi. The focus on Mississippi was to assess in-state regional variations and provide specific information of biomass estimates for those facilities interested in locating in Mississippi. Supply and cost of four woody biomass sources were derived from Forest Inventory Analysis (FIA) information, a recent forest inventory conducted by the Mississippi Institute for Forest Inventory, and primary production costs. According to our analysis, about 4.0 million dry tons of woody biomass are available for production of up to 1.2 billion liters of ethanol each year in Mississippi. The feedstock consists of 69% logging residues, 21%...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Entomological survey was conducted to know the breeding habitat preference of the forest breeder malaria vector Anopheles baimaii, known earlier as An. dirus species D in the northeastern region of India. Breeding potential of the vector in forest areas was found to be high in water stored in jungle pool (69.84%) followed by elephant footprints with clear water (39.13%) and with turbid water (26.19%), whereas in forest fringe areas, the vector breeding was more prominent in elephant footprints: 65.11% in clear water and 62.5% in turbid water. Although other habitats had shown only low breeding of the vector, all types of habitats were positively correlated with malaria occurrence. Cattle hoof marks (r?=?0.998) and elephant footprint (turbid; r?=?0.999) explained nearly the same amount of v...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Abstract A critical aspect of reestablishing a self-sustaining Jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata) forest ecosystem to bauxite-mined areas is to ensure that vital ecosystem functions such as litter decomposition and nutrient cycling are returned. Significant research has been undertaken over the past 20 years relating to litter decomposition and nutrient cycling. Studies have shown that litter accumulates rapidly in restored areas (1-4 ton ha-1 yr-1) and the accumulated litter tends to be richer in nitrogen due to intentionally elevated densities of nitrogen-fixing species. This leads to a lower (carbon:nitrogen) C:N ratio (60:1 compared to 130:1 in unmined forest) that may promote mineralization of organic N to inorganic forms in restored areas. The major nutrient store in the unmined forest is...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Recovery of soil organic matter, organic matter turnover and mineral nutrient cycling is critical to the success of rehabilitation schemes following major ecosystem disturbance. We investigated successional changes in soil nutrient contents, microbial biomass and activity, C utilisation efficiency and N cycling dynamics in a chronosequence of seven ages (between 0 and 26 years old) of jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata) forest rehabilitation that had been previously mined for bauxite. Recovery was assessed by comparison of rehabilitation soils to non-mined jarrah forest references sites. Mining operations resulted in significant losses of soil total C and N, microbial biomass C and microbial quotients. Organic matter quantity recovered within the rehabilitation chronosequence soils to a level co...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Regular fuel reduction burning is an important management strategy for reducing the scale and intensity of wildfires in south-west Australian native forests, but the long term effects of this on tree and stand growth are not well understood. Five fire treatments, including application of frequent and infrequent low intensity burns, and 25?years of fire exclusion, were applied to small (4?ha) experimental plots in a low rainfall mixed jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata) and marri (Corymbia calophylla) forest to investigate the effects of these treatments on tree stem diameter growth, stand basal area increment and tree mortality. Mean tree stem growth measured over 20?years was lowest in the long unburnt treatment compared with the burn treatments, although surface soil nutrient levels were gener...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

In order to better understand the structure and composition of forest plant communities, we aimed to predict the abundance of understory herbaceous species locally at the stand level and according to different environments. For this, we seeked to model species distributions of abundance at a regional scale in relationship with the local stand structure (canopy openness) and regional soil resources (soil pH). Floristic inventories, performed in different light and soil conditions located in 1202 records of north eastern France, were used to analyze the combined effect of canopy openness and soil pH on the abundance of 12 common western European forest species: Anemone nemorosa, Deschampsia flexuosa, Festuca altissima, Hedera helix, Lamium galeobdolon, Lonicera periclymenum, Molinia caerulea...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

We tested the hypothesis that overstorey of eucalypt forest dominated by tall, large diameter trees uses less water than regrowth stands in the high rainfall zone (>1100mmyear^-^1) of the northern jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata) forest in southwestern Australia. We measured leaf area, cover, sapwood area and sapwood density at three paired old and regrowth stands. We also measured sapflow velocity at one paired stand (Dwellingup) from June 2007 to October 2008. Old stands had more basal area but less foliage cover, less leaf area and slightly thinner sapwood. The ratio of sapwood area to basal area decreased markedly as tree size increased. Sapwood area of the regrowth forest stands (6.6+/-0.30m^2ha^-^1) was nearly double that of the old stands (3.4+/-0.17m^2ha^-^1), despite larger basal are...

UK PubMed Central (United Kingdom)

Background and AimsPopulus alba is a thermophilic forest tree present in the Mediterranean basin. Its habitat is highly fragmented and its distribution range has...Full Text Available

UK PubMed Central (United Kingdom)

Background: In North America and Europe, 80% of invasive skin cancers are basal cell carcinoma while 20% are squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). In contrast, African studies reveal a preponderance...Full Text Available

Wastenet

... 12, 2007 | Rate It Distribution and Variety of Equatorial Rain Forest , The http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/rainfo.html (3 votes) an in depth examination of ecological patterns in rainforests from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Added: Mar. 17, 2001 ...

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

"2"3"9 "2"4"0Pu concentrations were measured in biota from a 30-year-old contaminated floodplain forest in Tennessee. Concentration ratios relative to soil, for plutonium in litter, invertebrate cryptozoans, herbaceous ground vegetation, orthoptera and small mammals were approximately 10"-"1, 10"-"2, 10"-"3, and 10"-"4, respectively. Concentration ratios (CR) for plutonium in biota from the floodplain forest are less than CR values from other contaminated ecosystems in the USA. Presumably, this is due to humid conditions and greater rainfall which minimize resuspension as a physical transport mechanism to biota. Plutonium and radiocesium concentrations are correlated in biota from the forest at Oak Ridge and also from Mortandad Canyon in New Mexico. The cause of the covariance between concentrations of these elements is unknown. Nevertheless, the existence of these relationships suggests that it is possible to predict ...

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

The high rate of deforestation over the Andean forests has generated a large proportion of fragmented landscapes in the country. The distribution of oak groves in the country was determined based on ecosystem maps. Charala and Encino oak groves patches are the largest ones found at the east Andes and like others, due to the unfair use of these resources, have suffered a fragmentation process. Fifty-five species of mammals included in 10 orders and 14 families were found in these forests. Chiroptera and Rodentia were the most representative groups. Anthropic processes had produced a 68.1% loss of the habitat and constitute the main threat for these forests. The sizes of the patches were evaluated for three mammal species categories. The patches' area are not favorable for large-size species, intermediately to favorable to medium-size species and are favorable for small-size species. It is suggested that patches' area effect ...

UK PubMed Central (United Kingdom)

BackgroundMicroarray data are often used for patient classification and gene selection. An appropriate tool for end users and biomedical researchers should combine user friendliness...Full Text Available

Wastenet

... The costal plain still supports Jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata ) forest, dense woodlands, coastal heath and diverse swamplands. Many species of plants are endemic. 20 species of mammals and 12 species of introduced mammals including with feral pigs, rabbits and foxes of particular concern....

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Emissions of nitric oxide from soils of equatorial rain forest were measured in the Dimonika Natural Park (4 degrees 30'S, 12 degrees 30'E) in the Mayombe Forest in Congo. Three research campaigns were carried out in June and July 1991 and in February 1992. Fluxes were measured by dynamic chamber techniques using a chemiluminescence instrument Scintrex LMA3. NO fluxes measured on natural soils are in between 5 and 17x10[sup 9] molecules cm[sup -2]s[sup -1]; they are of the same order of magnitude as those observed in similar tropical forest media. Soil treatment experiments show that the auto-decomposition of HNO[sub 2] in these acid soils (pH 4) (chemodenitrification) is a potentially important cause of nitric oxide production in this type of ecosystem. Nitrous acid comes from autotrophic nitrification all the year around, and also from biological denitrification, shown by N[sub 2]O emissions, during the ...

Science.gov (United States)

Fuel treatments are being widely implemented on public and private lands across the western U.S. While scientists and managers have an understanding of how ... ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

A study of two forest areas in India investigated how much energy is wasted when high stumps are left after trees are cut to produce wooden boxes for packing the apple harvest. Measurements of the stumps determined the total wood pulp wasted, which was 1191 tons during 1981. The calorific value of the stumps would supply a year's cooking and heating fuels for 747 families of five. Additional fuel is wasted by abandoning the branches and tree tops which are unsuitable for box construction. 5 references, 4 tables.

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The paper describes an application of the tree classification method Random Forest (RF), as used in the analysis of data from the ground-based gamma telescope MAGIC. In such telescopes, cosmic gamma-rays are observed and have to be discriminated against a dominating background of hadronic cosmic-ray particles. We describe the application of RF for this gamma/hadron separation. The RF method often shows superior performance in comparison with traditional semi-empirical techniques. Critical issues of the method and its implementation are discussed. An application of the RF method for estimation of a continuous parameter from related variables, rather than discrete classes, is also discussed.

Wastenet

...forest products export revenue: call for new strategies by Roda Jean-Marc & Ismariah Ahmad & Rohana Abd Rahman & Lim Hin Fui &...pattern: the cards have changed by Roda Jean-Marc & Rohana Abd Rahman & Ismariah Ahmad & Lim Hin Fui & Mohd Parid Mamat [...] 2010, Volume 2010, Issue 07 15 Decision-making and sampling size effect by Ismariah Ahmad & Rohana Abd Rahman & Roda Jean-Marc & Lim Hin ... by Roda Jean-Marc & Ahmad Fauzi Puasa & Lim Hin Fui & Rohana Abd Rahman & Ismariah Ahmad [Downloadable!]...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Progress reports on the European Research Centre for Air Pollution Control Measures project are presented. Topics covered were: assessment and analysis of the impacts of airborne pollutants on forest trees, and distinction from other potential causes of recent forest dieback; research into atmospheric dispersion, conversion and deposition of airborne pollutants; development and optimization of industrial technical processes to reduce or avoid emissions; and providing instruments and making recommendations to the industrial and political sectors.

Science.gov (United States)

Spontaneous radiation emitted from relativistic electrons undergoing betatron motion in a plasma-focusing channel is analyzed, and applications to plasma wake-field accelerator experiments and to the ion-channel laser (ICL) are discussed. Important similarities and differences between a free electron laser (FEL) and an ICL are delineated. It is shown that the frequency of spontaneous radiation is a strong function of the betatron strength parameter a(beta), which plays a role similar to that of the wiggler strength parameter in a conventional FEL. For a(beta) > or approximately 1, radiation is emitted in numerous harmonics. Furthermore, a(beta) is proportional to the amplitude of the betatron orbit, which varies for every electron in the beam. The radiation spectrum emitted from an electron beam is calculated by averaging the single-electron spectrum over the electron distribution. This leads to a frequency broadening of the radiation spectrum, which places ...

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

A model for the simulation of the time dependent behavior and the analysis of the equilibrium of the coupled system of storage ring and Free Electron Laser (FEL) is presented. The analysis comprises both amplifier and oscillator FEL. Bunch lengthening and energy widening due to wake forces are taken into account in a self-consistent way. The method is based on a mapping algorithm for means and correlations of the electron distribution function, pioneered by K. Hirata. The evolution of the laser field in the oscillator FEL is described by K. Hirata. The evolution of the laser field in the oscillator FEL is described by supermodes. The model is used to simulate an FEL in a small 500 MeV storage ring with 100 m circumference. Typical values for the output power, spatial, and spectral characteristics of the emitted radiation are presented.

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Applications, techniques, instrumentation, and interpretation of flow visualization are discussed. Methods of using flow visualization for the examination of combustion in furnaces, heat transfer with heat exchangers, and in fluid engines are explored, along with flow visualization in food processing, steel-casting, and process engineering. Further attention is given to pipe and channel flow, flow separation in laminar flow and around oscillating airfoils, wakes and vortices, supersonic flow and shock waves, and stratified flow and oceanography. The visualization of boundary layers is considered for various conditions, and applications for multiphase flow, rheology, and medical problems are detailed. Oil film, dry-surface coating, chemical, fluorescent, and minituft methods are presented, as well as the use of tracers, optical techniques, strobe lights, lasers, computerized data acquisition, and hot-wire anemometry.

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Fatigue crack growth tests of three ferrite-pearlite steels with different size and spacing of pearlite particles, which were uniformly distributed in the ferrite matrix, were carried out to investigate the effect of microstructure on fatigue crack growth behavior in the Paris regime. The fatigue crack growth rates for the three materials did not coincide with each other, even when the crack growth curves were arranged by the effective stress intensity factor range. From in situ observations, crack tip stress shielding phenomena, such as interlocking and branching, were found on the crack wake, which enhanced fatigue crack growth resistance. A small size and spacing of pearlite particle seemed to induce small but frequent crack deflections, which resulted in crack closure phenomena. On the...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Concerning the requirements of future rocket technologies, providing a cost-efficient access to orbit as well as an increase in system reliability, a deeper insight into the unsteady phenomena during ascent of modern launchers is essential. Unsteady interactions and resonances of the turbulent separated launcher wake and the nozzle structure play an important role for the design of future main stage propulsion systems. The so-called buffeting coupling phenomenon is one of the main challenges during ascent. In the present study, a coupled simulation of the afterbody of the Ariane-5 launcher with a realistic structural and aerodynamic representation of different nozzle configurations is carried out. On the computational fluid dynamics side, unsteady detached eddy simulations are coupled with...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The composition, rank, coal facies, and coal pore structure characteristics of 15 coal samples were investigated systemically using methods of lithotype analysis, maceral analysis, proximate analysis, mercury porosimetry analysis, and nitrogen adsorption analysis. These samples were directly collected from the working faces of No.4, 8, 9 seams in Liulin district, eastern margin Ordos Basin, China. Four types of paleoenvironment including a wet forest swamp, an intergradation forest swamp, a drained forest swamp, and a fresh-water peat swamp were distinguished by lithotype and merceral analysis. An R-cluster analysis was performed to demonstrate the correlations between the coal facies and the pore structures. The results showed that coal rank is the primary factor affecting the development of micropores and transition pores, whereas coal facies control the development of seepage pores in similar coalification conditions, ...

Science.gov (United States)

Throughout much of the 1980s, deforestation in Brazil eliminated more than 15,000 square kilometers (9000 square miles) per year. That pace has only increased through the 90s and into the 21st century. Brazil is also home to more than a quarter of Earths tropical forests. Considering that the band of lush green that circles the globe through many equatorial nations is fundamental to the overall health of the whole planets environment, careful monitoring of forest health in the tropics is essential. Tropical forests act as major carbon sinks, places where ambient carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can be absorbed by growing things and sequestered for years. Definitive evidence shows that excess carbon dioxide can contribute to the greenhouse effect and speed global warming. Similarly, tropical forests also act as a primary producer of oxygen. In the respiration process that absorbs gaseous carbon dioxide, ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The research carried out by Metsaeteho Oy calculated what would be the total fuel consumption and CO{sub 2}-eq emissions of forest chip production if the use of forest chips is 24 TWh in 2020 in Finland in accordance with the target set of Long-term Climate and Energy Strategy. CO{sub 2}-eq emissions were determined with Metsaeteho Oy's updated Emissions Calculation Model. If the production and consumption of forest chips in Finland are 24 TWh in 2020, then the total CO{sub 2}-eq emissions would be around 230,000 tonnes. The volume of diesel consumption was 73 million litres and petrol 1.7 million litres. Electric rail transportation and chipping at the mill site consumed 17 GWh of electricity. The supply chain with the lowest CO{sub 2}-eq emissions was logging residues comminuted at plant. Conversely, the highest CO{sub 2}-eq emissions came from stump wood when operating with terminal comminuting. Less than 3% of ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Hungary has 10.7 million population in 100,000 km/sup 2/ territory. The gross national product is about $3,000 per capita per year. Hungary is a country with highly developed agriculture and medium degree developed industries. The Hungarian economy is an open economy because more than 40% of the national income is earned by export. The research and development works on various radiation processing have been performed for 25 years. In the Central Research Institute for Physics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, a laboratory was organized for the basic research of radiation chemistry and the moderator materials for nuclear reactors. Also the activities in the Central Research Institute for Chemistry, the Institute of Isotopes, the Research Institute for Plastics Industry, and the Central Research Institute for Food Industry are briefly reported. The largest radiation processing unit in Hungary is the automatic sterilization plant of Medicor Works in Debrecen with ...

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

'Full text:' Deregulation, distributed generation, combined heat and power, renewables, fuel cells, hydrogen. Power companies are facing a rapidly evolving environment that is testing their ability to effectively deploy capital and earn profits. While recent deregulation trends have shifted the structure of power markets into separating generators from distributors, the improving economic value proposition offered by smaller scale distributed generation technologies - such as fuel cells - would seem to be a conflicting development. In this complex and changing environment, decisions based on the economic reality of the capital markets are likely to prevail. By examining the opportunity to enhance risk management offered by stationary fuel cells, particularly in CHP applications, we provide a context for the issues being discussed in today's sessions focusing on power companies and electric utilities. Our risk management perspective suggests a pathway for ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Greenhouse gas mitigation strategies are generally considered costly with world leaders often engaging in debate concerning the costs of mitigation and the distribution of these costs between different countries. In this paper, the analyses and results of the design of a 100% renewable energy system by the year 2050 are presented for a complete energy system including transport. Two short-term transition target years in the process towards this goal are analysed for 2015 and 2030. The energy systems are analysed and designed with hour-by-hour energy system analyses. The analyses reveal that implementing energy savings, renewable energy and more efficient conversion technologies can have positive socio-economic effects, create employment and potentially lead to large earnings on exports. If externalities such as health effects are included, even more benefits can be expected. 100% Renewable energy systems will be technically possible in the future, and may even be ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Forests on the Kola Peninsula in Northern Russia grow close to the northern tree line. They are subjected to both natural and anthropogenic stress factors. The Cu-Ni smelter 'Severonikel' (Lat. 67 deg 55'N; Long. 32 deg 57'E) near Monchegorsk is one of the two major sources of sulphur dioxide and heavy metals emissions on the Kola Peninsula. These emissions have caused significant deterioration of the surrounding vegetation. The thesis demonstrates how methods of Remote sensing, ground survey and mathematical modelling can be integrated for monitoring of the smelter's environmental impact on the surrounding vegetation: ground truth data are used for calibration of remote-sensed data, which further serve to verify mathematical models. The study aims were: * to estimate the scale of airborne sulphur pollution from the smelting industry on the Kola Peninsula and its effect on vegetation; * to assess spatial extent of the ...

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Severe depletion of nutrients through removal of the above ground litter caused a cessation of growth of a Eucalyptus exserta forest in tropical China. Since there is no above ground input of C in this forest, microbial biomass (C_m_i_c) and soil organic C (C_o_r_g) are maintained by the below ground input only. By determining the maintenance requirement of the soil microflora, it should be possible to estimate the below ground production of this forest. To check this hypothesis the authors performed an experiment with labelled C. Since large scale production and field application of "1"4C labelled Eucalyptus litter were not feasible, 'naturally labelled' C_4 plant litter (Zea mays) was used. Maize litter has a #delta#"1"3C of -12.7 per mille as compared with a #delta#"1"3C of -30.7 per mille for Eucalyptus leaf litter. The "1"3C abundance is used to determine the amount of maize C in each of the soil layers. Investigations ...

Science.gov (United States)

There are few empirical data, particularly collected simultaneously from multiple sites, on extinctions resulting from human-driven land-use change. Southeast Asia has the highest deforestation rate in the world, but the resulting losses of biological diversity remain poorly documented. Between November 2006 and March 2008, we conducted bird surveys on six landbridge islands in Malaysia and Indonesia. These islands were surveyed previously for birds in the early 1900 s, when they were extensively forested. Our bird inventories of the islands were nearly complete, as indicated by sampling saturation curves and nonparametric true richness estimators. From zero (Pulau Malawali and Pulau Mantanani) to 15 (Pulau Bintan) diurnal resident landbird species were apparently extirpated since the early 1900 s. Adding comparable but published extinction data from Singapore to our regression analyses, we found there were proportionally fewer forest bird ...

Environmental Research Database

SummaryIntended Outputs: Documentation demonstrating an improved biophysical understanding of the role of forests on low flows in the arid zone regions of India through the development and outputs from hydrological models such as Hyluc and SWAT.A documented analysis of the impacts on the poor of historical and current water management policies, including the investigation through PRA techniques of people's perceptions and beliefs of land-use/hydrological interactions, and the implications o [continued...]ObjectivesTo establish a better understanding of forest impacts on low flows and the social impact of water resources management in arid zone regions of India, and to develop tools which allow this improved understanding to be disseminated directly to stakeholders.DescriptionProject Background: Reducing river flows and groundwater tables, especially during the dry season, constitutes a major problem causing great hardship to large numbers of ...

Environmental Research Database

ObjectivesThe overall aim of this proposal is to make use of the unique opportunity afforded by the 2010 Amazonian Drought in order to quantify the basin-wide impacts of an intense forest fire season on above and below-ground carbon stocks and ecophysiological changes in forest functioning. The specific objectives relating to our research questions are: O1. Assess the causes and spatial extent of the 2010 drought in terms of basin-wide rainfall anomalies and water deficits and their relationship wi [continued...]DescriptionDespite an 82% decline in deforestation rates in Amazonia, fires are still on the rise. 2010 has been a year of severe drought and fire in Amazonia. Over the last months (July and August) the number of fire counts has reached 80% of the 2005 values, which was characterized as the drought of the century. Through the beginning of September, fire outbreaks have intensified in southwest Amazonia, including Brazil, Peru and ...

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

The uptake of "9"9Tc by trees intercepting contaminated groundwater from a radioactive waste storage site was measured to identify the major "9"9Tc pools within the woodland ecosystem and to assess the relative mobility of "9"9Tc in the existing element cycle. The highest average "9"9Tc concentrations in vegetation were found in herbaceous plants. Tree wood was the major above-ground pool for "9"9Tc because of the high concentrations in wood as well as the large amount of wood relative to other biomass at the site. Technetium was not easily leached from the trees by rainfall and was not readily extractable from forest floor leaf litter by water. The relative importance of return pathways for "9"9Tc to the forest floor was leaf fall > stemflow > throughfall, indicating that "9"9Tc was conserved by the trees. Snails and millipedes from the leaf litter layer concentrated technetium 20- and 16-fold, respectively, above levels found in the ...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Abstract Questions: How important is the choice of flow routing algorithm with respect to application of topographic wetness index (TWI) in vegetation ecology? Which flow routing algorithms are preferable for application in vegetation ecology? Location: Forests in three different regions of the Czech Republic. Methods: We used vegetation data from 521 georeferenced plots, recently sampled in a wide range of forest communities. From a digital elevation model, we calculated 11 variations of TWI for each plot with 11 different flow routing algorithms. We evaluated the performance of differently calculated TWI by (1) Spearman rank correlation with average Ellenberg indicator values for soil moisture, (2) Mantel correlation coefficient between dissimilarities of species composition and dissimil...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

We present an innovative approach to estimating residential irrigation water demand for a large metropolitan area using GIS data, weather station data, and a water budget modeling approach commonly used by plant scientists and landscape management professionals. An important question addressed by our study is how a growing urban forest affects the overall irrigation water demand of a semiarid metropolitan area. To estimate the amount of water required by residential landscaping, we consider water demand to be a function of the areal extent of residential landscaping (i.e. tree/shrub or turf grass), the water-loss rate for different landscaping types, the efficiency with which the landscape is irrigated, and local climatic factors (i.e. reference evapotranspiration and precipitation). We es...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

To evaluate soil erodibility under different land uses and to study the applicability of nomograph for estimation of soil erodibility a field experiment was conducted under both natural and simulated rainfall conditions under four land uses viz. barren, cultivated, grassland, and forest in the sub-mountainous tract of Punjab (India). Measured soil erodibility (K) values varied from 033 to 067 under natural rainfall conditions and from 023 to 040 under simulated rainfall conditions. Among different land uses, measured K was in the order of barren > cultivated > grassland > forest soils. The values of the K estimated by nomograph were very low as compared to the observed values. The trends were also in contrast to these observed values of K under simulated and natural rainfall conditions. To...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

The diversity of plant resources in the Brazilian semi-arid region is being compromised by practices related to agriculture, pastures, and forest harvesting, especially in areas containing Caatinga vegetation (xeric shrublands and thorn forests). The impact of these practices constitutes a series of complex factors involving local issues, creating a need for further scientific studies on the social-environmental dynamics of natural resource use. Through participatory methods, the present study analyzed people?s representations about local environmental change processes in the Brazilian semi-arid region, taking into consideration local production systems, natural resources, and their importance. Environmental historical graphs were developed with nine local families to analyze landscape cha...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

The rate and intensity of land use land cover (LULC) change has increased considerably during the past couple of decades. Mining brings significant alterations in LULC specifically due to its impact on forests. Parts of Central India are well endowed with both forests and minerals. Here, the conflict between human interests and nature has intensified over time. Monitoring and assessment of such conflicts are important for land management and policy making. Remote sensing and Geographical Information System have the potential to serve as accurate tools for environmental monitoring. Understanding the importance of landscape metrics in land use planning is challenging but important. These metrics calculated at landscape, class, and patch level provide an insight into changing spatiotemporal d...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Abstract Restoration needs to consider more than just soils and plants. The role of terrestrial invertebrates in the restoration of Alcoa's bauxite mines in the Jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata) forest of Western Australia has been the subject of over 20 individual studies. Projects range from arthropods in soil and leaf litter, to the understorey vegetation, and the tree canopy. Moreover, projects span a range of trophic groups, including decomposers (e.g., springtails and termites), predators (e.g., ants and spiders), and herbivores (e.g., true bugs and ants preying on seeds). Elucidation of recolonization trajectories uses both space-for-time substitutions and long-term regular sampling. Importantly, many studies are at species level rather than coarser taxonomic ranks. This paper provides ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The Model of Acidification of Groundwaters in Catchments (MAGIC) was used to simulate the impact of acidifying deposition and future recovery at the Gaardsjoen Covered Catchment Experiment, at a number of hypothetical stations defined by statistical variation of the Gaardsjoen data and at 20 forest monitoring sites in Southern Sweden. For the future predictions a decrease of sulphur deposition of more than 70% was assumed. This assumption is based on a full implementation of the agreements made under the second sulphur protocol from 1994. The modelled impact of reduced deposition on the soils and on the runoff waters was discussed. To complement the discussion on long-term trends in future run-off chemistry, data from Gaardsjoen has been used to asses the risk for short-term acid runoff episodes 26 refs, 23 figs, 7 tabs

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Thinning and burning forests established on revegetated mine pits in jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata) forests of south-west Australia is being considered as a management option to accelerate succession in sites with excessive tree densities. To assess the impact of thinning and burning on reptiles and small mammals, we installed trapping grids in eight thinned and burned sites, each paired with untreated controls. Of the eight pairs, four were in rehabilitated sites (planted with nonlocal species) and four were in restored sites (seeded with local species). Thinning and burning had no significant impact on the small mammal community, although Cercatetus concinnus was more abundant in rehabilitated sites. In contrast, thinning and burning significantly increased reptile abundance and species r...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The Eddy covariance technique allows to measure different components of turbulent air fluxes, including the flow of water vapour. Sap flux measurements determine directly the water flow in tree stems. We compared the water flux just above the crowns of trees in a forest by the technique of Eddy covariance and the water flux by the xylem sap flux method. These two completely different approaches showed a good qualitative correspondence. The correlation coefficient is 0.8. With an estimation of the crown diameter of the measured tree we also find a very good quantitative agreement. (author) 3 figs., 5 refs.

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Velocity field behind a flat plate, placed near the wall in a narrow channel as a simulant of a BWR fuel spacer, was measured by using a hot wire anemometer. It was found that not only the positions where the dead water region behind flat plate disappeared but also the locations where the velocity relaxation completed were almost independent of the width of the clearance, although the local average velocity and velocity fluctuation immediately downstream the flat plate were affected by the difference in the clearance. The transverse flow diversions in the channel cross section were evaluated from the shape of the average velocity profile. The decrease of local flow rate near the channel wall, which may causes the drift flow behind a flat plate, was encouraged as the drag of clearance increased. Attempts have been made to measure spanwise velocity in the narrow channel. A spanwise velocity that occurred due to flow diversion was observed and its magnitude reached 14% of cross-sectional ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The first offshore wind farm in Sweden; Bockstigen, consists of five 500 kW stall controlled wind turbines on mono pile foundations. The main objectives of the technical evaluation are to verify the original design assumptions made for a load carrying mono pile and bedrock, investigate offshore power production versus onshore ditto as well as to determine park effects and analyse meteorological multi-mast statistics which serve as reference data to a newly developed computer code for offshore wind energy potential mapping. The 'main' measurement system has continuously been acquiring data at 1 and 20 Hz/channel since the summer of 1998. A 40 m meteorological mast was built within the wind farm in the summer of 1999 in order to acquire relatively undisturbed wind speed data from 'free' sectors as well as to enable wake measurements. The mono pile and tower of one of the turbines are equipped with strain gauges at several depths ...

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

In the utilization of the thermal energy by ocean temperature difference and factory waste heat, the high performance heating surfaces in pipes from which scale can be removed are required. As the method of removing scale, the method using sponge balls seems most suitable, but for applying this method, as the form of the protrusions attached to the inner surfaces of pipes, smooth circular are form is desirable. The promotion of heat transfer with the rows of circular arc protrusions like this is strongly related to the mode of flow and such structure as separation, recirculation flow, readhesion and turbulent energy generation. In this study, as the basic research to optimize the heating surface with the rows of smooth protrusions, the flow characteristics and the heat transfer characteristics including the turbulent structure of the wake of protrusions were experimentally determined, and the essence of the heat transfer characteristics was to be clarified on the ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Age-related deterioration of the fracture properties of bone, coupled with increased life expectancy, are responsible for increasing incidence of bone fracture in the elderly, and hence, an understanding of how its fracture properties degrade with age is essential. The present study describes ex vivo fracture experiments to quantitatively assess the effect of aging on the fracture toughness properties of human cortical bone in the longitudinal direction. Because cortical bone exhibits rising crack-growth resistance with crack extension, unlike most previous studies the toughness is evaluated in terms of resistance-curve (R-curve) behavior, measured for bone taken from wide range of age groups (34-99 years). Using this approach, both the ex vivo crack-initiation and crack-growth toughness are determined and are found to deteriorate with age; the initiation toughness decreases some 40% over six decades from 40 to 100 years, while the growth toughness is effectively eliminated over the ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

An increase in forest production will be necessary in the future when wood becomes a major renewable source of energy and chemicals along with its traditional role of fibre source. This increase could eventually by achieved be proper selection and breeding of trees. Clonal forestry by vegetative propagation of cuttings is becoming a viable alternative to a seedling-based forestry with many advantages, and cutting could be used to quickly propagate large numbers of clones of control-pollinated seedlings. Most forest trees are propagated sexually and seed orchards were started in the US and Canada in the last 40-50 years for breeding purposes. Forests could ultimately be established with improved seedlings instead of from seed with unknown genetic potential, or by natural regeneration. Micropropagation is the term used to refer to the propagation of plants raised by tissue culture methods rather than from seeds or cuttings. ...

Science.gov (United States)

Anthropogenic nitrogen (N) deposition affects many natural processes, including forest litter decomposition. Saprotrophic fungi are the only organisms capable of completely decomposing lignocellulosic (woody) litter in temperate ecosystems, and therefore the responses of fungi to N deposition are critical in understanding the effects of global change on the forest carbon cycle. Plant litter decomposition under elevated N has been intensively studied, with varying results. The complexity of forest floor biota and variability in litter quality have obscured N-elevation effects on decomposers. Field experiments often utilize standardized substrates and N-levels, but few studies have controlled the decay organisms. Decomposition of beech (Fagus sylvatica) blocks inoculated with two cord-forming basidiomycete fungi, Hypholoma fasciculare and Phanerochaete velutina, was compared experimentally under realistic levels of simulated ...

UK PubMed Central (United Kingdom)

NH₄⁺ inhibition kinetics for CH₄ oxidation were examined at near-atmospheric CH₄ concentrations in three upland forest soils. Whether NH₄⁺-independent...Full Text Available

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Since 1984 the Environmental Protection Agency (LfU) of the State of Baden-Wuerttemberg has been investigating the heavy metal burden of earthworms from representative long-term forest observation plots. These investigations are aimed at elucidating and assessing adverse effects of pollutants on the soil biocenosis. Methods: At first only lead and cadmium were measured in the worms; in repetitive measurements over the years further metals or metalloid elements such as aluminum, arsenic, chromium, cobalt, copper, manganese, mercury, nickel, thallium, vanadium, and zinc were added to the agenda. Results and conclusion: The frequency distribution of the metals in the earthworms was characterized statistically. For the first time state-wide background values, normal values and threshold values were established for all the elements measured. A comparable study with a similar range of parameters is known neither nationally nor internationally. Time trend studies have ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Sufficient genetic diversity exists in Indian tree species to give large genetic gains. Improvement potential, using wild gene resources for selection and breeding is vast as there are over 244 genera and 400 forest tree species in India. Of these over 30 species and 22 genera are of outstanding forestry value. Selective genetic-variation can be lifted from wild populations, multiplied vegetatively or by seed, and planted with controlled germplasm sources. Among the Indian species no less than 74 reproduce by cutting, 11 by layers, 9 by grafting and buding and 104 by root suckers. More than 161 species coppice vigorously. Afforestation techniques of over 170 species have been worked out. Tree genetic approach of survey of natural variability, quick evaluation, selection, conservation multiplication and planting superior variability directly in the field can give immediate genetic gains. This article discusses genetic information on indigenous species for use of ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The critical concentrations correspond to contamination thresholds of environments over which noxious effects can occur and deteriorate soils, water and vegetation. They are defined according to the type of pollutants and their mode of action. The aim of this document is to provide a scientific framework to the policies of reduction of atmospheric pollution negotiated at Geneva`s convention. The methodology of evaluation, the results obtained for surface waters and forest soils, the perspectives of French research and the integration of French knowledge in the European database are presented. (J.S.)

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Deforestation in Brazilian Amazonia in 1990 was releasing approximately 281--282 X 10{sup 6} metric tons (MT) of carbon on conversion to a landscape of agriculture, productive pasture, degraded pasture, secondary forest and regenerated forest in the proportions corresponding to the equilibrium condition implied by current land-use patterns. Emissions are expressed as committed carbon,'' or the carbon released over a period of years as the carbon stock in each hectare deforested approaches a new equilibrium in the landscape that replaces the original forest. To the extent that deforestation rates have remained constant, current releases from the areas deforested in previous years will be equal to the future releases from the areas being cleared now. Considering the quantities of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, nitrous oxide, NO{sub x} and non-methane hydrocarbons released raises the impact by ...

Wastenet

... Boreal Forest and Climate Change Pertti Hari, Liisa Kulmala, 160.45 EUR; 209.00 USD; 135.00 GBP... Advanced Hazardous Waste Management $179.00... More Journals » MAGAZINES & JOURNALS Environmental Quarterly - 2009 Fall Trinity`s Environmental Quarterly (EQ) magazine co... Journal of Water Reuse and ...

Wastenet

... Boreal Forest and Climate Change Pertti Hari, Liisa Kulmala, 160.45 EUR; 209.00 USD; 135.00 GBP... More Journals » MAGAZINES & JOURNALS Journal of Water and Health The journal represents a joint commitment to pr... Environmental Quarterly - 2009 Fall Trinity`s Environmental Quarterly (EQ) magazine co... ...

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) has imposed a price on the allowances for CO2 emissions of electricity companies. Integrating this allowance price into the price of electricity earns a rent for companies who have received these allowances for free. During Phase I, 2005-2007, rents corresponding to the aggregate value of allocated allowances amounted to roughly Euro 13 billion per year. However, due to the specific price-setting mechanism in electricity markets true rents were considerably higher. This is due to the fact that companies also that have not received any allowances gain additional infra-marginal rents to the extent that their variable costs are below the new market price after inclusion of the allowance price. Producers with low carbon emissions and low marginal costs thus also benefit substantially from carbon pricing. This paper develops a methodology to determine the specific interaction of the imposition of such a CO2 constraint ...

Science.gov (United States)

Construction is one of the important industries employing a large number of people on its workforce. A wide range of activities are involved in it. Due to the advent of industrialization and recent developments, this industry is taking a pivotal role for construction of buildings, roads, bridges, and so forth. The workers engaged in this industry are victims of different occupational disorders and psychosocial stresses. In India, they belong to the organized and unorganized sectors. However, data in respect to occupational health and psychosocial stress are scanty in our country. It is true that a sizable number of the workforce is from the unorganized sectors - the working hours are more than the stipulated hours of work - the work place is not proper - the working conditions are non-congenial in most of the cases and involve risk factors. Their wages are also not adequate, making it difficult for them to run their families. The hazards include handling of different materials required ...

CERN Document Server

Numerical simulations predict that a large number of baryons reside in intergalactic space at temperatures between 10^5-10^7 K. Highly-ionized metals, such as O VII and O VIII, are good tracers of this ``warm-hot intergalactic medium'', or WHIM. For collisionally-ionized gas, the ionization fraction of each ion peaks at some particular temperature (``peak temperatures''), so different ions can therefore trace the IGM at different temperatures. We performed a hydrodynamic simulation to study the metal distributions in the IGM. We then draw random lines-of-sight across the simulated region and synthesize resonance absorption line spectra in a similar way to simulating the Ly-alpha forest. By studying the distribution functions of H- and He-like O, Si and Fe in a collisionally-ionized IGM and comparing with semi-analytic results based on the Press-Schechter formalism, we find: (1) ions with higher peak temperatures (for instance, Fe XXVI) tend to concentrate around ...

CERN Document Server

We directly measure the evolution of the intergalactic Lyman-alpha effective optical depth, tau_eff, over the redshift range 2 is <1% at z=2, 4% at z=3, and 12% at z=4. Previous measurements of tau_eff at 3forest have generally neglected this effect and are therefore likely biased low. We provide estimates of the level of absorption arising from metals in the Ly-alpha forest based on both direct and statistical metal removal results in the literature, finding that this contribution is ~6-9% at z=3 and decreases monotonically with redshift. The high precision of our measurement, attaining 3% in redshift bins of width Delta z=0.2 aro und z=3, indicates significant departures from the best-fit power-law redshift evolution (tau_eff=0.0018(1+z)^3.92, when metals are left in), particularly near z=3.2. The observed downward departure is statistically consistent with a ...

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

This article briefly comments on some stumbling-blocks to climatic change modelling accuracy - in assessments of the greenhouse effect, 25% (missing link) of atmospheric carbon dioxide absorption is still unaccounted for; 1989 World Bank estimates of the Amazon rain forest deforestation rate have since proven to be inaccurate; there are difficulties in assessing the movement of the earth's crust relative to variations in sea level; and different studies vary in results relative to global temperature measurement and trend assessment. The need for an assessment of the economic impacts of increased atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide is also pointed out.

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

More efficient and safe production machines are required for sod peat production. The efficiency and durability of machines is especially important in contract work. Two sod peat harvester types, Pala-14 and Turve-Unsa, were tested by the forest department of the Work Efficiency Associationin summer 1986. Sod peat was collected with these machines at three sod peat production sites. The yield of the Pala-14 harvester was 121 m/sup 3//h for harvesting time, and 56 m/sup 3//h for worksite time, and that of Turve-Unsa was 108 m/sup 3//h and 55 m/sup 3//h, respectively.

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

The responses of ramets of hybrid poplar (Populus spp.) (HP) clones NE388 and NE359, and seedlings of red maple (Acer rubrum, L.) to ambient ozone (O_3) were studied during May-September of 2000 and 2001 under natural forest conditions and differing natural sunlight exposures (sun, partial shade and full shade). Ambient O_3 concentrations at the study site reached hourly peaks of 109 and 98 ppb in 2000 and 2001, respectively. Monthly 12-h average O_3 concentrations ranged from 32.3 to 52.9 ppb. Weekly 12-h average photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) within the sun, partial shade and full shade plots ranged from 200 to 750, 50 to 180, and 25 to 75 #mu#mol m"-"2 s"-"1, respectively. Ambient O_3 exposure induced visible foliar symptoms on HP NE388 and NE359 in both growing seasons, with more severe injury observed on NE388 than on NE359. Slight foliar symptoms were observed on red maple seedlings during the 2001growing season. Percentage of total leaf area ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Development of an assessment framework and indicators can be used to evaluate effectiveness of wetland restoration. Example of these include index of biotic integrity and the hydrogeomorphic method. Both approaches provide qualitative ranks. We propose a new method based on the EPA wetland research program. Similar to other methods, indexes are compared to reference communities; however, the comparisons are quantitative. In this paper we discuss the results of our framework using the Pen Branch riparian wetland system as an example.

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The main aim of the project is to model the energy wood business and total logistics in a certain large region. First, wood utilisation locations inside this area are examined; the most important ones are the wood processing factories, and the heating- and power plants. After that, wood potentials in the forests of the area are evaluated in sub-areas suitable in size and sufficiently detailed for further evaluations. For that purpose, the most valuable source data are forest management plans, up to ten years forward, on which basis the wood fuel potentials can be evaluated following sustainable development. In Finland there are extensive and detailed data bases storing forest information and it is possible to collect necessary data for a data base applicable to our calculations. In logistical sense it is important to know, by which delivery chains the economically best and desired results are achieved. The software ...

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

AECL is undertaking the validation of ADDAM, an atmospheric dispersion and dose code based on the Canadian Standards Association model CSA N288.2. The key component of the validation program involves the comparison of air concentrations predicted by the model with measured values. Measurements are available from field studies at two Canadian reactor sites and from a wind tunnel study of the CANDU site at Wol song, Korea. The measurements were obtained close enough to the release points to test the model for exclusion area boundaries as small as 500 m. Model predictions were higher than the observations almost 75 percent of the time and the magnitude of the over predictions was typically much larger than the magnitude of the under predictions. The effect of the topography at the Wol song site was limited to small changes in plume trajectory due to channeling in valleys and a small reduction in the lateral spread of the plume. The terrain did not substantially influence the effective ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The two-phase flows involve interfacial interactions which modify significantly the structure of the mean and fluctuating flow fields. The design of the two-fluid models adapted to industrial flows requires the taking into account of the effect of these interactions in the closure relations adopted. The work developed in this thesis concerns the development of first order two-fluid models deduced by reduction of second order closures. The adopted reasoning, based on the principle of decomposition of the Reynolds stress tensor into two statistically independent contributions turbulent and pseudo-turbulent parts, allows to preserve the physical contents of the second order relations closure. Analysis of the turbulence structure in two basic flows: homogeneous bubbly flows uniform and with a constant shear allows to deduce a formulation of the two-phase turbulent viscosity involving the characteristic scales of bubbly turbulence, as well as an analytical description of modification of the ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Remotely-fielded unattended sensor networks generally must operate at very low power--in the milliwatt or microwatt range--and thus have extremely limited communications bandwidth. Such sensors might be asleep most of the time to conserve power, waking only occasionally to transmit a few bits. RFID tags for tracking or material control have similarly tight bandwidth constraints, and emerging nanotechnology devices will be even more limited. Since transmitted data is subject to spoofing, and since sensors might be located in uncontrolled environments vulnerable to physical tampering, the high-consequence data generated by such systems must be protected by cryptographically sound authentication mechanisms; but such mechanisms are often lacking in current sensor networks. One reason for this undesirable situation is that standard authentication methods become impractical or impossible when bandwidth is severely constrained; if messages are small, a standard digital ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

In recent years the 'Nowcasting Wake Vortex Impact Variables' model NOWVIV has been developed at the Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- und Raumfahrt, DLR, to forecast weather parameters in airport environments. The German Meteorological Service, DWD, employs his COSMO-DE model (COnsortium for Small scale Modelling-DEutschland) for operational forecasts in Germany. A systematic comparison of model output from NOWVIV and a derivate of COSMO-DE, named COSMO-FRA, is presented. Both models are centred at Frankfurt Airport with horizontal resolutions of 2.1 km and 2.8 km, respectively. In the DLR Project Wetter and Fliegen the COSMO-FRA model will replace the NOWVIV model and become a key component in the future rapid update cycle for adverse weather predictions at the airports of Frankfurt and Munich. The forecast vertical profiles of runway crosswind, head/tail wind, temperature, and turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) are validated against Wind and Temperature ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The use of medicinal plants in the treatment of diseases has increased significantly in the last years, as has research concerning chemical characterization of these plants. In this study, inorganic constituents were determined in leaves and in extracts from three medicinal plant species of the Casearia genus (C. sylvestris, C. decandra and C. obliqua) collected in distinct regions of the Atlantic Forest, SP. The elemental compositions of the soils in which these plants were grown were also determined. Traditionally, these plants are used due to their antiinflammatory, antiacid, antiseptic and cicatrizing properties. The antiulcer and the antitumor activities of the Casearia genus and its capacity to neutralize snake and bee venoms, have also been scientifically confirmed. The analytical methodology used was neutron activation analysis. Long and short irradiation periods of the samples and the standards were carried out at IPEN's IEA-R1 nuclear research ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

There is now a scientific consensus that current rates of accumulation of greenhouses gases in the atmosphere will result in significant global warming and climate change. These changes are likely to have important impacts on a wide range of human activities and the natural environment. There has now been a considerable weight of literature published on the impacts of global warming, much of it very recent. This report seeks to summarise the important results, to analyse the uncertainties and to make a preliminary analysis of the feasibility of monetarising these environmental costs. The impacts of global warming are divided into ten major categories: agriculture, forests and forestry, terrestrial ecosystems and biodiversity, hydrology and water resources, sea level rise and coastal zones, energy, infrastructure/transport/industry, human health and air quality, oceans, and cryospheric impacts. The results of major summary reports are analysed, notably the report of ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

This Final Environmental Impact Statement and Environmental Impact Report (Final EIS/EIR) has been prepared to meet the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The Proposed Action includes the construction, operation, and decommissioning of a 48 megawatt (gross) geothermal power plant with ancillary facilities (10-12 production well pads and 3-5 injection well pads, production and injection pipelines), access roads, and a 230-kilovolt (kV) transmission line in the Modoc National Forest in Siskiyou County, California. Alternative locations for the power plant site within a reasonable distance of the middle of the wellfield were determined to be technically feasible. Three power plant site alternatives are evaluated in the Final EIS/EIR.

CERN Document Server

After two decades of direct dynamical simulation of large-scale structure in the universe, it is safe to say the subject is now mature. Still, there are parts of the problem that are less well developed than others. In general, the collisionless dynamics of the dark matter component is better understood than the collisional gas dynamics of the baryonic component. In situations where the gas dynamics is relatively simple, such as the Lyman-$\\alpha$ forest and the intracluster medium in X-ray clusters, our ability to reproduce observational data has evolved rapidly, and the interpretive and predictive power of such experiments should now be taken seriously. A comparison of twelve gas dynamic codes to the problem of forming a single X-ray cluster shows that numerical inaccuracies are modest (typically below ten percent), leaving missing physics as the main source for large systematic differences between theory and observation. Galaxy formation, being more complex, is ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

A survey of wetlands on the Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR) was conducted in 1990. Wetlands occurring on ORR were identified using National Wetlands Inventory (NWI) maps and field surveys. More than 120 sites were visited and 90 wetlands were identified. Wetland types on ORR included emergent communities in shallow embayments on reservoirs, emergent and aquatic communities in ponds, forested wetland on low ground along major creeks, and wet meadows and marshes associated with streams and seeps. Vascular plant species occurring on sites visited were inventoried, and 57 species were added to the checklist of vascular plants on ORR. Three species listed as rare in Tennessee were discovered on ORR during the wetlands survey. The survey provided an intensive ground truth of the wetlands identified by NWI and offered an indication of wetlands that the NWI remote sensing techniques did not detect.

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The use of gamma radiation to obtain wood-polymer composites is one of the applications of radiation that presents the most commercial interest. The process, denominated radiopolymerization, comprises the impregnation of monomers into the completely dried wood followed by exposure to gamma radiation to induce polymerization of the impregnated monomers. I this context, the present work aimed the application of this process to seven kinds of wood existing in the brazilian forests. The considered monomer is styrene and the gamma source is Cobalt-60. The obtained wood-polystyrene composites were found to have stronger static bending strength. (author)

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The report presents an overview of A.I.D. efforts, which encompass a wide range of environmental issues and support environmental training, research, and institutional development. The report's opening section details A.I.D.'s efforts to enlist host-country support for environmental programs, with specific emphasis on improving natural resource management (especially in Africa), encouraging policy change, strengthening the private sector's environmental role, and preparing environmental profiles of host countries and helping them develop conservation strategies. The ensuing sections recount A.I.D. efforts in particular topics of environmental concern (biological diversity and environmental health and safety), critical ecological areas (coastal areas and forests and fragile lands), and specific country programs (reforestation in Haiti). A brief history of the evolution of the Agency's environmental strategy since 1976 is included.

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Extraction of hemicellulose from hardwood chips prior to pulping is a possible method for producing ethanol and acetic acid in an integrated forest bio-refinery, adding value to wood components normally relegated to boiler fuel. Hemicellulose was extracted from hardwood chips using green liquor, a pulping liquor intermediate consisting of aqueous NaOH, Na2CO3, and Na2S, at 160degreeC, held for 110min in a 20L rocking digester. The extracted liquor contained 3.7% solids and had a pH of 5.6. The organic content of the extracts was mainly xylo-oligosaccharides and acetic acid. Because it was dilute, the hemicellulose extract was concentrated by evaporation in a thin film evaporator. Concentrates from the evaporator reached levels of up to 10% solids. Inhibitors such as acetic acid and sodium ...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

The diversity of ectoparasites in Southeast Asia and flea-host associations remain largely understudied. We explore specialization and interaction patterns of fleas infesting non-volant small mammals in Bornean rainforests, using material from a field survey carried out in two montane localities in northwestern Borneo (Sabah, Malaysia) and from a literature database of all available interactions in both lowland and montane forests. A total of 234 flea individuals collected during our field survey resulted in an interaction network of eight flea species on seven live-captured small mammal species. The interaction network from all compiled studies currently includes 15 flea species and 16 small mammal species. Host specificity and niche partitioning of fleas infesting diurnal treeshrews and ...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Plant secondary chemistry is determined by both genetic and environmental factors, and while large intraspecific variation in secondary chemistry has been reported frequently, the levels of genetic variation of many secondary metabolites in forest trees in the context of potential resistance against pests have been rarely investigated. We examined the effect of tree genotype and environment/site on the variation in defensive secondary chemistry of lodgepole pine, Pinus contorta var. latifolia, against the fungus, Grosmannia clavigera (formerly known as Ophiostoma clavigerum), associated with the mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae. Terpenoids were analyzed in phloem samples from 887, 20-yr-old trees originating from 45 half-sibling families planted at two sites. Samples were coll...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Abstract To be self-sustaining in the longer-term and meet defined completion criteria, it is important that the management of restored bauxite mines can be integrated with the surrounding unmined Jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata) forest. A number of research projects relating to fire management have been undertaken in restored areas over the past 15 years. The broad objectives of these studies have been to assess the resilience of different-aged restored sites to fire and define the most suitable fire regime (season, intensity, and frequency) to utilize in the management of these areas. Restored areas were found to be a low fire risk up to five years of age because litter fuel was discontinuous and could not normally carry the fire. Between the ages of five and 12-15 years, restored areas wer...

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Understanding the erosion and deposition rates in a small watershed is important for designing soil and water conservation measures. The objective of this study is to estimate the net soil loss and gain at points with various land use types and landform positions in a small watershed in the Sichuan Hilly Basin of China by the 137Cs tracing technique. Among various land use types, the order of erosion rate was bare rock > sloping cultivated land > forest land. The paddy field and Caotu (a kind of cultivated land located at the foot of hills) were depositional areas. The erosion rate under different landform was in this order: hillside > saddle > hilltop. The footslope and the valley were depositional areas. The 137Cs technique was shown to provide an effective means of documenting the spatial distribution of soil erosion and deposition within the small watershed.

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Since Taiwan lacks sufficient self-produced energy, increasing energy efficiency and energy savings are essential aspects of Taiwan's energy policy. This work summarizes the energy savings implemented by 303 firms in Taiwan's textile industry from the on-line Energy Declaration System in 2008. It was found that the total implemented energy savings amounted to 46,074 ton of oil equivalent (TOE). The energy saving was equivalent to 94,614 MWh of electricity, 23,686 kl of fuel oil and 4887 ton of fuel coal. It represented a potential reduction of 143,669 ton in carbon dioxide emissions, equivalent to the annual carbon dioxide absorption capacity of a 3848 ha plantation forest. This study summarizes energy-saving measures for energy users and identifies the areas for making energy saving to provide an energy efficiency baseline.

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Continuing high rates of acidic deposition in the eastern United States may lead to long-term effects on stream communities, because sensitive catchments are continuing to lose anions and cations. A two-year study of the effects of pH and associated water chemistry variables on detrital processing in three streams with different bedrock geology in the Monongahela National Forest, West Virginia were investigated. Leaf pack processing rates and macroinvertebrate colonization and microbial biomass (ATP concentration) on the packs in the three stream were compared. It was found that macroinvertebrate and microbial communities differed both among streams that differed in their capacity to buffer the effects of acidic precipitation and among years in the same stream; these differences in biotic communities were not large enough to affect rates of leaf processing between the two years of the study, but they did significantly affect processing rates between acidic and ...

CERN Document Server

We introduce the {\\sc classified stable matching} problem, a problem motivated by academic hiring. Suppose that a number of institutes are hiring faculty members from a pool of applicants. Both institutes and applicants have preferences over the other side. An institute classifies the applicants based on their research areas (or any other criterion), and, for each class, it sets a lower bound and an upper bound on the number of applicants it would hire in that class. The objective is to find a stable matching from which no group of participants has reason to deviate. Moreover, the matching should respect the upper/lower bounds of the classes. In the first part of the paper, we study classified stable matching problems whose classifications belong to a fixed set of ``order types.'' We show that if the set consists entirely of downward forests, there is a polynomial-time algorithm; otherwise, it is NP-complete to decide the existence of a stable matching. In the ...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Seven villages in southeastern Kenya surround Mt. Kasigau and depend on the mountain's cloud forest for their water supply. Five of these villages have regularly experienced water shortages, and all village water supplies were contaminated with Escherichia coli bacteria. There is a need to economically find new sources of fresh ground water. Remote sensing offers a relatively quick and cost-effective way of identifying areas with high potential for ground water development. This study used spectral properties of features on Landsat remote sensing imagery to map linear features, soil types, surface moisture, and vegetation. Linear features represented geologic or geomorphologic features indicating either shallow ground water or areas of increased subsurface hydraulic conductivity. Regarding...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Current scientific knowledge of climate change and its global impact is summarized in the first four chapters. The earth's natural climate, greenhouse gases, climate prediction models, and impact of a warmer world on natural terrestrial ecosystems, agricultural ecosystems, and coastal regions are discussed. The possible impacts on Canada are described in chapter five, which considers forests, agriculture, water resources, fisheries, coastal zones, transportation, human health and well being, energy production and use, and global security. Chapter six considers ways to respond to climate change. These include enhancing knowledge of climate change, working toward a consensus on the need for action, global political response, the Canadian response, and the role of the individual. 15 refs., 35 figs.

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Ninety-five nests of Centris (Heterocentris) terminata Smith were collected in trap nests, during November/2001 and January/2003, at two fragments (PZGV e CFO-UFBA) of secondary Atlantic Forest, in Salvador, Bahia State (13 deg 01' W and 38 deg 30' S). The highest nest frequencies occurred from December to February (summer), with no nests foundations from August to October (winter - early spring). Two-hundred eight adults emerged from 347 brood cells, being 164 males and 116 females (1: 0.42). During the study period sex ratio was male biased ({chi}{sup 2} = 9.342; gl = 10; P < 0.05). C. terminata nested in holes with diameters 6, 8, 10 mm, but 84,2% were constructed in 8 and 10 mm. nests had one to seven cells arranged in a linear series with the cell's partitions built with a mixture of sand and resin or oil. Male is significantly smaller than female, which emerges from the first cells constructed. Immature mortality occurred in ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Safety-technical factors related to spontaneous ignition and dust explosions of biomasses were investigated. Parametres of dust explosions and effect of inertisation on the maximum pressure (pmax) and the maximum rate of pressure rise (Kstmax) were studied at elevated initial pressure (1-9 bar). The level of inertisation required to prevent dust explosions totally was determined at different initial pressures. The sensitivity of fuels to spontaneous ignition and the effect of pressure on the sensitivity to and temperature of spontaneous ignition were studied on a pressurised dynamic self-ignition equipment. The effect of inertisation on the self-ignition temperature and alternatives of preventing spontaneous ignition by effective inertisation in the pressure ranges of 1 and 25 bar were investigated. As an example of application, results obtained with the laboratory test equipment were extrapolated to bin sizes used in practice. As a factor contributing to spontaneous ignition, the ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The development of the spatial N export and retention model N{sub E}XRET for large river basins is presented, utilizing remote-sensing-based land use and forest classification. Export coefficients describing the contribution from agriculture, forestry and peat harvesting were estimated based on empirical studies. Representativeness of forest treatment coefficients have been evaluated by use of data from a small, well-documented test catchment. Simulation results from the application of the model to the Oulujoki river basin (22,840 km{sup 2} ) are discussed. Model estimated N fluxes were compared with measured N fluxes in separate points of the river basin. Based on source apportionment, agriculture contributes 17% of the total export, varying between 8% in the uppermost subbasin and 38% in the lowermost subbasin close to the sea. Forestry contributes almost as much, 16%, with less pronounced variation (11-24%) between the different subbasins. ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The Jurua gas field is the first important hydrocarbon accumulation found in the jungle-covered Solimoes basin. The tectonic framework in this area is characterized by a right-lateral transpressional zone (Jurua structural trend). Hydrocarbon traps are anticlines developed along the upthrown block of a reverse fault. The prospective 2,200-m-thick Paleozoic section is unconformably covered by a 2,800-m-thick pile of Mesozoic and Cenozoic continental sediments. Anomalous concentrations of hydrocarbons (C{sub 2}-C{sub 4}) in soil samples are concordantly aligned with the trace of the reverse fault crossing the gas field, indicating that this feature acted as a conduit for hydrocarbon microseepage. Gas-producing wells are located over a tabular watershed which coincides with the northeast-southwest Jurua structural trend. An unsupervised classification of Landsat MSS data over the gas field area reveals that one spectral class of vegetation is aligned with the Jurua structural trend. Field ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

A plan has been put forth to strategically thin northern California forests to reduce fire danger and improve forest health. The resulting biomass residue, instead of being open burned, can be converted into ethanol that can be used as a fuel oxygenate or an octane enhancer. Economic potential for a biomass-to-ethanol facility using this softwood biomass was evaluated for two cases: Stand-alone and co-located. The co-located case refers to a specific site with an existing biomass power facility owned by Wheelabrator Environmental Systems Inc. near Martell, California. A two-stage dilute acid hydrolysis process is used for the production of ethanol from softwoods, and the residual lignin is used to generate steam and electricity. For a plant processing 800 dry tonnes per day of feedstock, the co-located case is an economically attractive concept. Total estimated capital investment is approximately $ 70 million for the co-located case. The ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The Ministere des Ressources naturelles du Quebec (Quebec Natural Resources Department) implemented a remedial program to treat the waste rock pile at Wood Cadillac, located near Cadillac, in Abitibi, Quebec. The solutions proposed by INRS-Georessources and ENVIROCONSEIL are aimed at eliminating erosion and stabilizing the geochemical processes. Part of the proposed solution also included the use of a reducing trickling filter for the treatment of acid leachates, which also contain arsenic when exiting the waste rock pile. The trickling filter is composed of forest tailings in which the bacteria reduce the sulphates and stimulate the precipitation of arsenic into arsenic sulphates. This is a new treatment that was developed following laboratory experiments which demonstrated the feasibility of the process and quantified the parameters. A demonstration unit was constructed by ENVIROCONSEIL and installed at the Wood Cadillac waste rock pile under the supervision of ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Geographic information system (GIS) technology is now being used by wind energy developers who are required to consider and accommodate a wide variety of environmental and social considerations. This poster presentation discussed some of the new features available in current GIS technologies. High resolution imagery from satellites is being used to verify the accuracy of collected spatial data, as well as to investigate potential locations for meteorological towers, turbine sites, and roads. Slopes are easily calculated using GIS software tools, and digital elevation data can be used with high resolution aerial photography to determine routes for new roads and to establish available sites for crane pads. The GIS tools allow developers to consider protected ecological areas, wetlands and forests, and gives them the ability to better report project development considerations at public consultations. Wind resource grid outputs can also be projected using GIS software. ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Separate effects of ammonium (NH{sub 4} {sup +}) and nitrate (NO{sub 3} {sup -}) on boreal forest understorey vegetation were investigated in an experiment where 12.5 and 50.0 kg nitrogen (N) ha{sup -1} year{sup -1} was added to 2 m{sup 2} sized plots during 4 years. The dwarf-shrubs dominating the plant community, Vaccinium myrtillus and V. vitis-idaea, took up little of the added N independent of the chemical form, and their growth did not respond to the N treatments. The grass Deschampsia flexuosa increased from the N additions and most so in response to NO{sub 3} {sup -}. Bryophytes took up predominately NH{sub 4} {sup +} and there was a negative correlation between moss N concentration and abundance. Plant pathogenic fungi increased from the N additions, but showed no differences in response to the two N forms. Because the relative contribution of NH{sub 4} {sup +} and NO{sub 3} {sup -} to the total N deposition on a regional scale can vary substantially, the ...

CERN Document Server

We study the quantum query complexity of minor-closed graph properties, which include such problems as determining whether a graph is planar, is a forest, or does not contain a path of a given length. We show that most minor-closed properties---those that cannot be characterized by a finite set of forbidden subgraphs---have quantum query complexity \\Theta(n^{3/2}). To establish this, we prove an adversary lower bound using a detailed analysis of the structure of minor-closed properties with respect to forbidden topological minors and forbidden subgraphs. On the other hand, we show that minor-closed properties (and more generally, sparse graph properties) that can be characterized by finitely many forbidden subgraphs can be solved strictly faster, in o(n^{3/2}) queries. Our algorithms are a novel application of the quantum walk search framework and give improved upper bounds for several subgraph-finding problems.

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The association of Finnish Plastics Industry examined the possibilities to utilize energy content of plastic wastes in spring 1990. A bark fuelled boiler plant of forest industry was used as test power plant. The power of the plant was 60 Mw. This report discusses shortly the theory of combustion of plastics. About 130 000-15 000 tons of plastic waste, corresponding to 7 % of the solid municipal waste, is dumped annually in Finland. Utilization of the plastic waste recovered from municipal wastes for energy production is technically viable in present power plants among present energy production. The chipping and mixing of the plastic in the other fuel are the only pretreatment required for the plastic waste. In Finland there are several power plants using suitable fuels for plastic mixture combustion. The portion of the plastic of the total fuel power was 10 %. No problems occurred during the tests. The results of the tests are presented in this report. Special ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The Crown of the Continent is one of the premiere ecosystems in North America containing Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, the Bob Marshall-Great Bear-Scapegoat Wilderness Complex in Montana, various Provincial Parks in British Columbia and Alberta, several national and state forest lands in the USA, and Crown Lands in Canada. The region is also the headwater source for three of the continent's great rivers: Columbia, Missouri and Saskatchewan that flow to the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, respectively. While the region has many remarkably pristine headwater streams and receiving rivers, there are many pending threats to water quality and quantity. One of the most urgent threats comes from the coal and gas fields in the northern part of the Crown of the Continent, where coal deposits are proposed for mountain-top removal and open-pit mining operations. This will have significant effects on the waters of the region, its native plants and ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Nitrogen is often provided to impoverished overburden dumps through the establishment of legumes. Low indigenous soil nutrient levels, summer drought conditions and an acidic mining overburden represent major obstacles to successful rehabilitation of open-cut coal mining at Collie in southwest Western Australia. In this study, Acacia pulchella, a native Western Australian species often used in rehabilitation of mined lands, was shown to nodulate and grow in coal mining overburden with pH values less than 4.0 under glasshouse conditions. Plant growth (both top and root dry weight), nodule fresh weight, and nodulation success was best at pH near 5.0, a value only slightly lower than the typical soil pH of the native jarrah (Eucalyptus marginata) forest. Acetylene reduction rates were reduced by acidity and ranged from 8.2..mu..m C/sub 2/H/sub 4//g hr at pH 6.77 to 3.0..mu..m C/sub 2/H/sub 4//g hr at a pH of 3.98. Four additional plant species were found to occur and ...

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

The EUROTRAC sub-project ''Tropospheric Ozone Research'' (TOR) follows a dual strategy: - Observation of the chemical processes contributing to the oxygen balance directly in the atmosphere; - Establishment of a validated data base for model calculations. Both tasks require simultaneous measurements of a wide range of chemical and meteorological components. In the case of the investigation of the chemical processes, it is also desirable to measure the free radicals directly involved in ozone production. In the project described, a measuring station was set up. For a period of two years and a half, continuous measurements were made of ozone and its chemical precursors (NO, NO_2, NO_y, VOC, CO), as well as other photooxidants (H_2O_2 and organic hydroperoxides, organic nitrates), the photolysis frequency of NO_2, and meteorological parameters (wind, temperature, moisture, aerosols). The station was located on the Schauinsland mountain in the southern Black Forest, at ...

CERN Document Server

Wireless sensor networks can revolutionize soil ecology by providing measurements at temporal and spatial granularities previously impossible. This paper presents a soil monitoring system we developed and deployed at an urban forest in Baltimore as a first step towards realizing this vision. Motes in this network measure and save soil moisture and temperature in situ every minute. Raw measurements are periodically retrieved by a sensor gateway and stored in a central database where calibrated versions are derived and stored. The measurement database is published through Web Services interfaces. In addition, analysis tools let scientists analyze current and historical data and help manage the sensor network. The article describes the system design, what we learned from the deployment, and initial results obtained from the sensors. The system measures soil factors with unprecedented temporal precision. However, the deployment required device-level programming, sensor ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The two-dimensional Eulerian hydrodynamic code 2DE with the shock initiation of heterogeneous explosive burn model called Forest Fire, is used to model numerically the interaction of jets of steel, copper, tantalum, aluminum, and water with steel, water, and explosive targets. The calculated and experimental critical condition for propagating detonation may be described by the Held V/sup 2/d expression (jet velocity squared times the jet diameter). In PBX 9502, jets initiate an overdriven detonation smaller than the critical diameter, which either fails or enlarges to greater than the critical diameter while the overdriven detonation decays to the C-J state. In PBX 9404, the jet initiates a detonation that propagates only if it is maintained by the jet for an interval sufficient to establish a stable curved detonation front. The calculated penetration velocities into explosives, initiated by a low-velocity jet, are significantly less than for non-reactive solids of ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

An analysis on landscape level was performed to investigate the growth of Scots pine stands (Pinus sylvestris L.) in the research area of 'Duebener Heide' under the impact of rapidly changing pollution loads and to evaluate their further development. Central to the work was a spatial database, installed using a geographic information system (GIS). This database enabled the statistical analysis of relationships and correlations between the growth of the pine stands, the influence of pollution impacts and the natural site characteristics. The results of emission and immission modelling gave detailed evaluation of the pollution load over the investigated area. The spatial information database was linked with a process-based growth model called FORSANA. The resulting regional model was used to simulate forest growth on stand level for variable time periods. The plausibility of the simulation results of the model was checked for the influence of ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

In accordance with Department of Energy (DOE) Regulations surveys for wetland presence or absence were conducted in September 1996 on the DWI-1630 site (Witherspoon Landfill) located in South Knoxville, Knox County, Tennessee. The DWI-1630 site includes a closed, capped landfill area, areas of past disturbance adjacent to the capped area, and patches of hardwood forest. Wetlands were identified on the landfill cap and in a small bottomland that was formerly used for a retention pond in the southwest corner of the DWI-1630 site. The wetlands identified on the cap are man-induced, atypical situation wetlands. These areas have hydrophytic vegetation and wetland hydrology, but the soils do not have hydric characteristics. Wetland development appears to be due to a combination of the grading or subsidence of the clay landfill cap, the low permeability of the clay fill soil, and the absence of surface drainage outlets from the depressions. These atypical situation ...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Ficus religiosa (Pipal) is a long-lived valuable multipurpose forest tree. The tree is exploited because of its religious, ornamental and medicinal value and the regeneration rate in natural habitat is low. An in vitro propagation protocol has been developed from nodal segments obtained from a 45?50-year old tree. The highest bud break frequency (100 %) followed by maximum number of multiple shoots (13.9) as well as length (2.47?cm) were obtained on Woody Plant medium (WPM) supplemented with 1.0?mg/l BAP along with 0.5?mg/l IAA. Two modifications in this medium resulted in enhanced shoot regeneration-one with 200?mg/l glutamine + 150?mg/l ADS (called as MM-1) giving 32.5 shoots per nodal explant while another modification?with 200?mg/l glutamine + 150?mg/l ADS + 100?mg/l phloroglucinol (ca...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Vegetation is a key compartment of ecosystems. It contains a large part of the biodiversity at the species level. For the evaluation of critical loads, we have to separate different receptors: lower plants (algae, fungi, lichens and mosses) and vascular plants. Trees must be distinguished due to their economic value. We analyze the different changes that pollution produces on vegetation: the state of health of individuals, changes in the biology and genetics at the population level, changes in the biodiversity or the specific composition at the community level. Calculation of critical loads is based on observational or experimental studies, in more or less controlled environments. However, they cannot yet be obtained through models of vegetation changes. Some results have been acquired at the European level, mainly for critical loads for nitrogen, but these results have come mostly from Northern Europe. Moreover, only heathlands and acidic forests have been studied ...

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

The juvenile fish community associated with natural, degraded and replanted Sonneratia alba mangroves in Gazi Bay was sampled during the South East and North East monsoons between April 2002 and June 2003. A total of 1800 individuals belonging to 49 taxa and 34 families were collected from the intertidal forest using stake nets. Fish abundance ranged from 0.93+-0.20ind. m-2 (SEM02) to 1.16+-0.18ind. m-2 (SEM03) between seasons and between 0.54+-0.07ind. m-2 and 1.64+-0.33ind. m-2 for individual sites across seasons. Five taxa accounted for approximately 70% of the total fish abundance, with Gobidae and Gerres oyena dominating. ANOSIM revealed seasonal differences in fish species composition and abundance (p=0.01) due to fluctuating abundances of primarily Terapon sp. and Thryssa sp. The ma...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Components of various forest and agricultural residue biomass-including the polyphenolic compounds-were converted into aqueous solution and/or suspension by extraction and digestion. Some biomass components reacted vigorously under alkaline catalysis with formaldehyde and initially showed a high degree of exothermic reaction; however, other components did not react as vigorously under these conditions, indicating that different biomass materials require different methods to obtain optimum reactivity for the copolymerization with phenol. Our primary goal is to develop adhesives capable of producing acceptable bond quality, as determined by the wood products industries` standards, under a reasonable range of gluing conditions. Copolymer resins of phenol, formaldehyde, and biomass components were synthesized and evaluated for gluability of bonding exterior grade structural replaced with chemicals derived from peanut hulls, pecan shell flour, pecan pith, southern pine ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The Convective and Orographically-induced Precipitation Study (COPS) has the aim to advance the quality of forecasts of orographically-induced precipitation in complex terrain. COPS is a Research and Development Project of the World Weather Research Program and considered to be one of the largest field campaigns on quantitative precipitation forecasting that has been performed so far. A network of state-of-the-art active and passive remote sensing systems was combined with in total 10 airborne platforms, Meteosat rapid scans and dense networks of standard meteorological instruments during the three months long field phase (June-August, 2007) in south-western Germany/eastern France to observe atmospheric variables in the three spatial dimensions and in time. By the University of Hohenheim, two novel ground-based mobile scanning lidar systems were deployed: a scanning rotational Raman lidar which provides combined measurements of the field of atmospheric temperature and aerosol optical ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The impact of increasing atmospheric C0{sub 2} has not been fully evaluated on western coniferous forest species. Two year old seedlings of Pinusponderosa were grown in environmentally controlled chambers under increased C0{sub 2} conditions for 6 months. These trees exhibit morphological, physiological, and biochemical alterations when compared to our controls. Analysis of whole plant biomass distribution has shown no significant effect to the root to shoot ratios, however needles subjected to elevated C0{sub 2} exhibited an increased overall specific needle mass and a decreased total needle area. Morphological changes at the needle level included decreased mesophyll to vascular tissue 91 ratio and variations in starch storage in chloroplasts. The elevated CO{sub 2} increased internal CO{sub 2} concentrations and assimilation of carbon. Biochemical assays revealed that ribulose-bisphosphate carboxylase specific activities increased on per unit area basis with ...

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

The study of tropospheric kinetics underlies global change because key greenhouse gases are photochemically active. Modeling of tropospheric chemistry on a global scale is essential because some indirect greenhouse gases are short-lived and interact in a non-linear fashion. It is also extremely challenging, however; the global change grid is extensive in both the physical and temporal domains, and critical lower atmospheric species include the organics and their oxidized derivatives, which are numerous. Several types of optimization may be incorporated into kinetics modules to enhance their ability to simulate the complete lower atmospheric gas phase chemical system. (1) The photochemical integrator can be accelerated by avoiding matrix and iterative solutions and by establishing families. Accuracy and mass conservation are sacrificed in the absence of iteration, but atom balancing is restorable post hoc. (2) Chemistry can be arranged upon the massive grid to exploit parallel ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The objective of the research was to develop a procurement method for small-diameter pulpwood based on chain-flail delimbing-debarking method. The study consisted of four parts: Development of the chain-flail delimbing-debarking method (based on Peterson Pacific DDC 5000 device); Combined chain-flail delimbing and drum-debarking; Processing and procurement of the chain-flail delimbing chips and; Intensifying of the timber debarking in chain-flail delimbing. The project was coordinated by Metsaeteho, and it was carried out as cooperation between Metsaeteho, the Finnish Forest Research Institute (METLA), VTT Energy, Pertti Szepaniak Oy and Enso-Gutzeit Oy. A calculation model, by which it is possible to determine the costs of pulpwood chips and fuel-rawmaterials formed beside the pulpwood chips while using different kinds of procurement methods and chains, was developed for chain-flail delimbing-debarking-chipping method based on utilization of Peterson Pacific ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

In the Netherlands, the interest in biomass for electricity generation has increased, mainly due to environmental reasons. Currently, the Dutch energy sector is investigating technologies which can reduce CO{sub 2} emissions. The growth of biomass and its subsequent utilization for energy purposes circulates recycled atmospheric carbon and has no net discharge of CO{sub 2}. To reduce emissions from coal-fired power plants biomass co-firing options are investigated. After exhaustion of internal supplies of wood wastes and other residues an extra amount of 1.02 Mt{sub 20} would be needed. Two supply options exist: the use of internal energy crops and the import of biomass. Because production of energy crops in the Netherlands is a rather expensive option, biomass procurement and production outside the Netherlands is studied. Two countries were investigated for the possible import of biomass: Estonia and Uruguay. Estonia has short-term opportunities for residue supply and long-term ...

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

More than 80% of the people of Nepal are farmers and 90% of the farmers do farming for subsistence. Agricultural productions contribute about 50% of country's GDP. Agricultural sector has been categorized as the top priority sector since many years. The environment of the country has also deteriorated substantially by the unplanned and unscientific use of natural resources such as air, soil, water, air and forest. Fertility of the soil has also been declining and studies show that productions in mountains is decreasing at a rate of 40 Kg/ha. Yr (1). The Terai, a narrow strip of land in the south, is in heavy pressure due to over exploitation and population growth (both natural and migratory). Shallow groundwater (shallow tube wells) is the main source of drinking water in Terai (the lowland region of Nepal). A study conducted by Department of Water Supply and Sewerage (DWSS) showed that more than 55% of Terai tube wells are microbiologically contaminated (2). There ...

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

This book summarizes the research that has been conducted in Canada over the past five years on the issue of climate change impacts on key sectors such as water resources, agriculture, forestry, fisheries, coastal zones, transportation, and human health and well-being. The book refers to the growing evidence that climate change is occurring. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) believes that these changes have already contributed to increases in annual precipitation, cloud cover and extreme temperatures over the last 50 years. It suggests that it in order to develop an effective strategy for adaptation, it is necessary to understand the vulnerability of each sector to climate change in terms of the nature of climate change, the climatic sensitivity of the region being considered, and the capacity to adapt to the changes. Adaptation will require a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in order to lower the rate of climate change. Problems associated with water resources ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The pharmacological properties of medicinal plants have been related to the presence of organic compounds, however elements are also known to have an important participation in the active compounds constitution process. In this study, instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) was applied to determine elements in leaves of Casearia obliqua medicinal plant collected at two different locations in the Atlantic Forest, Brazil, SP. Soil samples collected from where this plant was grown were also analyzed in order to verify if there is a correlation between the elements present in soils and plant leaves. Br, Ca, Cl, Co, Cr, Cs, Fe, K, La, Mn, Na, Rb, Sb, Sc and Zn were determined in C. obliqua leaves and the elements As, Ca, Ce, Eu, Fe, Hf, La, Lu, Nd, Rb, Sc, Sm, Tb, Th, U and Zn in soils. Soil samples collected from two different locations presented similar concentrations for most elements. Likewise, C. obliqua leaves collected from the two locations presented ...

Science.gov (United States)

The Earth`s oceans, forests, agricultural lands and other natural areas absorb about half of the carbon dioxide emitted from anthropogenic sources. Terrestrial carbon sequestration strategies are immediately available to bridge the gap between current terrestrial sequestration capacity and high-capacity geologic sequestration projects available in 10 to 20 years. Terrestrial carbon sequestration strategies consist of implementing land management practices aimed at decreasing CO2 emitted into the atmosphere and developing advanced measurement tools to inventory and monitor carbon processes in soils and biota. In addition to atmospheric CO2 mitigation and carbon trading advantages, terrestrial carbon sequestration produces a variety of benefits which include reclamation of degraded lands, increased soil productivity, increased land value and a more secure food source. Carbon storage in soil depends on climate and management practices, with potential yearly ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

For years, the writing has been on the wall about the impact of climate change on the people, plants, animals, and habitats of Latin America and the Caribbean. Now, day-to-day experiences and eye-witness accounts from leading environmental and development groups are proving predictions to be correct. In the late 1990s, the world's pre-eminent group of climate scientists gathered under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and predicted a devastating range of impacts, including an increase in the intensity and number of extreme weather events exacerbating natural disasters, forest die-off, melting glaciers, and the drying out of temperate grasslands. The region's huge geographical diversity means that patterns of vulnerability to climate change are extremely varied. It also makes modelling difficult, although this is constantly improving. To avoid misunderstanding, it is important to point out that with or without global warming, ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The biomedical and ecological interest for the microwave impact on the Earth biosphere is continuously increased since the industrial, military and communication activities strongly contribute to the electromagnetic stress of living bodies. In the next the authors present some of the main results obtained regarding the microwave exposure of various types of biological material: bacteria, fungi, young plant seedlings, dry seeds, animal tissues. The electromagnetic exposure was carried out in open space in well controlled environmental conditions by using 10.75 GHz/1 m W cm{sup -2} microwaves. Biochemical assays and cytogenetic tests have been carried out to reveal the changes induced post irradiation. The response of some pathogen bacteria, have been emphasized by means of turbidimetric measurements - the stimulatory effect being noticed at the level of the microbial population density (the stimulation of the human body microbial flora seems to be one of the side effects of microwave ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The transport and partitioning of {sup 129}I has been examined for a shallow groundwater flow system at Sturgeon Falls in northeastern Ontario. Recharge into a sandy surficial postglacial deltaic aquifer occurs in the vicinity of a seasonally-wet boreal forest. Concentrations of stable iodine, {sup 129}I, tritium, radiocarbon, stable isotopes and major ions were measured on samples of groundwater and precipitation. The present-day tritium profile delineates the position of the early 1960's above-ground nuclear weapons pulse at a depth of approximately 12 m. The concentrations of stable iodine for groundwaters above, near and below the above-ground nuclear weapons pulse range from 0.07 to 1.7 ppb. Over that same interval {sup 129}I concentrations decreased from 1.9 x 10{sup 6} atoms/L at 9 m, to approximately 1.9 x 10{sup 5} atoms/L in tritium-depleted waters at 35 m, below the present-day depth of the recharging above-ground nuclear weapons peak at ...

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

The existence of problems with wild pigs (Sus scrofa) is nothing new to the Western Hemisphere. Damage by these introduced animals was reported as far back as 1505 by the early Spanish colonies in the Caribbean, where wild pigs were killing the colonists cattle. Droves of these animals also ravaged cultivated crops of maize and sugarcane on islands in the West Indies during this same time period. These wild pigs reportedly were very aggressive and often attacked Spanish soldiers hunting rebellious Indians or escaped slaves on these islands, especially when these animals were cornered. The documentation of such impacts by introduced populations of this species in the United States has subsequently increased in recent years, and continued up through the present (Towne and Wentworth. 1950, Wood and Barrett 1979, Mayer and Brisbin 1991, Dickson et al. 2001). In spite of a fairly constant history in this country since the early 1900s, wild pigs have had a dramatic recent increase in both ...