In this study, the forest landscape in the Beijing mountain area is assessed using the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs model. The results showed the natural forests have higher functional capital than the planted forests and different species contribute to different ecological functions. Specifically, Larix gmelinii forests have the highest water resources and soil conservation function which are about 334.14 m³ hm⁻² year⁻¹ and 115.92 t hm⁻² year⁻¹; Betula allegansis forests have the highest carbon storage and biodiversity function which are about 128.46 t hm⁻² year⁻¹ and 0.76. Besides soil, water is conserved more within coniferous forests than within broadleaf forests. Carbon sequestration and the functional capacity for biodiversity within a unit area of coniferous forests are much smaller than those within a unit area of a broadleaf forest. Previous studies highlight the forest management strategies will influence the ecosystem functions while in the current studies we also found the species option during the afforestation is equally important and protecting of the natural forests is more important than afforestation for maintaining the ecological functional capitals.

The poultry industry in the European Union produces 13 million tons of manure annually, which represents a major health and environmental challenge. Composting is an environmental-friendly technique for the management of manure, but there are few studies about antibiotic residues and antimicrobial resistances at a field scale. The goal of this study was to determine if the composting of poultry manure at a field scale would result in the reduction of antibiotic residues, pathogenic bacteria, and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in the final fertilizer product. A 10-week composting of poultry manure spiked with enrofloxacin, doxycycline, and ciprofloxacin was performed. The determination of antibiotics residues and 22 selected ARGs was carried out together with the identification of bacteria by metagenomics. In the case of ciprofloxacin and doxycycline, a 90% decrease was observed after composting for 3 weeks. Sixteen ARGs were detected at the beginning of the experiment; 12 of them decreased from week 0 to week 10 (reduction of 73.7–99.99%). The presence of potentially pathogenic bacteria, such as, Campylobacter coli or commensal bacteria such as Escherichia coli decreases along the composting process. In conclusion, 10-week composting of poultry manure promotes the reduction of antibiotic residues and most of the ARGs and pathogenic bacteria.

The objective of this study was the experimental evaluation of ozonation as an additional treatment step for the removal emerging contaminants from secondary effluents of two wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), one receiving a primarily domestic wastewater (WWTP-A), and the other one domestic sewage together with pretreated tannery wastewater streams (WWTP-B). The experimental runs were conducted at two different pH values (i.e., original pH and adjusted pH of 10) and at six different ozone doses ranging between 0.2 and 1.5 mg O₃/mg DOC. A total of 20 compounds, including 12 micropollutants (MPs) and 8 metabolites, were selected as the target analytes for the evaluation of ozonation performance. When the tested MPs and metabolites were considered individually, the maximum elimination level for each compound was reached at different doses; therefore, optimum ozone doses were determined based on the reduction of the total MP content. Ozonation at the original pH with an ozone dose in the range of 0.4–0.6 and 0.8–1.0 mg O₃/mg DOC was selected as the optimum operating condition for WWTP-A and WWTP-B, respectively, both resulting in an average overall removal efficiency of 55%. Ozone treatment yielded only poor elimination for o-desmethyl naproxen (15%), which was found to be by far the main contributor accounting alone for approximately 30% of the total MP concentration in the secondary effluents. The systematic approach used in this study could well be adopted as a guide to other domestic and municipal WWTPs, which are thought to have a highly variable composition in terms of the MPs and metabolites.

The main objective of this study is to lower the greenhouse gases by developing and optimizing a solar flat plate collector. The rifled tube is integrated into the collector to increase the thermal heat transfer thereby improving its performance. Two flat plate collectors, one with in-housed longitudinal fins and another without fins of 0.5 m² collector area, have been intended and fabricated with provisions for K-type thermocouples to examine the temperature variations inside the collector for different working fluids. This current study reveals using CuO and Al₂O₃ nanoparticles in varying weight fractions in incremental order to study the effect of weight fractions on the efficiency of the collector. The simulation was done using computational fluid dynamics both for the finned and without finned tube collectors separately and the outcome of the results for the collector outlet temperatures is compared with the experimental one and results show a valuable outcome for the intended collectors. Initially, the test was conducted with pure distilled water as working fluid and further nanoparticles were opted and doped inside the collector side for varying weight fractions of 0.2% and 0.4% and their results are compared. The experimental results showed an improved heat transfer was pragmatic in the collector side for using nanoparticles. Mixing the nanofluids exhibited superior efficiency on the collector side. The results showed after successful trials of experimentation, doping of CuO nanoparticles by varying weight fractions of 0.2% and 0.4%, augmentation of the collector (unfinned) efficiency is 2.1% and 4.05%, and similarly for finned tube collector, it is 3.02% and 5.5% for same weight fractions. In order to improve the thermal efficiency of collector, CuO is replaced by Al₂O₃ nanoparticles; for dissimilar weight fractions, the efficiency is enhanced nearly by 3.7% and 6.54% for unfinned tube collector, and for the finned tube, the collector is 4.8% and 7.8% respectively, compared with the base working fluid (water). Experimentation of the collectors with finned tube type achieved a superior efficiency compared with that of unfinned tube collectors which is proved to be higher when used for nanofluids to that of the base working fluid water.

Securing a moderate level of social acceptance for obnoxious facilities, public facilities that have negative effects, such as odors, noise, or other disruptions, is critical to infrastructure plans. For wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), also obnoxious facilities, upgrading and expanding the capacity of existing WWTP, are more important than the construction of new plants, in some regions. This study analyzes and compares the social acceptance of different types of WWTP upgrades and capacity expansion projects. Contingent valuation method is used to elicit South Korean households’ willingness to pay (WTP) for preventing the expansion of a WWTP. The aggregated WTP is interpreted from the perspective of social conflict costs. The results show that the annual mean WTP of South Korean households to prevent WWTP expansion ranges from KRW 32,058 (US $27.61) to KRW 45,793 (US $39.44) depending on spatial location, which implies that the social conflict costs for the WWTP expansion in South Korea are considerable. It is also found that an underground WWTP at current site is a best alternative to lower the social conflict costs; it is even better than relocation an existing WWTP to another area. Several related policy implications are provided based on the analysis results.

Many cities are facing various environmental problems, where performance-based planning and nature-based solutions have been proposed to address such problems. As a natural landscape in the city, urban waterfront space has efficient ecological benefits, high-quality landscape vision and environment, and it is an important carrier of citizens’ activities. However, existing studies have mainly focused on coping with environmental problems, while social functions and strategies have been neglected. Therefore, this study aims to fill such research gaps by understanding the social performance of urban waterfront spaces. Field observation and questionnaire survey were conducted in a famous urban waterfront space, Qiantang riverside walkway, in Hangzhou, China. The results indicate that the Qiantang riverside walkway serves as a space for tourism, leisure and entertainment, as the visitors who lived more than 5 km away from here accounted for about 50% and the local people also accounted for about 50%. People’s activities exhibited significantly temporal differences, where the occupation of the Qiantang riverside walkway reached a peak at night. For the people who lived far from here, they mainly depended on self-driving, which led to two critical problems relevant to transport linkage with the city and parking lot. Results also indicate that the landscape, supporting facilities and road functions could perform well among the mind of 102 respondents. However, public service and main facilities should be improved to meet more people’s requirements. Moreover, importantly, the results indicate the phenomenon of stratification and agglomeration so that the similar aspects (e.g. rest seat quantity, rest seat style) could be merged into the same cluster (e.g. rest seat) for consideration in the urban waterfront space planning and design. This study also generates some implications for the renovation of urban waterfront spaces. Overall, this study provides people with basic understanding of the social performance of existing urban waterfront spaces, which can further promote urban planners and designers to comprehensively build sustainable, resilient and healthy water-based living environments.

Metformin is widely used as one of the most effective first-line oral drugs for type 2 diabetes. It is difficult to be metabolized by the human body thus commonly exists in both urine and feces samples. Guanylurea is metformin’s main biotransformation product with increased concentrations in the aquatic environments. Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS)-based methods used for measuring the two compounds have been well developed, but extremely limited studies have tracked gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS)-based analysis. To help better track the occurrence of the two non-volatile biguanide compounds in liquid samples, the improvement of existing GC-MS based methods for reliable metformin and guanylurea analysis is conducted. Derivatization of metformin and guanylurea is the key pretreatment procedure before the associated GC-MS analysis. Four selected factors affecting for the derivatization were evaluated, and the optimal factors include temperature (90°C), reacting time (40 min), solvent (1,4-dioxane), and ratio (1.5:1) of reagent to target component. Buformin and N-methyl-bis(trifluoroacetamide) (MBTFA) were used as the internal standard and the derivatization reagent, respectively. Calibration curves were made based on the optimal conditions of derivatization for metformin and guanylurea with the R² values of calibration linearity achieved as 99.35% and 99.2%, respectively. The values of relative standard deviation (RSD%) of metformin and guanylurea based on seven repeated trails are 2.67% and 15.37%, respectively. The optimal conditions for enhancing the sensitization of metformin and guanylurea derivatization performance were obtained. The improved GC-MS analysis method was eventually applied for metformin and guanylurea analysis in real water samples.

Climate change is persistently causing adverse effects to the agriculture sector of developing countries, specifically in Asia. Pakistan is no exception to this effect and is ranked among the top 10 countries, which are most vulnerable to climate change. A huge upcoming challenge is to sustain an equilibrium among production and environmental protection. In this context, adaptation to climate change is considered as a win-win strategy for agriculture sectors in developing countries. However, numerous studies have focused on current farm-level adaptation while a scant interest has been shown on the role of physiological factors in the process of shaping small livestock herders’ intentions towards environmental enrichment measures. A possible explanation of their lagging intentions is particular significance as they may comply with requisite climate adaptation measures or not. For deeper understanding, the current study investigates different psychological factors that affect the small livestock herder’s intentions on adopting climate smart practices by using theory of planned behavior (TPB) with additional constructs (moral norms, risk perception, and social attributes). To this end, 405 small livestock herders from Punjab, Pakistan, were selected on the basis of multistage random sampling. The results of structural equation model showed that all constructs accounted for 57% of the variances in small livestock herders’ adoption intentions. The outcome of this research offers a new indication regarding the interrelationship of numerous variables which are crucial to understand behavioral changes and psychological interventions. Overall attitude was the most prominent construct in the extended TPB model, which is mainly influenced by risk perception awareness. The results suggest that veterinary experts and extension agents should focus on psychological factors to explore different prospects to increase the involvement of livestock herders in environmental enrichment measures with little effort rather than tackling with traditional practices because it will be more likely to affect people’s consideration of the external obstructions to act. Findings also offer public and private intervention for enabling technical and policy environment and strengthen social networks to keep livestock herders on track of updates of running government policies to ensure them to adopt climate change measures for their prosperous future.

Wastewater effluent from alkaloid processing plants has the potential adverse environmental influences. Mathematical modelling and simulations were carried out using computational fluid dynamics of mass and momentum transfer in a hollow fibre membrane extractor. Conservation equations were derived for tyramine extraction in the membrane extractor and solved based on the finite element method. Model findings based on the computational fluid dynamics validated well with the experimental data. The results showed that increase in organic-phase flow rate, as well as the fibre length and its porosity, has a positive impact on the performance of the extractor, whereas the enhancement of aqueous-phase flow rate led to the reduction of tyramine extraction.

Recycled moisture, mainly originated from evapotranspiration (surface evaporation and transpiration), is the main sources of precipitation. Influenced on the different regional/local environments, the contributions of recycled moisture to precipitation present as different proportions. Recycled moisture has an important impact on the hydrological cycle, further occurred a series of environmental effect for regional/local. Aimed to estimate the contribution of recycled moisture to precipitation in an enclosed basin, Guanzhong Basin of northern China, precipitation and lake/reservoir samples were collected. The isotope ratio analysis was done for the summer season, and a three-component mixing model based on the stable hydrogen and oxygen isotopes was applied. The results indicated that the averaged contribution of recycled moisture to precipitation was 17.44% in Guanzhong Basin of northern China, while the mean proportions of surface evaporation moisture and transpiration moisture were found to be 0.38% and 16.97%, respectively. Comparatively, most of the recycled moisture mainly comes from transpiration moisture rather than evaporation moisture, suggesting that transpiration moisture from cropland, vegetation, and plants instead of evaporation is dominant in moisture recycling of the Guanzhong Basin.