The study has been carried out to assess surface water quality of Old Brahmaputra River from September 2015 to March 2016. DO, BOD5, COD, pH, EC, Chloride, Alkalinity, and Hardness concentrations in water samples have been found to range within 0.66-2.9 mg/L, 21-138 mg/L, 45-250 mg/L, 7.1-7.8, 185-1080 uS/cm, 10-98 mg/L, 85-197 mg/L, and 84-148 mg/L, respectively. Multivariate statistical analyses such as Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Correlation Matrix (CM) reveal significant anthropogenic intrusion of pollutants in water, while Cluster Analysis (CA) gives decent results that render three different groups of resemblance between the two sampling sites, reflecting the different water quality indicators of the river system. Very strong positive linear relations have been found between Alkalinity vs. Chloride (0.998), COD vs. BOD (0.994), Chloride vs. EC (0.981), Alkalinity vs. EC (0.976), and Hardness vs. EC (0.952) at the significance level of 0.01, which direct their common origin from industrial effluents, municipal wastes, and agricultural activities. River Pollution Index (RPI) indicates that the water of the Old Brahmaputra River varies from low to high pollution.

Surface waters become more and more polluted, depending on human activities around them. The current study has been conducted to evaluate the impact of Syrian civil war on water quality of the Turkish part of Orontes River. For so doing, it has obtained monitoring data between 2006 and 2014 from state of Hydraulic Works of Turkey, analyzing them via Water Quality Index (WQI) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA). WQI reveals that water quality in Orontes River has dropped sharply after 2011 and slightly improved by 2013. This time interval overlaps with Syrian civil war when conflicts between regime forces and dissidents occurred densely. Therefore, it can be concluded that Syrian civil war has impacted the water quality of Turkish water’s with potential causes of water quality degradation identified as polluters from conflicts and immigration activities. In addition, this research has conducted PCA to investigate indicator parameters, representing the water quality variation as a result of war. Results showed that NO2- and NO3- concentration in the surface water can be used as main indicators of Syrian civil war's impact on water quality. Finally, it may said that anthropogenic activities happening in the Turkish part of the watershed also contribute to the pollution level of river, especially domestic and industrial discharges.

Wind erosion is considered a major global environmental problem. Dust storms from the migration of sand dunes can seriously damage civil, industrial, and agricultural areas and a method to stabilize these sand dunes is mulching. The present study investigates the feasibility of using organic wastes of Press mud and Dunder with clay for the production of environmentally-friendly mulches. Sandy soil from the Dejgah Region, Fars Province, has been used as bed treatment. The treatments have been prepared, using different ratios of the above mentioned materials and 250 ml of water has been added to the each mulch combination to be sprinkled on a plot of sand, 50 × 30 × 1 cm in size. The research has measured Mechanical parameters such as Compressive Resistance (CR), Abrasion Resistance (AR), and Impact Resistance (IR), created by mulches, along with Wind Erodibility (WE) of the treatments and has analyzed the resultant measured data by means of SPSS software. An increase in the fraction of organic wastes has significantly increased CR, IR, and AR values, thus reducing WE. Higher amounts of organic matter and clay increase the CR and the application of 100g Dunder plus 100g Clay has been considered the best composition of organic mulch for stabilization of sand dunes.

Industrialization releases significant amounts of various air pollutants such as F, Cd, Pb, particulate matter, etc., which can in turn have a deleterious effect on a variety of biochemical and physiological processes as well as the structural organization within the cells. Responses from plants species to air pollutants is varied with certain species being very sensitive to such pollutants, ending up with well visible and measurable symptoms. Morphological damage is generally visible through lesions on the aerial parts, while biochemical and physiological changes which are invisible can be measured and quantified. This study has been designed to investigate the biochemical and physiological biomarkers of apricot (Prunus armeniaca L.) exposed to air pollution. It has been observed that, in comparison to unpolluted sites, lipid peroxidation level has increased in the leaves of apricot trees, grown in polluted areas, whereas photosynthetic capacity (Net photosynthesis, stomatal conductance, transpiration rate, total chlorophyll, and carotenoids) along with osmotic regulator (proline and soluble sugars) levels have declined. In P. armeniaca leaves, these symptoms can be used as indicators of air pollution stress for its early diagnosis, making them a reliable marker for a particular physiological disorder.

Middle and southern Iraq suffers from polluted soils due to crude oil, spilled on land, leakage from transmitting pipe networks, or petroleum products from refineries. Many researchers have studied pollution impacts on the soil in details, but there is a clear lack of investigation on the influence of crude oil on soil erodibility. Recent researches have investigated the influence of pollution on erodibility parameters, which include critical shear stress (τc) and detachment factor (dc). The variability of dc and τc due to different in-situ scaling has not been thoroughly established for polluted and unpolluted soils. Thus this research aims at investigating the influence of different in-situ scaling ratios (1:1, 1:30, and 1:50) on variability of dc and τc for polluted and unpolluted soils under controlled laboratory conditions, using Jet Erosion Test (JET), and tries to compare the three solution techniques (namely, Blaisdell’s approach, depth scour approach, and iterative approach) to solve dc and τc from JETs for polluted and unpolluted soils. The polluted soil samples have been prepared by submerging the soil surface with crude oil for 24 hours prior to testing. Results show that there have been statistical differences in dc and τc between polluted and unpolluted soil samples on the dry side of water contents with no statistically significant difference of measured dc and τc being observed across different in-situ scale ratios for polluted and unpolluted soils. All told, the study shows less variability of measured dc and τc across different solution techniques, compared to previous study findings.

The present study evaluates the suitability ofactivated carbon, prepared from Cane Papyrus, a plant that grows naturally and can be found quite easily, which serves as a biological sorbent for removal of  Cu2+ ions from aqueous solutions. Fourier transform infra-red analysis for the activated carbon, prepared fromCane Papyrus confirms the presence of amino (–NH), carbonyl (–C=O), and hydroxyl (–OH) functional groups with Bath mode getting used to investigate the effects of the  following parameters: adsorbent dosage (among the rates of 10, 20, and 30 g/L), pH values, Cu2+ initial concentration, and contact time. Results reveal higher efficiency (98%) of powdered adsorbent for removal of Cu2+ ions, which is found at pH=6 with 30 g/L activated carbon, prepared from Cane Papyrus, for a duration of 2 hours. The Freundlich isotherm model with linearized coefficient of 0.982 describes the adsorption process more suitably than the langmuir model, in which this rate equals to 0.899. Pseudo-second order kinetic equation best describes the kinetics of the reaction. Furthermore, it has been found that 0.5M HCl is a better desorbing agent than either 0.5 M NaOH or de-ionized water. The experimental data, obtained, demonstrate that the activated carbon prepared from Cane Papyrus can be used as a suitable adsorbent for Copper(II) ion removal from aqueous solutions.

Application of aromatic compounds has dramatically increased as raw materials in various industries and different factories have been established to produce aromatic compounds. The current research aims at characterizing industrial waste generation in aromatics production process in petrochemical industries and determining the best feasible alternative for waste disposal. For this purpose, the world’s biggest aromatic producer, i.e. Nouri Petrochemical Complex (NPC), located in Asaluyeh, Iran, has been selected as case study. Firstly, different waste streams, generated during aromatics production, have been determined through a specific checklist. Spent industrial soil, catalyst, spent sieve, and Normal­-Formyl­-Morpholine (NFM) solvent are the most important identified wastes in NPC, with the former being the most generated waste in NPC with a rate of 600 tons per year. Afterwards, the mentioned waste has been sampled and important physicochemical specification such as heavy metals and organic compounds has been measured. Ni, Cu, and As are remarkable trace heavy metals, observed in all kinds of generated waste. In the next step, industrial waste classification and coding has been done, based on different guidelines. Finally different feasible alternatives like material recovery, sanitary landfill, and incineration have been compared, based on conventional economic, technical, and environmental indices. The best feasible waste disposal methods are the extraction of heavy metals from spent catalysts, recycling of spent molecular sieves and spent industrial soil as additives to building materials, and recovery of thermal energy by incineration of spent NFM solvent.

Surface ozone (SOZ) can be very harmful if it exceeds the threshold limit. It can accumulate over sea and can return back to the land along with the breeze. Rural and vegetation rich areas often record elevated levels of surface ozone because of the variations in Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) levels, wind velocity and direction. Similarly methane is also an important greenhouse gas and plays a vital role in the atmospheric budget. In this work, ozone and methane levels measured during daytime in a mangrove estuary near Manakudy(8.0911 N, 77.477 E),kanyakumari, South India for a period of ten months from March 2014 to December 2014 are analyzed.SOZ showed an imprecise diurnal pattern with an early morning peak whereas methane recorded an apparent diurnality. The maximum value of SOZ was around 50 ppb. Summer months recorded high levels of SOZ followed by Southwest monsoon (SWM) and Northeast monsoon (NEM).High levels of methane were found in SWM followed by NEM and low concentration during summer. The correlation between SOZ and methane was found as r = -0.257, p

In the present investigation, 41 soil samples were subjected to single step chemical partitioning to assess the lithogenic and non-lithogenic portions of metals in Tehran's soils. The share of various studied metals in the anthropogenic portion ranges from as low as 0.2% to as high as 85% of bulk concentration. Geo-accumulation index (Igeo) showed that Cd falls within "heavily contaminated" soils. It might be inferred that Ni, Cu, Cr, Zn, Co and Ca fall within "Deficient to minimal" class in accordance with enrichment factor (EF) classification.. Enrichment factor values (to some extents) match with the chemical partition studies results (except for Ni and Cr). The very low Ca content of soil samples could be indicative of low biological productivity in the Tehran's soil. Also the very low concentrations of Mn could be indicative of reducing environment in soils of Tehran.

The present work solves two-dimensional Advection-Dispersion Equation (ADE) in a semi-infinite domain. A variable source concentration is regarded as the monotonic decreasing function at the source boundary (x=0). Depth-dependent variables are considered to incorporate real life situations in this modeling study, with zero flux condition assumed to occur at the exit boundary of the domain, i.e. its semi-infinite part. Without losing any generality, one can consider that the aquifer is initially contamination-free. Thus, the current study explores variations of two-dimensional contaminant concentration with depth throughout the domain, showing them graphically. Non-point source problem, i.e. the line source problem, can be discussed by solving two-dimensional depth-dependent variable source problem, as x=0 is a 2D line. A new transformation has been used to transform the time-dependent ADE to one with constant coefficients, with Matlab (pdetool) being employed in order to solve the problem, numerically, using finite element method.