The considerable increase in the amount of nitrogen in the surface water is a major environmental problem. It has become a great matter of worry because of the multiple environmental effects including eutrophication and health risks. The El-Kebir West watershed is a coastal plain in northeastern Algeria.This study aims to determine the physicochemical quality of waters of the western WadiEl-Kebir and its main tributariesand also to evaluate the spatiotemporal variabilityof its physicochemical quality in particular of mineral nitrogen during wet and dry periods. Four sampling campaigns were realized as follows: January 2015 and February 2016 corresponding to water high season and in March and September 2016 corresponding to the low season. The water samples were obtained from the seven stations located along western Wadi El-Kebir. Temperature, pH,conductivity,dissolved oxygen,SO42-, PO43-, NO3-, NO2-and NH4+ were measured either in situ or in the laboratory.A statistical treatment employingthe PCA method (The Principal Components Analysis) was applied for all the obtained results. It has been noticed that the S2 and S3 upstream stations are very rich in ammonium (NH4+) at the low water period with average values of 15.22 mg/L and 20.41 mg/L, respectively.This study has shown the influence of seasonal variations and anthropogenic activities on the evolution of physicochemical settings, in general, and on mineral nitrogen in particular. In conclusion,the waters of Wadi El-Kebir were of an average to poor quality.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was first noticed over Wuhan, China during December 2019. The spreading characteristics of COVID-19 infection from one person to another are resulting in a growing number of infected cases and created massive stresses across the world. The rapid dissemination of COVID-19 infection declares it as a pandemic. In India, till the mid of May 2020, there were around 75,048 confirm with 2440 number of death cases, specifically due to COVID-19. To break the chain of COVID-19, the Government of India had decided to implement the lockdown, first implemented on 23rd March 2020. Some of the significant benefits of lockdown resulted in the reduction in atmospheric pollutants of the cities across the world. The study is based on the fine and coarse particulate matters (PM) data corresponding to before lockdown and during lockdown periods. The efforts were made over Delhi (DEL) and one of the neighbouring cities, i.e. Gurgaon (GW) considering the duration 1st January 2020 to 15th May 2020 to understand the impact of lockdown on the particulate matter, i.e. PM (PM1.0, PM2.5 and PM10). Our investigation shows the decline in PM concentration during the lockdown period. The impact of COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the rapid increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in DEL, India, and the inhabitants of about 14 million people. The significance of the particulate matter, temperature (°C) and relative humidity (%) on the dispersal of COVID-19 virus and its association to the total number of cases (TC), active cases (AC), recovered cases (RC) and death cases (DC) with special reference to DEL were also discussed.

The extensive use of detergent causes a high level of it to contaminate water body. This study was aimed to determine the effectiveness of the Sagittaria lancifolia plant as a phytoremediator for water contaminated with detergents. Sagittaria lancifolia was planted in medium exposed to detergent at various levels (10, 50, 75 ppm) with two different detention times (7 and 14 days). Remediated water was tested of its toxicity using Xiphophorus maculatus. LAS removal rate, BOD, plant morphology, and mortality of X. maculatus were recorded. The result showed that S. lancifolia had a high level of LAS removal rate, the longer detention time (81.53 ± 0.37% at 14 days) with significantly lower BOD (27.48 ± 0.78mg/L). Plant leaves showed signs of necrosis and chlorosis during detergent exposure. Detergent water remediated for 14 days induced the lowest rate of mortality in Xiphophorus maculatus. Thus, Sagittaria lancifolia can be applied to remove the organic contaminant from the water body.

This paper aims to study structural differences and anti-erodibility properties of purple and loess soils in hilly terrains of southern and northern China. Yoder’s method and Le Bissonnais method were used to determine the distribution of soil particle sizes, mean weight diameter (MWD), and geometric mean diameter (GMD). The sequences of water-stable aggregates in different sizes were as follows: On one hand, the sequence of purple soil aggregates was W2-5mm>W0.25-0.5mm>W0.5-1mm>W0-0.053mm>W0.053- 0.25mm>W1-2mm>W>5mm. On the other hand, the sequence of the loess soil was W0-0.053mm>W0.053- 0.5mm>W0.25-0.5mm>W0.5-1mm>W2-5mm>W1-2mm>W>5mm. Three LB treatments were carried out and the results were as follows: MWD and GMD of soil aggregates in the loess soil presented the trend of slow wetting (SW)>wetting stirring (WS)>fast wetting (FW), while those in the purple soil were WS>SW>FW. Under SW treatment, purple soil had higher erodibility factor (K) than loess soil, close to the result of Yoder’s method. Yet under WS and FW treatments, K values of purple soil were much lower than that of loess soil (P<0.05). A significant difference in K, MWD, GMD, and soil organic matter (SOM) values was found between purple soil and loess soil (P<0.05). Slope positions greatly influence MWD, GMD, SOM content for the two soils (P<0.01), and the interaction between soil type and slope position showed an extremely significant positive correlation to MWD and GMD (P<0.01). Our study indicates that, under different breakdown mechanisms, purple soil has a more stable structure and higher anti-erodibility than loess soil. The results of this study will provide a theoretical basis for further understanding of the erosion mechanism of the main soils in China.

Characterization of the variability of soil moisture, salt content and organic matter content (SOM) is of great significance in agricultural production management and sustainable soil utilization. We present a case study of the variability and modelling with the depth of soil moisture, salt and SOM in a gravelsand mulched jujube orchard, using Geostatistics and Kriging interpolation. Soil moisture, salt and SOM were measured in 256 samples collected from a gravel-sand mulched jujube orchard in the 0-10, 10-20, 20-30 and 30-50 cm. Soil moisture, salt and SOM were more variable in the surface soil, due to several environmental factors, the coefficients of variation (CV) of soil were lower than 23%, indicating weak to moderate variation. The coefficient of variation of moisture and organic matter decreased with the depth and the salinity increased with the depth. There is a significant correlation between each soil layer, which decreases with the increase of the soil layer. The accuracy of the function model with depth as an independent variable and soil properties as a dependent variable is higher than 0.88. To master the relationship among soil depth, salinity, soil moisture and organic matter content can provide theoretical value for agricultural comprehensive management.

The release of textile effluents into the biosphere is a serious threat to the environment and promotes several health issues. Although several studies have been carried out in the remediation of textile effluents using adsorbents, the continuous mode of operation (packed bed) to treat effluent generated from the cotton-based textile industry using biosorbent is seldom reported. Here, one such investigation is made to remediate the Remazol effluent solution in batch and continuous mode of operation. A maximum decolourization efficiency of 77.5% and 49.66% was obtained for Ulva lactuca derived biochar in batch and continuous study. Column data parameters such as overall sorption time zone, breakthrough time, exhaustion time and volume of effluent treated were also calculated. Regeneration studies showed that 0.01 M sodium hydroxide can be utilized for sorption-elution up to three regeneration cycles.

The effective technique of RAD7 has been applied to determine the concentrations of radon and annual effective dose of mineral water samples collected from Iraqi local markets. The results show that the level of radon concentrations in mineral water samples ranged between 0.035 and 0.248 Bq/L with an average value of 0.120 Bq/L. In addition to the annual effective dose ranged from 0.129 to 0.905 ?Sv/y with an average value of 0.440 ?Sv/y. It was found that the mean value of radon concentration and annual effective dose in all the studied mineral water samples were within the acceptable limits according to the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) and World Health Organization (WHO).

Backyard chicken production is an integral part among rural families in the tropics like the Philippines. However, it has been declining as it continues to suffer low productivity with its small-scale operations. Among its production inputs, feeds remain to be the top cost driver, as well as the top contributor to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that result in global warming potential (GWP). In a prior experiment, 50% inclusion of Azolla Pinna was recommended in feed ration due to its favourable and comparable growth performance of Dominant DZ backyard chickens. Hence, this study further evaluated the inclusion in terms of environmental performance. The 50% inclusion resulted in reductions of CO2 by 35%, N2O by 22.32%, and CH4 by 4.74%. The gross effect of this reduction of conventional feeds is a climate change mitigation equivalent 28.47% of GWP kg CO2 -eq./1,000 birds. The potential impacts indicate that Azolla Pinnata can be a cost-effective and sustainable feedstuff in backyard chicken rearing system especially that it requires simple propagation method. The environmental impacts and savings can encourage more livelihood activities in rural.

The study gives the elimination of two kinds of antibiotics, tetracycline (TC) and cefradine (CF) by adsorption process, on the biochar derived from cornstalk. Dense, multifaceted and thick fragments of raw cornstalk almost all vanished at a pyrolytic temperature above 400°C. The carbon content increased from 60.48% of the raw cornstalk to 75.5% of the cornstalk biochar pyrolyzed at 600°C (BC600), while the oxygen content decreased from 17.31% to 6.94%. The uptake of each TC and CF on the cornstalk biochar was highly pH-dependent. The maximum adsorption capacities of TC and CF at 298 K calculated from the Langmuir mannequin have been 28.0 and 38.0 mg/g, respectively. The Columbic interaction and ?–? electron-donor-acceptor interaction between cornstalk biochar and CF/TC molecules played the main role. The experimental records were well outfitted by way of the ability of the pseudo-second-order kinetics model, indicating a possible chemisorption process to some extent. Isotherm result implied that both adsorption and partitioning contributed to the uptake of TC and CF onto BC600.

The crystalline structure of cellulose makes it difficult to degrade and so most of the cellulosic waste in nature is disposed of by biomass burning. Cellulase enzyme system is potent enough to convert cellulose into glucose. Fungi are known to produce an array of hydrolytic enzymes. This study involves isolation of high potential cellulolytic fungal strains from the soil and optimizing pH and temperature conditions for enhanced cellulase production. The fungal strains were isolated from soil using serial dilution and pour plate techniques and screened using Congo red test and FPase method. Based on hydrolytic zones formation and cellulase enzyme production, Aspergillus fumigatus, Aspergillus terreus and Aspergillus flavus were found to show the highest potency for hydrolytic enzyme production at pH 5.8-6.0 and temperature range of 40°C-50°C.