Recycling of organic waste with enormous nutrients gives soil fertility when added to the soil and reduce the usage of chemical fertilizers. Vermicomposting process of recycling the bio-organic waste by earthworms contains efficient nutrients with low levels of toxic contents. In the present study, banana leaves waste was mixed with cow dung in different ratios. The earthworm Eudrillus euginea was later added to the compost. Total organic matter (TOM), total organic carbon (TOC), pH, EC, total alkalinity and phosphorus were analysed and compared for different ratios of vermicompost at different day intervals. Microorganisms present in vermicompost were isolated and analysed for their enzymatic activities. Compost maturity was also observed by FTIR application. Results showed that the vermicompost quality was improved with positive catalase and protease enzymatic activity. FTIR analysis showed the proper maturation of vermicompost with reduced complex structures such as aromatic compounds, polysaccharides and polypeptides. It was concluded that composting of organic wastes by vermicomposting promote humification, increased microbial activity and enzyme production, which in turn increase the aggregate stability of soil particles resulting in better aeration with pollutionfree technique.

There are no recognized data about the relationships between soil organic carbon and soil texture in Northern Agriculture Region (NAR), Western Australia (WA). Such information is central in understanding the impact of silt and clay content of soil profile soil organic carbon. In order to describe mathematically this relation, twenty-one soil orders highly weathered soils (mostly sandy soils) in Northern Agricultural Region, Western Australia under similar climate, vegetation and topography were sampled at 120 cm depth and analyzed for texture and total SOC concentration. The SOC concentration was directly and linearly correlated with the combined clay + silt (but not to clay alone) content for all depths. The intercept and slope of these linear relations decreased with depth following exponential and logarithmic functions (P < 0.001, R2 = 0.81 and 0.76, respectively). These mathematical functions permitted the adjustment of the intercept and slope parameters of a SOC = a + b (clay + silt) function for any depth in the 0-120 cm interval. This profile pedotransfer function precisely estimated SOC concentration (P < 0.0001, R2 = 0.90) up to 120 cm of the studied soils. Using data from different soil orders, estimated vs. measured SOC relations with similarly high R2 values were obtained, despite slopes and intercepts were different than 1 and 0. This indicates that for the NAR, WA the textural control of SOC varies predictably with depth, and the proposed model can be calibrated to estimate SOC in subsurface layers of highly weathered soils.

A survey of environmental gamma radiation levels is attempted in the geographical site under construction to establish a petrochemical industry. The knowledge of natural background radiation is one of the significant steps in establishing the chemical industry. Some chemical operations such as chemical refinement may sometimes influence the natural radiation levels. The attempt of measurement of natural background gamma levels in the present paper is to establish the baseline data, which on further measurements will be useful to analyse the changes in natural background radiation levels at the time of operation of a chemical plant. The present investigation shows the activity levels of gamma radiation in the site under construction at 65 locations. The gamma levels are found to vary from 1459 μGyy-1 to 2765 μGyy-1 with the average of 2141±304 μGyy-1. It is to be noted from the study that the average gamma radiation levels at two sample locations, cement mixing point (2307 μGyy-1) and stone crushing point (2529 μGyy-1) have been elevated. The elevated radiation levels at the two sample locations can be attributed to the radioactive dust emitted in the process of crushing stones and cement mixing.

Use of the high-rate vermicomposting system and its relevant technology were successfully applied to accomplish direct vermicomposting of coral vine leaves - devoid of any pre-treatment/composting or amended with cow dung as earlier proclaimed protocols for the vermicomposting of various phytomass had necessitated. Three earthworm species tested were Eisenia fetida, Eudrilus eugeniae and Perionyx excavatus, and they had shown efficient vermicast recovery with few instances of mortality and good reproduction over the 150-day experiment. In this duration, all vermireactors were run in semi-continuous mode at the solid retention time of 15 days. This process enabled us to improve process efficacy of the reactor by the required pointers and systematic process monitoring. This paper substantiates the potential of the high-rate vermicomposting system in direct and potential vermicomposting of coral vine without any pre-treatment/composting or cow dung amendments. The observations have significance for enhancing process economics and therefore, process utility.

This paper introduces a project design on estimating air pollution over geographical regions that have a mono-source of data acquisition. Fourteen years (2000-2013) aerosol optical depth dataset was obtained from the Multi-angle Imaging Spectro-Radiometer (MISR). The peculiar design that has been discussed in this paper focusses on human health and environmental disturbances. The secondary datasets that were generated from the primary data were aerosol loading, particles sizes, Angstrom parameter, and the statistics of the primary dataset. A computational data treatment was introduced for the determination of data reliability of the dataset. The techniques highlighted in this study are germaine to be reproduced in several geographical locations.

The Legon Bajak port is a strategic port in Indonesia, because it is located in a busy and potential shipping lane. The port is adjacent to the Karimunjawa Marine National Park which is protected by the Indonesian government; therefore, this study aims to provide an overview of the ecological status of the Legon Bajak sea and the prediction of the impact of port activities on the ecological status of the Marine National Park. This research is a descriptive study by analysing seawater quality using atomic absorption spectroscopic methods, the status of biodiversity of seaweed and coral reefs with the transect method at 6 observed sample points and photos of underwater marine supporters. The results of the analysis of seawater quality indicate that it is in good condition, but when viewed from the analysis of seaweed conditions and coral cover <10%, this indicates that the ecological status is in a damaged condition and a category with a low functional value. An in-depth study is needed for the analysis of the environmental impact of the Legon Bajak port on the Karimunjawa National Marine Park Conservation Area.

Reservoirs are the major source of water supply in many localities for meeting the water demand of the people, and hence it is important to monitor the metal concentration of the water stored in such reservoirs for the benefit of the people in terms of drinking water and irrigation. The main objective of this study is to monitor the metal concentrations of Arsenic (As), Boron (B), Cadmium (Cd), Chromium (Cr), Copper (Cu), Iron (Fe), Nickel (Ni), Lead (Pb), Selenium (Se), and Zinc (Zn) in the water of the Amaravathi and Thirumoorthy reservoirs located in the Tiruppur district of the state of Tamil Nadu, India. Results indicate that the water collected from the Thirumoorthy reservoir is free from metal contamination while that from the Amaravathi reservoir has a marginal contamination of Fe concentration. Thus, the water stored in these reservoirs is suitable for drinking and irrigation purpose.

Machine learning and data mining are the two important tools for extracting useful information and knowledge from large datasets. In machine learning, classification is a widely used technique to predict qualitative variables and is generally preferred over regression from an operational point of view. Due to the enormous increase in air pollution in various countries especially China, air quality classification has become one of the most important topics in air quality research and modelling. This study aims at introducing a new hybrid classification model based on information theory and support vector machine (SVM) using the air quality data of 4 cities in China namely Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Tianjin from January 1, 2014 to April 30, 2016. China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection has classified the daily air quality into 6 levels, namely, serious pollution, severe pollution, moderate pollution, light pollution, good and excellent based on their respective air quality index (AQI) values. Using the information theory, information gain (IG) is calculated and feature selection is done for both categorical features and continuous numeric features. Then SVM machine learning algorithm is implemented on the selected features with cross-validation. The final evaluation reveals that the IG and SVM hybrid model performs better than SVM (alone), artificial neural network (ANN) and K-nearest neighbours (KNN) models in terms of accuracy as well as complexity.

Despite its small share of 0.15% in the global market, the oil palm production in the Philippines is being contested with environmental issues on continued deforestation, increased emissions from illegal burning of trees, and the marginalization of indigenous communities. As a developing industry, there is a need to further conduct of social and environmental impact studies to gain more acceptance, thereby, pursue growth and expansion. In view of the environmental concerns, this study aimed to conduct a life cycle assessment of the crude oil palm with North Cotabato, Philippines as the case study. Using cradle to gate approach, the potential environmental impacts were established: non-renewable energy of 0.394 MJ/kg oil, carbon footprint of 1.150 kgCO2/kg oil, ozone creation potential of 2.429×10-3 kg NOx /kg oil, acidification potential of 0.0138×10-3 kg SO2 /kg oil and water footprint of 5,797.3 L/kg oil. Compared to six locations in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, the environmental impacts and performance of the oil palm production in North Cotabato were satisfactory given the same topographical conditions. Opportunities to mitigate and decrease the impacts were also identified, namely improving oil extraction rates; increasing ratio of shell as biomass fuel; prudent application of nitrogen fertilizers and optimizing delivery loads and schedules. The results of this study can be a reference for future environmental assessments in other locations.

Mango seed kernel, a byproduct of the mango processing industry, is known to be a rich source of phenolic compounds. Phenolic compounds are bioactive in nature and highly valuable due to a number of potential health and therapeutic benefits making it a good component in functional food formulations and for the nutraceutical industry. Through spray drying, the bioactive fraction from an industrial waste mango seed kernel extract was recovered through encapsulation using maltodextrin (MD), gum Arabic (GA), and starch (ST) as encapsulating agents. The encapsulating agent type used alongside inlet drying air temperature was varied and observed to have an influence on encapsulation yield and on the powder qualities measured such as total phenolic content, antioxidant activity, moisture content, bulk density and water solubility index. Among the encapsulating agents used, MD was found to be the most desirable encapsulating material with regards to the desirable properties of spray-dried powders in terms of functionality and applicability.