Climate change is at the top of the development agenda in Central America. This region, together with the Caribbean, is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change in Latin America. Climate change is manifesting itself through higher average temperatures and more frequent droughts that result in higher water stress, and through the rising frequency of extreme weather events such as tropical storms, hurricanes, floods and landslides, all of which pose significant challenges in the rural water supply and sanitation sector. The paper starts with a review of the historic data on temperature and precipitation trends in Central America and particularly at the regional level in Nicaragua. The data reveal a clear trend of the growing climate variability, increased water stress for crops, and greater frequency of extreme weather events. The rising intensity and frequency of ex-treme weather events is among the most critical risks to the region's development agenda, and they translate into high economic losses. This paper examines the impacts and implications of potential climate change on water resources in Nicaragua and makes key recommendations to integrate climate change and rural water supply and sanitation policies and programs in a way that increase resilience to current and future climate conditions. | 0

La biosorción trata de absorber o remover contaminantes presentes en aire, suelo o agua mediante la utilización de biomasa viva o muerta. En este proyecto se construyeron bloques de heno conglomerados con hifas del hongo Pleurotus ostreatus con el fin de caracterizar el proceso constructivo y de proponer una alternativa biológica para la generación de filtros para aguas contaminadas. El material fue construido eficientemente y la densidad cualitativa del micelio llegó a ser muy alta en todas las réplicas estudiadas. A pesar de que el biomaterial fue primordialmente hidrofóbico, se logró documentar un alto porcentaje de absorción de agua –más del 200% del peso original– en comparación con otros materiales previamente comunicados en la literatura. De esta forma, tal material puede ser un candidato para el tratamiento de aguas para uso humano. Sin embargo, más estudios sobre el tema son necesarios todavía. | Biosorption deals with absorbing or removing contaminants present in air, soil or water by means of using living or non-living biomass. In this project, a series of panels made of hay bound by Pleurotus ostreatus hyphae were constructed with the objective of characterizing the creation of the material and proposing an alternative to filtering contaminated water. The material was constructed efficiently, and the qualitative density of the mycelium was high in all studied replicates. Despite the material being hydrophobic, water absorption was documented – more than 200% of the original weight – and compared with previous literature. In this manner, the material constructed herein could be a candidate for treating water for human consumption. Future research on the subject is necessary.

Water and salt migration properties are important in many disciplines, including engineering construction, natural disaster prevention, agricultural irrigation and wastewater disposal. Relevant research into unsaturated loess caters to the development needs of the cities located on it. The objective of this study is to identify the water flow dynamics and consequent salt migration and redistribution (as well as their influence on microstructure alteration of the soil) during long-term seepage in unsaturated loess. In this experimental study, a long-term and one-dimensional seepage simulation test is conducted in a loess column. Probes are buried at different depths along the vertical profile to monitor and record the variations of volume water content and electrical conductivity. After the seepage test, soils at different depths are analyzed with different methods to make further investigation, including use of a pressure-plate apparatus to obtain soil-water characteristic curves, ion chromatography to determine the soluble salt components, and scanning electron microscopy to observe the microstructure changes. Good consistency between the different tests is obtained. Based on those results, the water and salt migration patterns and their influence on loess are analyzed and concluded.

Drawings; 2 ref.

Water inrush from coal-seam floors greatly threatens mining safety in North China and is a complex process controlled by multiple factors. This study presents a mathematical assessment system for coal-floor water-inrush risk based on the variable-weight model (VWM) and unascertained measure theory (UMT). In contrast to the traditional constant-weight model (CWM), which assigns a fixed weight to each factor, the VWM varies with the factor-state value. The UMT employs the confidence principle, which is more effective in ordered partition problems than the maximum membership principle adopted in the former mathematical theory. The method is applied to the Datang Tashan Coal Mine in North China. First, eight main controlling factors are selected to construct the comprehensive evaluation index system. Subsequently, an incentive-penalty variable-weight model is built to calculate the variable weights of each factor. Then, the VWM-UMT model is established using the quantitative risk-grade divide of each factor according to the UMT. On this basis, the risk of coal-floor water inrush in Tashan Mine No. 8 is divided into five grades. For comparison, the CWM is also adopted for the risk assessment, and a differences distribution map is obtained between the two methods. Finally, the verification of water-inrush points indicates that the VWM-UMT model is powerful and more feasible and reasonable. The model has great potential and practical significance in future engineering applications.

Coal-floor water-inrush incidents account for a large proportion of coal mine disasters in northern China, and accurate risk assessment is crucial for safe coal production. A novel and promising assessment model for water inrush is proposed based on random forest (RF), which is a powerful intelligent machine-learning algorithm. RF has considerable advantages, including high classification accuracy and the capability to evaluate the importance of variables; in particularly, it is robust in dealing with the complicated and non-linear problems inherent in risk assessment. In this study, the proposed model is applied to Panjiayao Coal Mine, northern China. Eight factors were selected as evaluation indices according to systematic analysis of the geological conditions and a field survey of the study area. Risk assessment maps were generated based on RF, and the probabilistic neural network (PNN) model was also used for risk assessment as a comparison. The results demonstrate that the two methods are consistent in the risk assessment of water inrush at the mine, and RF shows a better performance compared to PNN with an overall accuracy higher by 6.67%. It is concluded that RF is more practicable to assess the water-inrush risk than PNN. The presented method will be helpful in avoiding water inrush and also can be extended to various engineering applications.

The affiliation of Daniel Strasser is hereby corrected to: Department of Geotechnical Engineering, Federal Waterways Engineering and Research Institute (BAW), Kussmaulstraße 17, 76187 Karlsruhe, Germany

With the rapid development and use of ground-source heat-pump (GSHP) systems in China, it has become imperative to research the effects of associated long-term pumping and recharge processes on ground deformation. During groundwater GSHP operation, small particles can be transported and deposited, or they can become detached in the grain skeleton and undergo recombination, possibly causing a change in the ground structure and characteristics. This paper presents a mathematical ground-deformation model that considers particle transportation and deposition in porous media based on the geological characteristics of a dual-structure stratum in Wuhan, eastern China. Thermal effects were taken into consideration because the GSHP technology used involves a device that uses heat from a shallow layer of the ground. The results reveal that particle deposition during the long-term pumping and recharge process has had an impact on ground deformation that has significantly increased over time. In addition, there is a strong correlation between the deformation change (%) and the amount of particle deposition. The position of the maximum deformation change is also the location where most of the particles are deposited, with the deformation change being as high as 43.3%. The analyses also show that flow of groundwater can have an effect on the ground deformation process, but the effect is very weak.