The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) region of Queensland, Australia, encompasses a complex and diverse array of tropical marine ecosystems of global significance. The region is also a World Heritage Area and largely within one of the world’s best managed marine protected areas. However, a recent World Heritage Committee report drew attention to serious governance problems associated with the management of ports and shipping. We review the impacts of ports and shipping on biodiversity in the GBR, and propose a series of guiding principles to improve the current governance arrangements. Implementing these principles will increase the capacity of decision makers to minimize the impacts of ports and shipping on biodiversity, and will provide certainty and clarity to port operators and developers. A ‘business as usual’ approach could lead to the GBR’s inclusion on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 2014.

The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill resulted in the release of a large quantity of oil and gas into the northern Gulf of Mexico from a bathypelagic source. Due to a lack of pre-spill quantitative data the baseline condition of the communities near the spill site is unknown. This makes it difficult to determine the impact of the spill on deepwater megafauna. Remotely operated vehicles were used to quantify megafauna at five study sites during August and September 2010:2000m north, west, south, and east, and 500m north of the Macondo well. Comparisons of animal abundances indicated that 2000m-N and 2000m-W had the greatest taxonomic richness and highest abundances while 2000m-E had slightly lower values. In contrast 500m-N and 2000m-S had the lowest taxonomic richness and abundances. Our study also suggests that certain taxa were potentially more resistant or sensitive to the spill.

In this study, we isolated and characterized Shewanella putrefaciens from shellfish harvested from the West Sea in Korea. For the initial isolation of S. putrefaciens, LB agar plates supplemented with ferrous sulfate and sodium thiosulfate were inoculated with shellfish homogenates, incubated for 24h, and then black colonies were selected. Gram-negative and catalase-positive colonies were subsequently confirmed by PCR assays and API 20E kit test system. The Shewanella-specific 16S rRNA and gyrB genes were used to design S. putrefaciens-specific PCR primers. From 6 species of shellfish tested, 24 S. putrefaciens strains were isolated. These 24 isolates had the following profiles of resistance against 16 antibiotics: all the isolates were resistant to cephalothin and vancomycin and 95.8% were resistant to ampicillin. Here, we report the isolation of S. putrefaciens from shellfish and our results point to a new possible route for exposing healthy individuals to S. putrefaciens.

Coastal benthic habitats are usually in a state of continuous recolonization as a consequence of natural disturbances or human activities. Recolonization patterns can be strongly affected by the quality of the sediment. We evaluated herein the macrobenthic recolonization of organically enriched sediments through a manipulative experiment involving reciprocal transplants between contaminated and non-contaminated intertidal areas. Regardless of the experimental treatments, the density of the polychaete Capitella sp. was extremely high in the contaminated area as well as the density of the gastropod Cylichna sp. in the non-contaminated area. We rejected the hypothesis that differences in sediment quality would determine macrofaunal recolonization at least in the considered scales of space in meters and time in weeks. The recolonization process in a subtropical estuarine environment was strongly dependent on the migration of adults present in the sediments adjacent to the experimental units.

We examined the geographic extent of petroleum hydrocarbon contamination in sediment, seawater, biota, and seafood during/after the BP/Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill (April 20–July 15, 2010; 28.736667°N, −88.386944°W). TPH, PAHs, and 12 compound classes were examined, particularly C1-benzo(a)anthracenes/chrysenes, C-2-/C-4-phenanthrenes/anthracenes, and C3-naphthalenes. Sediment TPH, PAHs, and all classes peaked near Pensacola, Florida, and Galveston, Texas. Seawater TPH peaked off Pensacola; all of the above classes peaked off the Mississippi River, Louisiana and Galveston. Biota TPH and PAHs peaked near the Mississippi River; C-3 napthalenes peaked near the spill site. Seafood TPH peaked near the spill site, with PAHs and all classes peaking near Pensacola. We recommend that oil concentrations continued to be monitored in these media well after the spill has ceased to assist in defining re-opening dates for fisheries; closures should be maintained until hydrocarbon levels are deemed within appropriate limits.

This paper seeks to enhance understanding of the data distribution of ground–level ozone time series by analysing their multifractal spectra. Emphasis is placed on the suitability of the box–counting and moments methods for characterizing scaling properties of ozone concentration, enabling us to describe similarities and differences inferred from the multifractal spectra by analysing various types of monitoring stations (urban, suburban and rural monitoring sites) under identical atmospheric conditions. It is herein demonstrated that that multifractal features are to a considerable extent similar for each type of monitoring station under warm atmospheric conditions and high solar radiation, owing to the fact that these weather characteristics homogenize the scaling behaviour of ozone. On the contrary, location and chemical precursors play a more prominent role under low temperatures and solar radiation, highlighting differences among multifractal features of ozone concentrations in the monitoring sites. At rural stations, the absence of anthropogenic emissions promotes less variability in ozone data and homogenization of multifractal behaviour throughout the year. Furthermore, a data shuffling procedure was performed in order to analyse changes occurring in multifractal spectra as time series are subjected to varying degrees of data position disturbance. Results indicate that multifractal analysis is a useful tool for describing the temporal scaling behaviour of ozone time series at different monitoring sites which refines results that have been traditionally provided by statistical analyses on ozone pollution.

In this paper, we develop a bi–level transferable air pollutant price (TAPP) model, and use the model to find ways to mitigate China’s interprovincial air pollution control problem. In this model, the leader is China’s central government and the followers consist of China’s 31 provinces. The leader aims to decrease the nation’s total pollutant control costs, whereas each province attempts to minimize its pollution control costs by balancing its own pollutant reduction cost with transfer payments to or from other provinces, in the context of a transfer price set by the leader. We chose a Karush–Kuhn–Tucker approach with an embedded bisection algorithm to solve the model. We then applied the TAPP model to the seriously polluted Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei area of China. Compared with the current command–and–control regulation approach, the TAPP model for the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei area decreased the total environmental cost by US$ 3 964.61×103 (10.5% of the current command–and–control regulation cost). This demonstrated that the TAPP model was superior because it both mitigated the problem of air pollution transport across regional boundaries and utilized the available resources of the study area more efficiently.

For full understanding of the bacterial community in the intertidal zones of Bohai Bay, China, we used pyrosequencing-based approach to analyze the 16S rRNA gene of bacteria in the sediments from the two typically intertidal zones – Qikou (Qi) and Gaoshaling (Ga). Results showed that, at a 0.03 distance, the sequences from the Qi sediment were assigned to 3252 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) which belong to 34 phyla, 69 classes and 119 genera, while the 3740 OTUs from the Ga sediment were affiliated with 33 phyla, 66 classes and 146 genera. Comparing the bacterial communities inhabiting in the two intertidal sediments, we observed significant difference in the dominant composition and distribution at phylum, class and genus levels. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) showed that the median grain size and DO were the most important factors regulating the bacterial abundance and diversity, while the other environmental factors have effects with different degree.

Atmospheric concentrations of elemental, organic and water–soluble organic carbon (EC, OC and WSOC) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have been studied in PM2.5 (particulate matter of aerodynamic diameter ≤2.5 μm) from a site (Barapani: 25.7 °N; 91.9 °E; 1 064 m amsl) in the foot–hills of NE–Himalaya (NE–H). Under favorable wind–regimes, during the wintertime (January–March), study region is influenced by the long–range transport of aerosols from the Indo–Gangetic Plain (IGP). For rest of the year, ambient atmosphere over the NE–H is relatively clean due to frequent precipitation events associated with the SW– and NE–monsoon. The concentration of PM2.5 over NE–H, during the wintertime, varied from 39–348 μg m–3, with average contribution of OC and EC as 36±8% (AVG±SD) and 6±3%, respectively. For the OC/EC ratio as high as 10–15 (relatively high compared to fossil–fuel source) associated with WSOC/OC ratio exceeding 0.5 in NE–H, it can be inferred that dominant source of carbonaceous aerosols is attributable to biomass burning emissions and/or contributions from secondary organic aerosols (SOA). The OC/PM2.5 ratio from NE–H is somewhat higher compared to upwind regions in the IGP (Range: 0.16–0.24). The abundance of ΣPAHs show large variability, ranging from 4–46 ng m–3, and the ratio of sum of 4– to 6–ring PAHs (Σ(4– to 6–) PAHs) to EC is 2.4 mg g–1; similar to that in the upwind IGP and is about a factor of two higher than that from the fossil–fuel combustion sources. The cross-plot of PAH isomers [FLA/(FLA+PYR) vs. ANTH/(ANTH+PHEN), BaA/(BaA+CHRY+TRIPH), BaP/(BaP+B[b,j,k]FLA) and IcdP/(IcdP+BghiP)] reaffirms the dominant impact of biomass burning emissions. These results have implications to large temporal variability in aerosol radiative forcing and environmental change over the NE–Himalaya.

The European seas are under anthropogenic pressures impacting the state of water quality, benthic habitats and species. The EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) requires the Member States to assess the impacts of pressures and make a programme of measures leading to good environmental status (GES) by 2020. This study presents a method for assessing the quantity and distribution of anthropogenic impacts on benthic habitats in the Baltic Sea by using spatial data of human pressures and benthic habitats. The southern sub-basins were more extensively impacted than the northern sub-basins. Over the entire sea area, deep sea habitats were more impacted than shallower infralittoral and circalittoral habitats. Sand and coarse sediments were the seabed types relatively most impacted in the Baltic Sea scale. A comparison against tentative thresholds for GES showed that in the sub-basin scale only one third of the habitat types was in GES.