Ecological Disaster Research Articles

The Establishment of the Cause-Effect Relationship of the Formation of Somatic Diseases in the Population of Pre-Aral under the Influence of Ecological Factors

Aim: The drying out region of the Aral Sea - the largest ecological disaster of anthropogenic origin. Establishment of the cause-and-effect relationship of formation of diseases among the adult population under the influence of environmental-hygienic factors.
 Methods: The article identifies the relationship between somatic diseases in the surveyed population and identifies the leading type of aberrations under influence of ecological factors in this region.
 Results: The article presents the results of multidimensional statistical analysis (correlation, linear and nonlinear regression, logistic) with the gradual establishment of the presence of the influence of the environmental factor on the development of a particular nosology and determining the significance of this influence, and also the prediction of the incidence growth with an increase in the level of the environmental factor was assessed.
 Conclusion: This article provides the leading nosologies from the main classes of diseases throughout the Aral Sea region.

ინვაირონმენტალისტური კინო და სამართლიანი საზოგადოების პრინციპები

The UN Summit on Climate Change in Paris was held in 2015, at which the Framework Convention was signed by many countries around the world, including Georgia. The document is the basis of the EU Green Agreement, which was approved in 2019 and which doubles the commitment of Georgia, a member of the Eastern Partnership, to promote a green economy and culture, which not only is not the case but on the example of Namakhvani HPP reveals the fact that the country has been arranged according to a wrong economic model. Cinema is the medium that has the most outstanding ability to reorganize the world and, therefore, has great potential. Cinema, as the screen of discourses best reflects a culture that stands out from the point of view of consumer values alike to ordinary people and nature, the environment, ecology. Marx's theory of fetishism, which has evolved since the advent of the term ideology, well explains the attitude of the culture towards natural (or human) resources. We must not forget that a culture that is a conglomerate of discourses, and like discourses, it is produced by ideology (superstructure). Ideology possesses the intellectual levers through which the dominant forces, the classes, are established by presenting the values of this class as the "norm". Culture, therefore, is directed to save the verticals of power by concealing problems, or by telling incomplete truth. Nevertheless, it is a culture that implies confrontation with the laws of nature and discourses based on those laws. However, first and foremost, capitalist ideology seeks to adapt thought systems to itself, including culture. Georgian cinema has always had an ideological line, but in the 1960’s the process of devaluation of communism in intellectual and creative circles shifted the focus to the problem of individualism. For example, in several of Merab Kokochashvili's films, the mainline is drawn between the relationship of the individual and the environment, where the apparatus (state) is presented only as a clear source of evil. It is regulations that create the environmental context that is the only way to stop profit-oriented destructive systems. Neither competition nor individual or corporate responsibility can solve ecological disasters and human exploitation problems. In modern Georgian cinema, there are more and more attempts to extract a broader holistic picture of the impact on the environment. Salome Jashi explores the whim of the richest Georgian - the passion for arranging a dendrological park with centuries-old trees, which is a class catastrophe along with an ecological catastrophe. Alexander Koberidze's "What do we see when we look at the sky?" asks the main question, "What do we answer our children" when they discover that they live in an unjust world that is sacrificed to the greed of a small number of people in power.

Depletion of resources by a population of diffusing species.

Depletion of natural and artificial resources is a fundamental problem and a potential cause of economic crises, ecological catastrophes, and death of living organisms. Understanding the depletion process is crucial for its further control and optimized replenishment of resources. In this paper, we investigate a stock depletion by a population of species that undergo an ordinary diffusion and consume resources upon each encounter with the stock. We derive the exact form of the probability density of the random depletion time, at which the stock is exhausted. The dependence of this distribution on the number of species, the initial amount of resources, and the geometric setting is analyzed. Future perspectives and related open problems are discussed.

The Maze Runner, the pandemic, and the Gospel

The Maze Runner book series and movie trilogy is set in the future, when ecological disaster and a global pandemic strike. Many children and young adults are immune to the disease and are therefore quarantined, studied, and used to develop a cure for the “flare.” This article examines some of the ethical frameworks experienced in the COVID-19 pandemic using the Maze Runner movies as illustrations. It also examines contemporary culture and proposes that a more robust gospel witness is needed to better deal with future global pandemics.

Reimagining Agricultural Embodiment with Feminist Foundations

Reimagining Agricultural Embodiment with Feminist Foundations

Classifying the 2021 ‘Ahrtal’ flood event using hermeneutic interpretation, natural language processing, and instrumental data analyses

Extreme weather events and severe flash floods during July 2021 caused numerous deaths and massive ecological disasters across Europe. The regionally overstrained environmental and socio-cultural resilience triggered an intensive discussion about cause and effect, responsibilities and public denouncement, and the financial consequences of climate-induced extreme events. In this article we analyze the flood event by four methodological approaches: (1) hermeneutics, with an analog interpretation of printed newspapers and sources; (2) text mining and natural language processing of digital newspaper articles available online; (3) precipitation and discharge models based on instrumental data; and (4) how the findings can be linked to the historical extreme floods of 1804 and 1910, based on documentary source analysis. These four approaches are used to compare and evaluate their consistency by tracking the course, consequences, and aftermaths of the flood disaster. The study shows a high consistency between the analog, digital, and instrumental data analysis. A combination of multidisciplinary methods and their application to historical events enables the evaluation of modern events. It enables to answer the question of return periods and intensities, which are indispensable for today’s risk assessments and their social contextualization, a desideratum in historical and modern climatology.

Predicting the Extent of Sidoarjo Mud Flow Using Remote Sensing

The Sidoarjo mud flow in East Java is the result of a natural phenomenon in which hot mudflow occurs due to volcanic activity. The Sidoarjo mud flow resulted in a considerable ecological disaster in the area. In this study, by using the Modification of Normalized Difference Water Index (MNDWI) technique we measured the extension of the mudflow area from 2013 to 2020 using Landsat 8 satellite data imagery. This study is meant to predict the extension of the mud flow area in the research site by comparing regression and neural network techniques in order to find the best approach. The RPROP MLP neural network technique was used to predict the Sidoarjo mud-flowing area in 2021 to 2025. Surprisingly the results of these calculations showed that the RPROP MLP neural network with three hidden layers and 20 neurons performed the best, with an R square value for training of 0.77915565 and for testing of 0.78321550.

A probabilistic framework for risk management and emergency decision-making of marine oil spill accidents

Offshore oil spills may pose a severe threat to marine ecological environment. In this paper, a new methodology based on Bayesian network (BN) and Influence Diagram (ID) is developed for risk management and emergency decision-making of marine oil spill accidents. The methodology integrates risk management before accident and emergency response after accident, which can balance risk and cost, and render an optimal decision-making. Marine oil spill scenarios including root causations, intermediate and consequent events are identified and modeled using BN considering the dependencies and multi-state of incident process nodes. The probabilities of offshore oil spill incident and the resulting ecological disasters are estimated. The prevention and mitigation measures marine oil spill incidents are identified and added to BN for developing Bayesian ID model, in which the cost and utility of implementing each safety measure are considered. Bayesian ID model can estimate the cost and utility of all safety strategies, and the optimal risk management and emergency strategy are determined by balancing the cost and utility. A case study of marine oil spill accident due to subsea oil pipeline leak is used to illustrate the methodology. It is observed that the methodology can efficiently support the decision-making of oil and gas sector in risk management and emergency response of offshore oil spill accidents.

No Free Tickets

No Free Tickets

Desertification in the Sahel Region: A Product of Climate Change or Human Activities? A Case of Desert Encroachment Monitoring in North-Eastern Nigeria Using Remote Sensing Techniques

Desertification has become one of the most pronounced ecological disasters, affecting arid and semi-arid areas of Nigeria. This phenomenon is more pronounced in the northern region, particularly the eleven frontline states of Nigeria, sharing borders with the Niger Republic. This has been attributed to a range of natural and anthropogenic factors. Rampant felling of trees for fuelwood, unsustainable agriculture, overgrazing, coupled with unfavourable climatic conditions are among the key factors that aggravate the desertification phenomenon. This study applied geospatial analysis to explore land use/land cover changes and detect major conversions from ecologically active land covers to sand dunes. Results indicate that areas covered by sand dunes (a major indicator of desertification) have doubled over the 25 years under consideration (1990 to 2015). Even though 0.71 km2 of dunes was converted to vegetation, indicative of the success of various international, national, local and individual afforestation efforts, conversely about 10.1 km2 of vegetation were converted to sand dunes, implying around 14 times more deforestation compared to afforestation. On average, our results revealed that the sand dune in the study area is progressing at a mean annual rate of 15.2 km2 annually. The land cover conversion within the 25-year study period was from vegetated land to farmlands. Comparing the progression of a sand dune with climate records of the study area and examining the relationship between indicators of climate change and desertification suggested a mismatch between both processes, as increasing rainfall and lower temperatures observed in 1994, 2005, 2012, and 2014 did not translate into positive feedbacks for desertification in the study area. Likewise, the mean annual Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from 2000 to 2015 shows a deviation between vegetation peaks, mean temperatures and rainfall. On average, our results reveal that the sand dune is progressing at a mean annual rate of about 15.2 km2 in the study area. Based on this study’s land cover change, trend and conversion assessment, visual reconciliation of climate records of land cover data, statistical analysis, observations from ground-truthing, as well as previous literature, it can be inferred that desertification in Nigeria is less a function of climate change, but more a product of human activities driven by poverty, population growth and failed government policies. Further projections by this study also reveal a high probability of more farmlands being converted to sand dunes by the years 2030 and 2045 if current practices prevail.

ECOLOGICAL CULTURE OF STUDENTS OF THE PEOPLES' FRIENDSHIP UNIVERSITY OF RUSSIA

Annotation: In the near future, humanity faces a global ecological crisis for the active use of natural resources. Ecology is an essential part of the well-being of society, and therefore there is a need to revise the concept of "man-nature-man". Regulation of the processes of anthropogenic impact on the environment will help humanity to avoid an ecological catastrophe. The release of household and industrial waste into the environment directly affects climate change and an increase in water temperature, which leads to pollution of the oceans, with the discoloration of coral reefs, followed by their replacement by "plant reefs". According to WHO (2017), non-communicable diseases account for 72% of all deaths, of which 16% are caused by toxic pollution. It was revealed that toxic pollution is the cause of 22% of all cardiovascular diseases, 25% of deaths from stroke, 40% of deaths from lung cancer and more than 53% of cases from chronic lung disease.

Long-Term Benefits of Coastline Ecological Restoration in China

Coastline ecological restoration is a critical approach for improving the coastal ecological environment and natural disaster mitigation capacity. Zhejiang Province, with the longest coastline in China, has carried out a three-year action of coastline remediation and restoration, expecting to complete the 300-km coastline restoration by 2020 as part of China’s coastline restoration project. We developed a cost–benefit framework synthesizing the ecosystem services (ES) analysis pattern and input-output approach to evaluate Zhejiang’s coastline ecological restoration projects. The results showed that the average value of ecosystem services (VES) of coastline restoration in Zhejiang was approximately 11,829 yuan/m, which was lower than the average VES of natural coastline. Obviously, damaged natural coastline could cause VES degradation, which cannot make up for the loss in a short time. In an optimistic scenario, coastline ecological restoration projects would deliver enormous well-being to Zhejiang and even China. Our results suggested that making decisions should be based on the net value after accounting for costs (NES), because ignoring costs might mislead planners to overstate the perceived benefits. The study provided a realistic data basis and method for coastline restoration projects in terms of the design, implementation and effectiveness evaluation to achieve sustainable development.

Encourage resource governance: Responding disaster threats behind environmentally friendly claims at the Tumpang Pitu gold mine

The Indonesian constitution has stated that natural resources must be utilized for the people’s benefit. But the people’s interests are often defeated by the elite. The long-term goal of this research is not to close the mining area and its activities, but to ensure that the exploration and exploitation process that has already started must prioritize ecological balance and disaster resilience. Using a qualitative method and a descriptive approach, this study analyzes the role of the government, corporation, and local communities in the framework of resources governance in order to strengthen the advocacy of civil society who are often marginalized in the existence of extractive industries. The results of the study show that the gold mining activity is contrary to the forestry law where the existing rules have been liberalized by selling state assets to private companies; the lack of added value for local communities such as limited job vacancies; the occurrence of environmental damage around the gold mining area where this area is actually a protected forest and a natural barrier from the threat of a tsunami disaster; and even though mining companies have claimed that their activities are environmentally friendly, in fact disasters are starting to appear.

TÍCH HỢP GIÁO DỤC VĂN HOÁ SINH THÁI TRONG GIẢNG DẠY GIÁO DỤC CÔNG DÂN TRUNG HỌC PHỔ THÔNG

Currently, humanity is facing increasingly serious ecological disasters, eco-cultural education is one of the basic solutions to build ecological culture into a driving force for development sustainability of nations as well as of the future of humanity. Within the scope of this work, on the basis of systematic research on ecological culture, eco-cultural education, the role of eco-cultural education in raising the ecological culture level of the community, for the purpose of sustainable development, the article analyzes and clarifies the need, goals and some requirements in the design and organization of the curriculum teaching organization that integrates eco-cultural education in order to improve the effectiveness of eco-cultural education for high school students in the current citizenship education program.

Optimization of Fire Station Locations to Increase the Efficiency of Firefighting in Natural Ecosystems

Wild fires have a catastrophic impact on the environment and lead to people’s deaths. Such fires are relevant in the global context. Many countries declare some of their territories an ecological disaster zone during fires in natural ecosystems (USA, Portugal, Greece, Spain, Italy, Australia). Fires in ecosystems occurred in southern Ukraine in 2007 and in the eastern part of Ukraine in 2021, which destroyed large tracts of pine, as well as homes, buildings and caused human casualties. In the given research, much attention is paid to fire-prevention measures in natural ecosystems. It is proposed to optimize fire stations in the territory of Male Polissya (Ukraine), where frequent grass fires and grassland forest fires occur, since existing fire stations are not able to respond to all fires in the region in a timely manner due to the lack of forces and resources. Optimization of fire station locations was carried out using Voronoi diagrams. This research has a practical aspect, ensuring the protection of human health and life by preventing destructive fires in natural ecosystems through the creation of local safety facilities. On the example of 3 administrative districts of Lviv Oblast in Ukraine, it was established that in order to respond quickly to fires in ecosystems, it is necessary to create 20 additional fire stations, which has been determined by the 20-minute drive method approved by the state authorities. The algorithm proposed in this work can be applied to rural areas in other administrative units, both in Ukraine and other countries. The next step in the development of this technique is to determine the required amount of equipment and human resources for firefighting in ecosystems taking into account the projected dynamics of fires and the time required for the delivery of fire extinguishers to epicenters of these events.

Технология экологически корректной рекультивации шахтной поверхности с выщелачиванием хвостов обогащения углей

On the territory of Donbass, more than 450 mine dumps with a volume of up to 300 million m3 and an area of 1.3 thousand hectares have a negative impact on the land, the area of which reaches 7 thousand hectares. In connection with this, an urgent task arises to involve processing waste in the production process for obtaining the end products. It is known that the coal enrichment tailings contain critical non-ferrous and rare-earth metals. However, the processing of coal enrichment tailings using traditional physical and chemical technologies does not solve the problem of mine surface reclamation due to new tailings formation. The main method of reclamation of the mine surface is the inclusion of dump materials in the natural circulation of the metal extraction. A promising direction of the development is the processing of coal enrichment tailings in the disintegrators with leaching. This will help to prevent an ecological catastrophe in the region and obtain critical products. The rational application of the theory of mechanical activation of processes, the use of the results of field observations and analysis methods at the satisfactory convergence of the theoretical and practical data, will allow to minimize the negative impact of coal processing tailings on the environment. Based on the results of comprehensive studies, the parameters of the waste-free disposal of coal tailings as the main cause of degradation of the environmental ecosystems were substantiated. The ecological and economic effect is ensured by the combination of sorting and mechanical activation of tailings of the coal preparation in the disintegrators. The recommended technology may become in demand in the development of deposits of the metal-containing technologically discovered minerals. It is used for industrial mining of uranium, copper, and gold at 12 enterprises in Russia. The proposed approach has good prospects as the only one that ensures cost-effective environmental and resource-saving production.

Ecological and societal effects of Central Asian streamflow variation over the past eight centuries

Understanding changes in water availability is critical for Central Asia; however, long streamflow reconstructions extending beyond the period of instrumental gauge measurements are largely missing. Here, we present a 785-year-long streamflow reconstruction from spruce tree rings from the Tien Shan Mountains. Although an absolute causal relationship can not be established, relatively high streamflow rates coincided roughly with the period of Mongol expansion from 1225 to 1260 CE and the rise of the Timurid Empire from 1361 to 1400 CE. Since overall wetter conditions were further found during the Zunghar Khanate period 1693–1705 CE, we argue that phases of streamflow surplus likely promoted oasis and grassland productivity, which was an important factor for the rise of inner Eurasian steppe empires. Moreover, we suggest that the streamflow variation might be critical for plague outbreaks in Central Asia, and propose several explanations for possible links with Europe’s repeated Black Death pandemics. We demonstrate that 20th-century low streamflow is unprecedented in the past eight centuries and exacerbated the Aral Sea crisis, which is one of the most staggering ecological disasters of the twentieth century.

Blake's debt: Artisanship and the future of labor

AbstractTaking as prerequisite Peter Frase's argument that the labor markets and living conditions of the twenty‐first century will be primarily determined by the dual “specters of ecological catastrophe and automation,” this article investigates William Blake's poetic response to the problems of religious and financial debt within the context of his own environmentally compromised era. It briefly historicizes the financial components of Blake's printmaking before turning to an examination of his illuminated books, which imagine a form of debt relief grounded in a millenarian theory of political intervention. While Blake's investment in artisanal labor reveals an aversion to technological reproducibility, his cyclical notion of an artificially constructed ecological future models a technologically hybrid ontology useful for addressing Frase's nexus of environmental destruction and mechanized production.

Surfacing Ecological Disaster:Poets for Living Watersand the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

AbstractConsidering the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Spill, the largest environmental disaster in American history, this article examines the elemental intermixing of oil and water via the chemical agent Corexit, the substantial effects submerging oil into the water column had on ocean life, and the aesthetic translation of this environmental destruction by the poetry platformPoets for Living Waters. Functioning as a communal expression of grief, of remembrance, and a demand for change,Poets for Living Watersbrings together the work of hundreds of authors, figuratively raising oil’s toxic specter to the surface by challenging America’s failure to protect ocean ecosystems through an elementally-attentive poetics that highlights the characteristic traits of both water and oil and the deadly effects that occur when these two elements intermix.

“The seeds of a different world are already alive in the everyday practices of ordinary Black and Indigenous people”: An interview with J.T. Roane

J.T. Roane is assistant professor of African and African American Studies in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. Beginning in Fall 2022, Roane will serve as Andrew W. Mellon Assistant Professor in Africana Studies, Geography, and Global Racial Justice at the Institue for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. He currently serves as the lead of the Black Ecologies Initiative at ASU’s Institute for Humanities Research. In this interview with Megan Femi Cole, Preeti Nayak, and Eve Tuck, J.T. Roane examines the ways that the quotidian practices of Black ecologies and the tradition of Black feminist ecological writing and praxis alongside the work of Indigenous sovereignties serve as the basis for an alternative future beyond ecological catastrophe in the context of Turtle Island and with implications beyond. In his responses to the important questions posed in this special issue, Roane centers the alternative worldmaking embedded in Black feminist praxis and related traditions, considering them as the seeds for a generative future beyond the current horizons of future extraction and disposability. Roane’s contributions to thinking about this in the context of pedagogy and curriculum emerges from his own struggles to transform discussions about the environment through the framework offered by Black ecologies as a mode of thinking together the reality that gendered racial capitalism sequesters Black communities to zones of expendability and also that these same communities possess the cultural resources and political insights to create meaningful alternatives (Hosbey & Roane, 2021; Roane & Hosbey, 2019).