Environmental Monitoring Projects Research Articles

Making Sense of Local Climate Change in Rural Tanzania Through Knowledge Co-Production

Shifting climate parameters and their rippling effects through social-ecological systems have altered the abilities of rural households and communities around the world to make livelihood decisions based on traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). National and regional climate services are responding, but the information they provide may not meet local needs or concerns in an accessible format. Previous anthropological research suggests that integrating different knowledge systems to improve climate services, assist in local decision-making, and strengthen climate models remains problematic. To reduce or avoid some of these problems, a participatory, community-based environmental monitoring project was co-developed with residents of four rural Tanzanian communities. A field team brought in equipment and facilitated the training of local monitors, while communities chose the environmental sectors to monitor, collected and analyzed data, and evaluated the results in light of their local TEK. This interaction between scientists and participating community members highlights the value of knowledge co-production in making sense of environmental changes associated with climate that are observed and experienced at the local level. These activities also empowered communities to explore local climate adaptation and policy creation.

Extensive Environmental-Monitoring Project Relies on Integration of Several Networks

This article, written by Editorial Manager Adam Wilson, contains highlights of paper SPE 156294, ’Innovative Environmental Monitoring for Upstream Onshore Installation,’ by Paolo Carnevale, SPE, and Silvia Di Croce, Eni, prepared for the 2012 SPE/APPEA International Conference on Health, Safety, and Environment in Oil and Gas Exploration and Production, Perth, Australia, 11-13 September. The paper has not been peer reviewed. A comprehensive environmental-monitoring project in the Agri Valley in southern Italy has been developed to ensure continuous management of the environmental effects of Eni’s oil treatment center there. This project is able to control the environmental effects of exploration and production in a large area around the plant (100 km2). It is characterized by a complete integration of several networks, stations, and systems used to monitor simultaneously air quality, noise, odorous emissions in terms of olfactory nuisance, groundwater and soil quality, ecosystems status, and ecological biodiversity. Introduction The area where the environmental-monitoring project was developed is characterized by sites that have community-level protection, especially areas protected because of national parks, widespread woods, rivers and streams of high quality, and springs and ground water of great regional and national importance for the production of safe drinking water. Eni’s oil treatment center in this territory collects the production from 24 oil wells, amounting to approximately 104,000 BOPD (Fig. 1). The environmental-monitoring plan consists of environmental-monitoring networks on more than 100 km2 at altitudes between 600 and 900 m. The system includes monitoring networks relevant to the following environmental variables: Air quality Biosystems Bad odors Noise Microseismicity Ecosystem Air Quality The network consists of four monitoring units placed 2.3–4.8 km from the oil center. The sites were chosen according to a model that predicted the spread of emissions from the oil center. The air-quality-monitoring stations were installed outside the plant to continuously identify the effects that production activities have on the quality of the air and to provide operational warnings to avoid any negative effect on the surrounding territory. Each unit is provided with computerized instruments, allowing continuous monitoring of the levels of carbon mon-oxide, hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide, ozone, nitrogen oxides, benzene, toluene, xylene, methane, nonmethane gases, volatile organic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and radon, and monitoring of meteorological standards (e.g., wind speed and direction, rainfall levels, humidity, temperature). The data received continuously from the monitoring units are reported in real time on the Web and in the control room of the plant and are compared continuously with information on pollution standards taken from the chimneys of the oil center.

Towards a societal scale environmental sensing network with public participation

Information acquisition is the prerequisite for environmental management, while insufficient information caused by sparse monitoring stations would result in improper management. Increasingly widespread distribution of consumer electronics equipped with various sensors can enhance the ability to gather and share data. In this study, a Collaborative Environmental Sensing Network (CESN) pattern is proposed, and its structure is clearly described. A Public Participation for Environmental Noise Monitoring (PPENM) project was conducted to illustrate the efficiency of this pattern, and PPENM implementation and the temporal-spatial properties of participators were analyzed. Results show that participators increased rapidly, reaching 32,140 in less than 14 months. The number of records shared by participants from cities all over China reached 531,608, and the participators were most active in the developed cities (e.g., Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou), the most distributed from 8 AM to 11 PM. Based on these results, we conclude that CESN can be formed during a short time and provide a cost-effective alternative approach to collect data at large scales, but that data credibility, privacy, and incentive mechanisms will be the major challenges. †Co-first author.

Diagnostic assessment of mycodiversity in environmental samples by fungal ITS1 rDNA length polymorphism

Biodiversity research rapidly progresses due to the continuous improvement of high-throughput analysis platforms, which facilitate detailed analyses of the composition and architecture of microbial communities in various environmental niches. In the fields of applied forestry and agriculture, microbial communities are also increasingly considered, because they are involved in various kinds of biotic interactions with plants and therefore have high diagnostic value for assessing the health status of plants and soils. While in-depth identification of microbial species in environmental samples is currently achieved by next generation sequencing or microarray techniques, profiling of whole microbial communities can be accomplished via less labor-intensive approaches. We modified the protocol for automated ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis (ARISA) by targeting length polymorphism of the fungal ITS1 rRNA gene for a rapid diagnostic assessment of fungal community composition and surveyed its application spectrum. The approach allowed for spatial and temporal differentiation among fungal assemblages in soil samples and different plant species, and is therefore particularly useful for environmental screening and monitoring projects. Standardized experimental conditions permit the cumulative gathering of data, for instance during long-term projects.

Citizen Science in the Age of Neogeography: Utilizing Volunteered Geographic Information for Environmental Monitoring

The interface between neogeography and citizen science has great potential for environmental monitoring, but this nexus has been explored less often than each subject individually. In this article we review the emerging role of volunteered geographic information in citizen science and present a case study of an integrated tool set that engages multiple types of users (from targeted citizen-based observation networks, expert-driven focused monitoring, and opportunistic crowdsourcing efforts) in monitoring a forest disease in the western United States. We first introduce the overall challenge of data collection in environmental monitoring projects and then discuss the literature surrounding an emergent integration of citizen science and volunteered geographical information. We next explore how these methods characterize and underpin knowledge discovery and how multimodal interaction is supported so that a large spectrum of contributors can be included. These concepts are summarized in a conceptual model that articulates the important gradients of Web-based environmental monitoring: the users, the interaction between users and data, and the types of information generated. Using this model, we critically examine OakMapper.org, a Web site created by the authors to collect and distribute spatial information related to the spread of a forest disease, and discuss many of the core issues and new challenges presented by the intersection of citizen science and volunteered geographic information in the context of environmental monitoring. We argue that environmental monitoring can benefit from this synergy: The increased emphasis on a diversity of participants in knowledge production might help to reduce the gaps that have in the past divided the public, researchers, and policymakers in such efforts.

SEMAT — The Next Generation of Inexpensive Marine Environmental Monitoring and Measurement Systems

There is an increasing need for environmental measurement systems to further science and thereby lead to improved policies for sustainable management. Marine environments are particularly hostile and extremely difficult for deploying sensitive measurement systems. As a consequence the need for data is greatest in marine environments, particularly in the developing economies/regions. Expense is typically the most significant limiting factor in the number of measurement systems that can be deployed, although technical complexity and the consequent high level of technical skill required for deployment and servicing runs a close second. This paper describes the Smart Environmental Monitoring and Analysis Technologies (SEMAT) project and the present development of the SEMAT technology. SEMAT is a “smart” wireless sensor network that uses a commodity-based approach for selecting technologies most appropriate to the scientifically driven marine research and monitoring domain/field. This approach allows for significantly cheaper environmental observation systems that cover a larger geographical area and can therefore collect more representative data. We describe SEMAT's goals, which include: (1) The ability to adapt and evolve; (2) Underwater wireless communications; (3) Short-range wireless power transmission; (4) Plug and play components; (5) Minimal deployment expertise; (6) Near real-time analysis tools; and (7) Intelligent sensors. This paper illustrates how the capacity of the system has been improved over three iterations towards realising these goals. The result is an inexpensive and flexible system that is ideal for short-term deployments in shallow coastal and other aquatic environments.

어림과 나머지 성분을 이용한 연안 수온자료의 이상자료 감지

연안 환경모니터링 사업이 확대되면서 방대하게 축적되어 있는 연안 환경모니터링 자료의 통계적 분석을 위해서는 모니터링 자료에서 빈번하게 발생하는 이상 자료의 감지·처리가 우선적으로 필요하다. 본 연구에서는 연안 환경모니터링 자료의 어림성분과 나머지(또는 잔차)성분을 이용한 이상자료 진단기법을 제안하였다. 주기함수를 이용한 조화분석 방법과 국지 회귀함수추정 방법을 이용하여 각각 어림성분과 나머지성분을 추출한 후, 추출된 나머지성분 자료에 범용적인 Grubbs 검정기법 및 수정표본점수기법을 적용하여 이상자료를 진단·제거한 후 이상자료가 제거된 자료로 재구성하는 방법이다. 제안된 이 기법을 국립수산과학원 실시간어장정보시스템 제공하는 연안 수온 연속 모니터링 자료에 적용한 결과 이상자료가 성공적으로 제거되는 양상을 보이는 것으로 파악되었다.

Linking chemical elements in forest floor humus (O h-horizon) in the Czech Republic to contamination sources

While terrestrial moss and other plants are frequently used for environmental mapping and monitoring projects, data on the regional geochemistry of humus are scarce. Humus, however, has a much larger life span than any plant material. It can be seen as the “environmental memory” of an area for at least the last 60–100 years. Here concentrations of 39 elements determined by ICP-MS and ICP AES, pH and ash content are presented for 259 samples of forest floor humus collected at an average sample density of 1 site/300 km 2 in the Czech Republic. The scale of anomalies linked to known contamination sources (e.g., lignite mining and burning, metallurgical industry, coal fired power plants, metal smelters) is documented and discussed versus natural processes influencing humus quality. Most maps indicate a local impact from individual contamination sources: often more detailed sampling than used here would be needed to differentiate between likely sources.

Advanced sensing technology in environmental field

Before the introduction of advanced sensing technology in environmental fields, environmental issues were discussed as several categories, such as local environmental issues in the 1970s, global environmental issues in the 1980s, living environmental issues in the 2000s and environmental stress issues in near future, which are of increasing interest in Japan. Using advanced sensing technologies, such as electrochemical sensors, chemically-sensitive field-effect transistors (ChemFETs) based on micro-electro mechanical system (MEMS) micromachining technology and subsequently electrophoretic separation and microfluidic Lab-on-a-Chip using MEMS technology, we have steered several kinds of environmental monitoring projects timely in response to the environmental issues for over the last 25 years. Among the local environmental issues, the global environmental issues and the living environmental issues, some fruits of R&D project will be introduced. Finally, our latest concern of the environmental stress monitoring was discussed and preliminary results were also introduced.

The Use of Control Charts to Interpret Environmental Monitoring Data

Abstract Many different methods of synthesizing and analyzing environmental monitoring data exist. Given the diversity of current environmental monitoring projects, and the large number of scientists and policy-makers involved, there is a critical need for a universal format that both summarizes data sets and indicates any potential need for management action. Control charts, originally developed for industrial applications, represent one way of doing this. Control charts indicate when a system is going ‘out of control’ by plotting through time some measure of a stochastic process with reference to its expected value. Control charts can be constructed for many different types of indicators, whether univariate or multivariate. Control charts are simple to interpret, and can easily be updated whenever additional data become available. The relative risks of Type I (i.e., concluding meaningful change has occurred when actually it has not) and Type II (i.e., concluding meaningful change has not occurred when i...

Allometric equations for estimating the foliage biomass of Scots pine

The research described in this paper was performed in the Niepolomice Forest (Southern Poland) in 2001 as part of the Forest Environmental Monitoring and Management System (FOREMMS; 5FP IST) project. The material for the present study consisted of the measurement results of the biomass of Scots pine shoots with needles and needles alone carried out on 113 felled sample trees. The purpose of this study was to construct empirical equations for estimating the foliage biomass of Scots pine from easy to measure parameters. To achieve this aim, the dependence of the foliage biomass of Scots pine on stem diameter, height, age, crown length, basal area increment of the trees was analyzed. Using the biometric characteristics such as: tree diameter at breast height (dbh), basal area increment, age, height, and crown length empirical equations for estimating the foliage biomass of Scots pine reasonably precisely have been established. The created empirical equation gives accurate foliage biomass estimates. The explained variability varies between 65 and 85%, it depends on the number of variables applied in the equation. The equations presented in this paper were created with a view to their possible use in ecological studies where biomass quantity may be used, for example, in modeling carbon circulation in the forest ecosystem. From the point of view of forestry practice, these equations may help to assess biomass production in Scots pine stands.

Agencies for Perception in Environmental Monitoring

This paper presents the main results obtained in the Agencies for PErception in environmental monitoring (APE) Project, funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research, and aimed at studying the employment of advanced distributed artificial intelligence techniques in developing cooperative multiagent systems oriented to support environmental monitoring applications. In particular, this paper describes issues about communication between perceptive agents and two implemented multiagent systems for monitoring electromagnetic fields and for pollutant evaluation.

A Web‐based Tool for UV lrradiance Data: Predictions for European and Southeast Asian Sites

There are a range of UV models available, but one needs significant pre-existing knowledge and experience in order to be able to use them. In this article a comparatively simple Web-based model developed for the SoDa (Integration and Exploitation of Networked Solar Radiation Databases for Environment Monitoring) project is presented. This is a clear-sky model with modifications for cloud effects. To determine if the model produces realistic UV data the output is compared with 1 year sets of hourly measurements at sites in the United Kingdom and Thailand. The accuracy of the output depends on the input, but reasonable results were obtained with the use of the default database inputs and improved when pyranometer instead of modeled data provided the global radiation input needed to estimate the UV. The average modeled values of UV for the UK site were found to be within 10% of measurements. For the tropical sites in Thailand the average modeled values were within 1120% of measurements for the four sites with the use of the default SoDa database values. These results improved when pyranometer data and TOMS ozone data from 2002 replaced the standard SoDa database values, reducing the error range for all four sites to less than 15%.

Continuous Determination of Fine Particulate Matter Mass in the Salt Lake City Environmental Monitoring Project: A Comparison of Real-Time and Conventional TEOM Monitor Results

Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) mass was determined on a continuous basis at the Salt Lake City Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Monitoring for Public Awareness and Community Tracking monitoring site in Salt Lake City, UT, using three different monitoring techniques. Hourly averaged PM2.5 mass data were collected during two sampling periods (summer 2000 and winter 2002) using a real-time total ambient mass sampler (RAMS), sample equilibration system (SES)-tapered element oscillating microbalance (TEOM), and conventional TEOM monitor. This paper compares the results obtained from the various monitoring systems, which differ in their treatment of semivolatile material (SVM; particle-bound water, semivolatile ammonium nitrate, and semivolatile organic compounds). PM2.5 mass results obtained by the RAMS were consistently higher than those obtained by the SES-TEOM and conventional TEOM monitors because of the RAMS ability to measure semivolatile ammonium nitrate and semivolatile organic material but not particle-bound water. The SESTEOM monitoring system was able to account for an average of 28% of the SVM, whereas the conventional TEOM monitor loses essentially all of the SVM from the single filter during sampling. Occasional mass readings by the various TEOM monitors that are higher than RAMS results may reflect particle-bound water, which, under some conditions, is measured by the TEOM but not the RAMS.

Monitoring and simulation of water, heat, and CO2 fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems based on the APEIS-FLUX system

The Integrated Environmental Monitoring (IEM) project, part of the Asia-Pacific Environmental Innovation Strategy (APEIS) project, developed an integrated environmental monitoring system that can be used to detect, monitor, and assess environmental disasters, degradation, and their impacts in the Asia-Pacific region. The system primarily employs data from the moderate resolution imaging spectrometer (MODIS) sensor on the Earth Observation System-(EOS-) Terra/Aqua satellite, as well as those from ground observations at five sites in different ecological systems in China. From the preliminary data analysis on both annual and daily variations of water, heat and CO2 fluxes, we can confirm that this system basically has been working well. The results show that both latent flux and CO2 flux are much greater in the crop field than those in the grassland and the saline desert, whereas the sensible heat flux shows the opposite trend. Different data products from MODIS have very different correspondence, e.g. MODIS-derived land surface temperature has a close correlation with measured ones, but LAI and NPP are quite different from ground measurements, which suggests that the algorithms used to process MODIS data need to be revised by using the local dataset. We are now using the APEIS-FLUX data to develop an integrated model, which can simulate the regional water, heat, and carbon fluxes. Finally, we are expected to use this model to develop more precise high-order MODIS products in Asia-Pacific region.

Kathleen Coen Buckwalter, PhD, RN, FAAN.

The use of crowds in research activities by public and private organizations is growing under different forms. Citizen science is a popular means of engaging the general public in research activities led by professional scientists. By involving a large number of amateur scientists, citizen science enables distributed data collection and analysis on a scale that would be otherwise difficult and costly to achieve. While advancements in information technology in the past few decades have fostered the growth of citizen science through online participation, several projects continue to fail due to limited participation. Such web-based projects may isolate the citizen scientists from the researchers. By adopting the perspective of social strategy, we investigate within a measure-manipulate-measure experiment if motivations to participate in a citizen science project can be positively influenced by a face-to-face interaction with the scientists leading the project. Such an interaction provides the participants with the possibility of asking questions on the spot and obtaining a detailed explanation of the citizen science project, its scientific merit, and environmental relevance. Social and cultural factors that moderate the effect brought about by face-to-face interactions on the motivations are also dissected and analyzed. Our findings provide an exploratory insight into a means for motivating crowds to participate in online environmental monitoring projects, also offering possible selection criteria of target audience.

The current use of remote-sensing data in peat, soil, land-cover and crop inventories in Scotland

The remote-sensing methodology developed, at the Macaulay Institute, for natural resource surveys is introduced and some recent mapping and environmental monitoring projects are reviewed. These include peat resource and peatland vegetation mapping in Lewis and North Harris, crop monitoring in Kincardineshire and landcover mapping in the Buchan Area of Grampian Region, NE Scotland. The current use of remote-sensing data by the Peat Survey Section and the Soil Survey Department is reviewed for peat, soil and vegetation mapping. The principal current projects, which include the D.A.F.S. Bracken Survey of Scotland, the AGRISPINE Experiment for the U.K. National Remote Sensing Centre at R.A.E. Farnborough and the SAR 580 Experiment for the European Space Agency, are discussed.

Some international activities in environmental health monitoring and surveillance

Environmental health monitoring and surveillance include activities such as collection of information on the production and use of chemicals; preparation of inventories of waste discharges; measurement of physical, chemical and biological agents in air, water and food, at work place and at home; epidemiological investigations, and collection and analysis of environmental, and health statistical data. There are two main objectives of these activities: estimation of human exposure to potentially harmful environmental factors and timely detection of adverse health effects; and the assessment of environmental conditions in relation to established guidelines and standards. Environmental health monitoring and surveillance projects initiated, organized and implemented by the Specialized Agencies and other bodies of the United Nations system include monitoring of air and water quality and of food and animal feed contamination; pilot projects on air pollution exposure assessment and biological monitoring; and ionizing radiation surveillance. Principles of environmental and health monitoring in occupational environment, and of monitoring and surveillance of environmental health effects are outlined. Two examples are provided of national environmental health surveillance systems.

Affinity tests for the detection of community alteration in plankton: Evaluation with a distributional computer model

A general method is outlined for the evaluation of sampling and data reduction procedures of the sort often used in environmental monitoring projects. Using the example of marine macrophytoplankton under stress from a thermal effluent, a spatial distribution model of species within the phytoplankton community is constructed by computer. Stochastic temporal variation of the community is built into the model. Samples can then be generated and analysed by different data reduction techniques at low cost. The efficiency of the analytical tests can be evaluated by noting the degree to which they uncover the known characteristics of the artificial community. The usefulness of affinity testing in this sort of study is discussed, and two procedures (Fager's recurrent group analysis and Orloci's n-dimensional clustering) are evaluated using the phytoplankton model. The Fager procedure is found to be superior in a sampling scheme that is likely to be employed in actual field studies.