Protecting local water quality has global benefits.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Downing JA
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8113532 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:While there is a general belief that reforesting marginal, often unprofitable, croplands can result in water quality benefits, to date there have been very few studies that have attempted to quantify the magnitude of the reductions in nutrient (N and P) and sediment export. In order to determine the magnitude of a credit for water quality trading, there is a need to develop quantitative approaches to estimate the benefits from forest planting in terms of load reductions. Here we first evaluate the availability of marginal croplands (i.e. those with low infiltration capacity and high slopes) within a large section of the Ohio River Basin (ORB) to assess the magnitude of the land that could be reforested. Next, we employ the Nutrient Tracking Tool (NTT) to study the reduction in N, P and sediment losses from converting corn or corn/soy rotations to forested lands, first in a case study and then for a large region within the ORB. We find that after reforestation, N losses can decrease by 40 to 80 kg/ha-yr (95-97% reduction), while P losses decrease by 1 to 4 kg/ha-yr (96-99% reduction). There is a significant influence of local conditions (soils, previous crop management practices, meteorology), which can be considered with NTT and must be taken into consideration for specific projects. There is also considerable interannual and monthly variability, which highlights the need to take the longer view into account in nutrient credit considerations for water quality trading, as well as in monitoring programs. Overall, there is the potential for avoiding 60 million kg N and 2 million kg P from reaching the streams and rivers of the northern ORB as a result of conversion of marginal farmland to tree planting, which is on the order of 12% decrease for TN and 5% for TP, for the entire basin. Accounting for attenuation, this represents a significant fraction of the goal of the USEPA Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Task Force to reduce TN and TP reaching the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, the second largest dead zone in the world. More broadly, the potential for targeted forest planting to reduce nutrient loading demonstrated in this study suggests further consideration of this approach for managing water quality in waterways throughout the world. The study was conducted using computational models and there is a need to evaluate the results with empirical observations.
| S-EPMC6548385 | biostudies-literature
Project description:By importing food and agricultural goods, countries cope with the heterogeneous global water distribution and often rely on water resources available abroad. The virtual displacement of the water used to produce such goods (known as virtual water) connects together, in a global water system, all countries participating to the international trade network. Local food-production crises, having social, economic or environmental origin, propagate in this network, modifying the virtual water trade and perturbing local and global food availability, quantified in terms of virtual water. We analyze here the possible effects of local crises by developing a new propagation model, parsimonious but grounded on data-based and statistically-verified assumptions, whose effectiveness is proved on the Argentinean crisis in 2008-09. The model serves as the basis to propose indicators of crisis impact and country vulnerability to external food-production crises, which highlight that countries with largest water resources have the highest impact on the international trade, and that not only water-scarce but also wealthy and globalized countries are among the most vulnerable to external crises. The temporal analysis reveals that global average vulnerability has increased over time and that stronger effects of crises are now found in countries with low food (and water) availability.
| S-EPMC4726167 | biostudies-other
Project description:Rapid industrialization, urbanization, global warming, and climate change are compromising surface water quality across the globe. Consequently, water conservation is essential for both environmental sustainability and human survival. This study assesses the water quality of the Jamuna River in Bangladesh at five distinct sites during wet and dry seasons. It employs six global water quality indices (WQIs) and contrasts the results with Bangladesh's Environmental Quality Standard (EQS) and the Department of Environment (DoE) criteria. The WQI models used are the Weighted Arithmetic WQI (WAWQI), British Columbia WQI (BCWQI), Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment WQI (CWQI), Assigned WQI (AWQI), Malaysian WQI (MWQI), and Oregon WQI (OWQI). Fifteen physicochemical parameters were analyzed according to each WQI model's guidelines. The findings reveal that most parameters surpass the standard permissible values. The WQI model results indicate that the average water quality across the five sites falls into the lowest category. A comparison of the WQI models suggests potential correlations between WAWQI and AWQI, as well as between MWQI and OWQI. The straightforward presentation of the WQI models indicates that while the river water requires treatment for household and drinking use, it remains suitable for irrigation. The decline in water quality is likely attributable to human activities, urbanization, municipal waste disposal, and industrial effluents. Authorities must prioritize regular monitoring and assessment of water quality to address the identified challenges. Restoring the water to an acceptable standard will become increasingly difficult without proactive measures.
| S-EPMC10665448 | biostudies-literature
Project description:US investment to decrease pollution in rivers, lakes, and other surface waters has exceeded $1.9 trillion since 1960, and has also exceeded the cost of most other US environmental initiatives. These investments come both from the 1972 Clean Water Act and the largely voluntary efforts to control pollution from agriculture and urban runoff. This paper reviews the methods and conclusions of about 20 recent evaluations of these policies. Surprisingly, most analyses estimate that these policies' benefits are much smaller than their costs; the benefit-cost ratio from the median study is 0.37. However, existing evidence is limited and undercounts many types of benefits. We conclude that it is unclear whether many of these regulations truly fail a benefit-cost test or whether existing evidence understates their net benefits; we also describe specific questions that when answered would help eliminate this uncertainty.
| S-EPMC6431143 | biostudies-literature
Project description:To protect bather health at recreational beaches, fecal indicator bacterial standards are used to monitor water quality, and waters exceeding the standards are subsequently closed to bathers. However beachgoers are also in contact with beach sands, the sanitary quality of which is not included within beach monitoring programs. In fact, sands and sediments provide habitat where fecal bacterial populations may persist, and in some cases grow, in the coastal zone. Specific pathogens are less well studied in beach sands and sediments, but there is a body of evidence that they too may persist in these environments. This paper reviews the current state of knowledge regarding the abundance and distribution of fecal indicator bacteria and pathogens in beach sands of diverse climatological regions, and at beaches subjected to varied levels of anthropogenic impact. In all regions fecal indicator bacteria are nearly ubiquitous in beach sands, and similar relationships emerge among fecal indicator abundance in dry sand, submerged sands, and water. Taken together, these studies contextualize a potential public health issue and identify research questions that must be addressed in order to support future policy decisions.
| S-EPMC3109870 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Methods for estimating the quality of 3D models of proteins are vital tools for driving the acceptance and utility of predicted tertiary structures by the wider bioscience community. Here we describe the significant major updates to ModFOLD, which has maintained its position as a leading server for the prediction of global and local quality of 3D protein models, over the past decade (>20 000 unique external users). ModFOLD8 is the latest version of the server, which combines the strengths of multiple pure-single and quasi-single model methods. Improvements have been made to the web server interface and there has been successive increases in prediction accuracy, which were achieved through integration of newly developed scoring methods and advanced deep learning-based residue contact predictions. Each version of the ModFOLD server has been independently blind tested in the biennial CASP experiments, as well as being continuously evaluated via the CAMEO project. In CASP13 and CASP14, the ModFOLD7 and ModFOLD8 variants ranked among the top 10 quality estimation methods according to almost every official analysis. Prior to CASP14, ModFOLD8 was also applied for the evaluation of SARS-CoV-2 protein models as part of CASP Commons 2020 initiative. The ModFOLD8 server is freely available at: https://www.reading.ac.uk/bioinf/ModFOLD/.
| S-EPMC8218196 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Water productivity (WP) is a robust benchmark for crop production in relation to available water supply across spatial scales. Quantifying water-limited potential (WPw) and actual on-farm (WPa) WP to estimate WP gaps is an essential first step to identify the most sensitive factors influencing production capacity with limited water supply. This study combines local weather, soil, and agronomic data, and crop modeling in a spatial framework to determine WPw and WPa at local and regional levels for rainfed cropping systems in 17 (maize) and 18 (wheat) major grain-producing countries representing a wide range of cropping systems, from intensive, high-yield maize in north America and wheat in west Europe to low-input, low-yield maize systems in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. WP was calculated as the quotient of either water-limited yield potential or actual yield, and simulated crop evapotranspiration. Estimated WPw upper limits compared well with maximum WP reported for field-grown crops. However, there was large WPw variation across regions with different climate and soil (CV = 29% for maize and 27% for wheat), which cautions against the use of generic WPw benchmarks and highlights the need for region-specific WPw. Differences in simulated evaporative demand, crop evapotranspiration after flowering, soil evaporation, and intensity of water stress around flowering collectively explained two thirds of the variation in WPw. Average WP gaps were 13 (maize) and 10 (wheat) kg ha-1 mm-1, equivalent to about half of their respective WPw. We found that non-water related factors (i.e., management deficiencies, biotic and abiotic stresses, and their interactions) constrained yield more than water supply in ca. half of the regions. These findings highlight the opportunity to produce more food with same amount of water, provided limiting factors other than water supply can be identified and alleviated with improved management practices. Our study provides a consistent protocol for estimating WP at local to regional scale, which can be used to understand WP gaps and their mitigation.
| S-EPMC6018065 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Actions to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions often reduce co-emitted air pollutants, bringing co-benefits for air quality and human health. Past studies1-6 typically evaluated near-term and local co-benefits, neglecting the long-range transport of air pollutants7-9, long-term demographic changes, and the influence of climate change on air quality10-12. Here we simulate the co-benefits of global GHG reductions on air quality and human health using a global atmospheric model and consistent future scenarios, via two mechanisms: a) reducing co-emitted air pollutants, and b) slowing climate change and its effect on air quality. We use new relationships between chronic mortality and exposure to fine particulate matter13 and ozone14, global modeling methods15, and new future scenarios16. Relative to a reference scenario, global GHG mitigation avoids 0.5±0.2, 1.3±0.5, and 2.2±0.8 million premature deaths in 2030, 2050, and 2100. Global average marginal co-benefits of avoided mortality are $50-380 (ton CO2)-1, which exceed previous estimates, exceed marginal abatement costs in 2030 and 2050, and are within the low range of costs in 2100. East Asian co-benefits are 10-70 times the marginal cost in 2030. Air quality and health co-benefits, especially as they are mainly local and near-term, provide strong additional motivation for transitioning to a low-carbon future.
| S-EPMC4051351 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Urban greening can potentially help mitigate heat-related mortality and flooding facing the >4 billion urban population worldwide. However, the geographical variation of the relative combined hydrological and thermal performance benefits of such interventions are unknown. Here we quantify globally, using a hydrological model, how climate-driven trade-offs exist between hydrological retention and cooling potential of urban greening such as green roofs and parks. Using a Budyko framework, we show that water retention generally increases with aridity in water-limited environments, while cooling potential favors energy-limited climates. Our models suggest that common urban greening strategies cannot yield high performance simultaneously for addressing both urban heat-island and urban flooding problems in most cities globally. Irrigation, if sustainable, may enhance cooling while maintaining retention performance in more arid locations. Increased precipitation variability with climate change may reduce performance of thinner green-infrastructure more quickly compared to greened areas with thicker soils and root systems. Our results provide a conceptual framework and first-order quantitative guide for urban development, renewal and policymaking.
| S-EPMC8792007 | biostudies-literature