| 1. |
- Alamdar, Ambreen, et al.
(författare)
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Human Arsenic exposure via dust across the different ecological zones of Pakistan
- 2016
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Ingår i: Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety. - : Elsevier. - 0147-6513 .- 1090-2414. ; 126, s. 219-227
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The present study aims to assess the arsenic (As) levels into dust samples and its implications for human health, of four ecological zones of Pakistan, which included northern frozen mountains (FMZ), lower Himalyian wet mountains (WMZ), alluvial riverine plains (ARZ), and low lying agricultural areas (LIZ). Human nail samples (N=180) of general population were also collected from the similar areas and all the samples were analysed by using ICP-MS. In general the higher levels (p < 0.05) in paired dust and human nail samples were observed from ARZ and LIZ than those of other mountainous areas (i.e., WMZ and FMZ), respectively. Current results suggested that elevated As concentrations were associated to both natural, (e.g. geogenic influences) and anthropogenic sources. Linear regression model values indicated that As levels into dust samples were associated with altitude (r(2)=0.23), soil carbonate carbon density (SCC; r(2)=033), and population density (PD; r(2)=0.25). The relationship of paired dust and nail samples was also investigated and associations were found for As-nail and soil organic carbon density (SOC; r(2)=0.49) and SCC (r(2)=0.19) in each studied zone, evidencing the dust exposure as an important source of arsenic contamination in Pakistan. Risk estimation reflected higher hazard index (HI) values of non carcinogenic risk (HI > 1) for children populations in all areas (except FMZ), and for adults in LIZ (0.74) and ARZ (0.55), suggesting that caution should be paid about the dust exposure. Similarly, carcinogenic risk assessment also highlighted potential threats to the residents of LLZ and ARZ, as in few cases (5-10%) the values exceeded the range of US -EPA threshold limits (10'6-10-4).
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| 2. |
- Arowolo, Aisha Olushola, et al.
(författare)
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Comparison of spatial interpolation techniques to generate high-resolution climate surfaces for Nigeria
- 2017
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Ingår i: International Journal of Climatology. - : Wiley. - 0899-8418 .- 1097-0088. ; 37, s. 179-192
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Climate datagaps are a major challenge for understanding the impacts of climate change on ecosystems, particularly in highly climate vulnerable countries such as Nigeria. The generation of gridded climate data sets in the form of interpolated surfaces may help to fill climate datagaps and in turns enable climate change impact assessments. This article generates climate surfaces of monthly total precipitation and minimum and maximum temperatures for Nigeria at 0.001 degrees spatial resolution by comparing two spatial interpolation techniques, i.e. kriging with external drifts and thin plate splines. Climate data from 43 meteorological stations covering the period of 1960-2012 were used to generate climate surfaces fitting the longitude, latitude, elevation and distance to coastline of the stations as independent variables. Three model error statistics, i.e. root mean square error (RMSE), Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) and index of agreement (d), were used to evaluate and compare the performances of interpolation techniques. The second-order and third-order partial thin plate splines were identified as the optimal models for generating precipitation, and minimum and maximum temperatures surfaces, respectively. The best-fit surfaces yielded an average RMSE, NSE and d of 14.98, 0.87 and 0.97 for precipitation, 0.42, 0.91 and 0.98 for minimum temperature and 0.52, 0.89 and 0.97 for maximum temperature. Our high-resolution climate surfaces are freely available from an online repository and widely applicable for climate change analysis as well as for biological, forestry and agricultural studies in Nigeria.
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| 3. |
- Bhowmik, Avit Kumar, et al.
(författare)
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Cyclone Sidr Impacts on the Sundarbans Floristic Diversity
- 2013
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Ingår i: Earth Science Research. - : Canadian Center of Science and Education. - 1927-0542 .- 1927-0550. ; 2, s. 1-18
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Sundarbans - the world’s largest single block of tidal halophytic mangrove forest situated at the southwest of Bangladesh, plays a vital role in maintaining environmental sustainability of the country and the world in general. This study identified and quantified the extent and degree of damage caused to the floristic diversity of the Sundarbans by the tropical cyclone Sidr in 15 November 2007. It also quantified the extent and rate of the post-cyclone regeneration in the damaged flora. Unsupervised classification - ISODATA and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) were carried out over a temporal series of 2007-2010 on four Landsat 7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM +) images for the months of February. Land change analysis from the classification results show that three important floristic taxa - Heritiera fomes (Sundari), Excoecaria agallocha (Gewa) and Sonneratia apetala (Kewra) have been significantly affected by the cyclone. NDVI analysis indicates that 45% area of the Bangladesh’s part of the Sundarbans (approximately 2500 sq.km) was affected due to the cyclone action. Results further indicated that the average rate of post-cyclone floristic growth in 2009-2010 is four times higher than the average rate in 2008-2009. Thus the study identified a temporary loss of the diversity (in terms of relative abundance) in the affected three floristic taxa of the Sundarbans after that severe exogenous perturbation; which took three years to regenerate. Moreover, it showed the higher efficiency and promptness of remote sensing techniques in similar cases than the ground data based studies.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Bhowmik, Avit Kumar, et al.
(författare)
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From Climate Endgame to Climate Long Game
- 2022
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. - : National Academy of Sciences. - 0027-8424 .- 1091-6490. ; 119:45
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)
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| 6. |
- Bhowmik, Avit Kumar, et al.
(författare)
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Global Mangrove Deforestation and Its Interacting Social-Ecological Drivers : A Systematic Review and Synthesis
- 2022
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Ingår i: Sustainability. - : MDPI. - 2071-1050. ; 14:8
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Globally, mangrove forests are substantially declining, and a globally synthesized database containing the drivers of deforestation and drivers' interactions is scarce. Here, we synthesized the key social-ecological drivers of global mangrove deforestation by reviewing about two hundred published scientific studies over the last four decades (from 1980 to 2021). Our focus was on both natural and anthropogenic drivers with their gradual and abrupt impacts and on their geographic coverage of effects, and how these drivers interact. We also summarized the patterns of global mangrove coverage decline between 1990 and 2020 and identified the threatened mangrove species. Our consolidated studies reported an 8600 km(2) decline in the global mangrove coverage between 1990 and 2020, with the highest decline occurring in South and Southeast Asia (3870 km(2)). We could identify 11 threatened mangrove species, two of which are critically endangered (Sonneratia griffithii and Bruguiera hainseii). Our reviewed studies pointed to aquaculture and agriculture as the predominant driver of global mangrove deforestation though their impacts varied across global regions. Gradual climate variations, i.e., sea-level rise, long-term precipitation, and temperature changes and driven coastline erosion, salinity intrusion and acidity at coasts, constitute the second major group of drivers. Our findings underline a strong interaction across natural and anthropogenic drivers, with the strongest interaction between the driver groups aquaculture and agriculture and industrialization and pollution. Our results suggest prioritizing globally coordinated empirical studies linking drivers and mangrove deforestation and global development of policies for mangrove conservation.
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| 7. |
- Bhowmik, Avit Kumar
(författare)
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Industries' Location as Jeopardy for Sustainable Urban Development in Asia : A Review of the Bangladesh Leather Processing Industry Relocation Plan
- 2013
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Ingår i: Environment and Urbanization Asia. - : Sage Publications. - 0975-4253 .- 0976-3546. ; 4, s. 93-119
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The article reviews the Bangladesh leather processing industries’ relocation plan by applying the Social Theories of the City and the three environmental economics theories—Willingness to Pay, Pigovian Tax and Hedonic Pricing Method on the data collected by a questionnaire survey among the industries’ owners and from the original project documents. Results prove the strong unwillingness of leather industries’ owners to relocate and pay for relocation, failure at imposing Pigovian tax and the high hedonic prices of the houses including threats to inhabitants’ health in the redeveloped residential area. In addition to high subsidy and compensation, historic growth trends and potential risks of flood and surface water resource pollution of Dhaka defy sustainability issues. Considering three consecutive failures to meet the relocation deadlines, these results claim that redeveloping an environment friendly leather processing zone at the present location will ensure sustainable urban development.
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| 8. |
- Bhowmik, Avit Kumar, et al.
(författare)
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Representativeness impacts on accuracy and precision of climate spatial interpolation in data-scarce regions
- 2014
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Ingår i: Meteorological Applications. - : Wiley-Blackwell. - 1350-4827 .- 1469-8080. ; 22, s. 368-377
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Data scarcity is a major scientific challenge for accuracy and precision of the spatial interpolation of climatic fields, especially in climate-stressed developing countries. Methodologies have been suggested for coping with data scarcity but data have rarely been checked for their representativeness of corresponding climatic fields. This study proved that satisfactory accuracy and precision can be ensured in spatial interpolation if data are satisfactorily representative of corresponding climatic fields despite their scarcity. The influence of number and representativeness of climate data on accuracy and precision of their spatial interpolation has been investigated and compared. Two precipitation and temperature indices were computed for a long time series in Bangladesh, which is a data-scarce region. The representativeness was quantified by dispersion in the data and the accuracy and precision of spatial interpolation were computed by four commonly used error statistics derived through cross-validation. The precipitation data showed very little and sometimes null representativeness whereas the temperature data showed very high representativeness of the corresponding fields. Consequently, precipitation data denoted scarcity but the temperature data denoted sufficiency regarding the required number of data for ensuring satisfactory accuracy and precision for spatial interpolation. It was also found that with the available data, accurate and precise precipitation surfaces can be produced only for representative synoptic spatial scales whereas such temperature surfaces can be generated for the regional scale of Bangladesh. It is highly recommended that the rain-gauge network of Bangladesh be increased or redistributed for computing representative regional precipitation surfaces.
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| 9. |
- Eqani, Syed Ali Musstjab Akber Shah, et al.
(författare)
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Mercury contamination in deposited dust and its bioaccumulation patterns throughout Pakistan
- 2016
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Ingår i: Science of the Total Environment. - : Elsevier BV. - 0048-9697 .- 1879-1026. ; 569, s. 585-593
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Mercury (Hg) contamination of environment is a major threat to human health in developing countries like Pakistan. Human populations, particularly children, are continuously exposed to Hg contamination via dust particles due to the arid and semi-arid climate. However, a country wide Hg contamination data for dust particles is lacking for Pakistan and hence, human populations potentially at risk is largely unknown. We provide the first baseline data for total mercury (THg) contamination into dust particles and its bioaccumulation trends, using scalp human hair samples as biomarker, at 22 sites across five altitudinal zones of Pakistan. The human health risk of THg exposure via dust particles as well as the proportion of human population that are potentially at risk from Hg contamination were calculated. Our results indicated higher concentration of THg in dust particles and its bioaccumulation in the lower Indus-plain agricultural and industrial areas than the other areas of Pakistan. The highest THg contamination of dust particles (3000 ppb) and its bioaccumulation (2480 ppb) were observed for the Lahore district, while the highest proportion (>40%) of human population was identified to be potentially at risk from Hg contamination from these areas. In general, children were at higher risk of Hg exposure via dust particles than adults. Regression analysis identified the anthropogenic activities, such as industrial and hospital discharges, as the major source of Hg contamination of dust particles. Our results inform environmental management for Hg control and remediation as well as the disease mitigation on potential hotspots.
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| 10. |
- Jacobson, Lisa, et al.
(författare)
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Tipping to staying on the ground : Internalized knowledge of climate change crucial for transformed air travel behavior
- 2020
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Ingår i: Sustainability. - : MDPI. - 2071-1050. ; 12:5
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Air travel accounts for a major share of individual greenhouse gas emissions, particularly for people in high-income countries. Until recently, few have reduced flying because of climate concerns, but currently, a movement for staying on the ground is rising. Sweden has been a focal point for this movement, particularly during 2018–2019, when a flight tax was introduced, and air travel reduction was intensely discussed in the media. We performed semi-structured interviews with Swedish residents, focusing primarily on individuals who have reduced flying because of its climate impact. We explore how such individual transformation of air travel behavior comes about, and the phases and components of this process. Applying a framework of sustainability transformation, we identify incentives and barriers in personal and political spheres. We show that internalized knowledge about climate change and the impact of air travel is crucial for instigating behavioral change. Awareness evokes negative emotions leading to a personal tipping point where a decision to reduce or quit flying is made. However, the process is often counteracted by both personal values and political structures promoting air travel. Even individuals with a strong drive to reduce flying feel trapped in social practices, norms and infrastructures. Hence, we argue that personal and political spheres interact complexly and to reduce flying at larger scales, interventions are needed across spheres, e.g., change of norms, effective policy instruments and better alternatives to air travel.
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| 11. |
- Otto, Ilona M., et al.
(författare)
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Social tipping dynamics for stabilizing Earth's climate by 2050
- 2020
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. - : The National Academy of Sciences. - 0027-8424 .- 1091-6490. ; 117:5, s. 2354-2365
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Safely achieving the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement requires a worldwide transformation to carbon-neutral societies within the next 30 y. Accelerated technological progress and policy implementations are required to deliver emissions reductions at rates sufficiently fast to avoid crossing dangerous tipping points in the Earth's climate system. Here, we discuss and evaluate the potential of social tipping interventions (STIs) that can activate contagious processes of rapidly spreading technologies, behaviors, social norms, and structural reorganization within their functional domains that we refer to as social tipping elements (STE5). STE5 are subdomains of the planetary socioeconomic system where the required disruptive change may take place and lead to a sufficiently fast reduction in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. The results are based on online expert elicitation, a subsequent expert workshop, and a literature review. The STIs that could trigger the tipping of STE subsystems include 1) removing fossil-fuel subsidies and incentivizing decentralized energy generation (STE1, energy production and storage systems), 2) building carbon-neutral cities (STE2, human settlements), 3) divesting from assets linked to fossil fuels (STE3, financial markets), 4) revealing the moral implications of fossil fuels (STE4, norms and value systems), 5) strengthening climate education and engagement (STE5, education system), and 6) disclosing information on greenhouse gas emissions (STE6, information feedbacks). Our research reveals important areas of focus for larger-scale empirical and modeling efforts to better understand the potentials of harnessing social tipping dynamics for climate change mitigation.
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| 12. |
- Schreiner, Verena C., et al.
(författare)
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Pesticide mixtures in streams of several European countries and the USA
- 2016
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Ingår i: Science of the Total Environment. - : Elsevier BV. - 0048-9697 .- 1879-1026. ; 573, s. 680-689
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Given the multitude of pesticides used in agriculture, adjacent streams are typically exposed to pesticide mixtures. Previous studies analysed the ecological risks of a few pesticide mixtures or were limited to an individual region or crop, whereas a large scale analysis of pesticide mixtures is missing. We analysed routine monitoring data from Germany, France, the Netherlands and the USA comprising a total of 4532 sites and 56,084 sampling occasions with the aim to identify the most frequently detected pesticides, their metabolites and mixtures. The most frequently detected compounds were dominated by herbicides and their metabolites. Mixtures mostly comprised of two up to five compounds, whereas mixtures in the USA and France had clearly less compounds than those of Germany and the Netherlands. The number of detected pesticides and thereby the size of mixtures is positively correlated to the number of measured pesticides (r = 0.57). In contrast, a low relationship was found to the ratio of agricultural areas within the catchment (r = 0.17), and no relationship was found to the size of the catchment (r = 0.06). Overall, our study provides priority mixtures for different countries that may be used for future ecotoxicological studies to improve risk assessment for stream ecosystems.
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| 13. |
- Sohail, Muhammad, et al.
(författare)
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Persistent organic pollutant emission via dust deposition throughout Pakistan : Spatial patterns, regional cycling and their implication for human health risks
- 2018
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Ingår i: Science of the Total Environment. - : Elsevier BV. - 0048-9697 .- 1879-1026. ; 618, s. 829-837
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the current study, Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) in outdoor dustfall was monitored for the first time along the Indus river system of Pakistan. Among the studied OCPs (ng/g, dry weight), DDTs (0.16-62) were the predominant contaminants identified in deposited dust followed by HCHs (0.1-10.2), HCB (0.09-7.4) and chlordanes (0.1-2.8). The indicative diagnostic ratio for DDTs and HCHs suggested recent emission of DDTs as well as historical emission of both chemicals in regions where they were used for crop protection and malarial control. The levels of Sigma(31)PCBs (ng/g, dry weight) in dust ranged from 0.95-125, and compositional profiles suggested arochlor-1248, -1254 commercial mixtures as source. A few exceptions were samples from urban areas that reflected the use of aroclor-1260, and-1262 and/or unintentional leakage from several industrial processes. The WHO05-TEQ values for dioxin-like PCBs (with major contributions of PCB-126) were found to be 0.07-34.5 (median; 1.87) pg TEQ g(-1) dw for all the studied samples. Correlation analysis identified that DDTs, HCHs, HCB and PCBs were significantly associated (r = 90; p < 0.01) with dusts collected in proximity to urban centers with widespread anthropogenic activities in these areas. A few cases where high levels of POPs from remote mountain highlands were detected, point to the potential for long range transport of these chemicals. Human risk assessment analysis of contaminated dust showed that DDTs and PCBs are major constituent chemicals of concern with regard to the development of cancer in children, with ingestion being the main route of exposure of dust-borne DDTs (0.12-1.03 x 10(-6)) and PCBs (0.86-12.43 x 10(-6)).
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