| 1. |
- MacDonald, Amy M., et al.
(author)
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Maternal and child biomonitoring strategies and levels of exposure in western Canada during the past seventeen years : The Alberta Biomonitoring Program
- 2022
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In: International journal of hygiene and environmental health. - : Elsevier BV. - 1438-4639 .- 1618-131X. ; 244
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The Alberta Biomonitoring Program (ABP) was created in 2005 with the initial goal of establishing baseline levels of exposure to environmental chemicals in specific populations in the province of Alberta, Canada, and was later expanded to include multiple phases. The first two phases focused on evaluating exposure in pregnant women (Phase One, 2005) and children (Phase Two, 2004–2006) by analyzing residual serum specimens. Phase Three (2013–2016) employed active recruitment techniques to evaluate environmental exposures using a revised list of chemicals in paired serum pools from pregnant women and umbilical cord blood. These three phases of the program monitored a total of 226 chemicals in 285 pooled serum samples representing 31,529 individuals. Phase Four (2017–2020) of the ABP has taken a more targeted approach, focusing on the impact of the federal legalization of cannabis on the exposure of pregnant women in Alberta to cannabis, as well as tobacco and alcohol using residual prenatal screening serum specimens. Chemicals monitored in the first three phases include herbicides, neutral pesticides, metals, metalloids, and micronutrients, methylmercury, organochlorine pesticides, organophosphate pesticides, parabens, phthalate metabolites, perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), phenols, phytoestrogens, polybrominated compounds, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins and furans, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and tobacco biomarkers. Phase Four monitored six biomarkers of tobacco, alcohol, and cannabis. All serum samples were pooled. Mean concentrations and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated for the chemicals detected in ≥25% of the sample pools. cross the first three phases, the data from the ABP has provided baseline exposure levels for the chemicals in pregnant women, children, and newborns across the province. Comparison within and among the phases has highlighted differences in exposure levels with age, geography, seasonality, sample type, and time. The strategies employed throughout the program phases have been demonstrated to provide effective models for population biomonitoring.
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| 2. |
- Alavaisha, Edmond, 1988-
(author)
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Agricultural expansion impacts on wetland ecosystem services from Kilombero Valley, Tanzania
- 2020
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Land use change has major impact on the world’s wetland ecosystems and biodiversity. The motivation behind this change has been to increase agricultural production, often resulting in negative effects on water quality and soil fertility. Tanzania has carried out a large expansion and intensification of agriculture under the Kilimo kwanza (First agriculture) initiative which has triggered the need for better knowledge on land use change effects and associated ecosystem functioning. This thesis considers small-scale irrigation schemes to understand the effects of agriculture expansion and farming practices on nutrients, water quality and ecosystem services (ES) in Kilombero Valley, Tanzania. The study approach is multidisciplinary involving interviews, remote sensing, geographical information system techniques, and in-field soil and water ecological sampling. The major land use change in the valley during the last three decades was transformation from forest, bushland and grassland into cultivated land. The rate of change was faster adjacent to irrigation schemes and most changes occurred downstream irrigation canals, close to the floodplain. Irrigation and fertilization contributed to soil carbon and nitrogen accumulation in crop fields, which both declined in concentration with depth into the soil. However, such management practices and agricultural land expansion had impacts on several ES – especially water quality in streams. Streams surrounded mainly by cultivated land, as well as downstream areas, had lower water quality compared to streams with less settlement, more natural vegetation and upstream areas. Furthermore, when evaluated, macroinvertebrates indices were found to be a good indicator of water quality and a complement to chemical and physical water analysis. Irrigation farming produced more food compared to rainfed farming, and also other ES such as flood regulation, erosion control and several cultural services, depending on the river discharge. The thesis shows the importance to use irrigation/fertilization management to enhance soil fertility and preserve soil structure, but also the need for proper irrigation management to prevent flooding and erosion, conserve natural vegetation, and protect water quality. To enhance nature conservation, preserve biodiversity and secure future supply of ES in the valley, investment in irrigation infrastructures should be done at small-scale to mitigate the large-scale exploitation of Kilombero wetland.
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| 3. |
- Alavaisha, Edmond, et al.
(author)
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Assessment of Water Quality Across Irrigation Schemes : A Case Study of Wetland Agriculture Impacts in Kilombero Valley, Tanzania
- 2019
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In: Water. - : MDPI AG. - 2073-4441. ; 11:4
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Coupled change in land and water use due to increased farming intensity is a main factor affecting water quality and quantity, ecological functions and biodiversity globally. Prolonging growing seasons and increasing productivity in wetlands through irrigation have been targeted for increasing food security, particularly in developing countries. Nevertheless, irrigation and drainage have often been associated with degradation of water quality through increased agrochemical and fertiliser runoff and leaching at local scales. In this study, we investigated water quality in streams used for irrigation in a wetland area in Kilombero Valley, Tanzania. We measured physical-chemical water parameters and collected macroinvertebrates with different sensitivity to water quality across several small irrigation schemes covering various conditions. Turbidity, temperature, nitrate-N, and ammonium-N were significantly higher at sampling sites downstream of irrigation compared to upstream. Macroinvertebrate diversity, richness and average score per taxa (ASPT) were higher in general in sampling sites upstream of irrigation, with more sensitive macroinvertebrates decreasing in abundance downstream. There was a positive correlation between physical-chemical parameters and macroinvertebrate indices across the sites. We demonstrate that macroinvertebrate indices can be used as a quick assessment of water quality in response to irrigation schemes in small-scale farming systems of Tanzania. This in turn can allow us to track changes affecting wetland ecosystem function and biodiversity at higher trophic levels and across larger scales, thereby providing useful early warnings to help avoid widespread degradation under widespread agricultural intensification.
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| 4. |
- Bishop, Kevin, 1960-, et al.
(author)
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The Relationship Between Land Use and Water
- 2012
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In: EOS. - 0096-3941 .- 2324-9250. ; 93, s. 259-
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Journal article (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The question posed in the title of this workshop formed its focus as an international group of more than 50 researchers and managers gathered to discuss our current level of understanding of land-water interactions and the potential impacts this has for resource management. Special emphasis was placed on the Ethiopian highlands, which deliver more than 85% of the flow in the Nile in Egypt. The 2-day workshop, held at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala, was cosponsored by the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs as part of its special allocation for global food security and by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations' Unit 3.05, Forest Operations Ecology.
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| 5. |
- Bogaart, Patrick W., et al.
(author)
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Streamflow recession patterns can help unravel the role of climate and humans in landscape co-evolution
- 2016
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In: Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 1027-5606 .- 1607-7938. ; 20:4, s. 1413-1432
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Traditionally, long-term predictions of river discharges and their extremes include constant relationships between landscape properties and model parameters. However, due to the co-evolution of many landscape properties more sophisticated methods are necessary to quantify future landscape-hydrological model relationships. As a first step towards such an approach we use the Brutsaert and Nieber (1977) analysis method to characterize streamflow recession behaviour of approximate to 200 Swedish catchments within the context of global change and landscape co-evolution. Results suggest that the Brutsaert-Nieber parameters are strongly linked to the climate, soil, land use, and their interdependencies. Many catchments show a trend towards more non-linear behaviour, meaning not only faster initial recession but also slower recession towards base flow. This trend has been found to be independent from climate change. Instead, we suggest that land cover change, both natural (restoration of natural soil profiles in forested areas) and anthropogenic (reforestation and optimized water management), is probably responsible. Both change types are characterised by system adaptation and change, towards more optimal ecohydrological conditions, suggesting landscape co-evolution is at play. Given the observed magnitudes of recession changes during the past 50 years, predictions of future river discharge critically need to include the effects of landscape co-evolution. The interconnections between the controls of land cover and climate on river recession behaviour, as we have quantified in this paper, provide first-order handles to do so.
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| 6. |
- Bring, Arvid, et al.
(author)
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Role-play simulations as an aid to achieve complex learning outcomes in hydrological science
- 2019
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In: Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 1027-5606 .- 1607-7938. ; 23:5, s. 2369-2378
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Students in hydrology are expected to become proficient in a set of quantitative skills while also acquiring the ability to apply their problem-solving abilities in real-life situations. To achieve both these types of learning outcomes, there is broad evidence that activity-based learning is beneficial. In this paper, we argue that role-play simulations in particular are useful for achieving complex learning outcomes, i.e., making students able to coordinate and integrate various analytical skills in complicated settings. We evaluated the effects of an integrated water resources management (IWRM) negotiation simulation next to more traditional teaching methods intended to foster quantitative understanding. Results showed that despite similar student-reported achievement of both complex and quantitative intended learning outcomes, the students favored the negotiation simulation over the traditional method. This implies that role-play simulations can motivate and actively engage a classroom, thereby creating a space for potential deeper learning and longer retention of knowledge. While our findings support the utility of simulations to teach complex learning outcomes and indicate no shortcoming in achieving such outcomes next to traditional methods aimed at quantitative learning outcomes, simulations are still not widely used to foster activity-based learning in the classroom. We thus conclude by presenting three particularly challenging areas of role-play simulations as learning tools that serve as potential barriers to their implementation and suggest ways to overcome such roadblocks.
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| 7. |
- Dahlke, Helen E., et al.
(author)
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Contrasting trends in floods for two sub-arctic catchments in northern Sweden - does glacier presence matter?
- 2012
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In: Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. - : Copernicus GmbH. - 1027-5606 .- 1607-7938. ; 16:7, s. 2123-2141
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Our understanding is limited to how transient changes in glacier response to climate warming will influence the catchment hydrology in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic. This understanding is particularly incomplete for flooding extremes because understanding the frequency of such unusual events requires long records of observation not often available for the Arctic and Sub-Arctic. This study presents a statistical analysis of trends in the magnitude and timing of flood extremes and the mean summer discharge in two sub-arctic catchments, Tarfala and Abisko, in northern Sweden. The catchments have different glacier covers (30% and 1%, respectively). Statistically significant trends (at the 5% level) were identified for both catchments on an annual and on a seasonal scale (3-months averages) using the Mann-Kendall trend test. Stationarity of flood records was tested by analyzing trends in the flood quantiles, using generalized least squares regression. Hydrologic trends were related to observed changes in the precipitation and air temperature, and were correlated with 3-months averaged climate pattern indices (e.g. North Atlantic oscillation). Both catchments showed a statistically significant increase in the annual mean air temperature over the comparison time period of 1985-2009 (Tarfala and Abisko p < 0.01), but did not show significant trends in the total precipitation (Tarfala p = 0.91, Abisko p = 0.44). Despite the similar climate evolution over the studied period in the two catchments, data showed contrasting trends in the magnitude and timing of flood peaks and the mean summer discharge. Hydrologic trends indicated an amplification of the streamflow and flood response in the highly glacierized catchment and a dampening of the response in the non-glacierized catchment. The glacierized mountain catchment showed a statistically significant increasing trend in the flood magnitudes (p = 0.04) that is clearly correlated to the occurrence of extreme precipitation events. It also showed a significant increase in mean summer discharge (p = 0.0002), which is significantly correlated to the decrease in glacier mass balance and the increase in air temperature (p = 0.08). Conversely, the non-glacierized catchment showed a significant decrease in the mean summer discharge (p = 0.01), the flood magnitudes (p = 0.07) and an insignificant trend towards earlier flood occurrences (p = 0.53). These trends are explained by a reduction of the winter snow pack due to higher temperatures in the winter and spring and an increasing soil water storage capacity or catchment storage due to progressively thawing permafrost.
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| 8. |
- Dahlke, Helen E., et al.
(author)
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Dissecting the variable source area concept - Subsurface flow pathways and water mixing processes in a hillslope
- 2012
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In: Journal of Hydrology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0022-1694 .- 1879-2707. ; 420, s. 125-141
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This study uses an instrumented (trenched) 0.5 ha hillslope in the southern tier of New York State, USA, to provide new data and insights on how variable source areas and associated flow pathways form and combine to connect rainfall with downstream water flows across a hillslope. Measurements of water fluxes in the trench, upslope water table dynamics, surface and bedrock topography, and isotopic and geochemical tracers have been combined for a four-dimensional (space-time) characterization of subsurface storm flow responses. During events with dry antecedent conditions infiltrating rainwater was found to percolate through a prevailing fragipan layer to deeper soil layers, with much (33-71%) of the total discharge of the hillslope originating from deeper water flow below the fragipan. During storm events with wet antecedent conditions and large rainfall amounts, shallow lateral flow of event and pre-event water above the fragipan occurred and was one magnitude greater than the deeper water flow contribution. Spatial surface and subsurface water quality observations indicate that water from a distance of up to 56 m contributed runoff from the hillslope during storm events. In addition, mobilization of total dissolved phosphorus (TDP) with subsurface flow played a greater role than with overland or near-surface flow. During all events TDP loads were highest in the total discharge during peak flows (8-11.5 kg ha(-1) d(-1)), except during the largest storm event, when TDP concentrations were highly diluted. These results have implications for strategies to protect streams and other downstream water recipients from waterborne nutrient and pollutant loading.
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| 9. |
- Dahlke, Helen E., et al.
(author)
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Early melt season snowpack isotopic evolution in the Tarfala valley, northern Sweden
- 2013
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In: Annals of Glaciology. - 0260-3055 .- 1727-5644. ; 54:62, s. 149-156
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This study investigated the stable water isotopic (delta O-18 and delta D) evolution of two snowpacks located at the same elevation on a north-facing (Nf) and a south-facing (Sf) slope within the Tarfala research catchment, northern Sweden, and the potential impact of pre-freshet snowpack melt on streamflow. Our results indicate that over the study period the Sf snowpack showed a more enriched isotopic composition, especially in the top of the profile, and contributed more snowmelt to streamflow than the Nf slope. The Sf snowpack also showed a significantly higher variability in snowpack delta O-18 levels and snowpack snow water equivalent (SWE) over time. Comparing snowpack and snowmelt isotopic values it was seen that the Sf slope experienced earlier snowmelt from upslope positions due to greater insolation that subsequently enhanced the meltwater flux at the base of downslope snowpacks. In contrast, the Nf slope primarily underwent changes within the snowpack and experienced relatively minimal melt. Detailed field-based isotopic snowmelt studies such as this highlight the potential importance of incorporating spatio-temporal runoff generation concepts into distributed energy-balance models, which could allow for more accurate prediction with regard to the spatio-temporal dynamics associated with the snowmelt ion pulse.
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| 10. |
- Dahlke, Helen E., et al.
(author)
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Isotopic investigation of runoff generation in a glacierized catchment in northern Sweden
- 2014
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In: Hydrological Processes. - : Wiley. - 0885-6087 .- 1099-1085. ; 28:3, s. 1383-1398
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this study, summer rainfall contributions to streamflow were quantified in the sub-arctic, 30% glacierized Tarfala (21.7km(2)) catchment in northern Sweden for two non-consecutive summer sampling seasons (2004 and 2011). We used two-component hydrograph separation along with isotope ratios (O-18 and D) of rainwater and daily streamwater samplings to estimate relative fraction and uncertainties (because of laboratory instrumentation, temporal variability and spatial gradients) of source water contributions. We hypothesized that the glacier influence on how rainfall becomes runoff is temporally variable and largely dependent on a combination of the timing of decreasing snow cover on glaciers and the relative moisture storage condition within the catchment. The results indicate that the majority of storm runoff was dominated by pre-event water. However, the average event water contribution during storm events differed slightly between both years with 11% reached in 2004 and 22% in 2011. Event water contributions to runoff generally increased over 2011 the sampling season in both the main stream of Tarfala catchment and in the two pro-glacial streams that drain Storglaciaren (the largest glacier in Tarfala catchment covering 2.9km(2)). We credit both the inter-annual and intra-annual differences in event water contributions to large rainfall events late in the summer melt season, low glacier snow cover and elevated soil moisture due to large antecedent precipitation. Together amplification of these two mechanisms under a warming climate might influence the timing and magnitude of floods, the sediment budget and nutrient cycling in glacierized catchments.
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