sediment-related disaster

Earthquake prediction and disaster assessment in tectonically active regions require a continuous and complete regional seismic archive, which is commonly difficult to obtain, especially for prehistoric records. Here, high-resolution analysis of the sedimentary sequence from Lake Ebinur in Xinjiang revealed a detailed history of environment evolution since 32 ka ago. Both the Cl content and ultrafine proportion revealed the changing climate: the climate was relatively dry with low lake-water volumes from 32 to 12 ka, while the climate became warmer and wetter since 12 ka...

The Yarlung Tsangpo River Basin is characterized by its intricate topography and a significant presence of erosive materials. These often coincide with heavy localized precipitation, resulting in pronounced hydraulic erosion and geological hazards in mountainous regions. To tackle this challenge, we integrated the RUSLE-TLSD (Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation-Transportation-limited sediment delivery) model with InSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) data, aiming to explore the sediment transport process and pinpoint hazard-prone sites within mountainous small watershed...

Flood disasters can induce the mass transport of soils and sediments. This has the potential to distribute contaminants and present novel combinations to new locations - including residential neighborhoods. Even when soil contaminants cannot be directly attributed to the disaster, data on bacterial and heavy metal(loids) can facilitate an environmentally just recovery by enabling reconstruction decisions that fill data gaps to minimize future exposure. These data-gathering interventions may be especially useful in poor, rural, and racially diverse communities where there is a high probability of exposure to multiple hazards and a potential dependency on the financial resources of disaster aid as a means of reducing chronic exposures to other environmental pollutants...

People's preferences regarding their neighborhood environment can vary depending on their socioeconomic status and the cities where they live. This study aims to discern the relationship between neighborhood environment factors and single-family detached house sales by sale price and by central and noncentral cities. We analyzed sale prices in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area from 2015 to 2020. The neighborhood environment was assessed using flood/sediment risk and neighborhood walkability measured by net residential density, intersection density, and facility density (walking opportunity)...

In the context of global urbanization, more and more people are attracted to these cities with superior geographical conditions and strategic positions, resulting in the emergence of world super cities. However, with the increasing of urban development, the underlying surface of the city has changed, the soil originally covered with vegetation has been substituted by hardened pavement such as asphalt and cement roads. Therefore, the infiltration capacity of urban rainwater is greatly limited, and waterlogging is becoming more and more serious...

Faced with a potential risk of a colossal amount of sludge released into the Doce River basin in the most shocking Brazilian mining disaster, we proposed to assess the environmental risk from a new perspective: Understanding the mobilization of potentially toxic elements (PTE) with the geochemical fractions. Soil and sediment samples were taken in nine sites throughout the basin and characterized. The environmental risk was assessed from the PTE sequential extraction in three fractions: soluble, reducible, and oxidizable, in addition to the pseudo-total concentration...

Marine sediments are the world's largest known reservoir of methane. In many coastal regions, methane is trapped in sediments buried at depths ranging from centimeters to hundreds of meters below the seafloor, in the forms of gas pockets, dispersed gas bubbles and dissolved gas, also known as shallow gas (methane-dominated gas mixture). The existence of shallow gas affects the engineering geological environment and threatens the safety of artificial facilities. The escape of shallow gas from sediments into the atmosphere can even threaten ecosystem security and affect global climate change...

Understanding the processes that underlay an ecological disaster represents a major scientific challenge. Here, we investigated phytoplankton and zooplankton community changes before and during a fauna mass kill in a European protected wetland. Evidence on gradual development and collapse of harmful phytoplankton blooms, allowed us to delineate the biotic and abiotic interactions that led to this ecological disaster. Before the mass fauna kill, mixed blooms of known harmful cyanobacteria and the killer alga Prymnesium parvum altered biomass flow and minimized zooplankton resource use efficiency...

Sediments represent a major sink and also a main source of contaminants to aquatic environments. An environmental disaster from a mining dam breakage in 2015 in South-East Brazil re-suspended complex mixtures of chemicals deposited in the sediment, spreading contaminants along the Doce River Basin (DRB) major river course. While high levels of contaminants in sediment were well described, toxicological effects in aquatic organisms were poorly investigated. Thus, the effects of these potentially toxic chemicals were assessed in the present study through different endpoints (biochemical to populational levels) in fish embryos of the South-American silver catfish exposed to elutriates from different sites of the DRB...

With the global rise in sea levels caused by climate change and frequent extreme weather processes, high-density population aggregation and human development activities to enhance coastal areas vulnerability, populations, resources, and the ecological environment are facing huge pressure. Natural coastlines are being destroyed, and increasingly serious problems, such as coastal erosion and ecological fragility, have become disasters in coastal zones. The coastal vulnerability changed by climatic variables has created a major concern at regional, national and global scales...

On August 4, 2014, a tailings dam failed at the Mount Polley copper and gold mine near Likely, British Columbia, Canada, releasing approximately 25 M m[Formula: see text] of contaminated water and solid tailings material into Polley and Quesnel lakes. Water, sediment, freshwater scuds (Hyalella azteca), and mayfly larvae (Ephemeroptera) were collected during the summer of 2018 from Polley Lake, affected and unaffected sites in Quesnel Lake, and both mine-contaminated and clean far-field sites as references...

Seasonal hypoxia, as an increasingly recognized environmental issue, frequently occurred in marine ranching from northern Yellow Sea, China. Although microorganisms play an important ecological role in marine ecosystems, but little is known on the response mechanism of microbial community to seasonal hypoxia in marine ranching. A total of 132 seawater samples and 47 sediment samples were collected from the marine ranching, both in the death disaster zone of sea cucumbers and the non-disaster zone, and in different months...

A novel comprehensive assessment system, consisting of a bioassay and chemical analysis, was developed to quickly evaluate the human health risk posed by toxic chemicals discharged due to natural disasters. To analyze samples quickly, a yeast-two-hybrid assay (Y2H) and GC-MS equipped with an automated identification and quantification system (AIQS-GC) were employed for the bioassay and chemical analysis, respectively. Since the analysis of 1000 substances by AIQS could be finished within two days following the Y2H assay for screening, this method would complete the risk assessment within three days...

The regression and salinization of the Aral Sea, largely caused by water diversion for irrigation, is among the most severe ecological disasters of the 20th century, and has had severe health and economic consequences for the local population. Introductions of alien species to enhance commercial fisheries before the regression had already impacted the ecology of this system. Crustaceans made up about one-quarter of the original metazoan species and constituted the principal food for native and introduced fish...

The failure of the Fundão Dam, considered the world's largest mining disaster, released more than 55 million m3 of ore tailings into the environment. The sediment plume formed by water and tailings spread along approximately 663 km of water bodies of the Doce River basin. It reached the Atlantic Ocean sixteen days after the dam failure. However, the effects of the dam failure in the marine coastal areas years after the disaster are still unknown. This study aims to evaluate water and sediment microbial communities of nearby coastal areas three years after the Fundão Dam failure, using 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing...

One of the largest environmental disasters worldwide occurred on November 5th, 2015, when the Fundão dam collapsed in Mariana (Minas Gerais State, Southeast Brazil). The tailing mud flooded the Doce River basin and reached the sea in the coast of Espírito Santo State (ES), Southeast Brazil. This coastal region is the habitat of the most isolated population of franciscana dolphins (Pontoporia blainvillei), with the lowest populational census and lowest genetic diversity in Franciscana Management Area Ia (FMA Ia) - 18° 25'S and 21° 17'S...

Temporal and spatial variabilities in concentrations of metals (Cd, Cr, Cu, Fe, Hg, Mn, Pb and Zn) and metalloid (As) associated with the Fundão dam tailings were evaluated in water, sediment and biota from freshwater (tributary, river, lakes and lagoons), marine and coastal (mangroves and beaches) ecosystems affected by the Mariana dam disaster (southeastern Brazil). In freshwater shrimps and fishes, temporal increases in the concentrations of most elements analyzed were observed. This finding was clearly associated with temporal increases in the concentrations of As and metals observed in both water and sediment...

Aquatic ecosystems are highly vulnerable to anthropogenic activities. However, it remains unclear how the microbiome responds to press disturbance events in these ecosystems. We examined the impact of the world's largest mining disaster (Brazil, 2015) on sediment microbiomes in two disturbed rivers compared to an undisturbed river during 390 days post-disturbance. The diversity and structure of the virulome and microbiome, and of antibiotic and metal resistomes, consistently differed between the disturbed and undisturbed rivers, particularly at day 7 post-disturbance...

When the Fundão dam collapsed in Brazil, 50 million m3 of iron ore tailings were released into the Doce river, resulting in the world's largest mining disaster. The contaminated mud was transported 668 km downstream of the Doce river and reached the Atlantic Ocean 17 days after the collapse. Seven months later, there was evidence that the tailings had reached the largest and richest coral reef formation in the South Atlantic Ocean. This study provides the first description of species composition, abundance, and diversity patterns of fish assemblages in estuaries, coastal areas, and coral reefs affected by the rupture of the mining dam in the Doce river...

BACKGROUND: Given the time and monetary costs associated with traditional analytical chemistry, there remains a need to rapidly characterize environmental samples for priority analysis, especially within disaster research response (DR2). As PAHs are both ubiquitous and occur as complex mixtures at many National Priority List sites, these compounds are of interest for post-disaster exposures. OBJECTIVE: This study tests the field application of the KinExA Inline Biosensor in Galveston Bay and the Houston Ship Channel (GB/HSC) and in the Elizabeth River, characterizing the PAH profiles of these region's soils and sediments...