Wetlands

The Franklin Parker Preserve within the New Jersey Pine Barrens contains 5,000 acres of wetlands habitat, including old-growth Atlantic White Cedar (or AWC; Chamaecyparis thyoides) swamps, cranberry bogs, and former cranberry bogs undergoing restoration into AWC forests. This study showed that the C-use efficiency was greater in the old-growth AWC soils than in soils from 8-year old mid-stage restored AWC stands, which were greater than found in soil from 4-year old AWC stands-the latter two stands being restored from long-term cranberry bogs...

The iSimangaliso Wetland Park World Heritage site, located on the east coast of South Africa, spans ∼3300 km(2) and constitutes the largest protected estuarine environment for hippopotami, crocodiles and aquatic birds in Africa. Given the ecological importance of this site and continued use of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) in the region, this study focused on the nature, distribution and potential sources of organochlorine contamination within iSimangaliso Wetland Park. OCPs were widely distributed in surface sediment samples obtained from the four main Ramsar wetland systems within the park (Lake St Lucia, Mkhuze, Lake Sibaya and Kosi Bay)...

Synthesized ferrihydrite (Fh) with the dosages of 0.3, 0.6 and 0.9 cm thickness (labeled as Fh, 2Fh and 3Fh respectively, equivalent to 248-774 g/m(2)) were deployed to serve as the reactive capping layer covering the Ornamental Lake sediments, the Royal Botanic Garden of Melbourne. The sediments were exposed to an alternating regime of oxic/anoxic conditions using laboratory reactors for 45 days. Dynamics of dissolved oxygen (DO), pH, filterable reactive phosphorus (FRP), filterable ammonium (NH4(+)), nitrate and nitrite (NOx), total dissolved nitrogen (TDN) and dissolved iron (Fe) of overlying water were examined...

Agricultural processes are associated with many different herbicides that can contaminate surrounding environments. In Queensland, Australia, herbicides applied to agricultural crops may pose a threat to valuable coastal habitats including nesting beaches for threatened loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta). This study 1) measured concentrations of herbicides in the beach sand of Mon Repos, an important marine turtle nesting beach in Australia that is adjacent to significant sugarcane crops, and 2) investigated the toxicity of these herbicides to marine turtles using a cell-based assay...

The establishment of non-native species is commonly described as occurring in three phases: arrival, establishment, and dispersal. Both arrival and dispersal by the Asian longhorned beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis Motschulsky), a xylophagous Cerambycid native to China and the Korean peninsula, has been documented for multiple locations in both North America and Europe, however the transitional phase, establishment, is not well understood for this species due to the need to rapidly remove populations to prevent dispersal and assist eradication, and the evident variation in the behavior of populations...

In the last 10 years, the microbial fuel cell (MFC) has been extensively studied worldwide to extract energy from wastewater via electricity generation. More recently, a merged technique of embedding MFC into a constructed wetland (CW) has been developed and appears to be increasingly investigated. The driving force to integrate these two technologies lies in the fact that CWs naturally possess a redox gradient (depending on flow direction and wetland depth), which is required by MFCs as anaerobic anode and aerobic cathode chambers...

Constructed wetlands (CWs) represent low-cost technology for the treatment and reuse of wastewater in urban areas. This study aimed to evaluate the pollutant removal efficiency of a CW system and to assess the effects of irrigation using treated urban wastewater on soil and on two warm-season turf species. The research was carried out in Sicily (Italy) on a pilot-scale horizontal subsurface flow system which was fed with treated urban wastewater following secondary treatment from an activated-sludge wastewater treatment plant...

In this study, a pilot-scale integrated constructed wetland with vertical flow (VF) and horizontal flow (HF) in series was designed and investigated to evaluate sewage wastewater treatment capacity. The VF unit was planted with Canna indica and was 1.2 m long, 1.2 m wide, and 1.2 m high; whereas the HF unit contained Colocasia esculenta and was 3.0 m long, 1.0 m wide, and 1.0 m high. The system was operated under different hydraulic loading rates (HLRs) of 0.1, 0.2, and 0.15 m/d. The effluent concentrations differed as HLR changed, and the means were total suspended solids (TSS): 87 mg/L; biological oxygen demand (BOD5): 31 mg/L; chemical oxygen demand (CODCr): 59 mg/L; ammonium nitrogen (NH4-N): 5...

Density dependence, population regulation, and variability in population size are fundamental population processes, the manifestation and interrelationships of which are affected by environmental variability. However, there are surprisingly few empirical studies that distinguish the effect of environmental variability from the effects of population processes. We took advantage of a unique system, in which populations of the same duck species or close ecological counterparts live in highly variable (north American prairies) and in stable (north European lakes) environments, to distinguish the relative contributions of environmental variability (measured as between-year fluctuations in wetland numbers) and intraspecific interactions (density dependence) in driving population dynamics...

Chemical oxygen demand (COD) is one of the major targets to remove in constructed wetlands (CWs) system. Traditional method for COD measurement is a complex, time-consuming and highly toxic reagents participated procedure. In this study, microbial fuel cell (MFC) was successfully integrated into CW for indicating COD concentration. Results showed that there are two linear correlations between bioelectrical signals (output voltage from MFC) and COD concentration (acetate), which are COD from 0 to 500mg/L (101...

Concentrations of mercury (Hg) are not well studied in free-ranging wildlife. Atmospheric deposition patterns of Hg have been studied in detail and have been modeled for both global and specific locations and often correlate to environmental impact. However, monitoring the impact of Hg deposition in wildlife is complicated due to local environmental conditions that can affect the transformation of atmospheric Hg to the biologically available forms (e.g., rainfall, humidity, pH, the ability of the environment to methylate Hg), as well as affect the accessibility to organisms for sampling...

The emergence of pathogenic bacteria resistant to antibiotics increases the need for discovery of new effective antimicrobials. Unique habitats such as marine deposits, wetlands and caves or unexplored biological communities are promising sources for the isolation of actinobacteria, which are among the major antibiotic producers. The present study aimed at examining cultivated actinobacteria strains associated with endemic Lake Baikal deepwater amphipods and estimating their antibiotic activity. We isolated 42 actinobacterial strains from crustaceans belonging to Ommatogammarus albinus and Ommatogammarus flavus...

Contamination of heavy metals would threaten the water and soil resources; phytoremediation can be potentially used to remediate metal contaminated sites. We constructed the Phragmites australis artificial floating wetlands outside the Qingcaosha Reservoir in the Yangtze Estuary. Water characteristic variables were measured in situ by using YSI Professional Pro Meter. Four heavy metals (copper, zinc, lead, and chromium) in both water and plant tissues were determined. Four heavy metals in estuary water were as follows: 0...

Crenarchaeol is a unique isoprenoid glycerol dibiphytanyl glycerol tetraether (iGDGT) lipid, which is only identified in cultures of ammonia-oxidizing Thaumarchaeota. However, the taxonomic origins of crenarchaeol have been debated recently. The archaeal populations, other than Thaumarchaeota, may have associations with the production of crenarchaeol in ecosystems characterized by non-thaumarchaeotal microorganisms. To this end, we investigated 47 surface soils from upland and wetland soils and rice fields and another three surface sediments from river banks...

The distribution and sources of PAHs and n-alkanes were determined in the surface sediments from 202 locations in Shadegan international wetland with 537,700ha. The concentrations of total n-alkanes and PAHs ranged from 395.3 to 14933.46μgg(-1)dw and 593.74 to 53393.86ngg(-1)dw, respectively. Compared with other worldwide surveys, the concentration and contamination of sedimentary hydrocarbons were classified very high. A common petrogenic hydrocarbon source was strongly suggested in all sites by n-alkanes' profile with a Cmax at n-C20, Pr/Ph and CPI ratios<1 in all sites, and high percentage of UCM...

The advanced treatment of secondary effluent was conducted in a two-stage deep sequencing constructed wetland (DSCW) which comprised a denitrification chamber (W1) and a nitrification chamber (W2). The results showed that a superior NO3(-)-N removal rate was observed in W1 with a C/N ratio of 6.5, and a high NH4(+)-N removal rate was obtained when the W2 was operated with 6-h duration of idle. In the long-term operation for 45days, the two-stage DSCW pilot system achieved high and stable removal of TN, NH4(+)-N and NO3(-)-N, which were 92...

Constructed mangrove wetland has been used for wastewater treatment but its long-term performance has not been reported. One-year monitoring of a 10-years old horizontal subsurface-flow constructed mangrove wetland consisting of three belts, two with mangrove plants and one without, revealed that the system maintained high and stable removal percentages of organic matter and nutrients, and planted belts performed better than unplanted control. Substrates in belts planted with Aegiceras corniculatum or Kandelia obovata had higher abundance of ammonifiers, nitrifiers and denitrifiers but lower total heterotrophic bacteria than unplanted substrate...

The present study investigated the performance of an integrated system, combining the sequential use of microalgae (MA) and vertical flow constructed wetland (VFCW) for the treatment of wastewaters produced at a university campus. Ecotoxicity and phytotoxicity assays were performed using respectively Daphnia magna and Lactuca sativa, whereas the genotoxicity of the wastewaters was assessed by using D. magna and Allium cepa. The results revealed that the major environmental impacts of the studied wastewaters are associated with the high eutrophication potential, due to high N-NH3 (68...

Wetlands are an important carbon reservoir pool in terrestrial ecosystems. Light fraction organic carbon (LFOC), heavy fraction organic carbon (HFOC), and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) were fractionated in sediment samples from the four wetlands (ZR: Zhaoniu River; ZRCW: Zhaoniu River Constructed Wetland; XR: Xinxue River; XRCW: Xinxue River Constructed Wetland). Organic carbon (OC) from rivers and coasts of China were retrieved and statistically analyzed. At regional scale, HFOC stably dominates the deposition of OC (95...

This article aims to evaluate the efficiency of an innovative hybrid Sequential Biofiltration System (SBS) for removing phosphorus and nitrogen and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from original municipal wastewater produced by a Wastewater Treatment Plant under authentic operating conditions. The hybrid SBS was constructed with two barriers, a geochemical (filtration beds with limestone, coal and sawdust) and a biological barrier (wetlands with Glyceria, Acorus, Typha, Phragmites), operating in parallel. Significant differences were found between inflow and outflow from the SBS with regard to wastewater contaminant concentrations, the efficiency of removal being 16% (max...