Seaweed (fresh, dry) or its products (extracts, composts, soil conditioners) have been long used in agriculture to enhance plant growth and productivity. In this study, we evaluated the effects that seaweed composts at different doses and degree of maturation had on the yield of tomatoes (Licopersicon esculentum Mill. cv. platense) grown on a horticultural soil in northeastern Patagonia. We used ...
Calculating forage availability is challenging for managers of grazing systems due to the spatial heterogeneity of swards. Remote sensing applications may help to overcome this problem through estimates of biomass made with reflectance data. The objectives of this study were to (i) estimate herbage mass using an active, on-the-go, ground-based, narrow band sensor to calculate the normalized ...
We performed a multiple‐pulsed atrazine experiment to measure responses of autotrophic endpoints in outdoor stream mesocosms. The experiment was designed to synthetically simulate worst‐case atrazine chemographs from streams in agricultural catchments to achieve 60‐day mean concentrations of 0 (control), 10, 20, and 30 µg/L, respectively. We dosed triplicate streams with pulses of 0, 50, 100, ...
Farming fish together with seaweed and other species could help improve the sustainability of aquaculture and reduce pollution. A new study provides a tool for designing sustainable fish farming systems and calculates their potential to recycle waste. An example of a salmon farming system incorporating seaweed and sea urchins could reduce nitrogen releases to the environment by 45%. Over half of ...
NC Service has set up the first plant of this type in Spain Thanks to the BIOCOM Project, Nicolás Correa Service, S.A. has built the first biomass combustion plant that not only produces thermal energy, but also electricity on a small scale (130 gross kWe). The process is based on the combustion of woodchips in a furnace to produce heat that is then transferred to an ORC module, where it ...
Do you know that proper management of waste from different kinds of agricultural operations can contribute in a significant way. You must have heard the saying ‘waste not want not’. It has been observed that proper management of waste from different kinds of agricultural operations can add up in a particular way. The waste management helps to create a healthy environment not for man ...
The capacity to predict time to silking relative to anthesis in maize (Zea mays L.) has important implications for breeding and seed production. We developed a theoretical quantitative framework for simulating the anthesis to silking interval (ASI) based on plant growth and biomass partitioning to the ear. We tested this framework to simulate the progress of silking relative to anthesis in nine ...
Community-based forest management (CBFM) is a major strategy in managing forest lands in the Philippines. Forest and land management activities implemented in CBFM project sites include management of tropical forests (enrichment planting, timber stand improvement or TSI and limited harvesting), rehabilitation of degraded lands (reforestation, assisted natural regeneration (ANR)) and agroforestry. ...
Abstract The biomass carbon (C) stock of forests is one of key parameters for the study of regional and global carbon cycles. Literature reviews shows that inventory-based forest C stocks documented for major countries in the middle and high northern latitudes fall within a narrow range of 36–56 Mg C ha−1 with an overall area-weighted mean of 43.6 Mg C ha−1. These estimates are ...
BC Bioenergy Network ("BCBN"), a provincially-funded leader in the growing bioenergy sector in British Columbia and the Wood Pellet Association of Canada ("WPAC"), have released a report that documents Canada's contribution to the EU's renewable energy targets. The study modeled forest carbon dynamics and determined that the production of energy from sustainable solid biomass rapidly mitigates ...
The stability of sand-based athletic fields is critical to maximizing playability and safety. The objective of this study was to assess the contributions of sand and plant factors to the surface stability of sports fields. In September 2000, Hallet mason sand (subround), Hallet concrete sand (subround, wide size range), Sidley Pro/Angle sand (angular), Bunker White sand (round), and a mixture of ...
The surface-flow constructed wetland (CW) located in Nonsan City, South Korea, and constructed as the final stage of a piggery wastewater treatment plant that aims to treat high nutrient content effluent during dry days and stormwater runoff during wet days was monitored from October 2008 to November 2011. This research investigated the seasonal nutrient uptake of plant biomass in the CW and ...
A research group from Michigan State University (Department of Plant Biology) is using the UniSpec-DC to analyze biomass dynamics and changes in species composition across a California grassland system, as they relate to management techniques including prescribed burning, prescribed grazing, and reseeding of native grasses. They are interested in enhancing the understanding of grassland dynamics ...
Pearl millet [Pennisetum glaucum (L.) R. Br.] single cross hybrids, bred from high-yielding parental lines in favorable environments, are not well adapted to northwest India's arid zone. The objectives of these experiments were (i) to measure grain and stover yield heterosis in testcrosses of six landrace-based restorer populations and (ii) to understand how heterosis for biomass and harvest ...
In the Orbetello lagoon basin there are some intensive land–based fish–farming facilities which contribute to cause a significant cyclic development of the opportunistic chorophycea Ulva laetevirens, and consequent serious decay events in spring and summer. To minimise the nutrients' impact, fish farming was supplied with phytotreatment system. The purpose of this study was to ...
Biosorption is an effective method for removing heavy metals from effluent. This work mainly aimed to evaluate the adsorption performance of the widely cultivated novel mushroom, Pleurotus eryngii, for the removal of Cu(II) from single aqueous solutions. Kinetics and equilibria were obtained using a batch technique. The sorption kinetics follows the pseudo-second-order model, whereas the ...
In every Greek island there is at least one town with more than 20,000 inhabitants. Several smaller towns and villages range from a few hundreds to a few thousands in population. Usually in the larger towns there are sewage treatment facilities providing at least secondary treatment of wastewater. In most cases the effluent produced is drained to the sea and the sludge is dumped in landfills. In ...
Received for publication November 7, 2008. We tested the efficacy of matrix-based fertilizers (MBFs) to reduce Escherichia coli and Enterococcus spp., NH4, NO3, dissolved reactive phosphorus (DRP), and total phosphorus (TP) in leachate and soil after dairy manure application in greenhouse column studies. The MBFs are composed of inorganic N and P in compounds that are relatively loosely bound ...
Algal biofuels around the world represent a sustainable pathway to meet increasing demand for fuel and clean energy with reduced environmental impact. More than half of that mass consists of lipids or triacylglycerides which are also found in vegetable oils and are used to produce such advanced biofuels as biodiesel, green diesel, green gasoline and green jet fuel. Algal remediation technology ...
An indicator must be defined according to at least three points of view. It must be a parameter of a model according to which the objective of the decision can be represented; it must be an argument of a decision function; and it must be estimable through a function of available data. The whole set of estimates of the parameters of a model is a multidimensional statistic, i.e. a set of functions ...