THE GAMMA RADIOLYSIS OF AQUEOUS STANNOUS-BROMIDE SOLUTIONS

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Literature Review and Comparative Analysis of Existing Certification and Training Programs Applicable to Clean Water Project Operations and Maintenance

Stormwater runoff that carries sediments and nutrients is a primary pollutant entering surface waters in the State of Vermont. Phosphorus pollution is driving cyanobacteria blooms in many of our lakes including Lake Champlain, Lake Carmi, and Lake Memphremagog, especially in the warmer months. Warmer weather patterns and an increased frequency of extreme storms are predicted with climate change. As such, there is critical need to take action on the land to minimize and treat stormwater runoff on-site. The State adopted a Clean Water Act in 2015, which was swiftly followed by a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) for Lakes Champlain and Memphremagog, and that was preceded by a TMDL for Lake Carmi. Each TMDL has an associated implementation and/or tactical basin plan that defines actions to address phosphorus transport in these watershed drainage areas. Other watersheds of the state also have land use practices guided by tactical basin plans. Green infrastructure practices are commonly recommended to address phosphorus pollution. Green infrastructure practices are nature-based solutions that clean and minimize stormwater runoff on-site. They include rain gardens and other types of bioretention basins, permeable pavers, green roofs, bioswales, and infiltration basins, among a variety of other systems that mimic nature to infiltrate, store and/or treat stormwater runoff to reduce its volume and clean it before it enters surface waters. While green infrastructure practices and other nature-based stormwater management solutions have become more and more commonplace in the state since the 1990s, understanding and awareness of the need for maintenance of these systems has grown overtime. Some installations have lost capacity to sustain their stormwater treatment and mitigation capabilities as a result of insufficient maintenance. In fact, long-term performance of green infrastructure practices is distinctly related to successful long-term maintenance. Act 76, Vermont’s Clean Water Service Delivery Act of 2019 sets forth requirements for the creation of an operation and maintenance (O&M) program for non-regulatory clean water projects funded through Clean Water Service Providers (CWSPs). The program will be complex, replete with new funding mechanisms, new policy and procedural guidelines, and a community of practice comprised of a myriad of stakeholders. In addition, it will include comprehensive training on the contents of a new Operations and Maintenance Standards Manual that was developed in 2020 by Hoyle, Tanner and Associates. This manual standardizes operations and maintenance procedures across land use types – from agriculture to developed lands and natural resources. This manual was nearing completion as this literature review and comparative analysis was conducted. The Operations and Maintenance Standards defined in the manual will need to be implemented by a capable and qualified suite of professionals who understand the general designs, functions, and required maintenance needs and timing for a variety of types of green infrastructure practices over time. These individuals will require training and both the individuals and the State may benefit if they are required to become certified to carry out maintenance on green infrastructure installations, as formalizing the training may add a level of quality assurance and control over the maintenance practices implemented by the contractors. As the program and its methods are being developed, it is helpful to ask: how do we engender quality maintenance practices? This paper looks at one possible tool: a certification program

Relationships between the Seasonal Variations of Macroinvertebrates, and Land Uses for Biomonitoring in the Xitiaoxi River Watershed, China

The impacts of differences in watershed land uses, and differences in seasonality on benthic macroinvertebrate communities, were evaluated in 12 stream sites within the Xitiaoxi River watershed, China, from April 2009 to January 2010. The composition of macroinvertebrate community differed significantly among three land use types. Forested sites were characterized by high taxa richness, diversity and the benthic‐index of biotic integrity (B‐IBI), while farmland and urban disturbed stream sites presented contrary patterns. The percentage of urban land use, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, ammonia nitrogen and total phosphorus were the major drivers for the variations. The land use related water quality stress gradients of the four sampling seasons were determined by means of four independent Principal Component Analyses. The responses of macroinvertebrate community metrics, to anthropogenic stressors, were explored using Spearman Rank Correlation analyses. All the selected metrics, including total numbers of taxa, numbers of Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Trichoptera taxa, percentage of non‐insect abundance, percentage of scrapers abundance, Pielou’s evenness index, Simpson diversity index, and the Benthic Index of Biotic Integrity were correlated significantly with environmental gradients (PC1) in autumn. In other seasons such correlations were less pronounced. Our results imply that autumn is the optimal time to sample macroinvertebrate communities, and to conduct water quality biomonitoring in this subtropical watershed. (© 2012 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/92105/1/184_ftp.pd

Growing Pains of Crowdsourced Stream Stage Monitoring Using Mobile Phones: The Development of CrowdHydrology

Citizen science-based approaches to monitor the natural environment tend to be bimodal in maturity. Older and established programs such as the Audubon’s Christmas bird count and Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) have thousands of participants across decades of observations, while less mature citizen science projects have shorter lifespans often focused on local or regional observations with tens or hundreds of participants. For the latter, it can be difficult to transition into a more mature and sustainable citizen science-based research program. This paper focuses on this transition by evaluating CrowdHydrology (ca. 2010), a citizen science project that has transitioned from a regional to national network. It evaluates the data accuracy, citizen participation, and station popularity. The CrowdHydrology network asks citizens to send in text messages of water levels in streams and lakes, which has resulted in 16,294 observations submitted by over 8,000 unique participants at 120 unique locations. Using water level data and participation records from CrowdHydrology, we analyze the expansion and citizen participation from a regional to national citizen science network. We identify barriers to participation and evaluate why some citizen science observation stations are popular while others are not. We explore our chosen contributory program model for CrowdHydrology and the influence this model has had on long-term participation. Results demonstrate a highly variable rate of contributions of citizen scientists. This paper proposes hypotheses on why many of our observations are from one-time participants and why some monitoring stations are more popular than others. Finally, we address the future expansion of the CrowdHydrology network by evaluating successful monitoring locations and growing interest of watershed groups to expand the network of gauges

Citizen science can improve conservation science, natural resource management, and environmental protection

Citizen science has advanced science for hundreds of years, contributed to many peer-reviewed articles, and informed land management decisions and policies across the United States. Over the last 10 years, citizen science has grown immensely in the United States and many other countries. Here, we show how citizen science is a powerful tool for tackling many of the challenges faced in the field of conservation biology. We describe the two interwoven paths bywhich citizen science can improve conservation efforts, natural resource management, and environmental protection. The first path includes building scientific knowledge, while the other path involves informing policy and encouraging public action. We explore how citizen science is currently used and describe the investments needed to create a citizen science program. We find that: 1. Citizen science already contributes substantially to many domains of science, including conservation, natural resource, and environmental science. Citizen science informs natural resource management, environmental protection, and policymaking and fosters public input and engagement. 2. Many types of projects can benefit fromcitizen science, but one must be careful tomatch the needs for science and public involvement with the right type of citizen science project and the right method of public participation. 3. Citizen science is a rigorous process of scientific discovery, indistinguishable from conventional science apart from the participation of volunteers.When properly designed, carried out, and evaluated, citizen science can provide sound science, efficiently generate high-quality data, and help solve problems

INFLUENCES OF WATERSHED URBANIZATION AND INSTREAM HABITAT ON MACROINVERTEBRATES IN COLD WATER STREAMS 1

We analyzed data from riffle and snag habitats for 39 small cold water streams with different levels of watershed urbanization in Wisconsin and Minnesota to evaluate the influences of urban land use and instream habitat on macroinvertebrate communities. Multivariate analysis indicated that stream temperature and amount of urban land use in the watersheds were the most influential factors determining macroinvertebrate assemblages. The amount of watershed urbanization was nonlinearly and negatively correlated with percentages of Ephemeroptera-Plecoptera-Trichoptera (EPT) abundance, EPT taxa, filterers, and scrapers and positively correlated with Hilsenhoff biotic index. High quality macroinvertebrate index values were possible if effective imperviousness was less than 7 percent of the watershed area. Beyond this level of imperviousness, index values tended to be consistently poor. Land uses in the riparian area were equal or more influential relative to land use elsewhere in the watershed, although riparian area consisted of only a small portion of the entire watershed area. Our study implies that it is extremely important to restrict watershed impervious land use and protect stream riparian areas for reducing human degradation on stream quality in low level urbanizing watersheds. Stream temperature may be one of the major factors through which human activities degrade cold-water streams, and management efforts that can maintain a natural thermal regime will help preserve stream quality.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72139/1/j.1752-1688.2003.tb03701.x.pd

Exploring citizen science in post-socialist space: Uncovering its hidden character in the Czech Republic

Citizen science is a relatively new phenomenon in the Czech Republic and currently a general overview of existing citizen science projects is not available. This presents the challenge to uncover the 'hidden' citizen science landscapes. The main objective of this paper is to explore the (public) representation of citizen science (CS) projects and to describe their heterogeneity. The study aims to answer the question of what type of projects in the Czech Republic meet the definition of citizen science. Based on a specific methodological data-base search approach, we compiled a set of CS projects (N = 73). During the classification process, two general citizen science categories were identified. The first group (N = 46) consists of "pure" CS projects with a prevalence towards the natural sciences, principally ornithology, and thus corresponding to general European trends. Citizens usually participate in such research in the form of data collection and basic interpretation, and a high level of cooperation between academia and NGOs was detected. The second group of "potential" CS projects (N = 27) entails various forms of public participation in general, frequently coordinated by NGOs. Based on these results, we discuss the position of citizen science in the Czech Republic, including socially-oriented citizen science. Further research is strongly encouraged to achieve a more in-depth insight into this social phenomenon.INTER-COST project: Geographical aspects of Citizen Science: Mapping trends, scientific potential and societal impacts in the Czech Republic [LTC18067

Ecosystem Consequences of Contrasting Flow Regimes in an Urban Effects Stream Mesocosm Study 1

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73638/1/j.1752-1688.2009.00336.x.pd

Impacts of Urban Land Use on Macroinvertebrate Communities with Comparison of Samples from Snags and Riffles for Southeastern Wisconsin Streams

Macroinvertebrates were used to assess the impacts of urbanization on stream quality across a gradient of watershed imperviousness in 43 southeastern Wisconsin streams. Decreased Shannon diversity, percent of pollution intolerant Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera individuals, and generic richness resulted as watershed imperviousness increased. Values of the Hilsenhoff Biotic Index increased with watershed imperviousness, indicating that stream quality had declined with increased urbanization. Functional feeding metrics indicated a shift in macroinvertebrate composition from little to highly urbanized sites. Percent composition of collectors and gatherers increased, while percent filterers, scrapers, and shredders decreased with increased watershed imperviousness. This shift in macroinvertebrate taxa also suggested decreased stream quality. At low levels of watershed imperviousness, stream quality assessments were variable. However, for most stream quality metrics, a threshold existed between 10 and 20 percent watershed imperviousness, past which stream quality declines were minimized. Future studies should focus on physical and chemical characteristics of watersheds with less than 10-20 percent watershed imperviousness. If aspects elucidating high stream quality levels of such watersheds can be pinpointed, future development may be planned to ensure high stream quality levels in developing areas. Benthic macroinvertebrate community structure was assessed at both snag ·and riffle habitats in the same 43 southeastern Wisconsin streams across a range of watershed urbanization to determine differences in taxa assemblage and a variety of stream quality metrics. Discriminant analyses indicated that dominant species at riffle and snag habitats differed; Hydropsychid caddisflies (Hydropsyche betteni and Cheumatopsyche spp.) and elmid beetles (Optioservus spp. and Stenernlis spp.) discriminated riffle habitats from snag habitats where isopods (Asellus intermedius) and amphipods (Hyalella azteca and Gammarus pseudolimnaeus) predominated. Results of analysis of covariance indicated snag and riffle habitats differed across a gradient of urbanization for the Hilsenhoff Biotic Index, Shannon diversity index, and percent of pollution intolerant insects, filterers, and shredders at each stream site (p </= 0.10). Specific and generic richness were not significantly different between snags and riffles (p ~ 0.10). Macroinvertebrate communities found in snags suggested decreased stream quality when compared to communities found in riffles at the same sites. Thus, metrics derived from each habitat should not be interchanged when assessing stream quality during biomonitoring. However, metric values derived from snag data may be calibrated according to those obtained from riffle habitat under the same level of environmental degradation to predict stream quality. There were 30.2 fewer percent Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera individuals, 0.58 fewer Shannon index points and 0.29 greater biotic index points at snags than at riffles. Snag communities had 1.5 more percent shredders and 44.2 fewer percent filterers than riffles. With additional study, these calibrated metric values might be used for stream quality analysis in streams without riffles or in which snags were sampled.Wisconsin Department of Natural Resource