Lake (or lacustrine) water is one of the most sensitive and vulnerable resources for many tourist destinations, whose attractiveness highly depends on the water quality and availability in the lakes. The Shchuchinsk-Burabay resort area, located in the Akmola region of the Northern Kazakhstan, is one of the most popular tourist destinations of the country, known for its attractive natural landscape and for its great number of lakes. However, during the last decades, these lakes have been facing environmental issues due to their overexploitation and increasing level of pollution. Thus, the aim of the current study is to examine the changes in surface area of these lakes during the last 30 years by using GIS technologies, and the influence of tourism industry upon this phenomenon. Accommodation facilities (hotels, sanatoriums and guesthouses), as main tourism-related water consumers, have been targeted within our analysis. Results show that tourism is one of the factors responsible for surface area decline of the main lakes in the region, and its responsibility increases when combined with other factors. This study also formulates recommendations for water management policymakers in order to guarantee the sustainability of lake water as a key resource of the tourism industry in the region.
Direct utilization of treated effluent from natural treatment systems for irrigation can be challenging on sensitive plants due to high levels of salinity. Post-treatment of such an effluent prior to its applicability in irrigation can be of significant importance. In this study, the wastewater from a natural treatment plant was treated using a lab-scale filtration system with zeolite as a filter material. Three different column depths (0.5 m, 0.75 m, and 1 m) were used to investigate the effect of column depth on the treatment efficiency of the media. The suitability of the raw wastewater and the treated effluent from each column for irrigation purposes was investigated. The water quality parameters investigated were; electrical conductivity (EC), total dissolved solids (TDS), sodium (Na+), calcium (Ca2+), and magnesium (Mg2+). From the analysis results, it was observed that the column depth had a significant influence on the removal efficiency of the pollutants. The highest removal efficiency (94.58%) was achieved from the combination of electrical conductivity and 1 m column depth, while the lowest removal efficiency (10.05%) was observed from the combination of calcium and 0.5 m column depth. The raw wastewater fell mostly into a “very high” hazard, which is class four (C4) based on electrical conductivity and class four (S4) based sodium adsorption ratio; making it unsuitable for irrigation purposes. However, when the wastewater was subjected to 1 m column depth, the quality of the treated effluent improved significantly which in turn also improved the suitability of the effluent for irrigation purposes, with percent compliance ranging from 20.19% to 97.54%.
The food industry is one of the sectors that produces considerable amounts of solid waste on a daily basis. Handling such waste has been a significant issue of worldwide concern. As a result, research into developing low-cost and effective technology for the recovery of food waste is critical in order to keep pace with the rapidly developing world. This research investigated the potential of maggot production on the recovery of food waste. Four different food waste materials (banana, starch, pineapples, and oranges) were taken into consideration. Additionally, the effect of the fly attractant on the production system’s overall performance was assessed; the fly attractant was a mixture of cattle blood and meat waste. With a correlation index of 0.96 (without fly attractant) and 0.87 (with fly attractant), the number of days before harvesting and the average maggot weight had a very high (positive) correlation. Moreover, it was observed that using a fly attractant increased maggot yield substantially. For instance, the banana materials produced up to 94 g/kg of maggot weight on the eighth day, which is approximately a 32.4% increase from the same material without fly attractant. On the other hand, the trials’ relative dry weight reduction ranged from 52.5% to 82.4%. The results of this study also showed that producing maggots can be a practical method for recovering food waste, particularly when combined with the use of a fly attractant. The residue from the maggot production process can be applied as an organic fertilizer.
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