The composition of the ambient air is constantly changing; therefore, the monitoring of ambient air quality to detect the changes caused by aerogenic pollutants makes the essential part of general environmental monitoring. To achieve more effective improvement of the ambient air quality, the Directive 2008/50/EC on 'Ambient Air Quality and Cleaner Air for Europe' was adopted by the European Parliament and the European Council. It informed the public and enterprises about a negative effect of pollution on humans, animals and plants, as well as about the need for monitoring aerogenic pollutants not only at the continuous monitoring stations but also by using indicator methods, i.e. by analysing natural deposit media. The problem of determining the relationship between the accumulation level of pollutants by a deposit medium and the level of air pollution and its risks is constantly growing in importance. The paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the response of the main four deposit media, i.e. snow cover, soil, pine bark and epigeic mosses, to the long-term pollution by aerogenic pollutants which can be observed in the area of oil refinery influence. Based on the quantitative expressions of the amounts of the accumulated pollutants in the deposit media, the territory of the oil refinery investigated in this paper has been referred to the areas of mild or moderate pollution.
Soil is one of the most important natural subsystems of the Earth's landscapes, which is exceptionally vital for a human being as the main source of food resources. In order to take care of the future one of the most relevant problems of the mankind is to preserve soils of the Earth, their fertility and normal state under conditions of the increasing technogenic effect and degradation of natural landscapes. As the global warming has already started, its after‐effects, which will be invertable faced by the Lithuanian agriculture, must be overcome as an additional negative factor. The paper aims at revealing the dependence of the total carbon on pH. It also focuses on the impact of climate change on the total carbon and soil degradation. Santrauka Dirvožemis yra vienas iš svarbiausiu gamtiniu Žemes landšaftu posistemiu, išimtinai svarbus žmogui kaip pagrindinis maisto ištekliu šaltinis. Rūpinantis ateitimi, viena iš aktualiausiu žmonijos problemu – išsaugoti Žemes dirvožemius, ju derlinguma ir normalia būkle vis didejančio technogeninio poveikio ir gamtiniu landšaftu degradacijos salygomis. Kaip papildoma neigiama faktoriu privalu iveikti prasidejusio globalaus atšilimo pasekmes, su kuriomis neišvengiamai susidurs ir Lietuvos žemes ūkis. Straipsnyje siekiama atskleisti bendrosios anglies priklausomybe nuo pH, atkreipti demesi i klimato kaitos itaka dirvožemio degradacijai. Резюме Почва является одной из важнейших подсистем природных ландшафтов Земли, имеющей особенно важное значение для людей в качестве основного источника пищи. Одной из наиболее неотложных задач, стоящих перед человечеством, обеспокоенным своим будущим, является сохранение почв Земли, их плодородия и здорового состояния в условиях усиливающегося техногенного воздействия и деградации природного ландшафта. При этом придется преодолеть и уже начавшееся глобальное потепление, которое неизбежно коснется литовского сельского хозяйства. В статье предпринята попытка выявить зависимость общего углерода от рН, а также обратить внимание на последствия, наносимые изменением климата общему углероду, а также на деградацию почв.
Snow-cap can be used as a simple and effective indicator of industrial air pollution. In this study snow-cap samples were collected from 11 sites located in the vicinity of an oil refinery in Mazeikiai, a region in the north-west of Lithuania, in the winter of 2011. Analysis of snowmelt water and snow-dust was used to determine anthropogenic pollutants such as: sulphates and chlorides, nitrites, nitrates, ammonium nitrogen, total carbon, total nitrogen; heavy metals: lead (Pb), copper (Cu), chromium (Cr), cadmium (Cd). Concentrations of heavy metals in snow-dust were detected thousands of times higher than those in the snowmelt water. In this study, analysis of heavy metal concentration was conducted considering different distances and the wind direction within the impact zone of the oil refinery. The sequence of heavy metals according to their mean concentrations in the snow-dust samples was the following: Pb > Cr > Cu > Cd. Heavy metals highly correlated among each other. The load of snow-dust was evaluated to determine the pollution level in the study area. The highest daily load of snow-dust was 45.81 +/- 12.35 mg/m2 in the north-western direction from the oil refinery. According to classification of the daily load of snow-dust a lower than medium-risk level of pollution was determined in the vicinity of the oil refinery.
The intensive industrial development and urbanization, as well as the negligible return of hazardous components to the deeper layers of the Earth, increases the contamination load on the noosphere (i.e., the new status of the biosphere, the development of which is mainly controlled by the conscious activity of a human being). The need for reducing the spread and mobility of contaminants is growing. The insights into the role of the tree in the reduction of contaminant mobility through its life cycle are presented to show an important function performed by the living matter and its products in reducing contamination. For maintaining the sustainable development, natural materials are often used as the media in the environmental protection technologies. However, due to increasing contamination intensity, the capacity of natural materials is not sufficiently high. Therefore, the popularity of engineered materials, such as biochar which is the thermochemically modified lignocellulosic product, is growing. The new approaches, based on using the contaminant footprint, as well as natural (biogeochemical) and engineered barriers for reducing contaminant migration and their application, are described in the paper.
Changing the concepts of economic development and introducing new amendments can hardly decrease the accumulation in the soil of such pollutants as metals, remaining there for a long time. The predictive models for describing the balance of metals in the soil, which are based on the 'atmosphere-plant-soil' system and reflect the complicated physical-chemical nature of the metals' migration, expressed by coefficients obtained in long-term observations in natural conditions, allow for evaluating long-term concentration of metals in the soil. The model BALANS evaluates selfpurification of soil, taking into account the uptake of metals of aerogenic origin by the soil together with amendments, their physical-chemical migration and the type of microrelief determining its intensity as well as the absorbed biomass of plants and the removal of metals with crops. In this model, the half-period of metals' washing out from the soil, found for the microrelief characteristic of low places, exceeds 200 years for Ni, Cr and Pb and makes 90 and 150 years for Zn and Cu, respectively.
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