Air Pollution Exposure Systems And Experimental Protocols A Review And Evaluation Of Performance

During late 1985, the Research Management Committee (RMC) of the National Crop Loss Assessment Network (NCLAN) decided the most ap propriate way to bring the NCLAN program to a successful conclusion was to hold an international conference. It was envisaged as an opportunity to present an overview of results from the NCLAN program and as a chance to view the results in the context of ongoing research by members of the international community. * Although we wanted the Conference to have an assessment orientation, it was also intended for the Conference to focus on current state-of-knowledge. The Conference was designed to overview the needs of crop loss assessment, current approaches to assessment, progress in the development of predictive models, the use of the information for economic predictions, and the application of the data in policy decisions. Every effort was made to assure a broad representation of ideas. The Conference program was developed to evaluate major issues that address regional/national assessments of impacts of atmospheric pollutants on agricultural production. Sessions were structured to address specific issues by invited speakers, and by contributed papers and posters. First, background needs for doing loss assessment research including specific approaches and a rather detailed review of the NCLAN program were addressed (Session I). Session II addressed the needs for defining the exposure environment (e. g. extrapolating to regional concentrations and exposure characterization). Field approaches for determining crop loss were reviewed in Session III.

Ecotoxicology is the evaluation of toxic effects within the environment, typically within one specific ecosystem, like a forest, stream, or lake. For years now, ecotoxicological studies have tended to focus on one toxicant at a time. But that isn't how an ecosystem encounters toxicants (or stresses): there may be several elements at work in the air, several more in the water, and still more already within the soil of any given ecosystem, and all have some level of toxic influence on that ecosystem. Multiple Stresses in Ecosystems presents the state-of-the-art in determining the effects of these multiple impacts upon ecosystems. Resulting from a vanguard conference originally held in 1993 at UC Davis, this new work is divided into three sections that present methodolgies for assessing the health of an ecosystem; the effects of multiple toxicological impacts upon an ecosystem, and which tools are worth using to assess these dangers. Environmental scientists, chemists, toxicologists, risk analysts, and probably the entire membership of SETAC will find need for this book, as will wetlands scientists, ecologists, and research biologists.

Tropospheric ozone is a regionally distributed air pollutant that adversely affects both humans and vegetation. Surface-Level Ozone Exposures and Their Effects on Vegetation focuses on the formation, distribution, and transport of surface-level ozone; the characterization of its exposures; the mechanisms and processes involved in its deposition and uptake by plants; and its effects on the growth of crops and forest trees. State-of-the-art information is presented and the methodology for studying its effects on vegetation is critically reviewed. This background material leads to a discussion of the approaches for developing an air quality standard that will provide protection from the adverse effects of ozone, as well as suggestions for future research directions. Researchers and professionals in the utility industry, oil industry, and government environmental agencies; university instructors; and students will find that this book is filled with information that can be used on a daily basis in their work and studies.

The idea for this book arose in 1993, after the Free State of Bavaria through its Bayrisches Staatsministerium rur Landesentwicklung und Umweltfragen (Bavarian Ministry of Regional Development and the Environment) decided to discontinue both the Bavarian project management (PBWU) for forest decline research and the multidisciplinary field research on the Wank Mountain in the Alps near Garmisch. Forest decline through the action of ozone and other photooxidants was a main topic of the supported re search in the Alps and will be a topic of new investigations in the Bavarian Forest. Many interesting results were obtained, but the researchers involved have not had sufficient time to allow reliable conclusions to be drawn. It was therefore decided to ask inter national experts for contributions in order to summarize the best available evidence of a possible link between ozone and forest decline - a topic which has been studied in the USA since the late 1950s and in Europe since the early 1980s. The original idea of Waldsterben as an irreversible large-scale dieback of forests in Germany was soon recognized to be wrong (Forschungsbeirat 1989). However, the new criteria used for the official German and European damage inventories (loss or yel lowing of needles or leaves, tree morphology) indicate that per sistently high percentages of damaged spruce and pine remain, and there is an increasing percentage of damaged beech and oak, with a high proportion of biotic disease (Forschungsbeirat 1989; UN-ECE 1995).