Urban River Interventions in São Paulo Municipality (Brazil): The Challenge of Ensuring Justice in Sociotechnical Transitions

The paper aims to discuss the sociotechnical transitions regarding urban rivers policy in São Paulo Municipality by focusing on programs and projects conducted since 2000. Accordingly, we use a theoretical reflection on sociotechnical transitions and just transitions in interventions related to water and cities. Our work is based on a documental analysis of programs and projects for urban rivers in the municipality conducted via theoretical discussion. The primary focus is on the current sociotechnical regime, the channeling of streams and construction of road systems on its banks, and disputes and pressures brought by the technological landscape and niches, which lead to the construction of linear parks and leisure areas along with the bodies of water. It also shows how the issue of justice has been losing ground in this transition, which although is “in the making,” already presents many factors of injustice. This is due to the low presence of the theme of precarious settlements, in innovative speeches and practices, and the different treatment given by the programs and projects for rivers in the consolidated middle- and upper-class regions and for those located on the peripheries.

ReaLSAT, a global dataset of reservoir and lake surface area variations

Lakes and reservoirs, as most humans experience and use them, are dynamic bodies of water, with surface extents that increase and decrease with seasonal precipitation patterns, long-term changes in climate, and human management decisions. This paper presents a new global dataset that contains the location and surface area variations of 683,734 medium-sized (0.1 - 100 sq. km.) lakes and reservoirs (south of 50°N) from 1984 to 2015, to enable the study of the impact of human actions and climate change on freshwater availability. Within its scope for size and region covered, this dataset is far more comprehensive than existing datasets such as HydroLakes. While HydroLAKES only provides a static shape, the proposed dataset also has a timeseries of surface area and a shapefile containing monthly shapes for each lake. The paper presents the development and evaluation of this dataset and highlights the utility of novel machine learning techniques in addressing the inherent challenges in transforming satellite imagery to dynamic global surface water maps.

INSPECTORMAP: A Spatial Data Infrastructure Applied to the Maintenance of Solar Plants Using Free Satellite Imagery

Photovoltaic solar plants are one of the main facilities away from urban centers for the generation of clean energy. Since its appropriate maintenance ensures its suitable operation, optimizing their maintenance tasks in a preventive way is key. This article presents a spatial data infrastructure called INSPECTORMAP that, based on the analysis of free satellite images within the optical spectrum, can detect unusual vegetation and bodies of water in the vicinity of photovoltaic plants that can affect their correct operation. Thanks to the implementation of a monitoring and alert system, it is possible to know and map the status of the photovoltaic plant in terms of unusual coverages appearing, both natural and artificial, at any moment. Thus, maintenance workers would travel to the solar plant to carry out their maintenance tasks in this regard only when the system detects a risk.

The Vulnerable Therapeutic Water Spaces of Virgen de Caysasay

The Virgen de Caysasay is one of the oldest manifestations of the Virgin Mary in the Philippines. According to popular belief, a fisherman netted her statue in the Pansipit River in 1603. Many miraculous healing events, mostly involving water, have been attributed to her. Despite the devastating effects of the climate crisis, Caysasay water spaces endure as therapeutic, healing, and ritual places. This essay examines the interlocking dynamics and vulnerabilities of bodies of water associated with the Virgen de Caysasay, their contextual sacred spaces where pieties are performed, and their surrounding communities

Incorporating terrain specific beaching within a lagrangian transport plastics model for Lake Erie

Mass estimates of plastic pollution in the Great Lakes based on surface samples differ by orders of magnitude from what is predicted by production and input rates. It has been theorized that a potential location of this missing plastic is on beaches and in nearshore water. We incorporate a terrain dependent beaching model to an existing hydrodynamic model for Lake Erie which includes three dimensional advection, turbulent mixing, density driven sinking, and deposition into the sediment. When examining parameter choices, in all simulations the majority of plastic in the lake is beached, potentially identifying a reservoir holding a large percentage of the lake’s plastic which in previous studies has not been taken into account. The absolute amount of beached plastic is dependent on the parameter choices. We also find beached plastic does not accumulate homogeneously through the lake, with eastern regions of the lake, especially those downstream of population centers, most likely to be impacted. This effort constitutes a step towards identifying sinks of missing plastic in large bodies of water.

Mitochondrial Genetic Diversity, Population Structure and Detection of Antillean and Amazonian Manatees in Colombia: New Areas and New Techniques

The Antillean manatee (Trichechus manatus) and the Amazonian manatee (Trichechus inunguis) are distributed in rivers in the Caribbean and Amazonian region of Colombia respectively. For 30 years, genetic information has been obtained from these populations in order to inform conservation programs for these endangered species and decide on the location to release them back to the wild. However, in previous studies, samples from rivers in some areas of the country were not included, given the difficulties to access these regions due to either logistic or safety issues. In this study, we analyzed mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) control region (CR) sequences of from samples of T. manatus (n = 37) and T. inunguis (n = 4) (410 and 361 bp, respectively), obtained in new and previously unexplored rivers and bays in the country, including Santa Marta, Urabá Gulf, Ayapel Marsh (San Jorge River Basin), Meta River and Magdalena Medio and the low Magdalena River (Cesar Province and Canal del Dique) as well as additional samples from Puerto Nariño in the Colombian Amazon. Our results included the discovery of two newly described mtDNA CR haplotypes for T. manatus. In addition, we confirmed significant population differentiation at the mitochondrial level between the Magdalena and Sinú rivers and differentiation among areas of the same river, including the middle and low Magdalena River. This differentiation may be related to anthropic changes in the river since construction of the Canal del Dique in the XVI century. We also tested environmental DNA sampling and analyses techniques to evaluate its potential use for manatee detection and monitoring in bodies of water in Colombia, in order to evaluate new areas for future manatee conservation initiatives. We emphasize the need to continue using genetic information to provide evidence on the potential best locations to undertake animal release to prevent outbreeding depression.

7. The Arctic carbon vault

‘The Arctic carbon vault’ describes the large share of Earth's organic carbon sequestered in the frozen ground and within the shelf sea sediments of the Arctic Ocean. The organic carbon stock of the permafrost is roughly equivalent to half of total global soil carbon. A cold Arctic with extensive permafrost is an effective long-term carbon sink as carbon is safely locked away as long as permafrost is maintained. Giant craters appeared on the Yamal peninsula. The thawing permafrost leads to the formation of thermokarst lakes, which are frozen bodies of water held in subsidence depressions created by the thawing of ground ice. Well-preserved carcasses of extinct ice age beasts, including woolly mammoths and cave bears, have been recovered from the thawing permafrost.

A Novel Combined Treatment Process of Hybrid Biosorbent–Nanofiltration for Effective Pb(II) Removal from Wastewater

The untreated effluents discharged by different industries, such as metallurgy, fertilizers, pesticide, leather, mining, electroplating, surface finishing, aerospace, and electroplating, have increased the risk of the contamination of bodies of water by heavy metals. Herein, hybrid biosorbent–nanofiltration processes for Pb(II) removal from wastewater was studied. The hybrid biosorbent was prepared from date seed waste and Ganoderma lucidum. Hybrid biosorbent characterization was performed by SEM and FTIR. SEM micrographs showed that the HB surface is irregular. For the adsorption studies, various sorption parameters were optimized. The maximum biosorption capacity of immobilized heat-inactivated hybrid biosorbent was 365.9 mg/g, with the Langmuir isotherm model to present the best fit. Desorption experiments were conducted for regenerating immobilized heat-inactivated hybrid biosorbent for three consecutive cycles using different desorption agents, with acetic acid to be the optimum. Going a step further, nanofiltration was also applied as a post-treatment process to elevate the remediation effectiveness for wastewater of high Pb(II) initial concentrations. The reasonably low cost and high removal of Pb(II) make hybrid biosorbent–nanofiltration processes a prosperous and potentially attractive hybrid approach against heavy-metal-polluted wastewater.

SALINITY: A MAJOR ENVIRONMENTAL FACTOR IN THE SUSTAINABILITY OF THE BLUE ECONOMY

The inshore region of the Bay of Bengal is one of the less-studied regions of the world ocean in terms of sustainability of Blue Economy while being one of the most exploited bodies of water to benefit a considerable chunk of the Indian population. For the first time, thirty-six years of in situ data at two locations in the northwestern Bay preferably in the lower Gangetic delta region has been analyzed to identify long-term trends in salinity. The salinity values obtained for Jharkhali and Haldia, situated in the lower Gangetic delta region exhibit extreme contrasting profiles. Jharkhali shows an increasing trend, whereas Haldia shows a pronounced decreasing trend of salinity with the passage of time. The results point towards the vulnerability of Jharkhali station towards corrosion of engineering structures, which might exert a negative impact on the sustainability of Blue Economy in this region.