4^th International Conference on Earth Science & Climate Change June 16-18, 2015 Melia Alicante, Alicante, Spain

Ana Arahuetes is a Geological Engineer, with a MSc in Hidrology and Water Resource Managemente. Nowadays she´s a PhD candidate, and this poster is a result of a pre-doctoral fellowship Researcher Training National Programme for Scientific Research, Development and Technological Innovation Research (FPI) and inserted in the research project "Construction and water metabolism in the coast of Alicante: trend analysis for the period 2000-2010 "(CSO2012-36997-CO2-02) funded by the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

Floods are among the most frequent natural hazards in the Mediterranean region and in particular in the area of Orihuela Costa (Alicante). Since flooding is a natural phenomenon intrinsic to river systems, the problem occurs when man occupies the areas susceptible to flooding. On the Mediterranean coast there are two favorable aspects for these floods, which are the strong urbanization suffered during the "real estate bubble" and irregular rainfall that occurs mainly between September and November, and often in a torrential way. To exemplify this compendium of circumstances the ravine of La Zenia will be studied, focusing on (i) the hydrological characteristics of the basin, (ii) the human occupation that has suffered in recent years within the framework of flooding and (iii) the basin reaction during these tumultuous events. The methodology, steps and tools used for the study are a compendium of different methods proposed in Spain for this type of study. In this poster we also refer to the legislation in terms of urbanization and flood prevention applicable in these cases. This example highlights how strong urban development has turned the ravine main channels into the urbanization streets, which has eventually led to heavy losses, mainly material and economic. In this situation, it is necessary to adopt a series of measures to try to minimize the risk associated with floods and mitigate their consequences.

Alrenice Castro has completed her PhD at the age of 33 years from both University of São Paulo (Brazil) and Minho University (Portugal). Now she continues the multidisciplinary postdoctoral studies at Porto University. She has a scholarship from CAPES foundation at CIIMAR, the Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research from Porto University.

Modern science has had interest in establishing approaches for defining patterns present in environmental data measurements, especially in remote sensing investigation. In the Atlantic Ocean, only the phytoplankton of the northern hemisphere has been investigated, mainly from collections made with remote sensing. This is so because most of the newest orbital sensors, responsible for bio monitoring, are maintained by governmental weather agencies of northern hemisphere countries only. In this paper, it is suggested applying exploratory functional data analysis (FDA) to investigate the relationships between chlorophyll-a concentrations and conditions at the sea surface in the Tropical South Atlantic Ocean and their variability over recent years. FDA is a relatively new branch in statistics. Data measurements of smooth processes over time may come from a process naturally described as functional. In this study the case of functional data presenting spatial dependence is focused on. FDA was applied to check more than 850 time series chlorophyll-a and sea surface temperature data and to help to identify important statistical patterns in both datasets. Results allow us to conclude that phytoplankton bio-dynamics functions response is influenced by several physical boundary conditions such as area, temperature and coastal effects. Finally, this paper attempts to make a contribution to oceanographic implications on global change effects.

Yie-Ruey Chen was born in 1960 in Hualien, Taiwan. He received theB.S. degree in civil engineering from Feng Chia University, Taiwan, in 1983,the M.S. degree in geotechnical engineering from Louisiana State University,Baton Rouge, in 1990, and the Ph.D. degree in geotechnical engineering fromthe University of California, Davis in 1995.He is a Professor in the Department of Land Managementand Development, Chang Jung Christian University, Taiwan.

Recently, because technological and economic development, the original plain area in Taiwan has been nearly fully developed and human development has extended to the hillside area. Human development coupled with the global impact of extreme weather, typhoons and heavy rains caused the hillside disaster. The scope and impact extent of the damage are more serious than ever before. For this reason, evaluation of rainfall-induced landslide potential due to land use is essential to disaster prevention.Based on the situations before and after the attack of typhoon or extreme rainfall events on the study area in Tsengwen catchment of southern Taiwan in recent years, this study applied the architecture of genetic adaptive neural networks combined with image texture analysis and GIS in satellite image interpretation and land use change analysis to obtain surface information and hazard log data.This study applied the optimum seeking method in the quantitative analysis of the weights of the various natural environmental and slope development hazard factors. Then, through GIS the landslide potential map is plotted. In addition, the evaluation processes for landslide potential after rainfall due to slope land use are established.Results of image classification show that the values of coefficient of agreement for different time periods are at intermediate-high level. The predicted potential of landslide is in reasonable confidence level. The findings of this study can provide a reference for subsequent slope development countermeasures, and the academic and engineering assessment of landslide disasters caused by slope development.

In the permafrost propagation areas thermal interaction between constructions and foundation soil leads to the thawing of soil and, therefore, to the loss of soil bearing capacity. One way to solve this problem and to minimize such negative influence is to use facilities for foundation soil thermostabilization: the seasonal cooling devices working during period of air temperatures below zero; machine methods of cooling with compulsory ventilation of coolant. Liquefaction of natural gas is important and even priority technology of gas import and usage. At the stages of designing and operation of gas-condensate fields infrastructure the problem of termostabilization of foundation soils appears. Thus, one of the perspective decisions could be potential possibility of partial utilization of the liquefied natural gas cooling. Technological norm of liquid natural gas (LNG) storage is estimated by value of liquefied gas in the tank storage daily evaporability, which is approximately 0.1% of the mass of the liquefied gas in one tank. These losses are formed due to heat inflows of environment to the tank, where the liquid natural gas is kept under the temperature about -163ºС. There is provided to use these technological outages with low freezing temperature for foundation soil termostabilization, using for this purpose recuperative heat-exchanging facilities. In that way, in line with ensuring competence of constructions foundation, this technology allows to utilize these outages of gas effectively. In contrast with usually applied seasonal thermostabilizers (TS), use of cooling capacity of the LNG complex allows: to provide reliable operation of a construction all the year round and irrespective of climatic conditions; to utilize selected gas for cooling of the foundation soil; to provide much higher rate of the soil frost penetration; to minimize effect of the frost heaving (the high rate of frost penetration provides minimization of volume of water migrating to the freezing front); to freeze cryopegs with various degree of a mineralization. Besides obvious advantages of LNG utilization as a refrigerant liquid for soil termostabilization it can lead to appearance of negative processes, such as frost cracking caused by emergence of big gradients of temperature near the wall of thermostabilizer tube. For that matter, it is required to pay special attention to the determination of optimum value of LNG-inlet temperature and the constructive solution of TS, for the purpose of prevention (minimization) of process of frost cracking. The task description and software products used for mathematical modeling are given in this article, and also results of calculations of frost penetration process of surrounding soil with various grain size compositions and salinity degree, and cryopegs with different mineralization are presented. The estimates of tension arising during the rapid frost penetration which allow us to find optimum values of LNG-inlet temperature and constructive solutions of TS, for the matter of minimization of process of frost cracking are given.

Francisco Guardiola Abellain has completed his PhD at the age of 29 years from University of Murcia. He has published more than 17 papers in reputed journals and more than 30 presentations at national and international conferences. Actually, he is a candidate to Marie Curie Fellowships. M.A. Esteban is Senior Lecturer, she has participated in more than 25 research projects and in 12 contracts with enterprises, has 2 patents, more than 130 contributions to congress, and more than 152 papers published in the area of fish immunology. In recent years she has also studied the effect of some environmental pollutants on the immune response of fish.

Aquaculture off-shore industry has been increasing steadily worldwide because of economic benefits and the improvements given to fisheries. However intensive activities can develop a negative impact on environment. High concentrations of heavy metals have been reported in aquaculture sediments, being Zn and Cu the most abundant heavy metals. Other heavy metals present on such sediments are Cd, Co, Cr, Mn, Ni and Pb. In this study heavy metals concentrations of Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Mn, Ni, Pb and Zn in sediments beneath fish cages in the Island of Tenerife (Spain) were determined. Sediment samples were collected in two different zones: “impact” and “control”. The Co, Cr, Cu, Mn, Ni, and Zn concentrations were determined using Electrothermal Atomic Absorption Spectrometry (ETAAS). The Cd and Pb concentrations were determined using Perkin-Elmer model 4100 ZL Zeeman spectrophotometer, equipped with a graphite furnace tube and an automatic sampler. Results demonstrate that the concentration of the studied heavy metals (Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn) was significantly different at both areas, with the exception of Mn. The impacted site showed higher concentrations of Cd, Co, Cu, Cr and Zn than at control location, while Mn, Ni and Pb concentrations in control site were higher than in the impacted site. In conclusion, seabed sediments can act as a pollution risk and it can represented a potential environmental risk.

Han-Chung Yang has completed his PhD from Nation Taiwan University and Postdoctoral studies from Nation Taipei University of Technology. He is the Associate Professor of Shu-Te University. He has published more than 10 papers in reputed journals and has been serving as a member of Taiwan Agricultural Engineers Society.

General scour of river structures during flooding has been an important issue in riverbed stabilization and river engineering. Researchers in hydraulic engineering have consistently been interested in understanding of riverbed changes during flooding. The numbered-brick column or chains that could only observe the general scour depth of riverbed. This study develops wireless tracer offering monitoring with the numbered-brick chain. At gravel-bed river section of Choshui River in central Taiwan, the developed method successfully observed the riverbed changes during typhoon. Wireless tracers also can observe surface velocity indirectly. Two monitoring points are installed on the upper and lower reaches of riverbed. The distance between the river centers of the monitoring points (L) and differences in the time signals received (T) are used to observe indirectly the surface velocity of the riverbed mainstreams (L/T = Us). In the future, an automatic monitoring system of flood flow can be taken to observe the riverbed changes in different weather condition; this not only helps to identify the riverbed scour process of unsteady flow, but also helps to improve on flood prevention engineering, bridge closure detection, and emergency evacuation.

Semova Ekaterina completed Bachelor of Environmental Science, now she is studying in the magistracy at Faculty Ecology and Physics at the Russian State Hydrometeorological University. She participated in regional and international conferences and has published more than 10 papers in scientific journals. She is researcher in the field of biometeorology, human ecology and medical geography; she is successful in scientific research and has received some grants and awards.

In various universities around the world people come from different climatic zones in with national characteristics, culture, lifestyle and social status. Thus, the adaptation of nonresident and foreign students is a serious problem, the solution of which requires a systematic approach and interdisciplinary research for the study of adaptive capacity, adaptation mechanisms to ensure the successful entry of students into the educational process. The purpose of the research is study and development of methodologies for integrated assessment the impact factors of the natural and social environment on the processes of adaptation of nonresident and foreign students in the city (for example, St. Petersburg). For the realization of the experimental model key problems were identified such as: Social, linguistic, geographical health, education, problem of tolerance and other. We have to consider factors of meteosensitivity such as the body of students, especially for students who come from the southern countries. To study the degree of individual, meteosensitivity technology has been developed, which includes subjective and objective assessment of the adaptive capacity of the student. The study involved focus group (100 students), application of a high-tech medical hardware system, conducting biometeorological monitoring, including collecting information about the weather, environmental conditions, geomagnetic activity and space weather. Based on these results recommendations were developed for students and university management.

Javier Torregrosa-Crespo is currently pursuing his PhD from University of Alicante (Spain) in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology after finishing his studies in Biology. In addition, he has got experience in production of Bio-fuels working in the international company ABENGOA S.L. (Sevilla, Spain).

Wastewater treatments (WWT) rely on microorganisms to perform the breakdown of sewage influent. Modern biological treatments of wastewater involve not only carbon removal but also elimination of other nutrients such as nitrogen. Although the importance of eukaryotic and bacterial organisms in these processes has long been recognized the role played by Archaea in aerobic and anaerobic WWT has received much less attention. In recent years, it is being particularly important the use of Haloarchaea in treatments that remove nitrogen compounds from water. The manufacture of chemicals compounds (pesticides, herbicides, explosives, etc.) usually generates effluents containing complex mixtures of salts and nitrate, nitrite or ammonium. Also, the increase of salinity in soils and waters in the last few decades has given advantage to some species like Haloferax mediterranei. Physiological studies focused on denitrification processes carried out with Hfx mediterranei have revealed that it tolerates high nitrate (up to 2 M) and nitrite (up to 50 mM) concentrations which are the highest described from a prokaryotic microorganism. Therefore it could be attractive for bioremediation applications in sewage plants where high salts, nitrate and nitrite concentrations are detected in wastewaters and brines. In a recent study, this Haloarchaeon was able to remove 60% of the nitrate and 75% of nitrite initially present in the brines (initial concentration was 40 mM nitrite). These results suggest that Hfx mediterranei and in general, Halophilic archaea are excellent models to explore large-scale bioremediation processes to remove nitrogen compounds from brines and wastewaters.

Jee-Hey Song is a Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Studies Graduate School of Environmental Studies Seoul National University. Dong Soo Lee is a Professor in Environmental Studies Graduate School of Environmental StudiesSeoul National University.

An East Asia model has been developed to assess the influence of climate change (CC) on concentrations of organic contaminants in multimedia environment of South Korea, China, and Japan.In this work,the results of 5 PAHs of different ring numbers (naphthalene, phenanthrane, fluoranthene, benzo[a]pyrene, benzo[ghi]perylene)were presented for the period of 1956 to 2100 with the RCP 8.5 scenario.The model was assessed to generally have prediction uncertainties of a factor of 10 as compared to multimedia monitoring data in the region.The influence of CC differs with PAHs, i.e., the atmospheric concentrations of lighter PAHs (naphthalene, phenanthrane, and fluoranthene)decrease due to increasing degradation rate (temperature effect) while those of benzo[a]pyrene and benzo[ghi]peryleneincreaseas a consequence of declining deposition rate (rain effect). In summer of China, increased precipitation plays a major role inremoving PAHs from air. Wind speed and direction are additionally important in Japan. The PAHs removal rate in air is less affected in South Korea than in China and Japan under the RCP8.5 scenario. Quantitative results and their analysis will further be presented in more details.

Jie-Lun Chiang received his B.S degree in hydraulic engineering from Feng Chia University in 1994, the M.S. degree in agriculture engineering in 1996 and Ph.D. degrees in bioenvironmental system engineering in 2006 from National Taiwan University. He is currently an associate professor in GIS and remote sensing in hydrology with the Department of Soil and Water Conservation, National Pingtung University of Science & Technology, Taiwan. His research interests include hydrology, GIS and remote sensing application to watershed management, uncertainty of temporal-spatial data, and climate change impact on soil and water resources.

Nanhua reservoir is an important water conservancy facility and habitat in southern Taiwan, due to vulnerability of geological condition, typhoons and heavy raincause serious erosion and sediment in Nan-hua watershed. In 2009, typhoon Morakot caused sediment amounted to 17,060,000 m³ and also brought uncertainty of water supply. As a result, to renovate landslides of watershed is an important issue forthe operation of reservoir. In thisstudy, SPOT image and landscape metrics areusedto analyze the variations and characteristics of the patch which is seen as vegetation restorative of landslide 2008-2012. Maximum likelihood classifier was used in this study. The features of classification included green, red and near-infrared, short-wavelength infrared band of SPOT and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). We classified the land cover into three categories：vegetation, bare soil, and water. The overall accuracies of classification can achieve higher than 99%. Then, the landslide areas were selected from the classified images.The area of landslide is reduced from 745(ha) in year 2008 to 247(ha) in year 2012. The number of patches (NP) is reduced from 3510 to 1326, and patch density (PD) is reduced from 32.5 to 12.28 in year 2008 to 2012, respectively. The results show that some indices including NP, PD and mean patch size (AREA_MN) increase along with the typhoon rainfall amount. But there is no significant relationship between largest patch index (LPI) and typhoon rainfall amount.The results of this study indicate those indices are suitable for identifying rainfall-induced landslide.

Jorge de las Heras is a full profesor in Department of Plant Production and Agricultural Technology. School of Agricultural Engineering of Albacete. University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain.

Fire is one of the most drastic disturbances in forest ecosystems, particularly in Mediterranean ecosystems. Global change, including climate change and land use changes, is strengthening the rising of frequency and intensity of them. The knowledge of the resilience of the main Mediterranean ecosystems would allow defining policies and actions to protect the most vulnerable species. One of the problems that the concept of resilience presents it is to be a concept associated to the dynamic of the ecosystem and there is no definition to quantify in a normalized and standardized way. This work propose an original methodology that involves the definition of type curves of recovery based on a time series of NDVI data, from Landsat satellite images, and the analysis of the potential changes in the taxonomic composition of the ecosystem after fire. We present the analysis of two areas affected by forest fires in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula. It involves representative plant communities in this region, specifically esparto-grassland, esparto and rosemary shrubbery, and Aleppo pine forest.

Tsai received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from National Chung Hsing University in 1974 and 1976 respectively. He completed his Ph.D degree on the subject of geotechnical engineering from Montana State University at Bozeman,USA in 1983. Dr. Tsai has been serviced as a distinguish chair professor of land management and development department at Chung Jung Christian University since 2006. Professor Tsai was also a direct general of Agricultural Bureau in New Taipei city, Taiwan. He has done a lot of researches regarding to the large-scale landslide and debris flow disasters induced by heavy rainfall under extreme climate change since 1990.

Extreme rainfall intensity was brought by Morakot typhoon in August, 2009. The accumulated rainfall amount was more than 2,900mm within continuous 3 days in southern Taiwan. Seriously landslide, debris flow, flooding and sediment related disasters were induced by this heavy rainfall event. This research mainly focuses on applying field investigations integrated with GPS/GIS/RS techniques to analyze the characteristics and mechanism of disasters. According to the satellite image analysis conducted by Soil and Water Conservation Bureau after Morakot event, the result indicated more than 10,904 sites of landslide with total sliding area of 18,113ha were found by this project. Kao-ping watershed located at Kaohsiung and Pingtung counties were selected as study areas. Mechanism, characteristics, and scale of these disaster areas in the watershed are analyzed to rule out their interaction of the factors and the extent of the sediment related disasters. Study on the mechanism and behaviors of disasters induced by heavy rainfall become an important issue which was seriously concerned by all people live in Taiwan. The mechanism of sediment related disasters under climate change during the past 10 years would be seriously concerned by this research. According to the simulation of both A2 & B2 models developed from IPCC(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the discharge and suspension load resulted from Kaoping river catchment have been increased more than 25-33% and 5~8% on both rainy and dried seasons respectively. All these results can give a general reference to prevent the sediment related disasters from Kaoping Watershed in the southern Taiwan.

Lia Chang has studied Atmospheric science and Environmental studies, and she is a PhD student at Seoul National University in South Korea.

The influence of climate change on the levels of 4 agricultural chemicals (butachlor, carbofuran, chlorpyrifos, and endosulfan) in surface water was predicted with a region-specific multimedia fate model, KPOP-CC. The model divides land surface into 703 watersheds based on the hydrological characteristics using Geographical Information System. Simulation was performed with 3-hour meteorological data generated from simulations for the period from 1956 to 2100 with Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios. Annual average concentrations for the 4 pesticides in cropland in watersheds throughout the country show gradually decreasing trend for the period 2006-2100 especially with the RCP 8.5 scenario. It is due to increase in solid runoff during the application period of the pesticides. The increased solid runoff results from increase in precipitation intensity and decrease in frequencies of rain event especially in May, Jun, July and August under the RCP 8.5 scenario. Annual average concentrations in surface watergenerally show a long term trend of decline in most of the watersheds. Contrarily, variances of thetop 10% of 3-day averaged concentrations significantlyincrease in 60%, 63%, 83% and 50% of 703 watersheds for butachlor, carbofuran, chlorpyrifos, and endosulfan, respectively. The characteristics of watersheds including hydrological network, morphometry, land use, and soil properties also contribute to the growth of the variance. The results demonstrate that climate change can increase short term health risk by agricultural pesticides to both human and aquatic ecosystem.

Marie Opálková finished her Master’s Degree in 2013 at the University of Ostrava, in the Czech Republic. After her Master’s thesis, focused on influence of water stress on plants, she started her PhD studies with a focus on solar radiation changes in polluted areas of Ostrava. She has taken part in one international and five nationals. She has published one paper in a peer-reviewed journal (on the topic of her Bachelor’s thesis).

The city of Ostrava is situated in the north-eastern part of the Czech Republic in central Europe and air pollution is a large problem in this area. Pollution causes health problems for people, but aerosols influence solar radiation too. The resultant changes in the spectral composition of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) may be large enough to influence crop yields, and this is the reason why a study of solar radiation is important in an area where the air is polluted. Solar radiation and its composition are measured by a system of radiation sensors, which is located in polluted part of Ostrava, in the area of Botanical Garden (University of Ostrava). In this work, the spectral composition of PAR around midday is shown for sunny and cloudy days over four months (March, June, September and December). Large deviations during cloudy days (because of the heterogeneity of clouds) and relatively small deviations during sunny days (because of the values for radiation on clear days are similar over one month) were recorded. Blue part of PAR usually represents higher proportion than other parts on clear days. For our next work, we would like to compare solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface at two locations (one with higher pollution and the other with lower pollution) and make experiments with plants (in the localities of the sensors, and in growing chambers too).

Francisco Guardiola Abellain has completed his PhD at the age of 29 years from University of Murcia. He has published more than 17 papers in reputed journalsand more than 30 presentations at national and international conferences. Actually, he is a candidate to Marie Curie Fellowships. M.A. Esteban is Senior Lecturer,she has participated in more than 25 research projects and in 12 contracts with enterprises, has 2 patents, more than 130 contributions to congress, and more than 152 papers published in the area of fish immunology. In recent years she has also studied the effect of some environmental pollutants on the immune response of fish

Heavy metals are non-degradable pollutants in aquatic system and they accumulate along the trophic chain. In Murcia (Spain), Portman bay was exposed to heavy metals rejections for more than 30 years. In this study, gilthead seabream, an important fish for the Mediterranean aquaculture, were exposed to different Portman bay sediments. Fish exposed to sand beach were used as control group. Induction of several stress biomarker and immune relevant genes (sod, cat, gr, il-1, igm, tcr, cox-2, csfr and hep) were determined in head kidney (main haemopoietic organ), liver and skin by real-time PCR. Results showed that, after two weeks of exposure, gilthead seabream resist to heavy metal toxicity and that induction of stress biomarker and immune relevant genes is organ dependent. In head kidney, tcr, csfr and hep genes were significantly down-regulated in the sediment-exposed groups. Likewise, tcr, gr and il-1geneswere significantly down-regulated in liver for both groups exposed. These last two genes (gr and il-1)were also significantly down-regulated in skin of fish exposed to both sediments. By contrast, in this tissue was observed an up-regulated of cox-2 gene by exposure to contaminated sediments. These finding confirmed that the exposure to contaminated sediments could not emphasize in all stress biomarker and immune relevant genes studied and that the induced genes are organ dependent. Besides, gilthead seabream could be used to regenerate the devastated ecosystem in this bay. Nonetheless,further studies are needed to understand this effects since the same fish showed stress and decreased immune response.

Leehas completed his PhD in 2006 from National Cheng Kung University (NCKU)and postdoctoral studies from Disaster Prevention Research Center, NCKU.He is an assistant professor of NPUST. His major specialty contains debrisflow disaster prevention, soil and water conservation and hydraulic engineering.He has published more than 20 papers in journals and has been serving as an editorial board member of Journal of the Taiwan Disaster Prevention Society (JTDPS).

Global climate change can modify precipitation patterns, leading to more extremes with associated erosion events. The erosivity factor (R-factor) in the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) provides an effective means of evaluating the erosivity power of rainfall. R-factor indicates the potential water erosion risk and it plays an important role in water and soil conservation assessments. Accurate estimation R-factor requires continuous rainfall data; however, such data rarely demonstrate good spatial and temporal coverage. Characteristics of storms (duration, maximum intensity, depth and frequency) recorded in the study area were analyzed using a tipping-bucket series, which was used to estimate rainfall erosivity from ten minute data (2002–2013), recorded at thirty precipitation stations, and annual data (1896–2013) recorded at Taipei weather station of the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) in Taiwan, was used to analyze the temporal variation of rainfall erosivity. A simple power relation between annual R-factor and annual precipitation was derived. The long-term change trend analysis showed significant increasing or decreasing trend observed for the region. The results further indicated that there is a higher relationship between elevation and rainfall erosivity. This study may also be useful for sediment disasters on Climate Change.

Orabi H.Orabi is a Former Head of Geology Department, Minoufiya University, Egypt.

The value of environmental health and the functioning of ecosystems are widely recognized at the Manzala Lagoon for the first time and are becoming more familiar to illuminated public opinions. The freshwater molluscs play significant roles in the public and veterinary health in the Manzala Lagoon region. The abundance of freshwater gastropods species Biomphalaria alexandrina, B. glabrata, Bellamya unicolor, Viviparous contectus, Bulinus (Bulinus) truncatus, Lymnaea columella, L.(Galba) truncatula, Melanoides maculate, M. tuberculata, Planorbis planorbis, Succinea (Amphibina) cleopatra, Theodoxus (Neritaea) niloticus and T. (N.) anatolicus was negatively correlated with salinity. These gastropods are of considerable importance because they are hosts for Cercaria pusilla, Fasciola hepatica, Schistosoma mansoni, Schistosomasis transmission and Schistosoma haematobium disease vectors. The latter two can cause Schistosomiasis transmission (Bilharzia). The salinity of water in the lagoon depending on the water supplied from the Mediterranean Sea in the northern region and the discharged drain waters in the southern one. The maximum value of salinity 37.12 ‰ was recorded at station No.12 during spring. This may be due to the discharge of Mediterranean Sea water resulting from the high tide during this period. The minimum value of salinity 0.86 ‰ was recorded at station No.2 during summer. This may be due to the effect of low saline water discharged from Hadous Drain at this area. People living along the banks of the drains which are located in southern and western sectors of the Manzala Lagoon are exposed to freshwater Mollusca pollutants. The drains wastewater pollutants affected the human health because they use the drain waters in their life needs.

Rosa Maria Martínez-Espinosa completed her PhD in 2003 from University of Alicante, Spain and Postdoctoral studies from University of East Anglia, (UK) between 2004 and 2008. She is member of the Biotechnology of Extremophilic Microorganisms research group at the University of Alicante. She is also In charge of in-company internships and mobility coordination at the Faculty of Sciences in the same University. She has published more than 35 papers in reputed journals focused on N-cycle in Archaea. She has also been involved in the organization of different meetings and congresses on the same subject.

Microorganisms belonging to the archaea domain constitute a major part of microbial populations in many types of very hostile environments. As a result, they play a crucial role in regulating global budgets of atmospheric gases in such environments. Archaeal methane production and consumption have received substantial investigation; however the knowledge on archaeal denitrification and NOX gases production is still poor. This work summarizes the current understanding of denitrification in the archaea domain. The denitrification pathway is influenced by the specific growth conditions including nitrate and nitrite concentrations, pH and oxygen supply being the last one the dominant controlling factor. Although the denitrifying ability has been found in microorganisms belonging to bacteria and archaea domains, the genes encoding the denitrifying reductases specifically nitrate and nitrite respiratory reductases have been studied in few species. In the archaea domain, where it is found among the halophilic and hyper thermophilic microorganisms, only there are biochemical studies related to nitrate and nitrite reductases in Haloferax mediterranei, Haloarcula marismortui, Haloferax denitrificans and Pyrobaculum aerophilum at the time of writing this abstract. Regarding to nitric and nitrous oxide reductases little is known about their genetics, regulation and enzymology compared to bacteria domain. However, the increasing number of genome sequencing projects has allowed us to analyze the genetics of denitrifying process. In the present study, we show the nos and nor genes organization using the available genomes from Halolex and NCBI databases.

Mingyang Li is a professor of Forest management department at the College of forest Resources and Environment, Nanjing Forest University, China. Educated in China, and trained on potential habitat modeling of invasive species and spatial balanced sampling of natural resources at natural Resources and Environment lab of Colorado State University, USA from 2007 to 2008. Mingyang Li has some research experiences both in China and oversea countries.

Ecological suitability analysis is one of the key components of wetland park planning. The traditional suitability analysis methods only emphasize vertical process of land landscape unit, ignoring the horizontal ecological process of land landscape unit. In this paper, the largest marshland Xinjizhou at Yangtze Xinjizhou National Wetland Park,China, was chosen as the case study area, while the high-resolution remote sensing image of QuickBird in July, 2008 and 13 spatial point distribution data of bird habitat were collected as the main source of information. Then "layer-cake model" based ecological suitability was analyzed and bird landscape security pattern was constructed, followed by optimization of suitability partition. Studies show that: (1) the bird landscape security pattern in study area is comprised of four sources, three ecological corridors, and two strategic points; (2) after optimization, the crossed places by two ecological corridors has been transformed from low ecological suitability area into appropriate suitable ecological zones; (3) after the optimization, the percent of low ecological suitability area of construction land, cropland and nursery land decreased by 7.34 percent, the percent of appropriate and high suitable area such as herbaceous swamps, forests, increased by 6.37 % and 0.37%, respectively.

Juha Karvonen has completed his MSc (Horticulture) studies from Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, University of Helsinki in 2009 and started Doctoral studies in Department of Agricultural Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, University of Helsinki in 2013. He has published the first book on Nordic Viticulture in 2004.

In recent decades, the cultivation of grapevines for wine production has been undertaken in the Baltic States and Scandinavia. Its success depends among other factors on the climate, the length of the growing season, the soil and soil temperature. This study measured vineyard soil temperatures in three localities in southern Finland (Tuusula) and Estonia (Räpina and Pärnu) from December to November. During the coldest months of January, February and March, soil temperatures at depths of 25 cm and 45 cm were 0ºC or slightly higher, so the roots of the vines did not freeze. In April, in the southern Finnish locality (Tuusula), the average temperature of the soil was 3.4 to 3.5ºC lower than in the Estonian locations. This difference grew smaller during the growing season but remained statistically significant (p<0.05-0.001) until August-September. From this it can be concluded that the risk of frostbite in vine roots that have been planted to a depth of 25 cm is low and existing soil temperatures do not restrict viticulture with suitable varieties on the Baltic coast.

Antoine Karam is a Professor of Environmental Soil Sciences and Head of the Department of Soils and Agrifood Engineering (2011-2019) at Laval University. He received his PhD (1986) in Soil Chemistry from Laval University, Québec, Canada. He is also the Director of graduate programs (soils and environment). In response to the years of dedicated to advancing the field of soil science in the province of Quebec, he was the recipient of the AQSSS Award (2007). He is currently conducting research on the development of bio-geowastes as soil amendments or sorbent materials for toxic metals in aqueous solution.

Mine tailing pH play important role in controlling trace metal solubility and mobility, with most metals (in free ionic form) being most mobile in acidic mine tailings. The purpose of this experiment was to evaluate the sorption of lead (Pb) in an acid sulfide mine tailing (SMT) (pHCaCl2 2.8) amended with chicken eggshell residue (CES) or concrete cement (0, 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 g kg-1 tailing). Tailing samples were equilibrated with 0 and 50 mg Pb L-1 in 0.01 M CaCl2 for seven days at room temperature. Afterwards, they were centrifuged and decanted. The supernatant solution was analyzed for Pb and calcium (Ca) by atomic absorption spectrophotometry and pH (pH e ). The cement application introduced high amount of Ca compounds and resulted in a great increase of the aqueous tailing pH (pH t ). On a weight basis CES has lower alkalizing power than cement in terms of its ability to neutralize acid or elevate pH t . The amount of Pb sorbed was positively correlated (P<0.01) with pH t , pH e and soluble Ca. The relationship between Pb sorbed and pHt was better described by a polynomial equation of degree 3 (R2 = 0.994). The differences in Pb sorption between mine tailing treatments were attributed to the pH t induced by calcareous amendment application. These results suggest that pH has a major effect on the sorption of Pb. Consequently, the SMT can sorb significant quantities of toxic metals from the mine drainage and surrounding environment, depending upon pH conditions.

Dmitry Samulenkov completed his Master education in St.-Petersburg State University. His present position is a Director of St. Petersburg State University “Observatory of Environmental Safety” since 2011. He was the expert in ecology, Biodiversity and Nature Protection in St.-Petersburg State University (09/2001- 06/2006). He was a part of the program Public health in a magistracy of medical faculty, Epidemiology in St.-Petersburg State University (09/2006-06/2008). He was a Postgraduate student at St. Petersburg Scientific Research Centre for Ecological Safety, Russian Academy of Sciences (SRCES RAS) (2008-2011). He was the Chairman of the Council of Young Scientists, SRSEC RAS - 2008-2012. He was the Council member of Young Scientists, Russian Academy of Sciences, 2009. Currently he is the manager of international program TEMPUS Improvement of education on environmental management 2009-2012, St. Petersburg State University.

The first results of complex observations and vertical profiling aerosol particles and wind parameters above the central part of St. Petersburg in day and night time are presented. Results include values of the extinction and backscattering coefficients, particle size distribution, depolarization rate, particle concentration and real and imagine parts of refractive index at different heights. These values allow indicating different kinds of atmospheric aerosol pollution in the air. Special attention is given to parameter space and time variations. Solar irradiance at the surface is calculated on the base of obtained aerosol content in different spectral regions. The influence of UV and IR solar radiation and air pollution on human health is estimated. Possible positive and negative impacts on skin, respiratory and heart diseases are considered. At present, the diseases caused by pollution are becoming more common. In the cities with strong pollution of sulfur gases, ammonia, hydrocarbons, the influence on the physical development of children is noted; allergic reactions also increase.

Jean-Pierre M. Mulumba is completing his PhDdegree at the School of Chemistry and Physics, University of KwaZulu Natal, in South Africa, Durban. He has a Master degree in Environmental Science and has eight years’ experience in Air Quality Management and is actually a Consultant at uMoya-NiluConsulting a South African based air quality consulting and Management Company in Durban.He has published 2 papers in reputed University of Rwanda and University of Teheran in various hydropower energy. He is an author of more than 25 reports in various Air Quality Monitoring projectsin South Africa and Africa (Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo)in Petrochemical and Mining industries.

Tropospheric ozone concentrations have been rising over southern Africa and Adjacent Indian Ocean since the last three decades. A study undertaken at Irene (25°54S, 28°130E) by Diab et al. (2004) confirmed seasonal features tropospheric ozone maximum modulated by both tropical and midlatitude influences due to meteorological parameters. Measurements undertaken at this station under Southern Hemisphere Additional Ozonesondes (SHADOZ) since 1998 have provided data useful to investigate change in meteorological conditions such as temperature, humidity as well as atmospheric pressure in order to determine long term trends on tropospheric ozone concentrations due to global warming. As tropospheric ozone is poorly documented over southern Africa, a few studies have been undertaken to understand the correlation between change in meteorological parameters and tropospheric ozone profiles variation. The objective of this paper is to first provide a comprehensive relationship between meteorological parameters and tropospheric ozone concentrations over Irene (South Africa) from 1998 to 2013 in order to predict possible change in the concentration of this greenhouse gas. Annual and seasonal analysis have shown changes in both temperature and humidity profiles. This is luckily to have an impact on radiative forcing over the region. Model simulation through temperature increase due to global warming predicts increase in humidity and lower tropospheric ozone concentration at high altitude and higher concentration in lower altitude.

Tatiana Rybina has completed her PhD at the age of 27 at the Department of Botanics at Tomsk State University. The thesis work is devoted to the study of protected natural areas of Tomsk. She is one of the authors of the Red Book of Tomsk region. She collaborates closely with the administration of different regions in the environmental sphere. She has worked out ecological excursions for students and pupils. She succeeds in teaching and making researches. At present she is the manager of educational programmes in the Centre of Excellence «Bio-Clim-Land» at Tomsk State University.

Tomsk region is situated in the taiga zone of Western Siberia. Its main part is covered with bog forests. These fires are long-termed and they can endure for years because of underground burning of peat. The destruction of bog forests leads to changes in the hydrological situation of the burnt area and its surroundings, to reclamation of bog and water objects and to changes in ecosystem. In order to estimate the area of forest burning of the region the scheme of coverage has been made. It is based on space images by Landsat-8 in the software package ENVI 4.7, including 23 shots during summer in 2013. On its basis the map of fires has been created in the software package ArcGis. According to our data 982000 ha (hectares) were damaged by fire in 2012 that is 31% of the territory of the region. The total number of fires was 404. We believe that the cause of natural occurrence of fires is the damage of natural structure of bog forests. It is represented by the structure «pine tree + bog shrubs+ sphagnum mosses». In case of damage we can observe a sharp decrease in a level of bog water, which leads to drying of peat deposits up to two meters or more. It happens on damaged territories and natural surroundings. As far as the dried peat is highly flammable, these areas are fire exposed.

Margareth Simoes is a senior researcher at Embrapa where is the coordinator of several Projects on Geomatics for Environmental and Agriculture Planning. From 2010-2012 she was a researcher at Embrapa LabEx Europe Program, where was responsible for the research area of Agriculture Sustainability and Natural Resources, coordinating projects and international articulations in Europe. By that time, she was a research fellow at la Maison de la Télédétection (UMR TETIS Territoires, Environnement, Télédétection et Information Spatiale). She is also professor at the Department of Computer Engineering and thesis supervisor at the Post graduate (Ph.D.) Course on Environment at Rio de Janeiro State University, Brazil.

The relationship between biodiversity loss and the impacts on ecosystem services of tropical forests, in face of the ongoing global climate change needs to be better quantified. In this work, we considered the concept of Ecosystem Integrity (IE), which represents the connection of biodiversity with the ability of ecosystems to sustain the processes of selforganization. Bayesian Networks (BBN-Bayesian Belief Network) can provide metrics for the generation of ecosystem integrity index, from the training of probabilistic relationships of evidence obtained through field data, Remote sensing data and GIS. The objective of this work is to present the methodological approach and the results of IE mapping,elaborated at the regional scale for different patterns of phyto-ecologic landscape of the Brazilian Amazon. The modeling was based on learning from the parameters (data-driven model) through the use of the Expectation Maximization algorithm. For the validation of this probabilistic model, an evaluation was carried out in controlled areas, with field observation and comparison with the IE model based on knowledge (knowledge driven), prepared by experts

Hadj Mohamed Nacera is a PhD student at Sciences and Technology University of Bab Ezzouar, Algiers (Algeria). She prepared a thesis in earth Sciences; the aim of the subject is to characterize Barite and lead - Zinc mineralization in the western part of Algeria. She is a teacher at Khemis Miliana University. She has participated in more than 10 international seminars in order to enrich her knowledge and identify new methods of analysis in minerals and rocks.

The Ghar Rouban Ba(Pb-Zn) district, western Algeria, includes veins in the Paleozoic basement and in the Liassic carbonates cover. The purpose of this study is to highlight the relationship between Ba mineralization occurring in the basement and cover by combining geologic, tectonic, mand fluid inclusions studies. The region is characterized by horst and graben structures and comprises deformed Paleozoic sedimentary and magmatic rocks with Mesozoic sediments. The Paleozoic basement rocks contain mineralization occurring as veins, veinlets and disseminations.Two ore fields have been identified : (i) Ghar Rouban s.s, comprising ba and Cu-Pb sulphides; (ii) Beni Snouss , containing Au, Pb-Zn and Ba-Pb-Zn deposits. The ore mineralogy of basement is simple and consists of barite and fluorite with minor galena and pyrite. The Liassic carbonate platform sequence contains Ba (Pb-Zn) sulphide deposits. Thermometric investigations indicate that homogenization temperatures (Th) for primary and pseudosecondary fluid inclusions performed in the barite from basement and Liassic cover range from 130-140 C°, whereas those for primary fluid inclusions in quartz range from 160 to 170 C°. The main salinities measured are 8 and 21 % equivalent NaCl for fluid inclusions in quartz and barite respectively. Interpretation of these data in their geologic context favours a basinal source for the ore forming fluids.

Sadegh Partani finished his MSc from University of Tarbiat Modares in Civil-Environmental Engineering. He is a PhD candidate of Water-Environmental Engineering at University of Tehran. Already his PhD dissertation is done and he is on the verge of final defense. He is Research Associate at Modares Environmental Research Center of Tarbiat Modares University of Tehran (MERC) for more than 5 years and working on water and environmental national projects of Iran. He was Research Associate at Coastal studies Institute of Louisiana State University (CSI-LSU) of USA and was working on water quality management in coastal zone

River quality monitoring in developing arid/semi-arid countries would be necessary, much expensive and time consumer especially on the verge of upcoming world drought and water scarcity. Simine-roud River is one of the main rivers which will be discharged to Uremia Lake in the north-west of the Iran. This study has investigated the water quality of Simine-roud River focusing on the physicochemical and hydro morphological parameters and land use characteristics relations to find out some easy going water quality index. The aim of this study is to develop an immediate factors (IF) which affects on the water quality. The mentioned IF should be accessible and effortless to reduce the first river quality out-looks obviously. Field studies were carried out in 4 seasons, 15 stations for 12 variations. Multivariate statistical and discriminated cluster analysis was employed to finding the effective factors. Results discovered that hydraulic parameter and some physical variations with land characteristics can give the monitoring systems a liable overview on the river quality. Hydraulic regime (Reynolds/Froude) and bed load size shall be representative of water energy, velocity, DO according to river morphology. Other IF parameters and variation expected to generate an Immediate Preliminary River Quality outlook without much time, costs, tests etc.

Udo-Akuaibit, Saviour P. has a Master of Science Degree in Natural Resources and Environmental Management from the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. He had a Bachelor of Science Degree in Geology and a Post Graduate Diploma in Integrated Coastal Zone Management from the University of Calabar, Nigeria. He is a Registered Environmental Specialist,National Registry of Environmental Professionals, U.S.A., and a holder of NEBOSH International General Certificate in Occupational Health and Safety, United Kingdom. He has more than eleven (11) scientific papers in reputable local and internationaljournals. He is the pioneer Editor-in-Chief of the Natural Environment Magazine- a publication of graduate students of Institute of Natural Resources, Environment and Sustainable Development, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Climate change is a global problem of weather variations characterized by extreme conditions measured over several decades. This paper analyses the impact of climate change on the coastal zone of Nigeria with a major focus in the Niger delta aimed at ascertaining areas which are most vulnerable to the climatic variables and hazards and proffer adaptation strategies. Severe coastal erosion and flooding, clustered coastal settlement due to shoreline retreat and coastal submergence complemented by increase in demographic pressure on limited land capacity, degeneration of mangrove vegetation, seawater intrusion into coastal aquifers, pluvial and fluvial flooding due to excessive rainfall, change in ocean dynamics, among others are identified as products of climate change in the coastal zone. Moreover, gas flaring, oil spills, deforestation, bush burning, etc., in the area also exacerbate the climate change impact. However, the sensitivity and adaptation potentials of the area to climate change impact vary geospatially, depending on the type of hazard, along the coastline from east to west. Limited mitigation measures by the government and private organisations noted include localized embankment of shoreline, beach nourishment, re-afforestation, channelization, etc. were more of reactive than proactive which pose serious challengesto management of climate change impact on the coastal zone. Attitudinal change by individuals and corporate organizations toward promoting a recovery of the impacted coastal environment and effective enforcement of environmental protection laws by the government are advanced for adaptation.