Vol. 8, No. 2 (2020): Regular Issue

The study aimed to model earth land use changing using logistic regression and multi-layer Perceptron artificial neural network in the South Coast of the Caspian Sea in Iran. Satellite Landsat images belonging to 1993, 2000, 2008 and 2017 has used. Modeling the potential of earth covering change was conducted using logistic regression and multi-layer Perceptron artificial neural network. Markov chain and a hard prediction model was used to forecast earth covering changes from 1993-2017 calibration method. Kappa coefficient results showed that regression (0.8657) has more accuracy compared to a multi-layer Percept.

The bread production sector is a major food business for Cuban population, which has grown slightly in recent years. In an attempt to pro-vide a better understanding about the food industry sustainability in Cuba, this paper presents an environmental life cycle assessment to estimate the impact of bread production on the environment. This study evaluates from factory gate to output analysis of the processing factory, which includes processing each product and packaging. Two scenarios were compared to assess the effect of bread production on deteriorated technology, the potential benefits of incorporating new technology and clean production practices. The main results show that the Bread Production System-year 2011 (Scenario 1), presents the main impacts on humans and the ecosystem; where the bread production process shows the greatest impacts, with inorganic respiration and acidification / eutrophication being the most relevant categories of this environmental study. In the comparative study, the implementation of new technology in the bread production process allows for greater environmental compatibility, and reduces the overall effects related to the different impact categories by 44%, and damage categories by 47%. Finally, the environmental results were compared with other published studies on bread production in different countries, and various improvementmeasures are proposed to reduce the environmental impacts of the production process.

Ecological regionalization in China is of great significance for guiding rational landscape planning and regionally differentiated ecological protection, as well as the management and layout of power transmission and transformation projects. Based on the principle of genesis, 11 indices, including elevation, slope, precipitation, river system, vegetation type, vegetation coverage, soil type, land use pattern, soil erosion intensity, bird migration pathway, and bird habitat distribution, were selected to characterize the topography, hydrology, vegetation, soil, and bird activities. Fuzzy Cmeans (FCM) cluster analysis was used to divide the country into 4 main ecoregions and 17 sub-ecoregions, and the ecological characteristics, sensitivities, and ecological protection points of each ecoregion were defined. The results show that the regionalization results is objective and feasible and can provide an operational basis for incorporating ecological planning and differentiated, large-scale ecological management into power development.

The abuse of toxic and hazardous chemicals has caused environmental pollution and harmed human health. As a result, chemical risk management has become a hot research topic around the world, and sound chemicalmanagement has become a key objective of sustainable development. Based on the concept of chemical risk management, many developed countries have identified toxic and harmful chemicals among their existing chemicals, and have prioritized assessment of the most dangerous chemicals and of chemicals that create a high risk of environmental exposure. Their goal has been to support a comprehensive risk assessment that will guide the implementation of risk management. This management model has been widely recognized by the international community, particularly in developed nations, but has not been fully implemented in developing nations. By analyzing three mature international risk assessment methods, we identified potential solutions for establishing methods that are most suitable for the current situation in China. Based on our literature review, we propose a screening method, the “criteria comparison method”, and a two-stage risk assessment method to prioritize the assessment of chemicals in China. The screening method proposed in this paper focuses on the hazards created during their manufacture and use based on the internationally accepted Globally Harmonized System hazard classification theory and principles, to ensure that the method is scientific and easy to operate. The proposed two-stage risk assessment method is mainly based on risk theory (risk = hazard × exposure), which fully considers the technical capability of chemical risk assessment in China. The screening and risk assessment methods will help decision-makers to screen potentially hazardous chemicals and carry out risk assessment for China’s priority assessment chemicals, thereby providing support for improving management of chemical risks in China.

The distribution of Erhai Lake sediment pore water DON followed the pattern of middle (1.449 mg/L) > south (0.828 mg/L) > north (0.266 mg/L), with the highest concentrations being found in the least polluted areas. The sediment pore water DON mainly contained hydrophilic substances and substances derived from microbial sources. Most of these were integrated into humic acid-like substances (∼78%), which benefited for reducing sediment DON releasing risk. There were more chains in Erhai Lake sediment pore water DON, with a small number of aromatic substituents. The characteristics of DON components were suggested to be related to human activities.

The transportation sector in Northeast China is facing challenges of fuel combustion and vehicle maintenance, like many high latitude areas, for the cold weather, long-lasting snow and associated slippery roads. The high reliance on vehicles rather than bicycles reinforced the challenges, resulting in inefficient fuel burning and high emissions from mobility. To better understand transportation emissions from cold areas and inform emission control strategies, this study analyzed the temporal and spatial dynamics of transport emissions in 2016, taking Changchun city as a typical city representing northeast China. Based on field investigation and national motor emission guideline, this study established a 1km×1km spatial highresolution emission inventory for atmospheric pollutants in Changchun City and analyzed emission responsibility from different types of vehicles. The results showed that the annual emissions of atmospheric pollutants CO, HC, NOx, PM2.5, and PM10 from road movement sources in 2016 in Changchun were 137,700 tons, 29,000 tons, 40,900 tons, 2200 tons and 2400 tons, respectively. Small passenger vehicles had the highest contribution rates to CO and HC emissions, which were 47.8% and 57.9% respectively. Heavy trucks had the highest contribution rates to NOx and PM which were 41.5% and 43.85%, respectively. Small passenger cars and heavy-duty trucks are the focus of future road source air pollution control. On the spatial level, the emission intensity of atmospheric pollutants from road movement sources in Changchun showed a trend of decreasing from city center to urban edge, especially concentrated in the square areas enclosed by the eastern urban expressway, southern urban expressway, western urban expressway and northern urban expressway.

This paper examines reservoir operation optimization considering probabilistic inflows. Optimal control of this model is obtained using Pontryagin’s Minimum Principle. The formulated problem includes non-linear equations on the state variables related to evaporation, stochastic inflows derived from historical time series and target ending storage constraint. Mohamed V dam is used as a case study to derive optimal operating rules through numerical simulation. The effect of inflows variability is demonstrated and a risk assessment of initial storage’s variation is discussed. A benchmark based on Genetic Algorithms showed the developed model’s performance. 9% of improvement for the low inflows scenario, are achieved.