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Main aim of this study is characterization of environmental contamination in surrounding of abandoned Sb-deposits in Slovakia by toxic elements as result of longtime mining activity. Main scientific interest is focused on migration of toxic elements in soil profile, their sources and bindings on Fe-oxyhydroxides or other natural sorbents, possibility of input to aquatic systems in studied localities. Results of chemical analyses of soil samples showed large-scale contamination of soil profiles in studied localitie...

Petroleum which is also known as black gold has a 150 year history. Oil which took part of coal in the 20th century is an important energy resource in economic and strategic terms. In the world, approximately the 26\% of oil reserves, and approximately 12\% 16 - 19 trillion cubic meters) of natural gas reserves are in the Caspian Sea. When we evaluate oil and natural gas reserves, the Caspian Sea (Region), not as much as the Persian Gulf, comes third after the Siberia in oil potential. Clean, cheap and safe way to...

Today, the world is involved in a major experiment, which studies what happens when they are released into the atmosphere in greater quantities of carbon dioxide and other gases. The climate models developed by specialists in the field estimate that, the global climate will warm by 1, 1 – 6,400 C during this century. The main cause of the global warming is increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere in the last centuries. The gases behave like walls of a greenhouse, maintaining the solar energy in the ...

Until the year of 1996, there had been an intense air pollution beyond standards because of the use of fossil fuels such as coal and fuel oil especially in homes in the winter. With the start of the use of natural gas in Istanbul after 1996 there has been a decrase in the amount of air pollution. In this study, the measurement values of pre and post natural gas use in 10 different measurement stations conducted by ‘Istanbul Metropolitan Municapality, Environment Protection and Development Department, Environment...

Past to present, climate changes take place on every sections of the world during the history. This is an ordinary fact when these changes occur naturally, i.e. the natural climate changes are the necessity of our world’s natural behavior, and then the beings on the world are not affected artificially. However, in recent years, some human activities that increase the concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere and cause global warming are the most effective factors playing great roles on changing...

Biomass resources include wood and wood wastes, agricultural crops and their waste by products, municipal solid waste, animal wastes, waste from food processing. Especially organic waste, dumped in open places causes heavy environmental pollution to soil, groundwater and surface waters as the amount of the waste generated is growing very fast. However, energy from biomass may significantly contribute to the growing future demand for energy. Energy from biomass avoids the net increase of carbon dioxide in the atmos...

There are selected regions with a certain quality of a situation or a tendency of changes of environmental components. The significantly changes, in these areas are observed at soils, as the basic component of environment at which is man biologically contacted. The significantly chemical degradation of soils - acidification and contamination of soils with heavy metals - in loaded regions – the middle Spis region are showed. The middle Spis region is area at Slovak republic with deteriorated or heavily deteriorat...

The mushrooms are able of cumulating metals from environment depending on specie, harvesting place, type of soil, degree of development and other environment conditions. The paper presents the results of the study on levels of copper, zinc, iron, manganese, chromium and calcium in mushroom harvests from Calimani site where the soil is degraded by mining work. The mycological material (19 samples of mushrooms) was harvested from 6 places of Calimani site: Ilva Dump, Dumitrelul Dump, near Dump of Pin, Dump of Pin, P...

The spoil heaps, present in the perimeter of the hydropower plants, industrial chemical complexes, groups of mining exploitation and minerals processing etc. are an important prejudice for the environment, and because of this, they need special attention (monitoring, EIA, implementation of some strategies of ecological restoration). We focused the attention on two spoil heaps categories from W. Romania (in Retezat National Park) and S.W. Romania (Moldova Noua complex), different as their provenience, morphological...

The paper present some result obtained by the authors in the research activity developed in the creation of a methodology to solve the environmental problems. The results presented in this paper are part of the soil moisture preservation and soil compaction prevention method, which is including in the methodology. The method is based on the soil moisture and compaction prediction in a certain geographic zone. The prediction is based on the maps of soil moisture and compaction, which is obtained starting of the GPS...

Recent data demonstrate a significant capacity of mushrooms to retain the pollutants from soil, so being realised the mycoremediation of soil. Nitrogen oxides are major atmospheric pollutants. The main oxides, nitrogen monoxide and dioxide, penetrated in human body cause important toxic effects: methaemoglobinemia, haemolysis, vasodilatation and even cancerogenesis. The accumulation of these oxides in mushrooms, as nitrites and nitrates, is dependent on: species, environmental conditions and chemical composition o...

The Estonian kukersite is the largest oil shale resource in the world used industrially today. The majority of mined oil shale is utilized for electricity and heat production. About 20\% of all of the oil shale extracted annually is used for retorting shale-oil and shale-gas, after which large amount of environmentally hazardous solid retort residue – semi-coke is left over. Production of 1 tonne of shale-oil is accompanied by almost 3 tonnes of semi-coke waste. During more than 80 years of operation over 110 mi...

In this study, removal zinc from aqueous solution was studied using smectite-bearing soil. The effects of initial Zn(II) concentration, pH, adsorbent dosage, and contact time were investigated. When the initial concentration of Zn(II) was incresed from 0.7 to 3.77 mM, the Zn(II) removal efficiency decreased from 100\% to 90.7\%. To determine the effect of pH on the adsorption efficiency of Zn(II), pH was varied between 3.0 and 7.0. The sorption efficiency of Zn(II) onto soil seems to be independent of pH with in s...

We introduce an example of a detailed study of soil texture and geochemistry with the aim of designing appropriate soil washing systems. Concretely, we have studied soils affected by the mining works of “Los Rueldos” (Asturias, Spain). After an initial characterization, composite, representative samples were taken and ICP-MS analysis was carried out. Results showed very high concentrations of As, and significant presence of heavy metals such Hg, Pb and Zn specially in silt-clay fractions obtained after wet sie...

The aim of this study is to provide data on biological state of soil in depth, using the comparative study of general microbiota frequency and activity. For the quantitative analysis of soil microbiota, we have used soil samples for dilutions (10-1 - 10-6). The results were expressed in colony-forming units/g soil (CFU). The soil was sampling from Calimani National Park (The Oriental Carpathians) in October 2006, June and September 2007. The soil microbiota registers quantitative variations from one sample point t...

Biogas is a part of the natural circle. Biogas is formed by the activity of anaerobic bacteria. In nature biogas is produced for example in bogs. It is also possible to produce from biological material in an environment free from air. The gas that is produced is methane (CH4), which is an excellent fuel for heat, electricity, and cars that doesn’t drain the earth’s fossil resources. The raw-material in biogas production has traditionally been waste from the food industries, and communal sewage treatment works....

Our paper presents the results of a study concerning the possibility to use mushrooms for soil remediation after mining exploitation. The samples have been harvested from Calimani Mountains (Northern Carpathians) an important site for sulphur extraction in Romania. Despite, the sulphur mines have been closed from several years, soil and vegetation are still affected and is necessary to improve theirs qualities especially by biological methods. By oxidation processes, sulphur is transformed in air to oxides especia...

It is well known that, many kinds of industrial organic waste can be used for biogas production, but the biogas and methane yields depend on the biodegrability of the compounds in raw material. Recent studies are aimed to increase the biodegradability of organic matter by many pretreatment processes. In this study, belt-filter press sludge which has been taken from the waste water treatment plant of ETAP, has been used in experiments, basic and/or microwave radiation (MW) pretreatments have been carried out in ord...

Heavy metals in wastewater are quite important because of being toxic effect for public health. Wastewaters that contain heavy metals are generally caused by industries discharged, either after primary treatment or even no-treatment farmers in Konya use wastewater for irrigation that discharged into canal. This causes soil pollution also decreases plant quality. Heavy metals can reach to humans and animals and causes toxic effects through food-chain. The aim of this study is determining heavy metal accumulation on...

We took into consideration aspects regarding the physiology at two species of wooden angiosperms cultivated in sites from industrial area of Borzesti, Bacau District: Populus tremula L. and Tilia tomentosa Moench., during their ontogenetic cycle. We also talked about aspects related to some special biochemical and physiological parameters (dry matter content and assimilating pigments content). The researches of vegetal physiology have used classical methods of investigation. The negative influence of air pollutant...

The studying area is placed on the surrounding of Ataturk Dam in Bozova (S.URFA) in the southern Turkey. The main lithology of the region starts calcareous marl and upper part is consist of lime stones with crystalline dolomites and chert. In the region there are some important climatic changes which took place during the accumulating water in the lake of the dam. These situations caused many new environmental and agricultural effects. Especially the geochemical features of the lithological unit of the region role...