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Topic Review
Remote Sensing and Monitoring of Marine Pollution
With the rapid development of urbanization and industrialization, human activities have caused marine pollution in three ways: land source, air source, and sea source, leading to the problem of marine environments. Remote sensing, with its wide coverage and fast and accurate monitoring capability, continues to be an important tool for marine environment monitoring and evaluation research.
  • 258
  • 07 Nov 2023
Topic Review
Remote Sensing and Deep Learning
The advances in remote sensing technologies, hence the fast-growing volume of timely data available at the global scale, offer new opportunities for a variety of applications. Deep learning being significantly successful in dealing with Big Data, is a great candidate for exploiting the potentials of such complex massive data. However, with remote sensing, there are some challenges related to the ground-truth, resolution, and the nature of data that require further efforts and adaptions of deep learning techniques.
  • 1.6K
  • 26 Jan 2021
Topic Review
Remote Sensing Land Surface Temperature-Based ET Algorithms
Evapotranspiration (ET) is a process that includes evaporation from the surface, such as open water bodies, soil and vegetation, and transpiration as the water released mostly by the plant leaves transported from the root system. ET is a key factor in the hydrological cycle, since it describes the mechanism and energy needed to transport the liquid water stored in the soil-watershed-canopy system to the atmosphere, converted into water vapour.  Remote sensing technology is a globally consistent and economically feasible means to estimate ET values at regional and meso-scales on the Earth’s surface, since the approach directly links surface radiances and the components of the surface energy balance. Over the past, combined use of satellite remote sensing data from optical and thermal infrared sensors has provided substantial progress in the estimation of ET. Based on the concept of surface energy balance and net radiation, most remote sensing models have estimated ET for application studies such as water consumption, water resources planning and management over watersheds or modeling ecological processes and analyzing biophysical characteristics of landscape.
  • 650
  • 02 Aug 2022
Topic Review
Remediation Solutions for AMDrainage
Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) is a toxic wastewater stream formed when oxygenated water comes into contact with exposed mine rock surfaces containing sulphide minerals. The formation of AMD is most prominent in abandoned mines where water accumulates in mine shafts and pits allowing exposure to sulphide minerals. The resulting AMD is typically characterised by a low pH with high concentrations of heavy metals and dissolved sulphate. When left untreated, AMD streams can cause severe environmental degradation, including the contamination of natural water bodies, destroying aquatic life and toxifying natural habitats. AMD remediation methods can be divided into two main categories, active treatment and passive treatment methods. Active treatment methods are characterised by process inputs such as energy, chemicals, labour and automated control, whereas passive remediation technologies require minimal process inputs and are mostly self-sustaining. Passive treatment methods are typically at source constructions comprising of a combination of naturally occurring geochemical, physical and biological processes.
  • 773
  • 04 Aug 2021
Topic Review
Remediation of Toxic Metals from Paddy Fields
Toxic metals (TMs)  may affect human growth and development, physiological metabolism, etc., and may cause diseases and even death. TMs enter the food chain via organisms located at the bottom of the food chain, and their concentration and toxicity are subsequently amplified as they move further up the food chain. Consuming a certain amount of food contaminated by TMs can threaten an individual’s health. Thus, humans (who are at the top of the food chain) face great health risks, as they risk TM exposure principally through food intake. Rice is more important than fish in terms of the risk of metal exposure in the human diet, and arsenic requires particular attention. Grain crops (e.g., rice) that grow on soil/water polluted by TMs not only experience a reduction in yield and quality but also enrich a large amount of TMs. To reduce the threat of TMs to human health, measures must be taken from the source. In particular, uncontaminated soil and water bodies can guarantee the production of healthy food, which is key to human health. Therefore, the research and exploration of the technical methods of heavy metal removal or remediation in rice fields is of great significance to human food safety and health.
  • 488
  • 31 May 2022
Topic Review
Remediating Endocrine-Disrupting Compounds
Over the years, the persistent occurrence of superfluous endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs) (sub µg L−1) in water has led to serious health disorders in human and aquatic lives, as well as undermined the water quality. At present, there are no generally accepted regulatory discharge limits for the EDCs to avert their possible negative impacts. Moreover, the conventional treatment processes have reportedly failed to remove the persistent EDC pollutants, and this has led researchers to develop alternative treatment methods. Comprehensive information on the recent advances in the existing novel treatment processes and their peculiar limitations is still lacking. In this regard, the various treatment methods for the removal of EDCs are critically studied and reported in this entry.
  • 539
  • 23 Nov 2021
Topic Review
Reliability of Driving Simulator
Despite constant technological innovation, road transport remains a significant source of pollutant emissions, and effective driver-behaviour changes can be considered as solutions that can increase the sustainability of road traffic in a short period. Thus, understanding driver behaviour plays a key role in assessing traffic-related impacts. Since real-world experiments entail some risks and are often not flexible, simulator-based experiments can be relevant to studying vehicle dynamics and driver behaviour. This research seeks to evaluate how reliable a simulator-based experiment can be for assessing the operational and environmental impacts of a typical light-duty vehicle.
  • 200
  • 20 Nov 2023
Topic Review
Release of Microplastics from Masks
The global panic caused by COVID-19 has continued to increase people’s demand for masks. Due to inadequate management and disposal practice, these masks have entered the environment and release a large amount of microplastics (MPs), posing a serious threat to the environment and human health. 
  • 708
  • 29 Aug 2022
Topic Review
Relative Humidity
Relative humidity (RH) is the ratio of the partial pressure of water vapor to the equilibrium vapor pressure of water at a given temperature. Relative humidity depends on temperature and the pressure of the system of interest. The same amount of water vapor results in higher relative humidity in cool air than warm air. A related parameter is the dew point.
  • 4.1K
  • 29 Sep 2022
Topic Review
Reinforcement (Speciation)
Reinforcement is a process of speciation where natural selection increases the reproductive isolation (further divided to pre-zygotic isolation and post-zygotic isolation) between two populations of species. This occurs as a result of selection acting against the production of hybrid individuals of low fitness. The idea was originally developed by Alfred Russel Wallace and is sometimes referred to as the Wallace effect. The modern concept of reinforcement originates from Theodosius Dobzhansky. He envisioned a species separated allopatrically, where during secondary contact the two populations mate, producing hybrids with lower fitness. Natural selection results from the hybrid's inability to produce viable offspring; thus members of one species who do not mate with members of the other have greater reproductive success. This favors the evolution of greater prezygotic isolation (differences in behavior or biology that inhibit formation of hybrid zygotes). Reinforcement is one of the few cases in which selection can favor an increase in prezygotic isolation, influencing the process of speciation directly. This aspect has been particularly appealing among evolutionary biologists. The support for reinforcement has fluctuated since its inception, and terminological confusion and differences in usage over history have led to multiple meanings and complications. Various objections have been raised by evolutionary biologists as to the plausibility of its occurrence. Since the 1990s, data from theory, experiments, and nature have overcome many of the past objections, rendering reinforcement widely accepted,:354 though its prevalence in nature remains unknown. Numerous models have been developed to understand its operation in nature, most relying on several facets: genetics, population structures, influences of selection, and mating behaviors. Empirical support for reinforcement exists, both in the laboratory and in nature. Documented examples are found in a wide range of organisms: both vertebrates and invertebrates, fungi, and plants. The secondary contact of originally separated incipient species (the initial stage of speciation) is increasing due to human activities such as the introduction of invasive species or the modification of natural habitats. This has implications for measures of biodiversity and may become more relevant in the future.
  • 1.3K
  • 28 Apr 2023
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