Pollution monitoring in the urban environment is an issue of paramount importance both for public health and for the environment, and in relation to the need of finding adequate solutions towards a more sustainable lifestyle. This is particularly true in the case of areas where specific activities or intense emissions occur. This is the case, for example, of ports. In fact, harbours are important for economic and social development of coastal areas, but they also represent an anthropogenic source of emissions, often located near urban centres and industrial areas. In order to define the characteristics and the boundaries of these critical areas, a method for conducting a survey has been defined and tested. The purpose of this work is to define a methodological approach for particulate matter (PM) monitoring of a given extended source. This article introduces a specific case study in the port of Naples (Southern Italy). A preliminary survey approach for defining the setup and operational conditions for a monitoring network has been defined. In this research a key role is played by the use of innovative devices, having a higher spatial and temporal resolution with respect to standard reference instruments, which already proved to be effective means in supporting the survey actions.

Cities are home of about 70% of the European population, and it is expected that by 2050 this number will be achieved around the world. As a result, cities are facing important challenges related to pressures induced by changes on urban metabolism and by climate change (CC) effects. Understanding the key factors determining the vulnerability of a city provides a framework to consider resilience. These issues become more and more relevant since changes in urban structure and metabolism together with CC will start affecting atmospheric emissions, urban air quality and consequently human health. Cobenefits of an urban air quality and CC approach need to be further addressed taking into consideration that CC creates both risks and opportunities. Therefore, an integrated assessment of the interaction between resilience factors and CC effects, and its influence on the urban microclimate and air quality, is required to better adapt to future climate. This knowledge is fundamental to support policy makers and stake- holders helping them to choose the best strategies to manage resources, to mitigate extreme weather events and to predict air pollution episodes. This article offers a systematic review on CC impacts in cities, providing some adaptation strategies and suggesting future research topics.

The plan for control of vehicle pollution was developed by the government of Paraná, a state located in the south of Brazil, to create an awareness among the community regarding the importance of changing urban mobility culture – which otherwise might have a dramatic impact over the next few years. The inventory shows that Curitiba has one of the highest vehicles/inhabitant ratios in the country, which affects air quality; considerable increase in pollution is noticeable and such increase is due to use of fossil fuels, mainly diesel. The increase of the vehicles fleet over the past 5 years has caused air quality to decrease and now Curitiba has 0.8 vehicle per person. The purpose of the plan is to report changes to the fleet, fostering the use of alternative transportation and ensuring a regular mechanical maintenance of all the fleet to reverse the current trend.

The southern part of Dunedin City, New Zealand, is built over an estuarine marsh, close to sea level and is vulnerable to increased flooding from raised groundwater levels, which will only worsen with predicted sea level rise. Limited data indicate that this area may also be subsiding via either sediment consolidation or tectonism. The underlying sediments amplify seismic waves with the potential to liquefy during strong earthquake shaking. Dunedin is a hazardous place to live and about 2,600 homes are less than 50 cm above mean sea level. Past mining of a dune barrier led to inundation of parts of the city and without the re-established dune barrier, this community would be unprotected. In June 2015, a moderate rainfall event caused NZD 26 million damage through flooding, primarily related to deteriorating and poorly maintained drainage infrastructure. However, the groundwater level here is near the surface (0–1 m depth) and shows tidal fluctuations, which influence the degree of flooding. Reduced storm water storage, related to the increased groundwater levels due to sea level rise, will result in more frequent flooding and of greater magnitude over time. Engineering solutions such as increased pumping capacity and creation of storage areas will be required at considerable cost and disruption to the city. There are difficult decisions to be made about the sustainability of this low-lying coastal community in terms of investment and protection or abandonment of this area. While fundamentally social and economic issues, such decisions should be informed by rigorous technical assessments and investigation and more extensive monitoring systems.

An increase of outflow of 1.70–4.66 mm was observed in five mountain small basins within areas that sustained a tremor of lower 6 on the Japanese intensity scale in Ibaraki during the 7–8 days immediately after the 2011 earthquake off the Pacific coast of Tohoku. The groundwater level dropped as much as about 1m in 8 days after the earthquake at a well in one of these watersheds. Comparison of the relation between outflow and groundwater level in this watershed for one year before and after the earthquake suggests that the earthquake has encouraged outflow of water of underground origin. however, the flow increment immediately after the earthquake was not so great. Computational analysis results indicate that the outflow might have been compensated by decline in a groundwater level of about 1.5% of the area of the basin area, at most. accordingly, the decline in the groundwater level is regarded as a phenomenon occurring in an extremely limited area within the watershed.

Control of water quality of coastal waters is essential to ensure the safety of bathers. Therefore, the current legislation establishes maximum concentration levels of faecal bacteria, in particular Escherichia coli and intestinal Enterococci. After several studies, it is known that there are environmental and physical factors such as the level of urbanization of the beach, sediment type, rainfall, salinity and water temperature, which influence the concentration of these bacteria. However, there are many other factors, such as the morphology of the beach, its orientation relative to waves and the proximity of spills, that can affect the survival of these bacteria and therefore directly influence the water quality in the coastal zone. In this article, 270 beaches between the provinces of Valencia and Granada (Spain) were analysed. It was observed that the local factors that further affect the concentration of faecal bacteria in coastal water are the presence of meadows of Posidonia oceanica, the orientation of the beach with respect to the direction of the most common incident waves and the agricultural discharges in the sea.

Current implementations of federal and state regulations have relied heavily on regional-scale photo-chemical models which, however, reflect outdated emissions and have a level of uncertainly due to the coarse grid resolution used in typical applications. The purpose of this study is to refine the 12 km grid resolution from recent assessments to a 4 km grid level in a novel application of the Community Mul- tiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) modelling system on an annual timescale. The main incentive was to determine the total acidic and mercury deposition over New York State (NYS) and the contribution of the NYS power sector point sources. To that end, the latest available United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (USEPA) National Emissions Inventory (NEI) for 2011 and Weather Research Forecast (WRF) simulated meteorological data were generated on the 4 km grid domain over the Northeastern United States centred on NYS. For mercury, emissions of the elemental, oxidized and particulate species were characterized for source categories to allow for species-dependent wet removal factors and dry deposition velocities. The results for mercury deposition indicate very low contributions from all NYS, but showed the importance of the oxidized Hg from both wet and dry components. The impacts of Hg emissions outside the modelling domain were found to clearly dominate total depositions in NYS. For acidic deposition, the wet component controlled for sulphate, while for total sulphur and nitrates, dry deposition had a significant contribution. For the NYS power sector, the only large contribution was due to dry deposition of SO2 for total sulphur. The projected total wet depositions of sulphate, nitrate and mercury compare very favourably with observed levels at National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP) sites.

Large-scale water transfer projects can be an important way of mitigating water scarcity and have been adopted worldwide. Nevertheless, investments in massive infrastructure, negative environmental impacts and restrictive legislation have required water managers to adopt new approaches, such as small-scale inter-basin water transfer (SSIWT), especially in industrial and urbanized regions. However, there is a lack of research concerning environmental impact assessments of SSIWT to support decision-making, notably in developing countries (such as Brazil). The main goal of this research was to assess the environmental impacts of water transfer on the quality of surface water in the Jundiaí-Mirim river basin, south-east Brazil. Water samples were collected along the Jundiaí-Mirim River in September 2013 (in the absence of SSIWT) and in September 2014 (during SSIWT) for determining the following parameters: pH, temperature, turbidity, electrical conductivity (EC), dissolved oxygen (DO), total organic carbon (TOC), dissolved organic carbon (DOC), total phosphorus (TP), total nitrogen (TN), chloride (Cl−), chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) and dissolved and total metals (Al, Cd, Cu, Fe, Mg and Mn). Descriptive statistics and the paired Student’s t-test (p < 0.05) were used to test the hypothesis that there was an effect of SSIWT on water quality. The results showed impacts due to the transfer of ions from the Atibaia River to the Jundiaí-Mirim River, as well as the degradation of riverbanks, which significantly (p < 0.05) influenced DO, TOC, DOC, TN, Cl−, Al, Fe and Mg concentrations. A positive impact on the trophic state was observed due to the increased flow caused by the water transfer, which acted to flush the river and reservoir. The findings provide important information on the environmental performance of small-scale hydraulic operations, which should assist decision-makers in establishing strategies to reduce negative environmental impacts.

Organic matter in clays often controls their geotechnical behaviour because of its influence on the strength and strain properties in bulk. It is integrated in the clay particle matrix and serves as a weak ductile component to an extent that depends on the degree of decomposition, which is a function of the moisture conditions, temperature and microfauna. Nematodes and arthropods, bacteria and fungi feed on it and make the soil porous, allowing infiltration of air and water. In the final stage of decomposi- tion, the rest product is humus. The function of organic constituents in clay depends on the atomic and molecular bonds within them and between them and the clay minerals. Under moderate deviatoric bulk stress conditions, strain occurs in the molecular scale involving slip when energy barriers, determined by the bond strength, are overcome. Shearing makes the slips accumulate and causes successive changes of the energy bond spectrum, implying that low-energy barriers are used while high-energy barriers become dominant. For low and moderate safety factors, this leads to a blueshift of the spectrum and to stiffening and brittleness. The mineral phase has a certain barrier spectrum, while the organics have their own, implying rapid overcoming of the lower-energy barriers. This results in large shear strain and higher strain rate and lower shear strength and ‘quickness’. Organic clay undergoes creep strain that is similar to that of smectite clay and controls long-term settlement of buildings and the stability of natural and excavated slopes.