Soil Pollution
Mahmood Kasaei; Nasrin Gharahi; Rafat Zare Bidaki
Abstract
Introduction: Nitrogen is the nutrient in plants production which usually can be added as a fertilizer into the soil. Nitrate is one of the pollutants which is mainly caused by agricultural activities which contaminants groundwater and surface water and threatens human health. Investigating an effective ...
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Introduction: Nitrogen is the nutrient in plants production which usually can be added as a fertilizer into the soil. Nitrate is one of the pollutants which is mainly caused by agricultural activities which contaminants groundwater and surface water and threatens human health. Investigating an effective factor on water and minerals movement in soil and applying the new modifiers such as inorganic nanoparticles and biochar might be useful in reducing nitrate leaching and avoiding underground waters pollutions. Due to this difficulty, some situations to preserve nitrogen in the upper layers of soil such as increasing the absorbent surfaces for minerals, zeolite modifier, and biochar are considered by researchers. As many research have been conducted on using biochar in agricultural systems in terms of organic carbon sequestration in soil and reducing the greenhouse gases, its influence on other processes such as nitrate leaching has been considered as well. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of mineral nano-particles and biochar on nitrate leaching in soil and aggregate stability.Materials and Methods: This study had been conducted in the laboratory in faculty of natural resources and geology science, Shahrekord University. Treatments in this study included zeolite, cloisite, and biochar at three levels. PVC pipes with 3 cm in diameter and 40 cm in height were used for the soil columns. Urea fertilizer included 46% pure nitrogen was applied to the soil columns. The amount of the Urea fertilizer was employed as an applied fertilizer for corn plants (200 g Nitrogen per hectare). Urea fertilizer was added as a solution to the soil in irrigation 1, and 5 from irrigation events. At the end of each irrigation event, nitrate effluent was measured using Spectrophotometry method.Results and Discussion: The results showed a significant reduction of nitrate leaching in treatments, 1g biochar, 1g zeolite, and 1g cloisite compared to the control treatment. There was no significant difference between reduction of nitrate leaching in the three treatments, 1g biochar, 1g Zeolite, and 1g cloisite. Furthermore, nitrate leaching in treatments, 5g biochar, 5g zeolite, and 5g cloisite compared to the control treatment was decreased significantly. In all irrigations, 5g biochar had the smallest amount of nitrate leaching comparing 5g zeolite, and 5g Clozite. In general, the results showed that nitrate leaching would be decreased significantly by adding biochar and mineral nano-particles (5%) into the soil. According to the present results and previous findings, it can be mentioned that adding biochar into the soil will cause improving the soil physical properties and reducing nitrate leaching. Thus, we show here, that biochar and nano-particles soil application decreased nitrate leaching and enhanced soil aggregate stability.
Rasool Zamani-Ahmadmahmoodi; Nasrin Gharahi; Samira Bayati; Hojatollah Khedri-Gharibvand; Mahnaz Amini; Fatemeh Asadi
Abstract
Introduction: Solid waste management became an important environmental issue in the last century. This study was conducted to evaluate the knowledge and attitudes of people regarding urban waste management in Shahrekord in 2013. Solid waste materials in Shahrekord often include household, commercial, ...
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Introduction: Solid waste management became an important environmental issue in the last century. This study was conducted to evaluate the knowledge and attitudes of people regarding urban waste management in Shahrekord in 2013. Solid waste materials in Shahrekord often include household, commercial, industrial, construction and agricultural waste. These wastes are buried unseparated and a percentage of the waste remains unmanaged. Since there is no recycling factory in Chaharmahal & Bakhtiari Province, many wastes, which have high economic value, are destroyed with indifference. Considering the influential role of urban and provincial managers and planners, with a little reflection and acceptance of the role of community members in the management cycle, many problems related to the next stages of the waste disposal system can be reduced to the minimum possible.Materials and Methods: In order to execute this study, a combined method (field, library and documentary, analytical and descriptive methods) was used. The city was divided into three districts and randomly, 50 questionnaires (n=150) were distributed. The validity of the questionnaires was confirmed by an expert in the field of waste materials from the medical sciences universities in the country and its reliability was confirmed by Cronbach’s alpha test. Finally, the data obtained from these questionnaires were analyzed using Excel and SPSS version 19 software, aided by descriptive statistics, correlation tests and variance analysis. In order to investigate the effect of gender on the participation rate, independent T-test was used, and the effect of education and age structure on the participation rate was evaluated by ANOVA test.Results: Given a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.87, the questions asked in the questionnaires had good validity. The largest number of respondents to the questionnaires were in the age range of 25-40 years old (53.3 percent), and in terms of education, they had associate and bachelors degrees (55.3 percent). Also, 50.7% of the respondents were women and 49.3% were men. The results showed a significant relationship between the level of education of people and their knowledge about solid waste management (chi-square, 0.05). There was no relationship between the awareness of people and their age and gender (chi-square, 0.05). The results of the frequency distribution of people’s responses regarding solid waste showed that approximately 97% of people are fully aware of the difference between dry and wet waste. The mean score of awareness of people in this study was 31.88 ± 0.98 (mean ± SD) of 68 score.Discussion: According to these results, awareness of people in Shahrekord was estimated as medium. These results indicated that in a society with a high level of culture, it is easier to manage solid waste. Therefore, there is a need for planning to change the behavior and attitudes of families and implement programs to increase people’s knowledge based on the social and cultural context of the study area. Therefore, to improve solid waste management, it should be use appropriate educational media to promote public culture in relation to solid waste management.