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This study highlights how Chinese economic development detrimentally impacted water quality in recent decades and how this has been improved by enormous investment in environmental remediation funded by the Chinese government. To our knowledge, this study is the first to describe the variability of surface water quality in inland waters in China, the affecting drivers behind the changes, and how the government-financed conservation actions have impacted water quality. Water quality was found to be poorest in the North and the Northeast China Plain where there is greater coverage of developed land (cities + cropland), a higher gross domestic product (GDP), and higher population density. There are significant positive relationships between the concentration of the annual mean chemical oxygen demand (COD) and the percentage of developed land use (cities + cropland), GDP, and population density in the individual watersheds (p < 0.001). During the past decade, following Chinese government-financed investments in environmental restoration and reforestation, the water quality of Chinese inland waters has improved markedly, which is particularly evident from the significant and exponentially decreasing GDP-normalized COD and ammonium (NH4+-N) concentrations. It is evident that the increasing GDP in China over the past decade did not occur at the continued expense of its inland water ecosystems. This offers hope for the future, also for other industrializing countries, that with appropriate environmental investments a high GDP can be reached and maintained, while simultaneously preserving inland aquatic ecosystems, particularly through management of sewage discharge.

The design and assessment of net-zero buildings commonly focus exclusively on the operational phase, ignoring the embodied environmental impacts over the building life cycle. An analysis is presented on the consequences of integrating embodied impacts into the assessment of the environmental advantageousness of net-zero concepts. Fundamental issues needing consideration in the design process - based on the evaluation of primary energy use and related greenhouse gas emissions - are examined by comparing three net-zero building design and assessment cases: (1) no embodied impacts included, net balance limited to the operation stage only; (2) embodied impacts included but evaluated separately from the operation stage; and (3) embodied impacts included with the operation stage in a life cycle approach. A review of recent developments in research, standardization activities and design practice and the presentation of a case study of a residential building in Norway highlight the critical importance of performance indicator definitions and system boundaries. A practical checklist is presented to guide the process of incorporating embodied impacts across the building life cycle phases in net-zero design. Its implications are considered on overall environmental impact assessment of buildings. Research and development challenges, as well as recommendations for designers and other stakeholders, are identified.

The building and construction sector is a large contributor to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and consumes vast natural resources. Improvements in this sector are of fundamental importance for national and global targets to combat climate change. In this context, vertical greenery systems (VGS) in buildings have become popular in urban areas to restore green space in cities and be an adaptation strategy for challenges such as climate change. However, only a small amount of knowledge is available on the different VGS environmental impacts. This paper discusses a comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) between a building with green walls, a building with green facades and a reference building without any greenery system in the continental Mediterranean climate. This life cycle assessment is carried according to ISO 14040/44 using ReCiPe and GWP indicators. Moreover, this study fills this gap by thoroughly tracking and quantifying all impacts in all phases of the building life cycle related to the manufacturing and construction stage, maintenance, use stage (operational energy use experimentally tested), and final disposal. The adopted functional unit is the square meter of the facade. Results showed that the operational stage had the highest impact contributing by up to 90% of the total environmental impacts during its 50 years life cycle. Moreover, when considering VGS, there is an annual reduction of about 1% in the environmental burdens. However, in summer, the reduction is almost 50%. Finally, if the use stage is excluded, the manufacturing and the maintenance stage are the most significant contributors, especially in the green wall system.

AbstractClimate change effects along with anthropogenic activities present the main factors that threaten the existence of heritage sites across the north Nile Delta of Egypt close to the coastline of the Mediterranean Sea. Observing the changes in the landscape close to the archaeological sites is an important issue for decision‐makers in terms of reducing the negative impact of natural events and human activities. The coastal heritage sites are becoming strongly threatened by the rising sea level phenomena that will happen due to global warming. Focusing on the distribution of the archaeological sites, this study aims to detect the areas at risk of shoreline erosion or accretion in the northern shoreline of the Nile Delta. In this study, the changes in the northern shoreline of the Nile Delta were observed and calculated during the last hundred years based on the integration between the old topographic maps from surveys in 1900, 1925 and 1945, optical satellite images captured by Landsat in 1972, 1986 and 2000; Sentinel2 2021; and the Radar SRTM data. The results of this study showed that the changes were enormous with a great shoreline erosion process over the last 121 years recorded along the shoreline in the periods between 1900–1925, 1925–1945, 1945–1972, 1972–1986, 1986–2000 and 2000–2021. The areas eroded were about 5.3, 4.7, 5.6, 8.9, 2.5 and 5.4 km2, respectively. Such negative movements caused the loss of two heritage sites, and the expected changes will lead to the loss of additional heritage sites in the next 500 years. Furthermore, a model was suggested for protecting the coastal heritage sites threatened by the risk of submergence. This study can help the decision‐makers to detect the coastal archaeological sites at risk and create innovative solutions for protecting these irreplaceable heritage sites.

A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with focus on carbon footprint, followed by Life Cycle Costing (LCC) of municipal solid waste (MSW) management were conducted in a residential area of a medium-sized European city of 80,000 inhabitants. The initial results showed high environmental impacts and lack of economic sustainability, due to the high amounts of waste landfilled, the low extent of separate collection, low performance of mechanical-biological treatment as well as absence from alternatives to landfilling of non-recyclable materials. Taking this result as a baseline scenario, three improvement.s were tested with the aim of turning the carbon footprint of the local MSW management system into a neutral value: (i) increased separate collection of recyclables, (ii) enhanced biogas production and (iii) refuse-derived fuel (RDF) production. Successively adding the improvements, three alternative improved scenarios were defined, until reaching a negative carbon footprint, meaning that an optimised system would avoid GHG emissions. The proposed changes were sufficient to achieve carbon neutrality, as well as reduce overall environmental impacts, but were not enough for achieving economic sustainability due to the great influence of collection costs, especially for separate collection. It was concluded that by using an adequate combination of several treatment options and increasing the separate collection of recyclable materials it is possible to turn MSW management into a carbon neutral activity as well as improve its economic balance.

As it becomes clear that climate change is not easily within the boundaries of the 1990's, society needs to be prepared and needs to anticipate future changes due to the uncertain changes in climate. So far, extensive research has been carried out on several issues including the coastal defence or shifting ecozones. However, the role spatial design and planning can play in adapting to climate change has not yet been focussed on.This book illuminates the way adaptation to climate change is tackled in water management, ecology, coastal defence, the urban environment and energy. The question posed is how each sector can anticipate climate change by creating spatial designs and plans. The main message of this book is that spatial design and planning are a very useful tool in adapting to climate change. It offers an integral view on the issue, it is capable in dealing with uncertainties and it opens the way to creative and anticipative solutions. Dealing with adaptation to climate change requires a shift in mindset; from a technical rational way of thinking towards an integral proactive one. A new era in spatial design and planning looms on the horizon. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009.

It is widely known that fossil fuels are limited; consequently, the generation of new sources of energy in a clean and environmentally friendly manner is a research priority. Bioethanol appears to be one potential solution, especially second-generation production from renewable biomass.In order to use lignocellulosic feedstock to produce bioethanol, its polysaccharide components, cellulose and hemicellulose, must be hydrolysed into soluble sugars, which can then be converted into ethanol by fermentative microorganisms such as Geobacillus thermoglucosidasius TM242 used by the company ReBio Technologies Ltd.To date, the cost of commercial enzymes used during the hydrolysis process remains a major economic consideration in the production of second-generation bioethanol as an alternative fuel. The research project presented in this thesis aims to improve this rate-limiting step of microbial bioethanol production through an investigation of the different enzymes associated with hemicellulose hydrolysis. Firstly, the TM242 genome sequence revealed a number of genes encoding glycoside-hydrolases. Six of these genes were cloned and expressed in E. coli and the recombinant enzymes characterised; three of them, two β-xylosidases and an α arabinofuranosidase, are relevant to xylan hydrolysis, and were found to be highly active and thermostable. Crystallisation of one of the β-xylosidases permitted the determination of a high-resolution (1.7 Å) structure of the apo-enzyme along with a lower resolution (2.6 Å) structure of the enzyme-substrate complex, resulting in the first reported structure of a GH52 family member (Espina et al., 2014).Secondly, as the TM242 microorganism lacks xylanase enzymes, four genes encoding xylanases from closely-related Geobacillus strains were cloned and expressed in E. coli, with one of them being also successfully cloned and expressed in G. thermoglucosidasius TM242. This heterologous xylanase was secreted in active form representing an enhanced biomass utilisation by TM242.In conclusion, it is felt that the findings presented here have the potential to make a valuable contribution towards second-generation bioethanol production.