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Climate change, environmental degradation, and limited resources are motivations for sustainable forest management. Forests, the most abundant renewable resource on earth, used to make a wide variety of forest-based products for human consumption. To provide a scientific measure of a product’s sustainability and environmental performance, the life cycle assessment (LCA) method is used. This article provides a comprehensive review of environmental performances of forest-based products including traditional building products, emerging (mass-timber) building products and nanomaterials using attributional LCA. Across the supply chain, the product manufacturing life-cycle stage tends to have the largest environmental impacts. However, forest management activities and logistics tend to have the greatest economic impact. In addition, environmental trade-offs exist when regulating emissions as indicated by the latest traditional wood building product LCAs. Interpretation of these LCA results can guide new product development using biomaterials, future (mass) building systems and policy-making on mitigating climate change. Key challenges include handling of uncertainties in the supply chain and complex interactions of environment, material conversion, resource use for product production and quantifying the emissions released.

The Social-Ecological Systems (SES) framework serves as a valuable framework to explore and understand social and ecological interactions, and pathways in water governance. Yet, it lacks a robust understanding of change. We argue an analytical and methodological approach to engaging global changes in SES is critical to strengthening the scope and relevance of the SES framework. Relying on SES and resilience thinking, we propose an institutional and cognitive model of change that institutions and natural resources systems co-evolve to provide a dynamic understanding of SES that stands on three causal mechanisms: institutional complexity trap, rigidity trap, and learning processes. We illustrate how Data Cube technology could overcome current limitations and offer reliable avenues to test hypothesis about the dynamics of social-ecological systems and water security by offering to combine spatial and time data with no major technical requirements for users.

Abstract Microorganisms used in syngas fermentation require nutrients to grow and convert syngas (CO, H2 and CO2) into various products. Many of the essential nutrients can be provided by biochar. Poultry litter biochar (PLBC) contains minerals and trace metals and has a high pH buffering capacity, making it suitable as a nutrient supplement. The effects of PLBC loadings from 1 to 20 g L−1 on syngas fermentation were determined in 250 ml bottle assays. Results showed that 10 and 20 g L−1 PLBC significantly increased ethanol production compared to standard yeast extract (YE) medium. Fermentations in a 3L continuous stirred tank reactor (CSTR) with 10 g L−1 PLBC with and without 4-morpholineethanesulfonic acid (MES) showed 64% and 36% more ethanol production, respectively, than standard medium. The acetic acid accumulated at the beginning of fermentation was completely converted to ethanol in all media tested in the CSTR. These results demonstrate the feasibility of using PLBC medium without costly MES in the CSTR to enhance ethanol production from syngas for potential use at commercial scale.

Among various bioreactors examined in anaerobic digestion and dark fermentation, UASB bioreactor has shown to be a promising alternative. However, mass transfer resistance and biomass washout have been the issues that reported as draw backs of the granular system in the literature. Another problem associated with such a system is its long start-up period as a result of biomass washout and long microbial granulation stage. In this paper, the results obtained from an UASFF bioreactor in methane (AD process) and hydrogen (DF process) production from POME, are presented to assess mass transfer of substrate into the granules and also study the role of internal packing used in the middle part of reactor in the process stability. The value of effectiveness factor, η, for AD and DF processes were calculated to be 0.96 and 0.94, respectively, indicating that there was no mass transfer resistance due to internal and/or external factors. The results showed that the packing material could retain biomass in the reactor and had outstanding contribution in the granulation enhancement. Its role as a supplementing treatment stage was more significant at low HRTs and up-flow velocities.

Forest soil acidification caused by acid deposition is a serious threat to the forest ecosystem. To investigate the liming effects of biomass ash (BA) and alkaline slag (AS) on the acidic topsoil and subsoil, a three-year field experiment under artificial Masson pine was conducted at Langxi, Anhui province in Southern China. The surface application of BA and AS significantly increased the soil pH, and thus decreased exchangeable acidity and active Al in the topsoil. Soil exchangeable Ca2+ and Mg2+ in topsoil were significantly increased by the surface application of BA and AS, while an increase in soil exchangeable K+ was only observed in BA treatments. The soil acidity and active Al in subsoil were decreased by the surface application of AS. Compared with the control, soluble monomeric and exchangeable Al in the subsoil was decreased by 38.0% and 29.4% after 3 years of AS surface application. There was a minimal effect on soluble monomeric and exchangeable Al after the application of BA. The soil exchangeable Ca2+ and Mg2+ in the subsoil increased respectively by 54% and 141% after surface application of 10 t ha-1 AS. The decrease of soil active Al and increase of base cations in subsoil were mainly attributed to the high migration capacity of base cations in AS. In conclusion, the effect of surface application of AS was superior to BA in ameliorating soil acidity and alleviating soil Al toxicity in the subsoil of this Ultisol.

AbstractPrincipal Component Analysis (PCA) was used to evaluate groundwater quality data acquired in the pre-injection and injection periods for the Illinois Basin – Decatur Project (IBDP), a large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) project located in Decatur, Illinois, USA. For the pre-injection and injection periods three principal components explained 76.6% and 80.0% of the total data variance, respectively. Analysis of the pre-injection data set determined that highly positive loadings for total dissolved solids, chloride, bromide, sodium, magnesium, potassium, and electrical conductance designated the first component (PC1) as the salinity factor. High loadings for calcium, iron, and sulfate in component two (PC2) represents an oxidation-reduction component. The third component (PC3) represents groundwater acidity because of highly positive loading of pH. For the injection data set the variables contributed to the first component are bromide, sodium, total dissolved solids, chloride, electrical conductance, potassium, sulfate, iron, and calcium. Sulfate, magnesium, and calcium contribute to the second component and pH to the third component and represent salinity, dissolution, and acidity of groundwater. The results of the PC analysis indicate that water-rock interactions are the primary mechanism governing groundwater quality during both periods. The results of this analysis indicate that CO2 injection activities have not impacted the quality of the shallow groundwater in the project area.

Driven by the need to develop a wide variety of products with low environmental impact, biorefineries need to emerge as highly integrated facilities. This becomes effective when overall mass and energy integration through a centralised utility system design is undertaken. An approach combining process integration, energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission analyses is shown in this paper for Jatropha biorefinery design, primarily producing biodiesel using oil-based heterogeneously catalysed transesterification or green diesel using hydrotreatment. These processes are coupled with gasification of husk to produce syngas. Syngas is converted into end products, heat, power and methanol in the biodiesel case or hydrogen in the green diesel case. Anaerobic digestion of Jatropha by-products such as fruit shell, cake and/or glycerol has been considered to produce biogas for power generation. Combustion of fruit shell and cake is considered to provide heat. Heat recovery within biodiesel or green diesel production and the design of the utility (heat and power) system are also shown. The biorefinery systems wherein cake supplies heat for oil extraction and seed drying while fruit shells and glycerol provide power generation via anaerobic digestion into biogas achieve energy efficiency of 53 % in the biodiesel system and 57 % in the green diesel system. These values are based on high heating values (HHV) of Jatropha feedstocks, HHV of the corresponding products and excess power generated. Results showed that both systems exhibit an energy yield per unit of land of 83 GJ ha−1. The global warming potential from GHG emissions of the net energy produced (i.e. after covering energy requirements by the biorefinery systems) was 29 g CO2-eq MJ−1, before accounting credits from displacement of fossil-based energy by bioenergy exported from the biorefineries. Using a systematic integration approach for utilisation of whole Jatropha fruit, it is shown that global warming potential and fossil primary energy use can be reduced significantly if the integrated process schemes combined with optimised cultivation and process parameters are adopted in Jatropha-based biorefineries.

Although the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) advocate, through SDG 4 and SDG 10, equitable quality education and the reduction of inequalities within and between countries, respectively, few studies have examined how inequalities in regional sustainability influence higher education. Therefore, this study aims to examine the relationship between regional sustainability and higher education in China using fixed-effects panel modelling. A systematic force framework showing how regional sustainability drives higher education was constructed from economic, social, and environmental perspectives, and the endogeneity in the process of how regional sustainability affects higher education was explored by introducing one-year lagged values as instrumental variables. Our results show that regional sustainability has a significant impact on higher educational attainment in China, with differing effects in the eastern, central, and western regions, respectively. In central China, economic sustainability plays a significant positive role in higher educational attainment; in the western region, economic and social sustainability have stronger positive effects, while environmental sustainability has significantly negative effects. In terms of policy implications, our findings can be used to support regional development policies to promote regional higher education.