Confronting Power and Environmental Injustice: Legacy Pollution and the Timber Industry in Southern Mississippi

Research has documented how grass-roots activists deploy the environmental justice frame to convey their grievances and demand their right to health and safety. While scholars have highlighted the widespread success of this frame, little attention has been paid to instances where the environmental justice frame fails to resonate. Drawing from social movements and environmental justice literatures, we examine how local discursive and cultural contexts can pose barriers to environmental justice claims. Our case is based on legacy pollution from a decommissioned creosote facility in Southern Mississippi. When black residents discovered the pollution in their neighborhood, they made repeated appeals to authorities for remediation and compensation. After being denied inclusion in a lawsuit filed by white residents, they formed an environmental justice organization to mobilize support for their campaign. Findings reveal the importance of both historical contextualization and the social situation of frame deployers in analyses of the environmental justice frame.     

Modeling the Invasion of Holly (Ilex aquifolium): Spatial Relationships and Spread Trajectories

In this study, we investigated the environmental factors associated with the establishment of invasive English holly (Ilex aquifolium) and the spatiotemporal trajectories of its potential spread. We collected georeferenced presence and absence and demographic data of holly between 2011 and 2014 in Saint Edward State Park, Washington. We analyzed them through a spatially explicit framework that combines multiple logistic regression, cellular automata, and bivariate quadratic modeling. Results showed that the presence of holly is influenced by the proximity to evergreen coniferous vegetation and forest edge, distance to streams, forest structure, and slope direction. Our study confirmed that local environmental conditions, species characteristics, and vegetative and dispersal mechanisms play a significant role in determining the rate and success of holly establishment across the different phases of invasion. Invasive species management plans should consider both species characteristics and their habitat and the interactions among them when planning long-term strategies for control and eradication.     

Decomposition and analysis by atomic absorption photospectrometry of silicate rocks

A rapid and simple method of analysis of silicate rocks using gold crucibles and fluoroboric acid as a solvent of the disintegrated material has been developed. The main elements are determined in a single treatment. The results obtained are comparable to the values recommended for samples of eleven standard rocks.     

Microstructure measurements in natural waters: Methodology and applications

Modern approaches to microstructure data processing, including wavelet denoising, are discussed. The wavelet procedure is applied to small-scale shear signals before estimating the dissipation rate ε and to the temperature/density profiles used to calculate Thorpe scales. Microstructure data obtained on the Mediterranean shelf of Catalonia are used to illustrate various approaches to the Thorpe displacement calculations. It is suggested that the Weibull probability function is an appropriate model for the Thorpe scale distribution. Microstructure measurements from the upper layer of the Boadella reservoir (Catalonia, Spain) support this finding.A new analytical approximation for the 1D Panchev–Kesich spectrum is deduced and the results of ε computation are compared with spectral fitting by the widely used Nasmyth spectrum. Applying the Kraichnan spectral model to compute ε from temperature spectra in the convective-viscous sub-range is examined as an alternative to the Batchelor spectrum. Microstructure measurements taken in Lake Banyoles (Catalonia, Spain) and in the North Atlantic were used for spectral calculations.Statistical analysis of eddy K_b and thermal K_θ diffusivities measured on a shallow shelf of the Black Sea shows the importance of process-orientated domain averaging of the diffusivities in obtaining good correspondence between K_b and K_θ in active turbulent regions. In weakly turbulent, stratified interior layers, the averaged K_b and K_θ differ significantly, which may point to the inapplicability of isotropic formulae used for ε and temperature dissipation χ_θ estimates, as well as to a dependence of the mixing efficiency γ on the Richardson number or in some cases on regions of fossil turbulence.     

Plants versus streams: Their groundwater-mediated competition at “El Morro,” a developing catchment in the dry plains of Argentina

Our understanding of how groundwater mediates evapotranspiration/streamflow partitioning is still fragmented and catchment studies under changing vegetation conditions can provide a useful frame for integration. We explored this partition in a flat sedimentary dry catchment in central Argentina in which the replacement of native vegetation with rainfed crops was accompanied by the abrupt formation of groundwater-fed streams by subsurface erosion (i.e., sapping) episodes. Historical records indicated widespread water table rises (~0.3 m y⁻¹ on average). Groundwater level and stream baseflow fluctuated seasonally with minima in the warm rainy season, indicating that evaporative discharge rather than rainfall shapes saturated flows. Diurnal groundwater level fluctuations showed that plant uptake was widespread where water tables are shallow (<3 m) but restricted to deep-rooted Prosopis forests where they are deep (7–10 m). MODIS and LANDSAT NDVI revealed a long-term greening for native vegetation, new wetlands included, but not for croplands, suggesting more limited evapotranspiration-groundwater level regulation under agriculture. Close to the deepest (20 m) and most active incisions, groundwater level and greenness declined and stream baseflow showed no seasonal fluctuations, hinting decoupling from evapotranspiration. Intense ecological and geomorphological transformations in this catchment exposed the interplay of five mechanisms governing evapotranspiration/streamflow partition including (a) unsaturated uptake and both (b) riparian and (c) distributed uptake from the saturated zone by plants, as well as (d) deepening incisions and (e) sediment deposits over riparian zones by streams. Acknowledging the complex interplay of these mechanisms with groundwater is crucial to predict and manage future hydrological changes in the dry plains of South America.     

Spatial and temporal changes in benthic communities of the Galician continental shelf after the Prestige oil spill

Two years after the Prestige oil spill (POS) an assessment of the effects on benthic fauna was carried out using the data obtained in five multidisciplinary surveys. Otter trawl, beam trawl, suprabenthic sled and box corer were used to study the main benthic compartments, along eight transects perpendicular to the coastline. Beam trawl was also employed to quantify the amount of tar aggregates on the continental shelf. No significant correlations between tar aggregates and species richness, biomass and diversity of benthic communities were found. This result was corroborated when the role of depth, season, latitude and sediment characteristics was examined by canonical ordination, in which POS-related variables had low influence on spatial distribution patterns. Depth and sediment grain diameter profoundly influence epibenthic communities. Sediment organic content is a third key variable for the infaunal, suprabenthic and lower-sized epibenthic communities, but not for the larger epibenthic communities. Nevertheless, a decrease in the densities of several epibenthic indicators was detected the first year after spill, followed by a noteworthy recovery in 2004. Non-macroscopic toxicity and some oceanographic agents are suggested as possible causes of these shifts.