Organic contamination identification in sediments from a Mediterranean coastal ecosystem: The case of the Nador lagoon (Eastern Morocco)     

Mohamed Karim Bloundi  Pierre Faure  Joëlle Duplay 《Comptes Rendus Geoscience》2008,340(12):840-849

The Nador lagoon ecosystem (North-East of Morocco) displays a major socioeconomic interest. In fact, it is essential to evaluate consequences of anthropogenic activities in the lagoon especially by organic matter studies (nature and distribution) in the sedimentary compartment. Surface sediments show variable rates in total organic carbon and in sulfur, high in some cases (7.5 and 1.8% respectively). These high contents are recorded in the center of the lagoon. Their distributions are controlled by the hydrodynamism and the anthropogenic degree. The molecular biomarkers analyses and especially n-alkanes distribution reveal: a zone of marine influence; and a zone of continental influence. The occurrence of pentacyclic triterpanes with a typical distribution of a thermally mature organic matter reveals a contamination due to petroleum products in the entire lagoon except for the center. Coprostanol occurrence near cities indicates wastewater effluents inputs and reducing conditions underlined by high values of stanols/sterol ratios. Thus, the organic contamination (petroleum by-products and wastewater effluents) occurs in the vicinity of the cities whereas the littoral edge and center remain weakly affected by these contaminations.  相似文献   

DEGRADATION OF GRADED-MATERIAL BEDS IN SEDIMENT-DEFICIENT RIVERS     

M. F. Karim Assistant Research Scientist 《国际泥沙研究》1986

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Dynamics of energy sector and GHG emissions in Saudi Arabia     

A. N. Khondaker  Karim Malik  Nahid Hossain  Shaikh Abdur Razzak  Rouf Ahmad Khan 《Climate Policy》2013,13(4):517-541

The energy sector is the main contributor to GHG emissions in Saudi Arabia. The tremendous growth of GHG emissions poses serious challenges for the Kingdom in terms of their reduction targets, and also the mitigation of the associated climate changes. The rising trend of population and urbanization affects the energy demand, which results in a faster rate of increase in GHG emissions. The major energy sector sources that contribute to GHG emissions include the electricity generation, road transport, desalination plants, petroleum refining, petrochemical, cement, iron and steel, and fertilizer industries. In recent years, the energy sector has become the major source, accounting for more than 90% of national CO₂ emissions. Although a substantial amount of research has been conducted on renewable energy resources, a sustainable shift from petroleum resources is yet to be achieved. Public awareness, access to energy-efficient technology, and the development and implementation of a legislative framework, energy pricing policies, and renewable and alternative energy policies are not mature enough to ensure a significant reduction in GHG emissions from the energy sector. An innovative and integrated solution that best serves the Kingdom's long-term needs and exploits potential indigenous, renewable, and alternative energy resources while maintaining its sustainable development stride is essential.

Policy relevance

The main contributor to GHG emissions in Saudi Arabia is the energy sector that accounts for more than 90% of the national CO₂ emissions. Tremendous growth of GHG emissions poses serious challenges for the Kingdom in their reduction and mitigating the associated climate changes. This study examines the changing patterns of different activities associated with energy sector, the pertinent challenges, and the opportunities that promise reduction of GHG emissions while providing national energy and economic security. The importance of achieving timely, sustained, and increasing reductions in GHG emissions means that a combination of policies may be needed. This study points to the long-term importance of making near- and medium-term policy choices on a well-informed, strategic basis. This analytical paper is expected to provide useful information to the national policy makers and other decision makers. It may also contribute to the GHG emission inventories and the climate change negotiations.  相似文献   

Deforestation effects on soil properties,runoff and erosion in northern Iran   总被引：2，自引：0，他引：2  

Ataollah Kavian  Ali Azmoodeh  Karim Solaimani 《Arabian Journal of Geosciences》2014,7(5):1941-1950

Improper cultivation practices are seriously degrading native forest ecosystems in northern Iran. Hence, the objectives of this study are to compare selected soil properties, runoff amount, erosion and also introducing equations to predict the runoff and soil erosion in three types of land use (forest, garden and cultivated). A simple portable rainfall simulator has been set in 90 random points to create experimental rainfall. Result showed that changes in natural forest led to a significant clay, organic carbon of soil, total N and antecedent soil moisture decrease and sand, pH and bulk density increasing. The rainfall runoff experiments indicate that runoff content of the natural forest soils was 35 % and respectively 38.45 % higher than the garden and cultivated land soils .This result could be related to the higher antecedent soil moisture in natural forest compared with the other land uses. According to the obtained results, garden soil erosion and cultivated land was 1.351 and respectively 1.587 times higher than the forest. The correlation matrix revealed that runoff content was positively correlated with antecedent soil moisture, bulk density and silt, and negatively with soil organic carbon, total N and sand. Also, soil organic carbon, total N, clay and sand showed negative correlation with soil erosion, while there is a positive correlation between erosion and silt, bulk density, pH and antecedent soil moisture. The results of multiple linear regression showed that runoff in forest, garden and cultivated land can be predicted with correlation coefficient of 0.637, 0.547 and 0.624, respectively. The correlation coefficients of 0.798, 0.628 and 0.560 in equations indicate their moderate potential in simulating soil erosion.  相似文献   

Fast direct sampling for multiple-point stochastic simulation   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Mohammad J. Abdollahifard  Karim Faez 《Arabian Journal of Geosciences》2014,7(5):1927-1939

Multiple-point statistics simulation has recently attracted significant attention for the simulation of complex geological structures. In this paper, a fast direct sampling (FDS) algorithm is presented based on a fast gradient descent pattern matching strategy. The match is directly extracted from the training image (TI) and so the method does not require intensive preprocessing and database storage. The initial node of the search path is selected randomly but the following nodes are selected in a principled manner so that the path is conducted to the right match. Each node is selected based on the matching accuracy and the behavior of the TI in the previous node. A simple initialization strategy is presented in this paper which significantly accelerates the matching process at the expense of a very naïve preprocessing stage. The proposed simulation algorithm has several outstanding advantages: it needs no (or very limited) preprocessing, does not need any database storage, searches for the match directly in the TI, is not limited to fixed size patterns (the pattern size can be easily changed during simulation), is capable of handling both continuous and categorical data, is capable of handling multivariate data, and finally and more importantly, is a fast method while maintaining high standards for the matching quality. Experiments on different TIs reveal that the simulation results of FDS and DS are comparable in terms of pattern reproduction and connectivity while FDS is far faster than DS.  相似文献   

Hierarchical approach to hydrological model calibration     

Ayfer Ozdemir  Ugur Murat Leloglu  Karim C. Abbaspour 《Environmental Earth Sciences》2017,76(8):318

Hydrological models have been widely used for water resources management. Successful application of hydrological models depends on careful calibration and uncertainty analysis. Spatial unit of water balance calculations may differ widely in different models from grids to hydrological response units (HRU). The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) software uses HRU as the spatial unit. SWAT simulates hydrological processes at sub-basin level by deriving HRUs by thresholding areas of soil type, land use, and slope combinations. This may ignore some important areas, which may have great impact on hydrological processes in the watershed. In this study, a hierarchical HRU approach was developed in order to increase model performance and reduce computational complexity simultaneously. For hierarchical optimization, HRUs are first divided into two-HRU types and are optimized with respect to some relevant influence parameters. Then, each HRU is further divided into two. Each child HRU inherits the optimum parameter values of the parent HRU as its initial value. This approach decreases the total calibration time while obtaining a better result. The performance of the hierarchical methodology is demonstrated on two basins, namely Sarisu-Eylikler and Namazgah Dam Lake Basins in Turkey. In Sarisu-Eylikler, we obtained good results by a combination of curve number (CN2), soil hydraulic conductivity, and slope for generating HRUs, while in Namazgah use of only CN2 gave better results.  相似文献   

Hyperspectral image betweenness centrality clustering based adaptive spatial and spectral neighborhood approach for anomaly detection     

Karim Saheb Ettabaa  Manel Ben Salem  Med Salim Bouhlel 《Arabian Journal of Geosciences》2017,10(18):412

Segmentation-based anomaly detectors proceeds to the clustering of the hyperspectral image as a first step. However, most of the well-known clustering methods cluster anomalous pixels as a part of the background. This paper presents a new hyperspectral image clustering approach based on the betweenness centrality measure. The proposed approach starts by the construction of an adaptive spatial and spectral neighborhood for each pixel. This neighborhood is based on the selection of the nearest spectral and spatial neighbors in multiple windows around each pixel to allow well-suited representation of the image features. In the next step, this neighborhood is clustered based on the edge betweenness measure algorithm that splits the image into regions sharing similar features. This approach (1) allows the reduction of intercluster relationship, (2) favors intracluster relations, and (3) preserves small clusters that can hold anomalous pixels. Experimental results show that the proposed approach is efficient for clustering and overcomes the state of the art approaches.  相似文献   

Shoreline change detection using DSAS technique: Case of North Sinai coast,Egypt     

Karim Nassar  Wael Elham Mahmod  Hassan Fath  Ali Masria  Kazuo Nadaoka  Abdelazim Negm 《Marine Georesources & Geotechnology》2019,37(1):81-95

This study focuses on the shoreline change detection along the North Sinai coast in Egypt using geographic information system and digital shoreline analysis system (DSAS) during the elapsed period from 1989 to 2016. The measurement of shoreline variation is mainly described for three zones: zone I, El-Tinah plain bay; zone II, El-Bardawil Lake; zone III, El-Arish valley. The rates of shoreline changes in the form of erosion and accretion patterns are automatically quantified by four statistical parameters functioned in DSAS namely endpoint rate, net shoreline movement, linear regression rate (LRR), and least median of squares. LRR results elucidate that the western seaside of El-Tinah plain bay has experienced an extremely dynamic feature with an average erosion rate of ?8.17?m/year. The littoral drifts have been driven by eastward alongshore currents toward the east side of the bay to be accreted with an average rate of +4.28?m/year. Moreover, the shoreline has progressed west of El-Bardawil inlet (1), El-Bardawil inlet (2), and El-Arish harbor. Subsequently, the corresponding average beach growth rates are found to be +2.7, +8.5, and +6.5?m/year, respectively. In contrast, the shoreline on the down-drift side to the east has negatively retreated, and the corresponding beaches have regressed at rates of ?4.5, ?8.65, and ?2.9?m/year, respectively.  相似文献   

Finite strain analysis for deformed Neoproterozoic rock associations of the Al Amar fault zone,Eastern Arabian Shield,Saudi Arabia     

Mohammed  Lami Abdel Karim Nouaman  Kassem  Osama Mohamed Kaoud  Al Bassam  Abdel Aziz Mohamed 《Arabian Journal of Geosciences》2020,13(6):1-6

Arabian Journal of Geosciences - In this work, quantitative analysis of coastal zone landform morphology is carried out through the integration of landscape index, remote sensing (RS) and...  相似文献   

Long-term changes in fish communities of the Ria Formosa coastal lagoon (southern Portugal) based on two studies made 20 years apart     

Joaquim Ribeiro  Carlos C. Monteiro  Pedro Monteiro  Luis Bentes  Rui Coelho  Jorge M.S. Gonçalves  Pedro G. Lino  Karim Erzini 《Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science》2008

Fish communities of the Ria Formosa coastal lagoon (south Portugal) were sampled on a monthly basis with a beach seine at 4 sites, during two different time periods: 1980–1986 and 2001–2002. Community indices, species ranking and multivariate analysis were used in order to identify changes in the fish community between the two time periods. A total of 153,511 fish representing 57 taxa were recorded. Although species composition was very similar for both sampling periods, multivariate analysis performed on annual species abundance in number and weight revealed differences in fish community structure between the two periods. Structural changes in fish community were related mostly to a sharp decrease in the abundance of Mugilidae from 1980–1986 to 2001–2002. These changes were probably associated to a decrease in organic matter contents and nutrients concentrations due to improvements in sewage treatment and better water circulation inside the lagoon. The changes in fish community structure are more evident in the inner areas of the lagoon than near the inlet. The association between changes in sewage patterns and changes in the ichthyofaunal community structure reinforces the importance of fish communities as a biological indicator of human induced changes in marine systems.  相似文献