Military conflicts result in local environmental damage, but documenting regional and larger scale impacts such as heavy metal pollution has proven elusive. Anthropogenic emissions of bismuth (Bi) ...include coal burning and various commodity productions but no emission estimates over the past century exist. Here we used Bi measurements in ice cores from the French Alps to show evidence of regional-scale Bi pollution concurrent with the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Tracers of the main sources of Bi emissions measured in the same ice-coal-burning, steel- and aluminum-industry, alloy and other metal processing-indicate a major, previously undocumented additional emissions source that we attribute to military activities between 1935 and 1945 Common Era (CE) in western Europe. These include the use of bismuth for low-melting point alloys for shells, thin-walled aluminum alloy aircraft oil, and munitions.
The Seine River Basin Flipo, Nicolas; Labadie, Pierre; Lestel, Laurence
2021, 2021-01-30, Letnik:
90
eBook, Book
Odprti dostop
This open access book reviews the water-agro-food and socio-eco-system of the Seine River basin (76,000 km2), and offers a historical perspective on the river’s long-term contamination. The Seine ...basin is inhabited by circa 17 million people and is impacted by intensive agricultural practices and industrial activities. These pressures have gradually affected its hydrological, chemical and ecological functioning, leading to a maximum chemical degradation between the 1960s and the 1990s. Over the last three decades, while major water-quality improvements have been observed, new issues (e.g. endocrine disruptors, microplastics) have also emerged. The state of the Seine River network, from the headwaters to estuary, is increasingly controlled by the balance between pressures and social responses. This socio-ecosystem provides a unique example of the functioning of a territory under heavy anthropogenic pressure during the Anthropocene era. The achievements made were possible due to the long-term PIREN Seine research program, established in 1989 and today part of the French socio-ecological research network “Zones Ateliers”, itself part of the international Long-term Socio-economic and Ecological Research Network (LTSER). Written by experts in the field, the book provides an introduction to the water budget and the territorial metabolism of the Seine basin, and studies the trajectories and impact of various pollutants in the Seine River. It offers insights into the ecological functioning, the integration of agricultural practices, the analysis of aquatic organic matter, and the evolution of fish assemblages in the Seine basin, and also presents research perspectives and approaches to improve the water quality of the Seine River. Given its scope, it will appeal to environmental managers, scientists and policymakers interested in the long-term contamination of the Seine River.
Abstract
Situating prehistoric sites in their past environment helps us to understand their functionality and the organization of early sedentary human societies. However, this is a challenge as the ...natural environment constantly evolves through time and erases these constructions, especially along riverbanks, thus biasing the archaeological record. This study introduces a reassessment of the paleo-landscape evolution around the Neolithic enclosures at the Noyen-sur-Seine site based on new field observations as well as the synthesis of (un)published and new radiocarbon dating. Contrary to the initial hypothesis, our results show that the Noyen enclosures were not built along a Neolithic Seine River: the nearby channels were active in the Middle Age and Early Modern periods. Therefore, the results show that the enclosures were originally much larger: only a fraction that survived river erosion (lateral migration rates up to 2–3 m yr
−1
estimated during the nineteenth century) has been preserved. Instead, an abandoned Mesolithic Seine River served as a natural delimitation of the SE part of the Neolithic enclosures. These results indicate that Neolithic enclosures in alluvial settings are often only partly preserved and that societies from that period lived farther away from active rivers than originally thought, where they were protected from floods.
Abstract 137 Cs is a long-lived man-made radionuclide introduced in the environment worldwide at the early beginning of the nuclear Era during atmospheric nuclear testing’s followed by the civil use ...of nuclear energy. Atmospheric fallout deposition of this major artificial radionuclide was reconstructed at the scale of French large river basins since 1945, and trajectories in French nuclearized rivers were established using sediment coring. Our results show that 137 Cs contents in sediments of the studied rivers display a large spatial and temporal variability in response to the various anthropogenic pressures exerted on their catchment. The Loire, Rhone, and Rhine rivers were the most affected by atmospheric fallout from the global deposition from nuclear tests. Rhine and Rhone also received significant fallout from the Chernobyl accident in 1986 and recorded significant 137 Cs concentrations in their sediments over the 1970–1985 period due to the regulatory releases from the nuclear industries. The Meuse River was notably impacted in the early 1970s by industrial releases. In contrast, the Seine River display the lowest 137 Cs concentrations regardless of the period. All the rivers responded similarly over time to atmospheric fallout on their catchment, underlying a rather homogeneous resilience capacity of these river systems to this source of contamination.
To understand the long-term fate of fish assemblages in the context of global change and to design efficient restoration measures in river management, it is essential to consider the historical ...component of these ecosystems. The human-impacted Seine River Basin is a relevant case that has experienced the extinction of diadromous fishes over the last two centuries and has recently witnessed the recolonization of some species. One key issue is to understand the historical evolution of habitat accessibility for these migratory species. Thanks to the unique availability of historical, mainly hand-written sources of multiple types (river engineering projects, navigation maps, paper-based databases on oxygen, etc.), we documented and integrated, in a geographic information system-based database, the changes to physical and chemical barriers in the Seine River from the sea to Paris for three time periods (1900s, 1970s, and 2010s). The potential impact of these changes on the runs of three migratory species that have different migratory behaviors—Atlantic salmon, allis shad, and sea lamprey—was evaluated by ecological connectivity modeling, using a least-cost approach that integrates distance, costs, and risks related to barriers. We found that accessibility was contrasted between species, emphasizing the crucial role of the migration type, period, and level of tolerance to low dissolved oxygen values. The highest disruption of ecological connectivity was visible in the 1970s, when the effects of large hypoxic areas were compounded by those of impassable navigation weirs (i.e., without fish passes). As the approach was able to reveal the relative contribution of physical and chemical barriers on overall functional connectivity, it may constitute a model work in assessing the functioning of large river ecosystems.
In the early nineteenth century, denounced pollution is visible and from industrial origin. Despite the effort to measure the quality of indoor air, there was neither measurement nor a definition of ...air quality for outdoor air. The given answers were technical (decrease of smoke emission) and regulations. Pollution from other sectors (urban uses, transport) due to the increased use of coal was not taken into account. In France, the first systematic analyses of atmospheric air are those of the Montsouris Observatory since 1876. Gradually, the regulation incorporates discharge limits, primarily for industrial black smoke (1934 in the department of the Seine) and for discharges of motor vehicles (Decrees of 1969). Episodes of increased mortality resulting from the combination of weather events and gas emissions lead to the establishment of monitoring networks in 1954 in Paris through the efforts of the Laboratory of Hygiene of the city of Paris, and the central Laboratory of the Préfecture de Police, and in all major cities and industrial areas of France since 1973. The organization of these monitoring networks was strengthened by the Air Act of 1996.
En deux siècles, les rivières traversant les villes européennes sont passées de réceptacle de tous leurs rejets à un milieu aquatique vivant, à préserver et à intégrer à la ville. Pour autant, ce ...retournement de perspective s’est produit alors que l’urbanisation et l’industrialisation conjointe des villes depuis le XIXe siècle avaient entraîné le sacrifice de leurs rivières. Les quatre métropoles de Bruxelles, Berlin, Milan et Paris ont été choisies car situées sur des rivières ayant un débit faible, voire très faible. Elles ont généré pendant longtemps des pressions telles que le fonctionnement des rivières s’en est trouvé modifié, au point de compromettre la préservation de leurs fonctionnalités. Avec un regard interdisciplinaire —entre écologie, hydrologie et sciences sociales—les auteurs reconstruisent ici la connaissance qu’ont eue les sociétés du fonctionnement de ces rivières, décrivent les techniques de surveillance des cours d’eau et énumèrent les actions menées pour améliorer leur état. Puis ils évaluent l’efficacité des réponses apportées, à travers l’évolution de l’état des rivières et de leurs populations piscicoles, utilisées ici comme traceur des pressions exercées et des réponses du milieu aquatique. Ces études de cas illustrent la diversité des trajectoires des couples ville-rivière et l’absence de causalité entre la connaissance de la qualité des cours d’eau, leur surveillance et les décisions prises. Elles révèlent l’importance des choix politiques pour ces quatre villes —indépendamment des moyens financiers et techniques disponibles— et fournissent un retour d’expérience pour les très grandes villes du monde qui se retrouvent, un siècle plus tard, confrontées aux mêmes défis.
The aim of this study is to explore the urban and/or industrial needs for non-ferrous metals (lead (Pb), copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn)) of Paris (France), a highly developed city conurbation, from the ...beginning of the nineteenth century to the present. Pb was necessary for the development of urban networks (Pb pipes), Zn for Parisian roofs and Cu for the development of boiler making and electricity. This study is based on economic statistics and shows that the situation evolved from a city transforming ores, having its smelters and transforming metal into goods, to a city where metal smelting has been more or less quickly banned, and where only a small activity of metal transformation into metal-containing goods remains. The patterns of the three metals showed slight differences. The deindustrialization of Paris is also accompanied by a change of the supplying areas over time. Ores were always imported from abroad, because of the lack of French non-ferrous metal mines. But foundries, which were first abroad, had developed in France between the late nineteenth and late twentieth century and were again found abroad at the end of the twentieth century. The transformation of metal into goods left Paris to the benefit of other parts of France first, then of abroad, over time. In a second part, the evaluation of Pb consumption per capita in Paris conurbation shows that Pb needs of Paris conurbation were higher than those of France in the nineteenth century. Then, the Paris demand was satisfied and it became lower than that of France. Both the deindustrialisation of Paris conurbation and its lower needs led to a decrease in the relative weight of Paris for non-ferrous metals, compared to other parts of France.
River basins were identified very early on as a key component of chemical fluxes from continents to oceans, driven by weathering and biogeochemical cycles in their basin. Fifty years ago, important ...riverine changes attributed to human impacts started to be studied at the global scale, an evolution which has been the foundation for Anthropocene studies in hydrosystems since 2000. However, the co-evolution of river basin systems and sociosystems remains poorly addressed, particularly over long periods (\(>\)100 y). Medium-sized river basins make it possible to perform such detailed analyses, which combines historical river fluxes, material flows, river ecology, environmental history and political ecology. Such an interdisciplinary approach at the scale of the Seine basin, undertaken by the PIREN-Seine research program, started in 1989, has shown how scientific and technological knowledge, environmental awareness, environmental regulations and policies, and political decisions have played a role on water quality during that period.
PDF
