Soil contamination is increasingly a global problem with serious implications for human health. Among different soil decontamination approaches, electrokinetic (EK) remediation is a relatively new technology for treating organic and inorganic contaminants in soil. This research aims to develop an enhanced EK treatment method incorporating a compost-based reactive filter media (RFM) with the advantages of low-cost and strong affinity for heavy metals and test and improve the treatment efficiency for multiple heavy metals in natural soil. A series of EK operations were performed to investigate the performance of EK-RFM under different operating conditions such as the electric current and voltage, processing time, and the amount of RFM. The electric current and treatment time demonstrated a significant positive impact on removing Zn, Cd and Mn ions while changing the amount of RFM had an insignificant impact on the efficiency of heavy metals removal. Overall, 51.6%-72.1% removal of Zn, Cd, and Mn was achieved at 30.00 mA of electric current and 14 days of treatment duration. The energy consumption of the EK process was 0.17 kWh kg-1. The soil organic matter adversely affected the mobilization and migration of heavy metals such as Cu and Pb during EK treatment. The results are valuable in optimizing the design of the EK-RFM system, which will extend its application to field-scale soil decontamination practices.The objective of this study was to calculate the carbon footprint (CF) of straw and plastic film mulching practices in order to identify the optimum field management for low-carbon agriculture. A four-year field experiment was conducted to determine the effects of different mulching measurements on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, grain yield, and CF of a winter wheat-summer maize cropping system in the Loess Plateau of China. Mulching treatments were no mulching (NM), straw mulching (SM), half plastic film mulching (HPM); full plastic film mulching (FPM), and ridge-furrow planting with film mulching over ridges (RPM). Plastic film mulching decreased N2O emissions compared with NM. However, SM significantly increased direct N2O emissions by 59.2% and indirect N2O emissions by 16.2%. Average annual total GHG emissions calculated by life cycle assessment were 5199-7631 kg CO2-eq ha-1 yr-1. Nitrogen (N) fertilizer was the largest contributor to total GHG emissions, accounting for >41%. For plastic film mulching treatments, the second greatest contributor was plastic film, accounting for 21.1-35.7% of total GHG emissions. In contrast, the second greatest contributor was direct and indirect N2O and CH4 emissions under NM (17.2%) and SM (21.6%). Emissions from diesel consumption was the third largest component of total GHG emissions. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/AP24534.html All mulching treatments showed significantly greater annual grain yield than the NM treatment. The CF of summer maize yield was higher than that of winter wheat. SM showed the lowest CF (0.38 kg CO2-eq kg-1), and plastic film mulching increased CFs compared with NM. These results suggest that SM should be the priority mulching practice used to increase yield and to reduce the CF of winter wheat-summer maize production in the Loess Plateau, China. Optimizing N fertilizer application rates should be one of the key production strategies employed to mitigate agricultural GHG emissions.Air pollution by particulate matter (PM) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is a major global issue. Many technologies have been developed to address this problem. Phytoremediation is one possible technology to remediate these air pollutants, and a few studies have investigated the application of this technology to reduce PM and VOCs in a mixture of pollutants. This study aimed to screen plant species capable of PM and VOC phytoremediation and identify plant physiology factors to be used as criteria for plant selection for PM and VOC phytoremediation. Wrightia religiosa removed PM and VOCs. In addition, the relative water content in the plant and ethanol soluble wax showed positive relationships with PM and VOC phytoremediation, with a high correlation coefficient. For plant stress responses, several plant species maintained and/or increased the relative water content after short-term exposure to PM and VOCs. In addition, based on proteomic analysis, most of the proteins in W. religiosa leaves related to photosystems I and II were significantly reduced by PM2.5. When a high water content was achieved in W. religiosa (80% soil humidity), W. religiosa can effectively remove PM. The results suggested that PM can reduce plant photosynthesis. In addition, plants might require a high water supply to maintain their health under PM and VOC stress.Cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (HABs) are increasing in a growing number of aquatic ecosystems around the world due to eutrophication and climatic change over the past few decades. Quantitative monitoring of HABs remains a challenge because their distributions are spatially heterogeneous and temporally variable. Most of the standard biological sampling methods are labor intensive and time consuming. In this paper, we present an efficient acoustic method to assess the biomass (biovolume) concentration of the cyanobacterium Microcystis in aquatic ecosystems. Acoustic backscattering vertical profiles from a gas-bearing Microcystis population were measured with echosounders at three frequencies (70, 120, and 333 kHz) in Lake Kinneret (case study). Concurrently, the volume concentration of Microcystis colonies and cyanobacteria-related Chlorophyll a were evaluated. We developed a partially coherent acoustic scattering model to quantify the cyanobacterium biomass based on depth-dependent acoustic backscattering signals. We also evaluated empirical regression models to obtain the Microcystis biomass from acoustically measured volume backscattering strength, Sv. It is demonstrated that both methods can convert the Sv to Microcystis biovolume concentrations reasonably well. Pro and cons of these methods are discussed. The results suggest that the presented methods may have a potential to be used for broader applications to monitor and quantify the gas-containing plankton in large aquatic ecosystems.