1. Let your grass grow longer

There’s a reason the lawn always seems moist after a fresh mowing. Each blade of grass stores a significant quantity of water, especially at the base of the blade—and the shorter you cut your grass, the more it will bleed out and evaporate, and the more you’ll have to water. A lawn that has been cut short will also regrow faster, creating a cycle of very frequent mowing (and fertilizing), and extensive water loss. Mow your lawn just long enough to keep it even, or as long as your covenant permits; this will minimize water loss, and save you the backache of constant mowing. Also, spread the clippings over the lawn—it will shade the remaining grass while it heals and reduce evaporation.

2. Plant grass that can survive in your local climate

While it’s universally admired for its color and thickness, Kentucky bluegrass belongs in Kentucky. Most strains need 2 inches of water per week to stay healthy, and unless you live in a very rainy part of the country, most of that will have to come from your municipal water table. Look for drought-resistant alternatives that will stay green and beautiful without water—and grow much slower, so they need less mowing.

3. Expand your garden space

One of the easiest ways to minimize your lawn’s footprint is to simply minimize your lawn. Larger garden plots and more expansive patio designs will give you less to water, fertilize, and mow. In particular, a flat of vegetables appropriate to your climate region will take much less water than a lawn in the same area, and provide your family with a steady supply of fresh produce free of factory-farm contaminants. Your HOA may have restrictions on what you can grow (i.e. you may be forbidden to grow vegetables in your front yard), in which case you can choose a low-maintenance, low-water flower garden instead.

4. Change your watering patterns

Especially in dry regions, you should do most of your lawn care in the cool of the morning, or just before dusk, to reduce evaporation. About half the water you spray on your lawn will be lost to evaporation in direct sunlight, so wait until just before bed (or first thing in the morning) to water your lawn. Also, try to water less frequently, allowing your lawn to soak up and store more. For lawns with deep roots, an hour of watering once a week should be sufficient; shallower systems will probably need fifteen minutes of soaking, three times a week. If your lawn can’t handle that routine without going dormant or withering, you may need to switch to a hardier seed.

5. Switch to a push mower

A gas-powered mower doesn’t use much fuel compared to a car, but it also doesn’t burn very clean, blowing pollutants into the air and making a great deal of noise. Especially if you intend to mow early in the morning or late in the evening, switching to a push mower can reduce your carbon emissions, and save your neighbors some headache. It might seem like more work, but modern push mowers are a great deal more efficient than the models you may have grown up with—and they’re a great deal lighter and more pleasant to operate than a gas-powered behemoth.

Mike Freiberg is a staff writer for HomeDaddys, a resource for stay-at-home dads, work-at-home dads, and everything in between. He’s a handyman, an amateur astronomer, and a tech junkie, who loves being home with his two kids. He lives in Austin.

Photo: Green grass closeup from Shutterstock

Many new microgrid projects are still under the radar, and many local projects originate organically, without official designations or titles, making them very hard to track. As a sector, however, microgrids are beginning to move into the mainstream, with a greater focus being placed on viable business models.

The result is a much more robust microgrid market than just a few years ago. According to a new report from Navigant Research, more than 480 microgrid projects are proposed, planned, under construction, or operating worldwide, representing nearly 3,800 megawatts (MW) of capacity.

“New vendors are continually entering the market and previously undiscovered projects are coming to the forefront, such as 27 projects planned or proposed in the state of Connecticut alone,” says Peter Asmus, principal research analyst with Navigant Research. “The outlines of a growing and vibrant microgrid movement are emerging, and the findings in this report reaffirm some of the market optimism surrounding microgrids, clearly demonstrating the rapid growth in the sector.”

North America remains the world’s leading market for microgrids, with a planned, proposed, and deployed capacity of 2,505 MW, representing an additional 417 MW since the fourth quarter 2012 version of the report—indicating an additional 55 projects. Of the total North American microgrid capacity, 1,459 MW is currently online and more than 1,122 MW is planned, under development, or proposed.

The report, “Microgrid Deployment Tracker 2Q13”, provides data on known microgrid projects in the proposal, planning, and deployed stages, including details on the various technologies employed in individual projects. The report includes specific information on the capacity of the following generation assets: diesel, combined heat and power, solar photovoltaic, wind, and fuel cells. It also details the rated capacity, duration, and types of energy storage for each project. The database is also segmented by world region. An Executive Summary of the report is available for free download on the Navigant Research website.

Source: Business Wire

Adobe bricks drying in the sun in front of El Presidio Real de Santa Barbara, which was built in 1782 as a military installation, and the first home of the Spanish in Santa Barbara.
~photo by Kata Polano

So you want to build your abode with adobe.  Ok, I know that doesn’t rhyme, but I still find it a fun coincidence between these two words.

The word adobe comes from the Arabic word al-tob, which means “the brick” and from Coptic tube, which also means “brick”.  A brick is precisely what adobe is, a sun-dried brick of clay-soil and sand, with fiber added in some instances as well. These fibers, which add tensile strength, are usually straw, hair, or even horse manure. Yes, I said horse manure! Building with adobe is one of the oldest building techniques in the world, and some of the world’s oldest standing buildings were constructed with adobe.

Once upon a time, in a land far away, there was a group of people who faced the obstacle of building shelter for themselves. All they had was the clay underfoot, and the water from the nearby watering hole. Though I can’t tell you how they determined that mixing the two together, shaping them into rectangles, and stacking them atop one another would give them an amazing building material that was ideal for their situation, but they somehow did.

They probably started without the rectangles, making something more like cob (next article’s topic), and eventually adapted their technique to use bricks. During this time of invention and ingenuity, people also figured out that they could use their horses to mix their mud for them. They would tether the horse to a post in the centre of a shallow pit and have it walk circles around the post. Observations were made that these bricks were much stronger than those made by the people. What was the difference? Yup, you guessed it, the poop! Horse manure not only added strengthening fibers to the adobe mix, it also added an enzyme, which produced a harder and more resistant brick, once dry.

Filling the forms for the adobe bricks, which will be used in the restoration of El Presidio Real de Santa Barbara.
~ photo by Kata Polano

Today, adobe continues to be made in a variety of ways, including by foot, horse, and even machine. The mix is poured into forms, and set out in the sun to dry. Forms of various sizes are used to control the size of the bricks; weight and wall thickness are the driving factors in choosing a form size. I, for one, wouldn’t want to lift hundreds of bricks weighing in at 100 lbs each. But hey, it might beat going to the gym.

The wider your brick means the wider your wall, which means more thermal mass of your building.  Since adobe buildings are more commonly found in climates that see a lot of sun, and not so much cold and rain, a higher thermal mass makes good sense. A building with high thermal mass slowly absorbs the heat of the sun throughout the day, stores it in its density, and slowly releases it during the cool nights, keeping indoor air temperatures comfortable.

Comfort is also found in the beauty and durability that adobe houses embody. Many adobe walls are kept without a finish plaster on them, with little stones often embedded in the cob mortar for decoration. Other homes receive beautiful finish clay or lime plasters to give smooth, soft surfaces that also add protection from the elements. These finishes can be applied in such a manner that the organic texture of the walls is  hidden or flattened out. Whichever your preference, the flexibility of clay and lime finishes can give you what you want while remaining compatible with the natural adobe substrate. But we’ll learn more about finishes in later articles.

I hope you have enjoyed learning about this beautiful ancient building technique that is maintaining its place and functionality in today’s modern world. Stay tuned for my next article, which will take you through the story of cob.

Until recently people believed much of the rain forest’s carbon floated down the Amazon River and ended up deep in the ocean. University of Washington research showed a decade ago that rivers exhale huge amounts of carbon dioxide – though left open the question of how that was possible, since bark and stems were thought to be too tough for river bacteria to digest.

A study published this week in Nature Geoscience resolves the conundrum, proving that woody plant matter is almost completely digested by bacteria living in the Amazon River, and that this tough stuff plays a major part in fueling the river’s breath.

The finding has implications for global carbon models, and for the ecology of the Amazon and the world’s other rivers.

“People thought this was one of the components that just got dumped into the ocean,” said first author Nick Ward, a UW doctoral student in oceanography. “We’ve found that terrestrial carbon is respired and basically turned into carbon dioxide as it travels down the river.”

Tough lignin, which helps form the main part of woody tissue, is the second most common component of terrestrial plants. Scientists believed that much of it got buried on the seafloor to stay there for centuries or millennia. The new paper shows river bacteria break it down within two weeks, and that just 5 percent of the Amazon rainforest’s carbon ever reaches the ocean.

“Rivers were once thought of as passive pipes,” said co-author Jeffrey Richey, a UW professor of oceanography. “This shows they’re more like metabolic hotspots.”

When previous research showed how much carbon dioxide was outgassing from rivers, scientists knew it didn’t add up. They speculated there might be some unknown, short-lived carbon source that freshwater bacteria could turn into carbon dioxide.

“The fact that lignin is proving to be this metabolically active is a big surprise,” Richey said. “It’s a mechanism for the rivers’ role in the global carbon cycle – it’s the food for the river breath.”

The Amazon alone discharges about one-fifth of the world’s freshwater and plays a large role in global processes, but it also serves as a test bed for natural river ecosystems.

Richey and his collaborators have studied the Amazon River for more than three decades. Earlier research took place more than 500 miles upstream. This time the U.S. and Brazilian team sought to understand the connection between the river and ocean, which meant working at the mouth of the world’s largest river – a treacherous study site.

“There’s a reason that no one’s really studied in this area,” Ward said. “Pulling it off has been quite a challenge. It’s a humongous, sloppy piece of water.”

The team used flat-bottomed boats to traverse the three river mouths, each so wide that you cannot see land, in water so rich with sediment that it looks like chocolate milk. Tides raise the ocean by 30 feet, reversing the flow of freshwater at the river mouth, and winds blow at up to 35 mph.

Under these conditions, Ward collected river water samples in all four seasons. He compared the original samples with ones left to sit for up to a week at river temperatures. Back at the UW, he used newly developed techniques to scan the samples for some 100 compounds, covering 95 percent of all plant-based lignin. Previous techniques could identify only 1 percent of the plant-based carbon in the water.

Based on the results, the authors estimate that about 40 percent of the Amazon’s lignin breaks down in soils, 55 percent breaks down in the river system, and 5 percent reaches the ocean, where it may break down or sink to the ocean floor.

“People had just assumed, ‘Well, it’s not energetically feasible for an organism to break lignin apart, so why would they?’” Ward said. “We’re thinking that as rain falls over the land it’s taking with it these lignin compounds, but it’s also taking with it the bacterial community that’s really good at eating the lignin.”

Source: AAAS EurekAlert 

Photo: Limestone on Amazon in Equador from Shutterstock

June 19-21, 2013, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

Learn - about the latest developments in the aquaponics industry.

Share - thoughts and ideas with like-minded, forward-thinking individuals.

Discover – how aquaponics is helping to feed people around the world.

Enjoy – great food, new friends, and an abundance of information on aquaponics.

Experience – aquaponics first-hand on the aquaponic greenhouse tour.

Registration is now open!

Early registration fee is $495/person, until May 15.
Regular registration fee is $595/person, after May 15.
Student registration fee is $225/person, must be full-time student and provide student ID.

Conference Registration includes first year membership in the International Aquaponics Society.

Need Based Conference Scholarships are available–download Application Form

A credit option is available – get details. 

View Tentative Schedule Here. 

Meet your Speakers Here. 

Conference Highlights:

• The latest in aquaponic technology, methods and applications will be presented.
• Experts in the aquaponics industry will share information about aquaponics and its varied uses that are feeding people around the world.
• Applications and uses including commercial, education, mission and integrated systems will be discussed. Issues such as food safety, fish feeds and regulations will be addressed.
• A Poster Contest will showcase student research in aquaponics. Prizes will be awarded.
• The Chef’s Demo will feature local chefs who will demonstrate a variety of ways to prepare aquaponically-grown fish and vegetables and conference attendees will get to sample the culinary creations.
• Attendees will tour a 5,000 square foot aquaponic greenhouse.
• An evening Wisconsin-style picnic will provide a great opportunity for attendees to socialize while getting to sample some of Wisconsin’s finest local products… cheese, brats (bratwurst) and beverages.
• The International Aquaponic Society, a UWSP Foundation organization dedicated to aquaponics research and education, will be launched and the first organizational meeting will take place at the conference.

Who Should Attend:

• Prospective Aquaponic Growers - if you are thinking of getting into aquaponics, attend this conference to learn about how people use aquaponics, where people use aquaponics, and how you can use aquaponics to feed your family, feed a village, or produce a profit in a commercial farming venture.
• Aquaponic Growers – if you are already an aquaponic grower, this conference will benefit you with new insight into the technology, methods, processes and commercial viability of aquaponics.
• Educators – if you are an educator, you will quickly learn and understand that aquaponics is a great hands-on learning tool to teach all facets of science, agriculture, engineering, mathematics and much more.
• Ministers of Agriculture and Government Representatives – if you are a government official and your country is concerned about food security, aquaponics can be a solution. It provides continuous production of fresh fish and vegetables in a sustainable, efficient manner.
• Regulators – if you make rules related to agriculture, aquaculture, business, health, education or food safety, this conference is a must to understand what aquaponics is, what methods are common and why it is inherently a safe and sustainable method of food production.

Getting Here:  Click herefor transportation details. 

Lodging Information:  Click herefor information on local lodging options. 

Check out what’s happening with Central Rivers Farmshed at www.farmshed.org

Source: University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point

Some forward-thinking hospitals and health systems are starting to understand that greater energy efficiency can advance patient-care goals and are devoting more attention and resources to conservation initiatives.

A groundbreaking new study provides an innovative and cost-effective way for newly constructed hospitals nationwide to offset continuing economic challenges by reducing energy consumption by an average of 62 percent. The study, titled Targeting 100!, identifies a process that integrates architectural, mechanical and central plant systems to deliver significant efficiencies.

The biggest breakthrough comes from addressing the reheating of centrally-cooled air — the largest contributor to wasted energy in a hospital — which represents more than 40 percent of annual heating energy usage.

“More than any other single research initiative, Targeting 100! is effectively transforming U.S. healthcare to meet the low-energy and low-carbon future,” said Robin Guenther, the sustainable healthcare design leader at architecture firm Perkins+Will.

By combining energy-reduction design solutions — including  sun and daylight shading controls, vacant room sensors, outdoor air supply with heat recovery systems, modified air delivery systems, thermal energy storage, and improved air-tightness and high-insulation values in windows and walls — a newly constructed, code-compliant hospital in the range of Targeting 100! saves between $500,000 and $800,000 in annual energy costs.

The newly released research is discussed in detail at the University of Washington’s Integrated Design Lab’s website.

“That’s one aspect of our work that makes it unique,” said Heather Burpee, a health-design and energy-efficiency research assistant professor at University of Washington’s Integrated Design Lab. “Our peer reviewers — who came from all aspects of the design, construction and operation of hospitals — provided invaluable guidance and grounded our research in reality. Our primary goal is to get this research into the hands of people who are truly able to make a change.”

The new study looked at six distinct and diverse climate zones in the United States’ most populous regions —including New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix and Seattle — to determine if integrated design methods could cut energy consumption and operating costs for hospitals nationwide. The team conducted a complete reassessment of the architectural systems, building mechanical systems and central plant systems to find a code-compliant path that achieves the highest-quality, lowest-energy hospital design for the least additional capital cost.

The resulting integrated-design approach delivers a 62 percent average reduction in energy consumption across all climate zones—and a 9 percent year-over-year average return on investment.

NBBJ, an architecture firm and study partner in the project, has designed several healthcare facilities that incorporate Targeting 100!’s strategies, including Seattle Children’s Bellevue Clinic, the University of Washington Medical Center’s Montlake Tower Expansion, and a large hospital in Northern California. That hospital will see an annual energy cost benefit of approximately $1,325,000 — a return on investment of more than 50 percent that will pay back the provider’s initial investment in less than two years. According to the project’s engineer, the total investment needed to implement the energy-reduction strategies amounted to less than one year of typical operating costs.

A Healthier Planet

The average hospital, many of which rely on power generated by coal, oil and natural gas, dumps about 15,000 tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year. Such emissions lead to and aggravate health conditions linked to poor air quality, like asthma and cardiovascular disease — an obvious inconsistency with the mandate to “first do no harm.” Yet many major players have been slow to go green.

The average energy savings for one Targeting 100! hospital prevents 4,500 tons of carbon from entering the atmosphere each year. According to the EPA’s greenhouse gas equivalencies calculator, that’s the same as the amount of carbon removed from the atmosphere by adding 3,400 acres of forests, taking 850 passenger cars off the road, or removing 600 households from the grid every year.

“Targeting 100! has delivered to the healthcare sector a compelling and preferred response to deep cuts in federal reimbursements that will require dramatic reductions in operational costs,” said Richard Beam, the construction and sustainability system director for Providence Health & Services. “It prescribes an energy-efficiency remedy that will ensure our shrinking revenue supports quality patient care in an environmentally responsible way.  Targeting 100! is good for the patient — whether the Earth or humankind.”

To see comprehensive study results, visit the Targeting 100!website. To read an executive summary of Targeting 100! click here.

Graphics: Targeting 100!

This is an image of North America from the data visualization video “Water in the Anthropocene,” to debut May 21 at gwsp.org and www.anthropocene.info.
Credit: gwsp.org/ www.anthropocene.info

A suite of disquieting global phenomena have given rise to the “Anthropocene,” a term coined for a new geologic epoch characterized by humanity’s growing dominance of the Earth’s environment and a planetary transformation as profound as the last epoch-defining event — the retreat of the glaciers 11,500 years ago.

And in Bonn, Germany May 21-24, world experts will experts will focus on how to mitigate key factors contributing to extreme damage to the global water system being caused while adapting to the new reality.

“The list of human activities and their impact on the water systems of Planet Earth is long and important,” Anik Bhaduri, Executive Officer of the Global Water System Project (GWSP) said.

“We have altered the Earth’s climatology and chemistry, its snow cover, permafrost, sea and glacial ice extent and ocean volume—all fundamental elements of the hydrological cycle. We have accelerated major processes like erosion, applied massive quantities of nitrogen that leaks from soil to ground and surface waters and, sometimes, literally siphoned all water from rivers, emptying them for human uses before they reach the ocean. We have diverted vast amounts of freshwater to harness fossil energy, dammed major waterways, and destroyed aquatic ecosystems.

“The idea of the Anthropocene underscores the point that human activities and their impacts have global significance for the future of all living species — ours included. Humans are changing the character of the world water system in significant ways with inadequate knowledge of the system and the consequences of changes being imposed. From a research position, human-water interactions must be viewed as a continuum and a coupled system, requiring interdisciplinary inquiry like that which has characterized the GWSP since its inception.”

Among many examples of humanity’s oversized imprint on the world, cited in a paper by James Syvitski, Chair of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme and three fellow experts (in full: http://bit.ly/Yx4COp), and in a new “Water in the Anthropocene” video to debut in Bonn May 21 (available at gwsp.org and http://www.anthropocene.info):

• Humanity uses an area the size of South America to grow its crops and an area the size of Africa for raising livestock
• Due to groundwater and hydrocarbon pumping in low lying coastal areas, two-thirds of major river deltas are sinking, some of them at a rate four times faster on average than global sea level is rising
• More rock and sediment is now moved by human activities such as shoreline in-filling, damming and mining than by the natural erosive forces of ice, wind and water combined
• Many river floods today have links to human activities, including the Indus flood of 2010 (which killed 2,000 people), and the Bangkok flood of 2011 (815 deaths)
• On average, humanity has built one large dam every day for the last 130 years. Tens of thousands of large dams now distort natural river flows to which ecosystems and aquatic life adapted over millennia
• Drainage of wetlands destroys their capacity to ease floods—a free service of nature expensive to replace
• Evaporation from poorly-managed irrigation renders many of the world’s rivers dry — no water, no life. And so, little by little, tens of thousands of species edge closer to extinction every day.

This is an image of Africa from the data visualization video “Water in the Anthropocene,” to debut May 21 at gwsp.org and www.anthropocene.info.
Credit: gwsp.org/ www.anthropocene.info

Needed: Better water system monitoring and governance

The water community stresses that concern now extends far beyond ‘classic’ drinking water and sanitation issues and includes water quality and quantity for ecosystems at all scales.

Says GWSP co-chair Claudia Pahl-Wostl: “The fact is, as world water problems worsen, we lack adequate efforts to monitor the availability, condition and use of water — a situation presenting extreme long term cost and danger.

“Human water security is often achieved in the short term at the expense of the environment with harmful long-term implications. The problems are largely caused by governance failure and a lack of systemic thinking in both developed and developing countries. Economic development without concomitant institutional development will lead to greater water insecurity in the long-term. Global leadership is required to deal with the water challenges of the 21st century.

“Humanity changes the way water moves around the globe like never before, causing dramatic harm,” says Bonn conference keynote speaker Joe Alcamo, Chief Scientist of the UN Environment Programme and former co-chair of the GWSP. “By diverting freshwater for agricultural, industrial and municipal use, for example, our coastal wetlands receive less and less, and often polluted, freshwater. The results include decreased inland and coastal biodiversity, increased coastal salinity and temperature, and contaminated agricultural soils and agricultural runoff.”

Adds Charles Vörösmarty, co-Chair and a founding member of the GWSP, which receives input from more hundreds of international scientists: “By throwing concrete, pipes, pumps, and chemicals at our water problems, to the tune of a half-trillion dollars a year, we’ve produced a technological curtain separating clean water flowing from our pipes and the highly-stressed natural waters that sit in the background. We treat symptoms of environmental abuse rather than underlying causes. Thus, problems continue to mount in the background, yet the public is largely unaware of this reality or its growing costs.”

Aims of the Bonn meeting

Featuring 60 special topic sessions, “Water in the Anthropocene” is a capstone event for the GWSP, which is developing “Future Water,” the water-related component of the emerging new multi-dimensional international collaborative environmental research framework, Future Earth.

A goal of the meeting is to synthesize major global water research achievements in the last decade and help assembling the scientific foundations to articulate a common vision of Earth’s water future.

It will recommended priorities for decision makers in the areas of earth system science and water resources governance and management.

And it will constitute a scientific prelude to October’s Budapest Water Summit, a major objective of which is to elevate the importance of water issues within the UN General Assembly negotiations on the Sustainable Development Goals — a set of globally-agreed future objectives to succeed the UN Millennium Development Goals in 2015.

Observers expect adoption of “water security” as a Sustainable Development Goal

This is an image of Europe from the data visualization video “Water in the Anthropocene,” to debut May 21 at gwsp.org and www.anthropocene.info.
Credit: gwsp.org/ www.anthropocene.info

Water expert Janos Bogardi, Senior Advisor to GWSP, says the absence of defined global water quantity and quality standards for personal use, agriculture and healthy ecosystems are critical gaps as the world community develops its next set of shared medium-term objectives.

“These definitions constitute a cardinal challenge today for scientists and politicians alike. It is important to reach consensus in order to make progress on the increasingly important notion of ‘water security’,” says Dr. Bogardi, stressing that changing terminology will not in itself solve problems. “Replacing the word ‘sustainability’ with ‘security’ is not a panacea.”

With respect to quantity, less than 20 liters daily for sanitary needs and drinking is deemed “water misery” while 40 to 80 liters is considered “comfortable.” (Current US per capita average daily consumption is over 300 liters; daily usage in urban Germany is about 120 liters per capita and in urban Hungary, where water is relatively expensive, the figure is 80 liters.)

Missing also are authoritative scientific determinations of how much water can be drawn without crossing a “tipping point” threshold into ecosystem collapse. While there is no general rule, GWSP scientists say withdrawals of 30% to 40% of a renewable freshwater resource constitutes “extreme” water stress, but underline scope to continue satisfying needs if water is returned and recycled in good quality. Mining fossil groundwater resources is by definition non-sustainable.

The GWSP is developing water quality guidelines for people, agriculture and ecosystems in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals.

“The urgency of formulating the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals and a tracking system for their success means that quite soon the SDG negotiators must offer-up water targets,” says Dr. Vörösmarty. “Whether they focus predominantly on continuing the Millennium Development Goals (narrowly on drinking water and sanitation for human health) or formulate a more comprehensive agenda that simultaneously optimizes water security for humans as well as for nature remains an open question. The water sciences community stands ready to take on this challenge. Are the the decision makers?”

Definitions of water security

In 2007, World Bank expert David Grey and Claudia Sadoff of IUCN, defined water security as “The availability of an acceptable quantity and quality of water for health, livelihoods, ecosystems and production, coupled with an acceptable level of water-related risks to people, environments and economies.”

Their use of the term “acceptable” acknowledges that water security has relative, negotiable meanings.

In March, another formulation was set out by UN-Water, the United Nations’ inter-agency coordination mechanism for all water-related issues.

It defined water security as: “The capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of and acceptable quality water for sustaining livelihoods, human well-being, and socio-economic development, for ensuring protection against water-borne pollution and water-related disasters, and for preserving ecosystems in a climate of peace and political stability.” (see http://bit.ly/1864vMG)

Source: AAAS EurekAlert 

Researchers have engineered a strain of electricity-producing bacteria that can grow using hydrogen gas as its sole electron donor and carbon dioxide as its sole source of carbon. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst report their findings at the 113th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology.

“This represents the first result of current production solely on hydrogen,” says Amit Kumar, a researcher on the study who, along with his co-authors are part of the Lovley Lab Group at the university.

Under the leadership of Derek Lovley, the lab group has been studying Geobacter bacteria since Lovley first isolated Geobacter metallireducens in sand sediment from the Potomac River in 1987. Geobacter species are of interest because of their bioremediation, bioenergy potential, novel electron transfer capabilities, the ability to transfer electrons outside the cell and transport these electrons over long distances via conductive filaments known as microbial nanowires.

Kumar and his colleagues studied a relative of G. metallireducens called Geobacter sulfurreducens, which has the ability to produce electricity by reducing organic carbon compounds with a graphite electrode like iron oxide or gold to serve as the sole electron acceptor. They genetically engineered a strain of the bacteria that did not need organic carbon to grow in a microbial fuel cell.

“The adapted strain readily produced electrical current in microbial fuel cells with hydrogen gas as the sole electron donor and no organic carbon source,” says Kumar, who notes that when the hydrogen supply to the microbial fuel cell was intermittently stopped electrical current dropped significantly and cells attached to the electrodes did not generate any significant current.

Source: AAAS EurekAlert

The largest drinking water purification plant in Europe to feature GE’s  ZeeWeed 500 advanced water treatment technology is under construction in Ravenna, Italy. Located on the east coast of Italy, close to the Adriatic Sea and part of the Mediterranean Sea, this popular tourist destination needed a way to ensure increased water supply, as a result of repeated water shortages, and high-quality drinking water for residents and visitors.

Several years ago, Romagna Acque – Società delle Fonti SpA, the public company in charge of the water wholesale supply for Italy’s Romagna region, realized it needed to heavily invest in supplementing its existing water supply to ensure water always is available. The municipality selected GE’s membrane technology for the project due to its ability to convert deteriorated raw source water into high-quality, safe drinking water.

Often plagued by long periods of drought that cause the reservoirs to reach critically low levels, the region turns to the Po River, the longest river in Italy, as a drinking water source. The raw water from the Po River has a high variation of solids and turbidity especially after rain, and the new drinking water plant needed a reliable method to purify the severely deteriorated incoming water.

“Our region’s economy depends on industrial assets and on seasonal tourists who come to Ravenna’s coastal area for popular beaches and historical sites. Safe and reliable drinking water is essential to ensuring visitors continue to patronize the Romagna region,” said Romagna Acque CEO, Romagna Acque – Società delle Fonti SpA. “We had been experiencing water shortages and needed to add to our reliable supply of water. Building a new drinking water plant with GE’s ZeeWeed technology is the key to turning the river into a safe and dependable source of potable water.”

Once operational, the new drinking water plant utilizing GE’s ZeeWeed 500 technology will treat an average flow of 95 million liters per day (MLD), which is enough water to serve approximately 400,000 people. GE will provide the technology to the engineering, procurement and construction joint venture led by Torricelli S.r.l., in partnership with Degrémont SpA. Featuring 40 cassettes filled with ZeeWeed 500 modules and distributed in eight filtration trains, the new facility will be the largest potable plant of its kind in Europe using GE technology.

GE ZeeWeed 500 technology is an advanced filtration technology that separates particles, bacteria and viruses from water or wastewater. Nearly 1,000 plants worldwide use this technology to produce superior quality. Its unique ability to handle high peaks of solids and turbidity, combined with the high-efficient process and low energy and chemicals usage, makes it ideal for treating deteriorated or high variation raw water sources and always producing high and stable drinking quality water.

“In recent years, Italy’s Romagna region has been afflicted with a limited and deteriorating water supply from conventional sources such as reservoirs and aquifers and was forced to turn to alternative water bodies, which can have severely deteriorated quality. Sophisticated water treatment processes, like GE’s ZeeWeed ultrafiltration technology, are ideal for when tough, raw source water needs to be turned into potable water,” said Yuvbir Singh, general manager, engineered systems—water and process technologies for GE Power & Water. “More and more governments and municipalities are looking into new ways to safely and reliably generate potable water, regardless of how deteriorated the original water source.”

Ultrafiltration uses a semi-permeable membrane barrier to reject suspended solids, bacteria, viruses, endotoxins and other pathogens in water to produce treated water known as permeate with very high purity and low silt density. It serves as a pretreatment for surface water, seawater and biologically treated municipal effluent before reverse osmosis and other membrane water treatment systems. Ultrafiltration also is used in industry to separate suspended solids from solution. GE’s ZeeWeed ultrafiltration membranes offer an unmatched combination of ultrafiltration performance, energy efficiency, durability, fast installation, ease of operation and reliability.

Source: Business Wire

The soothing role of trees

Although this is universally true, trees generally are very good for the mood for people who live in big urban areas and don’t have easy access to non-urban environments. Not only are trees majestic and beautiful, they provide some shade on warm summer days, limit noise pollution, and allow birds to nest and to tweet by your window. Some even produce tasty, edible fruits a few steps away from your front door. Trees have a direct and significant impact on the mental and physical state of the people who live in the city. Yet, their presence around one’s house also has an impact on the overall energy-efficiency of the building.

Insulation

Trees are considered to be the biggest living species on earth. Mature ones often grow much higher than any one- or two-story houses and  play the role of an umbrella in the summer, limiting the surface over which sun rays hit the house. They also provide an additional shielding layer in the winter, protecting the walls against the cold winds. This insulating capacity makes any urban house much more comfortable year round: hot air does not get into the house as much in the summer, and cool air does not reach the walls as much in the winter. The inside temperature therefore is much more stable.

Although all of this may seem obvious, it ought to be noted that the insulation capacity of trees is everything but trivial. Some studies demonstrate that having trees around the home in urban settings can reduce energy consumption significantly. In the winter, heating needs can be decreased by 15% while in the summer the cost of air conditioning can be reduced by as much as 50%! Not only do these savings potentially represent an inviting amount of money at the end of the year, they also indicate that the overall carbon footprint of any house with trees around it can be significantly smaller than its treeless and plantless equivalent.

Herbs and flowers

Although their green impact can seem more tenuous than that of mature trees, plants and herbs are far from being useless around the house. Indeed, having nearby some of the herbs you often use in your recipes (such as basil, cilantro, parsley, chives, thyme, rosemary, etc.) can add a tiny bit of autonomy to your household in the sense that you produce more of what you actually need to sustain your living needs. Not having to go to the supermarket to buy those herbs when they are missing in the fridge does not only rhymes with money savings: it also means less waste in terms of wrapping. Think about those little plastic bags and packages that you actually pay for every time you buy just a few tiny branches of fresh rosemary!

How you take care of the lawn also matters. Indeed, opting for an electric lawn mower, especially if the energy grid you are connected to produces renewable forms of energy, can yield substantial energy savings at the same time as it limits GHG emissions. The same can be said of any other instrument that can be used around the house such as grass trimmers and handheld blowers. In summary, thinking green beyond the inside of your house can result in a significant, positive impact on your living space’s overall energy-efficiency.

About the author: Alexandre Duval is a freelance blogger who writes about travel destinations in Quebec, Canada and elsewhere in the world for ViaRail promoting their travel Montreal packages. He has lived in three countries and travelled in more than fifteen. He is currently completing his master’s degree in Montreal.

Photo: The ninth Yeouido Spring Flower Festival from Shutterstock