Perception of the Residential Environmental Quality of Yenagoa Metropolis,Nigeria

Residential environmental quality(REQ)affects human health and quality of life(QoL).Therefore,this study as­sessed residents’perception of the REQ of the Yenagoa metropolis.Data for the study were sourced from the 400 ad­ministered questionnaires,which required respondents to rate their REQ based on seven selected indicators(air quality,drinking water quality,housing location,sanitation,waste management,housing accessibility and noise pollution).The respondents were sampled using the multistage sampling technique.The data were analyzed using frequency,percent­age,t-test,ANOVA and REQ model.The findings show that the overall calculated REQ of Yenagoa was classified as“good quality”.The best-rated indicator was drinking water quality,while the least-rated was noise pollution.Ratings based on respondents’sex,income and educational status recorded similar results.Also,the respondents’perception of the REQ across the four zones was similar as the calculated ratings of all the zones fell under the“good quality”classification.Furthermore,the hypotheses tested revealed that there were no significant differences in the perception of the REQ by sex and income status,while significant variation exists by education status.Despite the general“good quality”rating,there is still room for improvement,especially in the areas of noise pollution,sanitation and housing location,which received relatively low ratings.

Assessment and mapping of environmental quality in agricultural soils of Zhejiang Province, China

Heavy metal concentrations in agricultural soils of Zhejiang Province were monitored to indicate the status of heavy metal contamination and assess environmental quality of agricultural soils. A total of 908 soil samples were collected from 38 counties in Zbejiang Province and eight heavy metal （Cd, Cr, Pb, Hg, Cu, Zn, Ni and As） concentrations had been evaluated in agricultural soil. It was found 775 samples were unpolluted and 133 samples were slightly polluted and more respectively, that is approximately 14.65% agricultural soil samples had the heavy metal concentration above the threshold level in this province by means of Nemerow＇s synthetical pollution index method according to the second grade of Standards for Soil Environmental Quality of China （GB15618- 1995）. Contamination of Cd was the highest, followed by Ni, As and Zn were lower correspondingly. Moreover, Inverse Distance Weighted （IDW） interpolation method was used to make an assessment map of soil environmental quality based on the Nemerow＇s pollution index and the soil environmental quality was categorized into five grades. Moreover, ten indices were calculated as input parameters for principal component analysis （PCA） and the principal components （PCs） were created to compare environmental quality of different soils and regions. The results revealed that environmental quality of tea soils was better than that of paddy soils, vegetable soils and fruit soils. This study indicated that GIS combined with multivariate statistical approaches proved to be effective and powerful tool in the mapping of soil contamination distribution and the assessment of soil environmental quality on provincial scale, which is beneficial to environmental protection and management decision-making by local government.

Using benthic macrofauna to assess environmental quality of four intertidal mudflats in Hong Kong and Shenzhen Coast

Intertidal zone is a significant wetland between land and ocean. It plays an important rolein maintaining local ecological balance. Both Mai Po and Futian intertidal mudflats are located in Shenzhen Bay and are important 'refueling' point along the East Asian/Australian flyway of migratory birds. The environmental quality of Mai Po and Futian mudflats have aroused great concern due to rapid economic developments in Hong Kong and Shenzhen in recent decades. Macroinfauna of Mai Po and Futian mudflats was investigated in December 2000 and the faunal data were used to assess their environmental quality. Two other mudflats, namely Ma Wan Typhoon Shelter (a more disturbed area) and Luk Keng intertidal mudflat (a place with relatively less human disturbance), were also sampled for macroinfauna and used as reference mudflats. Shannon - Weaver species diversity index (Isd), biotic coefficient (Cb) and macrofaunal pollution index (Imp) of the macrofauna community on four intertidal mudflats were used to determine their environmental quality. The results showed that Luk Keng intertidal mudflat was unpolluted, Mai Po and Futian mudflats were slightly polluted, and Ma Wan was moderately polluted. The pollution in Ma Wan Typhoon Shelter mainly came from various types of rubbish and fishing boats that disturbed the sediment, while pollution sources in Mai Po and Futian mudflats were discharges of industrial water, municipal sewage and from nearby rivers.

Impact of Electronic Wastes Recycling on Environmental Quality

Objective To evaluate the environmental quality of Guiyu, Guangdong impacted by the electronic waste recycling industry. Methods The surface water, ground water and sediment samples taken separately from two sites that recycle E-wastes and other rubbish relevant to the E-waste recycling, and an agricultural area, were analyzed, and the data were used to evaluate the impact of E-waste recycling on the environmental quality of Guiyu based on environmental quality standards in China. Results The concentrations of lead and iron in the surface water samples significantly different in the three locations. The maximum value of lead in the first site was 8 times higher than the threshold of environmental quality standards for surface water. The concentration of iron in polluted sample was 22 times that of the background sample. Manganese and iron also showed a significant difference in ground water samples between the three sites. The amount of iron was 22 times that of the threshold of the quality standard for ground water, and 120 times that of the background sample. Moreover, the results of all the eight heavy metals showed significant differences among the sediment samples. The concentrations of copper, cadmium, nickel, and lead in the polluted samples were above the median benchmarks of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration （NOAA）. The copper concentration of 2670 mg/kg was 10 times that of the median benchmark. Conclusion E-waste recycling has led to the severe pollution Guiyu.

The Fuzzy Synthesizing Evaluation of City's Environmental Quality Based on GIOWA Operator:A Case of 13 Cities of Jiangsu Province

In this paper, the generally induced ordered weighted averaging (GIOWA) operator is used to construct the fuzzy evaluating system of the quality of a city’s environment including air, water and noise. Based on the part data of air, water and noise of the 13 cities under the jurisdiction of Jiangsu provincial government in 2002, a case study is given. The evaluating results show that the evaluating system of the quality of a city’s environment based on the GIOWA operator can reflect the condition of pollution controlled and environmental quality of a city in a period of time.

Objective and quantitative evaluation of environmental quality of the land for agriculture purpose

An objective and quantitative evaluation method on land environmental quality for agricultural purpose in a county range is studied in this paper. The method takes into account the quantity of heat, precipitation, meteorological disaster and soil fertility, which have close relationship to the potential productivity of land and can be expressed conveniently and accurately by taking Kai County as an example. Besides comprehensive grading assessment, assessment with Hilbert Space distance coefficiency and comprehensive judgement by fuzzy sets theory, the assessment factors are expanded to 18 parameters, and fuzzy dominance matrix and fuzzy clustering methods are adopted for regional comprehensive identification of agriculture-use land. Among these methods, each benefits from association with the other. In this paper, an all-round and objective new way for understanding of land environmental quality is put forward.

R/S method for evaluation of pollutant time series in environmental quality assessment

The significance of the fluctuation and randomness of the time series of each pollutant in environmental quality assessment is described for the first time in this paper. A comparative study was made of three different computing methods： the same starting point method, the striding averaging method, and the stagger phase averaging method. All of them can be used to calculate the Hurst index, which quantifies fluctuation and randomness. This study used real water quality data from Shazhu monitoring station on Taihu Lake in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province. The results show that, of the three methods, the stagger phase averaging method is best for calculating the Hurst index of a pollutant time series from the perspective of statistical regularity.

Correlation Analysis between Economic Growth and Environmental Quality

With the rapid development of the economy,China’s environment has been damaged severely,which has attracted much attention from scholars and the local government.The concept of green development has been an underlying trend since 2012,and it is of great significance to explore the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality.Huzhou is a prefecture-level city under the jurisdiction of Zhejiang Province,and it is one of the 27 cities in the central area of the Yangtze River Delta.In recent years,this city develops well not only in economic development but also in maintaining a green environment.In the paper,the back propagation neural network is used to evaluate the local environmental quality.Meanwhile,the panel model is exploited to analyze the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality.All the data presented in the paper range from the year 2008 to 2018.Theoretical analysis indicates that the evaluation value of environmental quality,the emissions of industrial SO2,and waste water exhibit an inverted U-shaped relationship with economic growth.As for the regression results,the inflection point of income in the environmental Kuznets curve of the model which takes the evaluation value of the environmental quality as a dependent variable is higher than that of the model which takes the SO2 emission as an independent variable.The research result would help the local government to take appropriate countermeasures to improve the environment and economy.

A STUDY ON ECONOMY EVALUATION ON THE PROFIT AND LOSS OF GEOLOGIC ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY ABOUT GEOLOGIC ENVIRONMENTAL EXPLOITATION PROJECT

The problems of environmental geology refer to the geologic phenomena, incidents or accidents arising from action of environmental geology. The action is mainly the mutual influence between human activity and geologic environment. When human activity is uncoordinated with objective laws of the geologic environment, the problems of environmental geology or economic loss would occur.Therefore,the level and the changing orientation of geologic environmental quality are relative to the types of human activity,particularly relative to human intentional-activities of geologic environmental exploitation project. The geologic environment fitting to mining may not fit to urban construction,and fitting to water conservancy and hydroelectric projects may not fit to communication,and so on.Economy evaluation on the profit and loss of geologic environmental quality is exactly to depict the level of the profit and loss of geologic environmental quality about geologic environmental exploitation projects and the

Investigating environmental quality among G20 nations: The impacts of environmental goods and low-carbon technologies in mitigating environmental degradation

Environmental goods and low-carbon technologies have long been identified as having the potential to drive long-term economic progress without compromising environmental quality. However, their exact role in mitigating environmental degradation are yet to be unravelled. In addressing this shortfall, the extant literature relied on research funding and patent application as proxies for green technologies. Having established the weaknesses in the use of these variables as proxies for green technologies, this study explored the role of trade in environmental goods and low-carbon technologies in boosting environmental quality among G20 nation using a panel dataset from 1994 to 2018. The study employed the Method of Moment quantile regression for the model estimation and the Ridge regression, Discroll-Kraay standard error, and the Newey-West standard error estimators to test the robustness of our findings. Our findings indicate that whereas environmental goods promote environmental quality, low-carbon technologies decrease same. Also, the study found economic growth to exert an aggravating effect on environmental quality, while foreign direct investments, natural resource rents, human capital development, and renewable energy consumption exert positive influence on environmental quality. Based on the findings of the study, G20 nations are encouraged to improve green market structures to improve the trade in environmental goods and low-carbon technologies. Also the share of renewable energy sources in the overall energy basket must be improved to help improve environmental quality.

Enhancing environmental quality in the United States by linking biomass energy consumption and load capacity factor

This study analyzes the impact of biomass energy,financial development,and economic growth on environmental quality using the novel Fourier autoregressive distributed lag(ARDL)approach on annual data for the period 1965–2018 in the United States(USA).The study analyzes the impact of related variables on the load capacity factor(LCF)as well as on indicators of environmental degradation such as carbon dioxide emissions and ecological footprint.The LCF is one of the most comprehensive environmental indicators to date,encompassing both biocapacity and ecological footprint.In this regard,this study contributes to the environmental economics literature by examining,for the first time,the impact of biomass energy on the LCF.The results of the cointegration test show that there is only a long-run relationship between the LCF and the independent variables.According to the Fourier ARDL results,biomass energy improves the environmental quality,while financial development has no effect on the LCF.Moreover,the increase in per capita income reduces the LCF.Furthermore,since the income elasticity is larger in the long run than in the short-run,the environmental Kuznets curve is validated.Therefore,the United States government should encourage the use of biomass and investment in this form of energy.

Will male semen quality improve with environmental quality?

Wenzhou has improved its environmental quality because of comprehensive environmental remediation;nevertheless,the semen quality of infertile males remains unclear.This study determined whether better environmental quality improved semen quality in this region.We recorded semen quality data from 22962 infertile males from January 2014 to November 2019 at the Center for Reproductive Health of The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University(Wenzhou,China).Patients were predominantly 30–35 years old(33.1%)and workers(82.0%),with high school education or lower(77.6%);more than a half of the patients(52.6%)were Wenzhou household registration;and most patients(77.5%)had abnormal semen quality.Patients who were older than 40 years and workers,and those with Wenzhou household registration,had significantly worse semen quality(all P<0.05).From 2014 to 2019,progressive sperm motility,total sperm motility,and semen volume showed increasing linear trends in all patients(P=0.021,0.030,and 0.005,respectively),yet normal sperm morphology showed a linearly decreasing trend(P=0.046).Sensitivity analyses for subgroups yielded similar results.In conclusion,the improvement of environmental quality and better function of the accessory glands are associated with progressive sperm motility,total sperm motility,and semen volume.Normal sperm morphology is influenced by occupational exposures and personal lifestyle and does not improve with environmental quality.

Application of statistical analysis of sample size:How many occupant responses are required for an indoor environmental quality(IEQ)field study

Determining required sample size is one of the critical pathways to reproducible,reliable and robust results in human-related studies.This paper aims to answer a fundamental but often overlooked question:what sample size is required in surveys of occupant responses to indoor environmental quality(IEQ).The statistical models are introduced in order to promote determining required sample size for various types of data analysis methods commonly used in IEQ field studies.The Monte Carlo simulations are performed to verify the statistical methods and to illustrate the impact of sample size on the study accuracy and reliability.Several examples are presented to illustrate how to determine the value of the parameters in the statistical models based on previous similar research or existing databases.The required sample size including“worst”and“optimal”cases in each condition is obtained by this method and references.It is indicated that 385 is a“worst case”sample size to be adequate for a subgroup analysis,while if the researcher has an estimate of the study design and outcome,the“optimal case”sample size can potentially be reduced.When the required sample size is not achievable,the uncertainty in the result can properly interpret via a confidence interval.It is hoped that this paper would fill in the gap between statistical analysis of sample size and IEQ field research,and it can provide a useful reference for researchers when planning their own studies.

Environmental Quality,Energy Consumption and Economic Inequality in China:Smooth Structural Shifts and Causal Linkages

The space-temporal evolution of economic inequality is examined with Markov chain test method,and the dynamic interrelationships among environmental quality,energy consumption,and economic inequality in China from the province-level are tested by focusing on accounting for structural shifts in causal linkages in this paper.We first employ the Toda-Yamamoto causality framework and then augment it with a Fourier approximation which captures structural changes as a smooth process.The empirical findings show that taking into account smooth structural shifts is important for the causal linkages between economic inequality and energy consumption,and also between environmental quality and energy consumption.The causality analysis with structural changes provides a causal linkage between economic inequality and energy consumption in 26 out 30 provinces and a causal linkage between environmental quality and energy consumption in 7 out 30 provinces,while the quantities are 22 out 30 and 5 out 30 respectively when not accounting for structural shifts.These findings are consistent with the fact that provincial economics in China have experienced structural changes in economy-environment-energy sectors.We also conduct additional analyses which point out that regional and cyclical dependency matter for the causal relationships,and the method of HP filtering can not effectively solve the problem of smooth shifts in economy-environment-energy causality.

Economic structure and environmental quality and their impact on changing land use efficiency in China

Extensive urban land expansion and heavy industrialization have increased energy consumption and caused environmental problems, both of which present serious threats to humans. Consequently, improved land use efficiency and realization of green development are imperative. Based on a detailed analysis of spatial- temporal evolution of urban land use efficiency, this paper analyzes the synergistic effect of industrial structure and city size, as well as the effect of environmental quality, by using panel data from 283 cities at or above prefecture- level in China from 2003 to 2012. It was concluded that 1） environmental quality has an obvious ＂crowding out effect＂ on urban land use efficiency and 2） urban land use efficiency shows a significant spatial auto-correlation. The effect of industrial structure is dependent on popula- tion size of the city. It has been found that a threshold population size of more than 108.45 （10,000 persons） is needed for an optimized benefit from industrial linkages. The urban population size presents an inverted-U shape against the urban land use efficiency, and the marginal benefit of urban size increases when the industrial structure shifts from secondary industry to tertiary industry. Additionally we found that the actual urban size of 98.2% is less than the cities＇ optimal sizes.

Healthy soils for sustainable food production and environmental quality

Soil is the foundation for sustainable foodproduction and environmental protection. Created byunsustainable land management practices and a range ofsocial, economic and environmental drivers, soil degrada-tion and pollution have been an ongoing threat tointernational food security and environmental quality.Soil degradation and pollution assessments are, however,often focused on the soil itself with little scope to devisenew soil management approaches that match foodproduction systems and/or environmentalprotection.This study draws lessons from an Australia-China JointResearch Center Program, Healthy Soils for SustainableFood Production and Environmental Quality: a researchplatform that has brought together multi-disciplinaryapproaches fromworld-renowned universitiesandresearch organizations in Australia and China. To thisend, a framework is presented for future soil managementin a new way that combines excellence in research,industry and policymakers in a partnership that will ensurenot only the right focus of the research but also that high-quality outputs will be transferable to industry and end-users.

Machine Learning and Deep Learning Methods for Enhancing Building Energy Efficiency and Indoor Environmental Quality – A Review

The built environment sector is responsible for almost one-third of the world’s final energy consumption. Hence, seeking plausible solutions to minimise building energy demands and mitigate adverse environmental impacts is necessary. Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques such as machine and deep learning have been increasingly and successfully applied to develop solutions for the built environment. This review provided a critical summary of the existing literature on the machine and deep learning methods for the built environment over the past decade, with special reference to holistic approaches. Different AI-based techniques employed to resolve interconnected problems related to heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems and enhance building performances were reviewed, including energy forecasting and management, indoor air quality and occupancy comfort/satisfaction prediction, occupancy detection and recognition, and fault detection and diagnosis. The present study explored existing AI-based techniques focusing on the framework, methodology, and performance. The literature highlighted that selecting the most suitable machine learning and deep learning model for solving a problem could be challenging. The recent explosive growth experienced by the research area has led to hundreds of machine learning algorithms being applied to building performance-related studies. The literature showed that existing research studies considered a wide range of scope/scales (from an HVAC component to urban areas) and time scales (minute to year). This makes it difficult to find an optimal algorithm for a specific task or case. The studies also employed a wide range of evaluation metrics, adding to the challenge. Further developments and more specific guidelines are required for the built environment field to encourage best practices in evaluating and selecting models. The literature also showed that while machine and deep learning had been successfully applied in building energy efficiency research, most of the studies are still at the experimental or testing stage, and there are limited studies which implemented machine and deep learning strategies in actual buildings and conducted the post-occupancy evaluation.

Marine environmental quality, pollution monitoring and environmental management

Chinese government has adopted a series of management measures to prevent and manage marine pollution and to protect ocean bio resources and ecosystem. The key points of Chinese marine environmental quality status, pollution monitoring and environmental management since 1980' were discussed in this paper. Those included the investigations of Chinese coast environmental quality, monitoring techniques and standards, as well as the marine environmental management measures. Recent status of marine environmental pollution and the monitoring network in China were also introduced.

Questions and Feasible Conditions of Environmental Quality and Fuzzy Comprehensive Assessment

In recent years, methods of fuzzy comprehensive assessment (FCA) have been widely applied in environmental quality comprehensive assessment(EQCA) without conditions. A lot of practised theses have been published. They imitate each other and have a great influence. In this paper, however, opposite examples are given and we further prove that using environmental quality fuzzy comprehensive assessment method (EQFCAM) without conditions will lead to the absolutely non-scientific result. Two basic rules that FCA should adhere to are put forward in this paper. They should be the foundation of EQCA. The sufficient and necessary condition that should meet the fundamental rules in methods of FCA will also be given.