A wide range of microorganisms produce extracellular polymeric substances (EPS), highly hydrated polymers that are mainly composed of polysaccharides, proteins, and DNA. EPS are fundamental for microbial life and provide an ideal environment for chemical reactions, nutrient entrapment, and protection against environmental stresses such as salinity and drought. Microbial EPS can enhance the aggregation of soil particles and benefit plants by maintaining the moisture of the environment and trapping nutrients. In addition, EPS have unique characteristics, such as biocompatibility, gelling, and thickening capabilities, with industrial applications. However, despite decades of research on the industrial potential of EPS, only a few polymers are widely used in different areas, especially in agriculture. This review provides an overview of current knowledge on the ecological functions of microbial EPSs and their application in agricultural soils to improve soil particle aggregation, an important factor for soil structure, health, and fertility.
Abstract Social and environmental impacts, responses and indicators are reviewed for the mainstream tourism sector worldwide, in five categories: population, peace, prosperity, pollution and protection. Of the ∼5000 relevant publications, very few attempt to evaluate the entire global tourism sector in terms which reflect global research in sustainable development. The industry is not yet close to sustainability. The main driver for improvement is regulation rather than market measures. Some tourism advocates still use political approaches to avoid environmental restrictions, and to gain access to public natural resources. Future research priorities include: the role of tourism in expansion of protected areas; improvement in environmental accounting techniques; and the effects of individual perceptions of responsibility in addressing climate change.
The discharge of untreated tannery wastewater containing biotoxic substances of heavy metals in the ecosystem is one of the most important environmental and health challenges in our society. Hence, there is a growing need for the development of novel, efficient, eco-friendly, and cost-effective approach for the remediation of inorganic metals (Cr, Hg, Cd, and Pb) released into the environment and to safeguard the ecosystem. In this regard, recent advances in microbes-base heavy metal have propelled bioremediation as a prospective alternative to conventional techniques. Heavy metals are nonbiodegradable and could be toxic to microbes. Several microorganisms have evolved to develop detoxification mechanisms to counter the toxic effects of these inorganic metals. This present review offers a critical evaluation of bioremediation capacity of microorganisms, especially in the context of environmental protection. Furthermore, this article discussed the biosorption capacity with respect to the use of bacteria, fungi, biofilm, algae, genetically engineered microbes, and immobilized microbial cell for the removal of heavy metals. The use of biofilm has showed synergetic effects with many fold increase in the removal of heavy metals as sustainable environmental technology in the near future.
Nowadays, the material recycling is a growing trend in development of building materials and therefore using of secondary raw materials for production new building materials is in accordance with sustainable development in civil engineering. Therefore, it is increasingly becoming crucial to accelerate the transition from application of non-renewable sources of raw materials to renewable raw materials. One fast renewable resource is natural plant fibers. The use of the cellulosic fibers as environmentally friendly material in building products contributes to the environmental protection and saves non-renewable resources of raw materials. Wood fibers and recycled cellulose fibers of waste paper appear as suited reinforcing elements for cement-based materials. In this paper, there is used application of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) on cellulose fibers coming from different sources. FTIR spectra of cellulose fiber samples are investigated and compared with reference sample of cellulose.
This study investigates why people who actively engage in environmental protection at home engage, albeit unintentionally, in vacation behaviour which has negative environmental consequences. The environmental activists participating in the study were highly aware of the negative environmental consequences of tourism in general, but all displayed an attitude–behaviour gap which made them feel uncomfortable. Participants did not report changing their behaviour; instead, they offered a wide range of explanations justifying their tourist activities. Gaining insight into these explanations contributes to our understanding of why it is so difficult to motivate people to minimize the negative environmental impacts of their vacations, and represents a promising starting point for new interventions to reduce environmentally unsustainable tourism behaviours.
India faces major environmental challenges associated with waste generation and inadequate waste collection, transport, treatment and disposal. Current systems in India cannot cope with the volumes of waste generated by an increasing urban population, and this impacts on the environment and public health. The challenges and barriers are significant, but so are the opportunities. This paper reports on an international seminar on ‘Sustainable solid waste management for cities: opportunities in South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries’ organized by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute and the Royal Society. A priority is to move from reliance on waste dumps that offer no environmental protection, to waste management systems that retain useful resources within the economy. Waste segregation at source and use of specialized waste processing facilities to separate recyclable materials has a key role. Disposal of residual waste after extraction of material resources needs engineered landfill sites and/or investment in waste-to-energy facilities. The potential for energy generation from landfill via methane extraction or thermal treatment is a major opportunity, but a key barrier is the shortage of qualified engineers and environmental professionals with the experience to deliver improved waste management systems in India.
Faustine Cantalloube, Camille Noûs, A. Jolly
et al.
In 2025, the French Society for Astronomy \& Astrophysics (SF2A), gave the environmental transition commission the opportunity to share their considerations during a plenary session at the annual SF2A conference. This year, the presentation focused on some of the main results obtained from the survey entitled 'French astronomy and astrophysics research activities in the face of the environmental crisis, from 2019 to 2024'. The survey was initiated in 2019 by the group 'Environnement-Transition' (coordinated by P. Martin) at IRAP, whose results were presented during the SF2A annual conference 2019 in Nice. The survey was updated in 2024 by the CNRS INSU-AA prospective working group 'Climate and ecological challenge' (coordinated by S. Bontemp). The SF2A environmental transition commission took on the survey to the French institutes, sorted the answers and extracted the preliminary results. The full results will be published at the end of 2025 in the final CNRS INSU-AA 2024 prospective document. This publication presents a selection of pieces from the full survey, along with a few of the main discussions it triggers.
The extraction of invariant causal relationships from time series data with environmental attributes is critical for robust decision-making in domains such as climate science and environmental monitoring. However, existing methods either emphasize dynamic causal analysis without leveraging environmental contexts or focus on static invariant causal inference, leaving a gap in distributed temporal settings. In this paper, we propose Distributed Dynamic Invariant Causal Prediction in Time-series (DisDy-ICPT), a novel framework that learns dynamic causal relationships over time while mitigating spatial confounding variables without requiring data communication. We theoretically prove that DisDy-ICPT recovers stable causal predictors within a bounded number of communication rounds under standard sampling assumptions. Empirical evaluations on synthetic benchmarks and environment-segmented real-world datasets show that DisDy-ICPT achieves superior predictive stability and accuracy compared to baseline methods A and B. Our approach offers promising applications in carbon monitoring and weather forecasting. Future work will extend DisDy-ICPT to online learning scenarios.
Nediljka Vukojević Medvidović, Mihaela Brnadić, Sandra Svilović
et al.
Efficient wastewater treatment is essential for environmental protection and sustainable water resource management, particularly when dealing with complex wastewater streams. Hybrid processes that combine electrochemical and physicochemical methods are increasingly explored due to their potential to enhance pollutant removal efficiency and reduce operating costs. This study evaluates the performance of hybrid treatment methods for complex compost wastewater by integrating electrocoagulation (EC), zeolite and magnetic assistance using aluminium (Al) and iron (Fe) electrodes. The influence of different electrode materials on magnetically assisted hybrid treatment process was assessed with respect to key treatment indicators, including chemical oxygen demand (COD) and turbidity reduction, as well as electrode mass loss, surface morphology, suspension settling, and EC sludge amount. Energy consumption and electrode usage were also considered to evaluate process economics. The results show that the application of a magnetic field in Al electrode systems slightly improves COD and turbidity removal, enhances anodic dissolution, and contributes to a more homogeneous surface morphology. In contrast, Fe electrodes exhibit a partially opposite response – the magnetic field accelerates floc settling and increases EC sludge production but reduces pollutant removal efficiency due to decreased dissolution intensity. Ferromagnetic Fe electrodes respond more strongly to the magnetic field, promoting aggregation and compaction of Fe-hydroxide flocs and partial surface stabilisation, which leads to lower anode mass loss. Weakly paramagnetic Al electrodes, on the other hand, are not directly affected by the magnetic field, but experience an indirect influence through magnetohydrodynamic (MHD)-induced micro-mixing and improved mass transfer. This leads to more uniform and intensive dissolution and a slightly higher pollutant removal efficiency. These findings provide a deeper understanding of the interactions between electrochemical and magnetic effects in hybrid electrocoagulation and offer guidance for optimising electrode material selection and magnetic field parameters to achieve more efficient and sustainable treatment of complex wastewater.
Abstract. Rockfall is an extremely rapid process involving long travel distances. Due to these features, when an event occurs, the ability to take evasive action is practically zero and, thus, the risk of injury or loss of life is high. Damage to buildings and infrastructure is quite likely. In many cases, therefore, suitable protection measures are necessary. This contribution provides an overview of previous and current research on the main topics related to rockfall. It covers the onset of rockfall and runout modelling approaches, as well as hazard zoning and protection measures. It is the aim of this article to provide an in-depth knowledge base for researchers and practitioners involved in projects dealing with the rockfall protection of infrastructures, who may work in the fields of civil or environmental engineering, risk and safety, the earth and natural sciences.