Kevin Czajkowski

Uptake of pharmaceutical and personal care products by soybean plants from soils applied with biosolids and irrigated with contaminated water.

Many pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) are commonly found in biosolids and effluents from wastewater treatment plants. Land application of these biosolids and the reclamation of treated wastewater can transfer those PPCPs into the terrestrial and aquatic environments, giving rise to potential accumulation in plants. In this work, a greenhouse experiment was used to study the uptake of three pharmaceuticals (carbamazepine, diphenhydramine, and fluoxetine) and two personal care products (triclosan and triclocarban) by an agriculturally important species, soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr.). Two treatments simulating biosolids application and wastewater irrigation were investigated. After growing for 60 and 110 days, plant tissues and soils were analyzed for target compounds. Carbamazepine, triclosan, and triclocarban were found to be concentrated in root tissues and translocated into above ground parts including beans, whereas accumulation and translocation for diphenhydramine and fluoxetine was limited. The uptake of selected compounds differed by treatment, with biosolids application resulting in higher plant concentrations, likely due to higher loading. However, compounds introduced by irrigation appeared to be more available for uptake and translocation. Degradation is the main mechanism for the dissipation of selected compounds in biosolids applied soils, and the presence of soybean plants had no significant effect on sorption. Data from two different harvests suggest that the uptake from soil to root and translocation from root to leaf may be rate limited for triclosan and triclocarban and metabolism may occur within the plant for carbamazepine.

Evaluating land surface moisture conditions from the remotely sensed temperature/vegetation index measurements An exploration with the simplified simple biosphere model

Land soil moisture conditions play a critical role in evaluating terrestrial environmental conditions related to ecological, hydrological, and atmospheric processes. Extensive efforts to exploit the potential of remotely sensed observations to help quantify this complex variable are still underway. Among the various methods, several investigators have explored a combination of surface temperatures and spectral vegetation index (SVI) measurements, the TVX method, as a means to account for the variable influence of vegetation cover in soil moisture assessment. Although considerable empirical evidence has been presented exploring the potential of TVX methods to assess regional moisture conditions, less attention has been given to assessing the underlying biophysics of the observed TVX patterns. In this study, the Simplified Simple Biosphere (SSiB) model is exploited to examine the factors that lead to the observed TVX relation. For a range of typical, midlatitude, growing season conditions, the SSiB model produces the expected TVX relationship, surface temperature decreases with increasing SVI values. The most critical factors that cause the TVX relation to vary include near-surface soil moisture (2 cm), incident radiation (IR), and, to a lesser degree, wind speed. Whereas many empirical studies have suggested that the slope of the TVX relation may provide an important diagnostic of soil moisture conditions, in this analysis, the impact of plant stomatal function is shown to confuse this interpretation of the TVX slope. However, other aspects of the TVX metrics, specifically bare soil temperature and canopy temperature, do provide diagnostic near-surface soil moisture information. Growing season variations in TVX metrics were examined for the conditions recorded at the Hydrological and Atmospheric Pilot Experiment—Modelisation du Bilan Hydrique (HAPEX-Mobilhy) study site. The results from this analysis indicate that soil and canopy temperatures vary as a function of soil moisture conditions and, to a lesser degree, as a result of varying solar insolation and wind speed. The results also show that the TVX metrics are able to provide daily soil moisture variation up to 2 cm of soil depth and seasonal trend up to 10 cm. Using the satellite-derived surface temperatures and a SSiB-derived retrieval equation, the retrieved soil moistures at the HAPEX-Mobilhy site generally closely approximate the conditions recorded on the ground.

OCCURRENCE OF SELECTED PHARMACEUTICALS IN AN AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPE, WESTERN LAKE ERIE BASIN

The occurrence of 18 commonly used pharmaceuticals was investigated in an agricultural area, which is primarily affected by runoff from agricultural fields and septic systems, on the coastline of Maumee Bay, within the western Lake Erie basin. Selected pharmaceuticals were detected in surface water, except clofibric acid and fluoxethine. The most frequently detected compounds were caffeine (88%), carbamazepine (57%) and paraxanthine (56%). Caffeine, carbamazepine, ibuprofen and paraxanthine were detected with maximum concentrations of 4.2, 1.2, 2.8 and 1.8 microg L(-1), respectively. However, no compound was detected in any sediment samples. In a field receiving biosolids application, pharmaceuticals were detected in the field tile drainage following biosolids application but not in soil. The occurrence of pharmaceuticals in surface water can be linked to the use of septic systems.

Thermal Remote Sensing of Near Surface Environmental Variables: Application Over the Oklahoma Mesonet

Many recent studies have applied satellite remote sensing data to large-scale hydrologic and biospheric modeling. It is widely accepted that the thermal infrared observations from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) have the potential to estimate land surface conditions, such as surface temperature, near surface air temperature, and near surface water vapor. In this study, algorithms to estimate all three variables are presented and applied to an area covering the state of Oklahoma for a six day period in August, 1994. The results were validated using ground observations from the 111 station Oklahoma Mesonet. Validation of the remote sensing algorithms with Mesonet observations produced comparable results to previous validation studies. In addition, the validation process revealed inadequacies in thermal modeling that had not been detected in previous validation studies leading to the development of a new approach to estimate atmospheric water vapor.

Biospheric environmental monitoring at BOREAS with AVHRR observations

Global models of biospheric processes such as production efficiency models need environmental input and validation data sets at high temporal and spatial resolution. Methods developed to assess biospheric environmental conditions from advanced very high resolution radiometer (AVHRR) observations, specifically air temperature and surface moisture, are explored through exploitation of field measurements collected at the Boreal Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study site. The surface temperature/spectral vegetation index (TVX) concept provides the potential for estimating air temperature and surface moisture from AVHRR-type satellite observations. Initial results show that the slope of TVX over boreal landscapes is related to near-surface soil moisture in addition to vegetation type and solar irradiance. Also, the TVX air temperature estimation correlates well with shelter height observations. However, our analysis shows that challenges remain in using the TVX approach, largely because it is difficult to isolate the effects of variations in atmospheric conditions from physical environmental conditions at the Earths surface. Clouds significantly limit the application of the TVX technique. It is also limited when the variability of the normalized difference vegetation index is low or a sharp vegetation boundary is contained within the TVX contextual array. The TVX air temperature can be used to approximate shelter height temperature to within ±5 K under most conditions; however, there are outliers with differences as large as 15 K which, at this time, cannot be explained. The air temperature estimation also exhibits a 3.2 K warm bias. Part of this bias is a result of errors in the split window surface temperature estimate used in the TVX regression.

Land surface temperature estimation from AVHRR thermal infrared measurements: An assessment for the AVHRR Land Pathfinder II data set

Abstract Improved processing algorithms are being developed, under the AVHRR Land Pathfinder II (ALP-II) Project, to process the entire Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) archive, including methods to produce surface temperature ( T s ) measurements from the thermal infrared portion of the observation record. This new data set should assist in the monitoring of global terrestrial environmental conditions on seasonal to interannual time scales. The impact of both the calibration and filter function variations between National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)-AVHRR sensors is addressed in this proposed ALP-II approach. Accounting for these sensor factors reduces the error of intersatellite comparison of surface temperatures by as much as 2.3 K. The environmental factors were also addressed, including the surface emissivity, large range of atmospheric water vapor (WV) across the globe, and the potential for large surface-to-air temperature differences for land. To account for both the sensor and environmental factors in the ALP-II data set, we derive, from the MODTRAN-3 model, two sets of new coefficients, for low and high WV in the atmosphere. Two types of split-window equations were analyzed, the linear and quadratic forms of the land split-window equations. Our MODTRAN-based analysis suggests that the quadratic form is more accurate than the linear form, especially for high WV contents. These coefficients can be used in our LST algorithm in combination with a global emissivity map and WV data from Global Circulation Model (GCM).

Land surface air temperature mapping using TOVS and AVHRR

Surface air temperature is an important variable in land surface hydrological studies. This paper evaluates the ability of satellites to map air temperature across large land surface areas. Algorithms recently have been developed that derive surface air temperature using observations from the TOVS (TIROS Operational Vertical Sounder) suite of instruments and also from the AVHRR (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer), which have flown on the NOAA operational sun synchronous satellites TIROS-N NOAA-14. In this study we evaluate TOVS soundings from NOAA-10 (nominal local time of overpass 7:30 a.m./p.m.) and data from AVHRR aboard NOAA-9 (nominal local time 2:30 a.m./p.m.). Instantaneous estimates from the AVHRR and TOVS were compared with the hourly ground observations collected from 26 meteorological stations in the Red River-Arkansas River basin for a 3-month period from May to July 1987. Detailed comparisons between the satellite and ground estimates of surface air temperatures are reported and the feasibility of estimating the diurnal variation is explored. The comparisons are interpreted in the geographical context, i.e. land cover and topography, and in the seasonal context, i.e. early and midsummer. The results show that the average bias over the 3-month period compared with ground-based observations is approximately 2°C or less for the three times of day with TOVS having lower biases than AVHRR. Knowledge of these error estimates will greatly benefit use of satellite data in hydrological modelling.

Thermal remote sensing of near-surface water vapor

Abstract In this study, four approaches to estimate atmospheric water vapor from Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) observations were tested with data from the Boreal Ecosystem–Atmosphere Study (BOREAS) and the Oklahoma Mesonetwork. The approaches studied were (i) the split-window difference of the thermal channels (Channel 4: 10.3–11.3 μm and Channel 5: 11.5–12.5 μm) by Dalu [Int. J. Remote Sens. 7 (1986) 1089.], (ii) the ratio of variances by Jedlovec [J. Appl. Meteorol. 29 (1990) 863.], (iii) the regression slope by Goward et al. [Ecol. Appl. 4 (1994) 322.], and (iv) a look-up table derived from radiative transfer model output. Although these techniques were primarily developed to estimate total column precipitable water, we used them to estimate near-surface water vapor, within a few meters of the surface. Near-surface water vapor is needed for hydrologic and biospheric modeling. Analysis showed the total column precipitable water to be highly correlated ( r 2 =.79) with near-surface absolute humidity for clear-sky conditions at the BOREAS and the Oklahoma study sites. Correlation of all the retrieval techniques with ground observations was very low. For the split-window approach, water vapor can only be estimated on a per pixel basis and is ambiguous for anything but a single site. The regression slope and variance ratio techniques showed very little correlation with ground observations with r 2 =.02 when compared with data from BOREAS, and .17 for the variance ratio and .24 for the regression slope when compared with Mesonet data. The spatial variability of water vapor across the landscape hampers the use of these contextual approaches. The highest correlation was for the look-up table approach, with r 2 =.36 when compared with data from the BOREAS site. The look-up table was applied using AVHRR Channels 4 and 5 brightness temperatures, surface temperature, and near-surface air temperature. Surface temperature and air temperature were both estimated from the satellite readings. Combining the satellite data with air temperature measured at meteorological ground stations improved the correlation to .50. The relatively low r 2 values were at least partly due to spatial and temporal mismatches between surface and satellite measurements. Simulation of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) thermal Channels 29 (8.4–8.7 μm), 31 (10.78–11.28 μm), and 32 (11.77–12.27 μm) brightness temperatures showed that Channels 31 and 32 provide similar information as AVHRR Channels 4 and 5. The additional thermal information provided by Channel 29 shows promise for future water vapor detection efforts.

Net ecosystem methane and carbon dioxide exchanges in a Lake Erie coastal marsh and a nearby cropland

Net ecosystem carbon dioxide (FCO2) and methane (FCH4) exchanges were measured by using the eddy covariance method to quantify the atmospheric carbon budget at a Typha- and Nymphaea-dominated freshwater marsh (March 2011 to March 2013) and a soybean cropland (May 2011 to May 2012) in northwestern Ohio, USA. Two year average annual FCH4 (49.7 g C-CH4 m−2 yr−1) from the marsh was high and compatible with its net annual CO2 uptake (FCO2: −21.0 g C-CO2 m−2 yr−1). In contrast, FCH4 was small (2.3 g C-CH4 m−2 yr−1) and accounted for a minor portion of the atmospheric carbon budget (FCO2: −151.8 g C-CO2 m−2 yr−1) at the cropland. At the seasonal scale, soil temperature associated with methane (CH4) production provided the dominant regulator of FCH4 at the marsh (R2 = 0.86). At the diurnal scale, plant-modulated gas flow was the major pathway for CH4 outgassing in the growing season at the marsh. Diffusion and ebullition became the major pathways in the nongrowing season and were regulated by friction velocity. Our findings highlight the importance of freshwater marshes for their efficiency in turning over and releasing newly fixed carbon as CH4. Despite marshes accounting for only ~4% of area in the agriculture-dominated landscape, their high FCH4 should be carefully addressed in the regional carbon budget.

Dissipation and Leaching Potential of Selected Pharmaceutically Active Compounds in Soils Amended with Biosolids

Biosolids land application is an important pathway introducing pharmaceuticals into the environment. In this work, laboratory column and dissipation experiments were performed using soils of varying properties in order to study the fate and transport of pharmaceutical residues introduced by the land application of biosolids. For experimentation, five pharmaceutical compounds (carbamazepine, diphenhydramine, fluoxetine, diltiazem, and clindamycin) and two metabolites (carbamazepine-10,11-epoxide and norfluoxetine) commonly found in biosolids were selected. Leaching experiments indicate that the selected pharmaceuticals have low mobility in tested soils. However, small portions of the applied pharmaceuticals were recovered in the leachates, likely attributed to sorption to dissolved organic matter. Dissipation experiments show that carbamazepine, diphenhydramine, and fluoxetine were persistent in soils, whereas the dissipation of diltiazem and clindamycin was affected by redox conditions and soil properties.