Phytoremediation is an exciting, new technology that utilizes metal-accumulating plants to rid soil of heavy metal and radionuclides. Hyperaccumulation plants are an appealing and economical alternative to current methods of soil recovery. Phytoremediation of Contaminated Soil and Water is the most thorough literary examination of the subject available today. The successful implementation of phytoremediation depends on identifying plant material that is well adapted to specific toxic sites. Gentle remediation is then applied in situ, or at the contamination site. No soil excavation or transport is necessary. This severely contains the potential risk of the pollutants entering the food chain. And it's cost effective. The progress of modern man has created many sites contaminated with heavy metals. The effected land is toxic to plants and animals , which creates considerable public interest in remediation. But the commonly used remedies are ex situ, which poses an expensive dilemma and an even greater threat. Phytoremediation offers the prospect of a cheaper and healthier way to deal with this problem. Read Phytoremediation of Contaminated Soil and Water to learn just how far this burgeoning technology has developed.

Increasing competition in the world sugar industry, combined with the need to maintain the resource base and minimise negative impacts on the environment, mean that sugar industries around the world face many complex problems. These challenges are shared by many other intensive cropping industries. However, advances in crop physiology, biotechnology, management systems, systems analysis and modeling and economics and policy initiatives offer great opportunities for these industries to meet these challenges. This book appraises the current situation and set the agenda for sustainable sugarcane production into the future. The book has been developed from papers presented at the Sugar 2000 symposium held in Brisbane, Australia, in August 1996. All the elements of successful intensive crop production are discussed. These include the biological, climatic, economic and social aspects which must be taken into account and judiciously managed. Topics addressed include new gene technologies and their potential value for sugarcane, along with using knowledge of crop physiology to bring about high levels of yield. Other issues considered include the economics of resource use, such as irrigation, and the impact of sugarcane production on the environment. The book is essential reading for all research scientists working with sugarcane, including plant breeders, physiologists, agronomists and food technologists. It also provides general agronomists with a model system for intensive crop production that will be relevant to other sustainable cropping systems. It is also relevant to economists, regulatory authorities, and commodity traders.

The Environmental Protection Agency's estimate of the costs associated with implementing numeric nutrient criteria in Florida's waterways was significantly lower than many stakeholders expected. This discrepancy was due, in part, to the fact that the Environmental Protection Agency's analysis considered only the incremental cost of reducing nutrients in waters it considered "newly impaired" as a result of the new criteria-not the total cost of improving water quality in Florida. The incremental approach is appropriate for this type of assessment, but the Environmental Protection Agency's cost analysis would have been more accurate if it better described the differences between the new numeric criteria rule and the narrative rule it would replace, and how the differences affect the costs of implementing nutrient reductions over time, instead of at a fixed time point. Such an analysis would have more accurately described which pollutant sources, for example municipal wastewater treatment plants or agricultural operations, would bear the costs over time under the different rules and would have better illuminated the uncertainties in making such cost estimates.