Stavi, I., Eldad, S., Xu, C., Xu, Z., Gusarov, Y., Haiman, M., et al. (2024). Ancient agricultural terrace walls control floods and regulate the distribution of Asphodelus ramosus geophytes in the Israeli arid Negev. Catena, 234, 107588.
Abstract: Ancient stone terrace walls aimed at harvesting water runoff and facilitating crop production are widespread across the drylands of the Middle East and beyond. In addition to retaining the scarce water resource, the terrace walls also conserve soil and thicken its profile along ephemeral stream channels (wadis) by decreasing fluvial connectivity and mitigating erosional processes. In this study, we created hydrological models for three wadis with ancient stone terrace walls in the arid northern Negev of Israel, where the predominant geophyte species is Asphodelus ramosus L. A two-dimensional (2D) rain-on-grid (RoG) approach with a resolution of 2 m was used to simulate the rain events with return periods of 10, 20, 50, and 99 % (10-y, 5-y, 2-y, and yearly, respectively) based on the Intensity-Duration-Frequency rain curves for the region. To evaluate the effect of stone terrace walls on fluvial hydrology and geomorphology, the ground level was artificially elevated by 20 cm at the wall locations in a digital terrain model (DTM), using the built-in HEC-RAS 2D terrain modification tool. Our results showed that the terraced wadis have a high capacity to mitigate runoff loss, but a lesser capacity to delay the peak flow. Yet, for all rainstorm return periods, peak flow mitigation was positively related to the number of terrace walls along the stream channel. Field surveys in two of the studied wadis demonstrated that the A. ramosus clones were found in proximity to the stone terrace walls, presumably due to the greater soil–water content there. The results thus suggest that the terrace walls provide improved habitat conditions for these geophytes, supporting their growth and regulating their distribution along the wadi beds.
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Chen, Y., Hong, Y., Huang, D., Dai, X., Zhang, M., Liu, Y., et al. (2022). Risk assessment management and emergency plan for uranium tailings pond. Journal of Radiation Research and Applied Sciences, 15(3), 83–90.
Abstract: The safety of uranium tailings pond is closely related to social stability and economic development, so it is necessary to improve the emergency management of uranium tailings pond to ensure its safety by adjusting the emergency plan. The Interpretive Structural Model (ISM) is used to analyze the structural relationship between the main risk factors leading to the occurrence of emergencies. The results show that attention should be paid to the risk factors originating from humans and infrastructures, and effective management measures should be adopted in the process of emergency management, for example, people build tighter employee access system, clarify the responsibilities of employees at all levels, and improve monitoring and organizational means. According to the results of ISM analysis, a structural risk control system can be constructed, and a defensive barrier that can effectively block the risk coupling transmission can be designed to prevent the risk from being transformed into an event. For other risks, system resilience management should be strengthened to respond to risks. The process is set as emergency response and accident response. Different management objects use different management methods to make emergency management work efficiently.
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