The application of environmental certification to the Province of Siena.

The SPIn-Eco project has provided very broad and precise data collection regarding the Province of Siena. These data and their elaborations have also been developed as a basis for the environmental certification of this organization. In this way, the Administration of the Province of Siena (the first Province in Italy) has reached its goal of obtaining better knowledge of the state of the system and of constructing its environmental management system (EMS) according to the environmental aspects directly and indirectly arising from the organization's activities. Indirect aspects are mainly related to the territorial monitoring and planning. Indicators based on the classical pressure-state-response approach, as well as more complex ones based on CO(2) balance, emergy and ecological footprint analyses, have been used to assess the environmental performance of the EMS. This paper presents how this EMS is constructed, as well as the indicators that are used to analyze the system, paying particular attention to sustainability indicators.

Effects of bioaccumulation of PCBs on biodiversity and distribution of fish in two creeks in east Tennessee (USA).

The Oak Ridge Reservation, established in Tennessee during World War II as a research, development and process facilities support for the Manhattan Project, released large quantities of organic, inorganic and radionuclear contaminants into the environment. Their effects are particularly evident in aquatic ecosystems, as chemical concentrations in water, and as a disease in biodiversity and species richness. East Fork Poplar Creek and its tributary, Bear Creek flow inside the Reservation and have highly degraded natural habitats, unsatisfactory water quality and impoverished biota. PCB concentrations exceed recommended criteria for aquatic life safety and appear as a primary cause of environment degradation and reduced species richness. An uptake model, FGETS (Food and Gill Exchange of Toxic Substances) was used to analyse fish biodiversity and distribution in the two streams in relation to bioaccumulation of PCB congeners 1254 and 1260. Bioaccumulation of the two polychlorinated biphenyls was estimated in four different species of fish common in Tennessee rivers and streams: Catostomus commersoni, Lepomis macrochirus, Cyprinus carpio and Micropterus salmoides to integrate the available set of data and to evaluate the entity of human impact on these escosystems.