Remote Sensing of the Aquatic Environments

Introduction: Sustainable water and wastewater services are critical to providing the American public with clean and safe water and helping ensure the environmental, economic, and social sustainability of the communities that utilities serve. Utilities across the country face tremendous challenges, such as aging infrastructure, an aging workforce, increasing mandates, and competing priorities within the communities they serve. The purpose of this document is to assist utility leaders with implementing proven and effective practices over time to improve their operations and move toward sustainability, at a pace consistent with their needs and the needs of their communities. It provides utility leaders with a cohesive structure to help them address various challenges proactively and with confidence. The practices described in this document reflect the lessons learned and the practical experience utilities have derived as they have improved their operations. A utility can use this document to identify specific opportunities for improvement and draw on the example practices to create an individualized “roadmap” to more sustainable operations.

The Muna Consortium (Mediterranean and Middle East University Network Agreement) was founded in 2015 and renewed in 2021, when 30 Uni­versities coming from all Countries of Mediterranean area and some others from Middle East signed the Fra­mework Agreement. As written in the Framework Agreement, also in this Muna space in the CUCS Conference, we propo­se three different main themes: MARE NOSTRUM (our Sea, the Mediterranean), PERSONA (Man) and ORBIS (the Earth), to summarize the proposals of Co­operation between Muna Network Universities. The first session is dedicated to the field of ORBIS to share the sustainability, through the biodiversity as a key ele­ment for the development of soil in different aspects as agricolture, fauna and flora sustainable management, with impact in the field of veterinary. Neverthless, a focus is also related to the inclusion and integration in the sustainable cities during this time of pandemia and migration flows with regard to the problem of clima changes in the Mediterranean area.

Forests cover 30% of the Earth’s land area, or nearly four billion hectares. Enhancing the benefits and ecosystem services of forests has been increasingly recognized as an essential part of nature-based solutions for solving many emerging global environmental problems today. A core science supporting forest management is understanding the interactions of forests, water, and people. These interactions have become increasingly complex under climate change and its associated impacts, such as the increases in the intensity and frequency of drought and floods, increasing population and deforestation, and a rise in global demands for multiple ecosystem services including clean water supply and carbon sequestration. Forest watershed managers have recognized that water management is an essential component of forest management. Global environmental change is posing more challenges for managing forests and water toward sustainable development. New science on forest and water is critically needed across the globe.

This review presents the developments in artificial intelligence technologies for environmental pollution controls. A number of AI approaches, which start with the reliable mapping of nonlinear behavior between inputs and outputs in chemical and biological processes in  terms of prediction models to the emerging optimization and control algorithms that study the  pollutants removal processes and intelligent control systems, have been developed for environmental clean-ups. The characteristics, advantages and limitations of AI methods, including single and hybrid AI methods, were overviewed. Hybrid AI methods exhibited synergistic effects, but with computational heaviness.

Lagoon Environments Around the World - A Scientific Perspective covers a wide range of topics. Typically bordering between land and sea, lagoons are among the most diversely utilized waterways on the planet. Lagoons are extremely important environments socio-economically, and their usage places ever increasing stress on these very sensitive aquatic regions