Devastated by the combined impact of massive drainage works and upstream damming since the 1980's, Al-Hammar Marsh, Southern Iraq, has completely collapsed with 94 % of its land cover transformed into bare land and salt crusts by 2000. After a policy initiated to restore the Iraqi marshes again in 2003, the marsh recovered about half of its former area. As a part of the ecological recovery assessment of this newly inundated marsh, it is important to investigate the extend impact of desiccation after 3 years of inundation on water quality as the latter plays an important role in the restoration process of the marshes. Therefore, from a restoration point of view, major and trace element distribution and sourcing as well as seasonal variations were studied in the re-flooded marsh of Al-Hammar. First, the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment Water Quality Index [1] analyses applied revealed threatened or impaired water quality and conditions in the marsh that depart from natural or desirable levels. Second, multivariate statistical techniques such as Agglomerative Hierarchal Cluster Analyses (AHCA) that were used to analyze the data and identify the possible sources of water pollution in the marsh indicated that some elements such as Ca, SO4, Mg, TDS, Cl, Na, Co, and Ni are associated with natural sourcing while other elements such as Cd, Zn, Pb, and turbidity indicated a possible anthropogenic sourcing. Third, seasonal variations investigation displayed that the water quality is affected by natural seasonal processes such as evaporation and rainfall as well as biological activities. Dry season exhibited an increase in TDS, Ca, Mg, Na, Cl, SO4, and Cd due to the concentration by evaporation during the season compared to the dilution by rainfall during the wet season. In contrast, BOD and DO levels showed a considerable decrease in dry season owing to the poor water ability to hold oxygen at high temperature as a result of higher rate of microbial metabolism.
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Measurement of radon concentration level was carried out in 40 houses in Al – Najaf city during summer season of 2012. Long term measurement of indoor of old building radon concentrations have been taken, using a previously calibrated passive diffusion dosimeters containing CR – 39 solid state nuclear track detectors which are very sensitive for alpha particles. The measurement of the indoor radon concentration obtained in summer in these regions ranged from 11.654±4.216 Bq.m-3 to 53.610±8.777 Bq.m-3. The results were within universally permitted levels. |
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The mineralogical investigation, geochemical analysis, and grain size calculation were carried out for floodplain sediment in the Tigris River to identify the properties of the sediment. The average values of the three main sediment classes, very fine sand, silt, and clay are 9.67, 62.53 and 27.80%, respectively. The silt size fraction was predominant. The classification and nomenclature of surface sediment types from the floodplain of the Tigris River are sandy-silt and mud, and they are the dominant sediment. Statistical parameters of grain size analysis refer to the average of the median values 3.74 Φ very fine sand; mean in average 6.16 Φ coarse silt; standard deviation evident by average 1.30 Φ poorly sorted, skewed; in
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Oil recovery could be impacted by the relation between vertical permeability (Kv) and horizontal permeability (Kh) (Kv/Kh). 4816 plugs that have been getting hold of 18 wells of Mishrif formation in the West Qurna oilfield were used. Kv/Kh data provided some scatter, but the mean is ~1. Kv/Kh =1 was used for the Petrel model before upscaling according to the heterogeneity of each layer.
Kv/Kh values for Mishrif Formation in West Qurna Oilfield are 0.8 for relatively homogeneous, 0.4 for heterogeneous rock, and 0.1 for cap rocks (CRII).
Eclipse TM was used for reservoir simulation. PVT and SCAL data e
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Three seismic instantaneous attributes (phase, frequency, and variance) were utilized on 3D-seismic poststack migrated data, covering 617.31 km2, integrated with data of two wells (Du-1 and Du-2) in Dujaila oil field, southeast of Iraq. They gave good results in detecting reef buildups and confirmed the existence of the stratigraphic hydrocarbon trap that was not obvious in the conventional seismic amplitude sections. They display several seismic criteria in attribute sections for recognizing reef buildups and hydrocarbon accumulation, such as phase reversal, low frequency, and high amplitude variance. The seismic attributes emphasized that the stratigraphic trap of reef rudist buildups with hydrocarbon content is con
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In this study, the activity concentrations of indoor radon, thoron
and their progeny have been measured in air for 61 different
locations of Al-Maddan city using twin cup dosimeter. Furthermore,
some useful parameters concerning the health hazards have been
estimated; working level month (WLM), annual effective dose (Eff),
and excess lung cancer per million person per year (ELC).The results
show that the values of radon gas levels in the investigated districts
varied from 56.28 to 194.43Bq/m3with an overall average value
132.96Bq/m3, while 0.313 to 1.085 for WLM with an overall average
0.740, respectively. The value of Eff and ELC have been found to
vary from 1.420 to 4.918 mSv/y with an overall average valu
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Petrography and physicomechanical characteristics of Iyuku granite from southwestern Nigeria were investigated. Rock and aggregate samples were obtained from five different quarry sites for thin-sectioning and physical and mechanical tests. The rock slides were subjected to petrographic analysis, while the aggregates were tested for the parameters of specific gravity (S.G), water absorption, aggregate impact value (AIV), aggregate crushing value (ACV), Los Angeles abrasion value (LAAV), and flakiness and elongation indices in accordance with the British Standards (B.S), American Standards for Testing Materials (ASTM) and Federal Ministry of Works Standards (FMWS). The petrographic, physical, and mechanical characteristics were described
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Specimens of the sesarmid crab Nanonsesarma sarii (Naderloo and Türkay 2009) were collected from the intertidal zone of Khor Al-Zubair, Basrah, Iraq 2012 far from the Arabian Gulf coasts. Morphological features of this species are highlighted and a figure is provided.
Due to rapid urbanization and industrialization that occurred in Al- Muthanna province in southeastern Iraq during the last decade, pollutants such as heavy metals were emitted into the environment and became a serious threat to human health. Environmental pollution could be caused by different types of pollutants, which come from different sources.
This study aims to assess the environmental magnetism efficiency for heavy metal pollution assessment using the magnetic susceptibility technique which became a more rapid and cost-effective compared to conventional methods. Increasing heavy metal contents in soils causes an increase in the magnetic mineral concentration. The study are
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