Browsing by Author "Mbululo, Y."

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    Evolution of atmospheric boundary layer structure and its relationship with air quality in Wuhan, China
    (Springer, 2017-09) Mbululo, Y.; Qin, J.; Yuan, Z. X.
    Airpollutiondata,airqualityindex(AQI)dataandLband sounding data of Wuhan City from January 1 to February 28, 2015, were used in this study. Since air quality is mainly determined by the condition of the atmospheric boundary layer structure (ABLS), a detailed analysis was carried out in order to determinethe evolutionof thislayer anditsrelationship withair quality.Duringtheinvestigationperiod,thehighestvalueofAQI was 307 on January 26 and the lowest was 33 on February 28 indicating ‘severe pollution’ and ‘excellent’ air quality, respectively. The concentrations of PM2.5 during the days with the highest and lowest AQI were 142.61 and 9.78 μg/m3, respectively. The percentage of days in which the ratio of PM2.5 in PM10 was more than half was 83.05% which means that the greaterportionofpollutantswerecomposedofsmallerparticles. Moreover, four PM2.5 episodes (three or more consecutive days ofPM2.5≥75μg/m3)wereidentifiedandtheaveragepercentage of elementary carbon (EC) in PM2.5 during episode 1 (prior to the episode) was 6.274% (6.276%), episode 2 was 5.634% (7.174%),andepisode4was4.067%(7.785%).Higherconcentrations of EC prior to episodes suggest biomass burning to be one of the reasons for episodes occurrence. Analysis of the ABLS during polluted days show that the boundary layer was dry and warm and had weak low-level wind and dominance of northerlywinds.Adifferentscenarioisseenoncleandaysasthe boundary layer is observed to be wet and cool, and there is dominance of strong winds. Back trajectory analysis results show that polluted days were dominatedbyair mass from north China while on clean days, the dominant air masses were from East China Sea, Mongolia, and west China
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    Performance of environmental impact assessment (EIA) regime in Tanzania
    (2014) Mbululo, Y.; Katima, J. H. Y.; Nyihirani, F.
    Tanzania enacted the Environmental Management Act (EMA) in 2004 with Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) as one of its major tools for protecting environment from the impacts of development projects. According to EMA, all new projects have to undertake EIA before they are commissioned. This paper assesses to what extent this has been achieved. The study involved 5 industries (as cases) which have Environmental Certificates, staff of the National Environment Management Council (NEMC) which is responsible to enforce EMA, Municipal Councils, Wards, Registered Environmental Consulting Firms and NGOs. The assessment focused on institutional strength and weaknesses, awareness of industrial staff and resources allocation for implementation of the Environmental Management Plan (EMP) and Environmental Monitoring Plan (MP). The assessment was done through reviewing Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), site observation, interviews and questionnaires. Study findings show that to a greater extent, EMPs and MPs as presented in EIS are not implemented due to existence of institutional weaknesses, low awareness, poor allocation of resources for EMP implementation and weak enforcement. It was thus concluded that; EIA process apart from identifying potential impacts, it does not go all the way to ensure that they are mitigated. The paper proposes recommendations to remedy the situation.