Environmental monitoring: what is it and how is it carried out

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:44

The powerful urbanization of recent years has led to the fact that humanity is on the verge of a real environmental disaster. There is a lack of clean water and air, as well as food that is not contaminated with various harmful substances. That is why nature protection, an important element of which is environmental monitoring, is becoming an increasingly priority area in almost all developed countries.

What is this? To put it simply, such monitoring is a system of interconnected systemic measures, with the constant implementation of which scientists receive information about the current state of specific ecological systems, and can also timely identify signs of disturbances beginning in a particular biocenosis.

And every year more and more important is becoming not so much classical environmental monitoring as its variety, which studies the human impact on the environment. Such control is especially relevant near large cities, which have a simply catastrophic effect on nature.

Shouldn'tconsider that all these activities are represented by only two measurements. As already mentioned, environmental monitoring is a system of measurements. The purity of atmospheric air is monitored; scientists take samples of specific precipitation or snow cover; samples are also taken from water bodies for analysis.

The radiological monitoring of soil, air and water, as well as background monitoring of the general state of the biosphere, is also important. Thus, ecological monitoring of the environment makes it possible to carry out a comprehensive control of the quality of the nature surrounding man and take timely measures to eliminate the detected dangers.

It should be noted that environmental testing for air should be carried out daily where there is a developed industrial production.

It is especially important to determine if there are hazardous substances such as hydrogen sulfide, formaldehyde, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen in the air. It is they who can cause the so-called acid precipitation, from which large cities constantly suffer.

No less important is environmental monitoring aimed at studying precipitation. In precipitation near large industrial centers, the content of lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic is necessarily measured. Any excess of their maximum permissible concentrations can lead to serious he alth problems for the local population.

Accordingly, soil testing near industrial cities is also important.

Such studies are carried out annually, monitoring also determines the degree of soil contamination with heavy metals.

In light of relatively recent events in Japan and the Maritime region, environmental monitoring related to the measurement of radiation activity has become extremely important.

Summing up, we can say that the prevention of environmentally hazardous situations largely depends on correct and timely measurements, which can warn of danger in time.