Land resource inventories for integrated land use planning with special reference to the catchment of Pohru river in Jammu and Kashmir state

A Soil and land Use Map of Pohru catchment was prepared through the adoption of a systematic Air Photo-interpretation procedure including selective field studies in such a manner that the ten delineated mapping units were co-extensive with major Land Resource Areas. Defined in terms of physiography, soil profile, soil erosion and present land use each of the ten units has unique characteristics requiring differential management, which was arrived at through joint field studies by Pedologists who prepared the Map, Foresters, Soil Conservationists, Agronomists. a Horticulturist and an Agricultural Chemist. Stemming from this integrated effort a Land Use Plan for the catchment was drawn up with its major objective as the conservation of Land and Soil Resources leading to a reduction in sediment yields that are now so high as to clog the Jhelum river at the polnt where Pohru river joins it. In respect of four Land Resource areas, the plan prescribes radical readjustments of Land Use such as conversion of Forest Department owned Himalayan Southern slopes to grass lands, change of cropping pattern in Karewa side slopes and conversion of the northern and southern Himalayan footslopes now under cultivation into orchards. The areal extents of the different Land Resource Areas as also the cost of implementing the conservation recommendations have been furnished for every one of the twentyeight watersheds falling under the eight subcatchments of the Pohru catchment. The total cost of implementing the conservation recommendations approximates to about fifty five million rupees.     

Spatial analysis of public health facilities in Riyadh Governorate,Saudi Arabia: a GIS-based study to assess geographic variations of service provision and accessibility

Much attention has been given to address public health policy in Saudi Arabia, particularly for the management, quality, and coverage issues. However, assessment of spatial patterns, distribution, and provision of public health services has been neglected. This paper analyzes the availability and accessibility of public health facilities across Riyadh Governorate, Saudi Arabia at the subnational level. Spatial and attribute data of public health facilities potentially have been analyzed using GIS to produce accurate measure of accessibility. The spatial pattern of service distribution was examined using average nearest neighbor. Distances from demand points (populations) to providers (facilities) were calculated for each district using near analysis. In addition, the ratios of public health facility to population were calculated to identify underserved and overserved areas. The findings clearly indicate that the spatial pattern of the distribution of public health facilities was significantly clustered (p value < 0.001) with Z-score of ?10.9. Several districts within the central parts of the governorate were identified as having a higher density of facilities, while most of districts that are located in the marginal parts exhibit very low density of health facilities. Overall, there was a considerable variation in the average distance from district centroids to health facilities. Substantially, less than half of the population (45.4%) living in 61 districts has access to public health facility within less than 1-km distance. In contrast, the greatest increase in distances was observed for 6% of population living in 38 districts. People that live in such districts need to travel long distances for public health care. The output of this analysis can assist policy-makers and authorities of Riyadh Governorate in planning public health delivery.     

Geospatial analysis of Tamil Nadu Eastern Ghats forest types at landscape level with reference to fragmentation and species diversity

The present study has generated spatial databases on the vegetation type with plant biodiversity, forest fragmentation and disturbance regimes in Tamilnadu parts of Eastern Ghats (EG), India. These databases have been analysed geospatially with landscape ecology approach. The study also includes ground inventory of plant species based on Remote Sensing (RS) data stratification. The vegetation type map was generated from the visual interpretation of two season IRS LISS III data. The spatial landscape analysis of the remotely sensed interpreted images was carried out using customized software, SPLAM. This is first such study in Tamilnadu Eastern Ghats that provides a comprehensive spatial database on vegetation types, disturbance regime and plant species diversity. The study has shown that the dry deciduous and thorn forests have shown better resistance to disturbance compared to the most disturbed evergreen and semievergreen forests. The study outputs are being utilized by forest department and biodiversity boards for conservation action planning and compliance to Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).     

Solution for azimuth of the geodesic in near antipodal situations with special reference to the behaviour of lines for which the azimuth is in the region of 90°

To deal specifically with the case of a nearly antipodal geodesic of given terminal positions, an equation in azimuth is produced for solution by the Newton-Raphson Method of successive approximation. When the azimuth is in the region of 90° it is found that an approach is best made by a development in series when the aim is precision calculation. Degeneracy is examined theoretically and graphically.     

Optimization of Airborne Real-time Cueing Hyperspectral Enhanced Reconnaissance (ARCHER) imagery,in situ data with chemometrics to evaluate nutrients in the Shenandoah River,Virginia

Abstract

Phosphorus and nitrogen have a strong influence on water resource and remote sensing technology has demonstrated that water quality monitoring over a greater range of temporal and spatial scales can be used to overcome these constraints. This research was designed to demonstrate the feasibility of combining remotely-sensed water quality observation and chemometric techniques to estimate water quality in the Shenandoah River. We used Airborne Real-time Cueing Hyperspectral Enhanced Reconnaissance (ARCHER) imagery, combined with a partial least squares analysis to characterize the spatial distribution of nutrients in the Sheanadoah river. ARCHER retrievals for phosphorous with cross-validation show high sensitivity in estimating water quality in the Shenandoah River with the Bentonville in the South Fork, with an R2 of 0.93 sensitivity. Using the significance level of 0.05, data from the summer of 2014 showed that the p-value was 0.00 for both nitrogen and phosphorous. Results show retrieval method is transferable.