Changes in Agricultural Biodiversity： Implications for Sustainable Livelihood in the Himalaya

Himalayan mountain system is distinguished globally for a rich biodiversity and for its role in regulating the climate of the South Asia.Traditional crop-livestock mixed farming in the Himalaya is highly dependent on forests for fodder and manure prepared from forest leaf litter and livestock excreta. Apart from sustaining farm production, forests provide a variety of other tangible and intangible benefits, which are critical for sustainable livelihood of not only 115 million mountain people, but also many more people living in the adjoining plains. Extension of agricultural landuse coupled with replacement of traditional staple food crops by cash crops and of multipurpose agroforestry trees by fruit trees are widespread changes. Cultivation of Fagopyrum esculentum,Fagopyrum tataricum, Panicum miliaceum, Setaria italica and Pisum arvense has been almost abandoned. Increasing stress on cash crops is driven by a socio-cultural change from subsistence to market economy facilitated by improvement in accessibility and supply of staple food grains at subsidized price by the government. Farmers have gained substantial economic benefits from cash crops. However, loss of agrobiodiversity implies more risks to local livelihood in the events of downfall in market price/demand of cash crops, termination of supply of staple food grains at subsidized price, pest outbreaks in a cash crop dominated homogeneous landscape and abnormal climate years. Indigenous innovations enabling improvement in farm economy by conserving and/enhancing agrobiodiversity do exist, but are highly localized. The changes in agrobiodiversity are such that soil loss and run-off from the croplands have dramatically increased together with increase in local pressure on forests. As farm productivity is maintained with forest-based inputs, continued depletion of forest resources will result in poor economic returns from agriculture to local people,apart from loss of global benefits from Himalayan forests. Interventions including improvement in traditional manure and management of on-farm trees,participatory development of agroforestry in degraded forest lands and policies favoring economic benefits to local people from non-timber forest products could reduce the risks of decline in agricultural biodiversity and associated threats to livelihoods and Himalayan ecosystems.     

Book review

Sea Surveying, edited by Alan Ingham (London: John Wiley & Sons, 1975), 2 volumes, 306 and 233 pp., hardcover, $49.50.     

Sub‐meter acoustic surveying

Abstract

During May 1985, a comprehensive GPS and acoustic navigation data set was collected off the Monterey, California coast. Three types of GPS units, a LORAN‐C, and a Miniranger operated concurrently with an OCEANO acoustic system to resolve state‐of‐the‐art accuracies for at‐sea geodetic positioning. This report details the acoustic system which displayed baseline errors of only ±0.25 m over distances to 2600 m. Unfiltered point‐to‐point acoustic navigation errors had a standard deviation of ± 1.25 m, which included ship motion errors in addition to surveying errors. Ninety percent of the stations had navigation standard deviations below ±0.75 m The experiment showed that sub‐meter acoustic surveying is the state‐of‐the‐art.     

Gas-Phase Formation of Water-Soluble Organic Compounds in the Atmosphere: A Retrosynthetic Analysis

Atmospheric particles contain a myriad of organiccompounds, including many multifunctional,water-soluble organic compounds. Many of thesecompounds are postulated to be secondary of origin. This work investigates the possible precursors ofseveral classes of multifunctional, water-solublesecondary organic compounds by analyzing the pathwaysleading to their formation, based on known gas-phasereactions. The analysis is termed `retrosynthetic'due to the backward direction of the analysis, fromproducts to precursors. Pathways for multi-functionalcompounds were generated combinatorially, consideringthe formation of one functional group at a time.Many multifunctional organic compounds with carboxylicacid, carbonyl, and hydroxy functional groups werefound to be first- or second-generation products ofcommon anthropogenic and biogenic volatile organiccompounds such as alkanes, alkenes, aromatics, andcyclic alkenes. The estimated yields of water-solubleorganic compounds from primary precursors ranged fromless than 1% to over 10%, based on stoichiometricconsiderations. The SOA formation index, whichcombines the concepts of yields and rates, was used tocompare the feasibility of the retrosyntheticpathways. Many of the candidate pathways involve theisomerization reaction of alkoxy radicals andoxygenated intermediate products such asmonocarboxylic acids and hydroxyaldehydes.     

Carbonate shedding and sedimentary cyclicities of a distally steepened carbonate ramp (Miocene, Great Bahama Bank)

Received: 10 May 1999 / Accepted: 16 October 1999     

Fictive component model of pyroxenes and multicomponent phase equilibria

Pyroxenes are considered as ideal solid solutions of some real components (e.g. diopside or orthoenstatite) and some fictive or hypothetical components (e.g. orthodiopside or orthohedenbergite). Using the reversed experimental data in the CaO-MgO-SiO₂ system, the Gibbs free energy of formation of fictive orthodiopside and of fictive clinoenstatite have been determined in the temperature range of 1,000 to 1,600 °K. The data on free energies of components in the binary system can be used to extend the fictive component model to the ternary CaSiO₃-MgSiO₃-FeSiO₃ system. Using published phase diagrams on the pyroxene quadrilateral, Gibbs free energy of formation of fictive orthohedenbergite has been calculated. Application of the ideally mixing fictive component model to computation of phase equilibria leads to the determination of compositions of coexisting Fe-Mg-Ca pyroxenes at different temperatures.Abbreviations and symbols G _f ⁰ Gibbs free energy of formation from the elements at 1 bar and temperature - G ^Ex excess free energy of mixing in a solution - G molar Gibbs free energy - R gas constant - H enthalpy - S entropy - T absolute temperature - P pressure - KJ/M kilojoules per mole - j joules - Opx orthopyroxene - Cpx clinopyroxene - H hedenbergite - D diopside - E enstatite - F ferrosilite - X mole fraction - K equilibrium constant     

Absolute sea level determination for the subtropical Atlantic Climate Study

The Subtropical Atlantic Climate Study (STACS) is a subprogram in the NOAA climate program designed to access the feasibility of monitoring horizontal fluxes in the Gulf Stream system off Florida. Transport in the Florida Current fluctuates on time scales which are reflected in sea level records monitored at tide gauges. Geodetic leveling, connecting tide gauges along the east coast of the United States, allows intercomparison of sea level records alongstream, but the cross-stream and alongstream records in the Bahamas and Cuba are not connected. In this study, various methods to determine absolute sea level differences across the Straits of Florida between Miami, Florida and Cat Cay, Bahamas, a part of the STACS area, were investigated; the desired accuracy of the sea level difference is ± 1 cm. This study indicates that a combination of dense gravity data with satellite altimeter (TOPEX and GEOSAT) data in the STACS area could provide a ± 1 cm absolute sea level difference accuracy across the Straits of Florida. This paper also provides discussion of other conventional methods.