Enhancing the relevance of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways for climate change impacts,adaptation and vulnerability research

This paper discusses the role and relevance of the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) and the new scenarios that combine SSPs with representative concentration pathways (RCPs) for climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability (IAV) research. It first provides an overview of uses of social–environmental scenarios in IAV studies and identifies the main shortcomings of earlier such scenarios. Second, the paper elaborates on two aspects of the SSPs and new scenarios that would improve their usefulness for IAV studies compared to earlier scenario sets: (i) enhancing their applicability while retaining coherence across spatial scales, and (ii) adding indicators of importance for projecting vulnerability. The paper therefore presents an agenda for future research, recommending that SSPs incorporate not only the standard variables of population and gross domestic product, but also indicators such as income distribution, spatial population, human health and governance.     

Hydrogeochemical investigation and groundwater quality assessment of Pratapgarh district,Uttar Pradesh

Hydogrochemical investigation of groundwater resources of Paragraph district has been carried out to assess the solute acquisition processes and water quality for domestic and irrigation uses. Fifty-five groundwater samples were collected and analyzed for pH, electrical conductivity, total dissolved solids, hardness, major anions (F^?, Cl^?, NO₃, HCO₃ ^?, SO₄ ^2?) and cations (Ca²⁺, Mg²⁺, Na⁺, K⁺). Study results reveal that groundwater of the area is alkaline in nature and HCO₃ ^?, Cl^?, Mg²⁺, Na⁺ and Ca²⁺ are the major contributing ions to the dissolved solids. The hydrogeochemical data suggest that weathering of rock forming minerals along with secondary contributions from agricultural and anthropogenic sources are mainly controlling the groundwater composition of Pratapgarh district. Alkaline earth metals (Ca²⁺+Mg²⁺) exceed alkalis (Na⁺+K⁺) and weak acid (HCO₃ ^?) dominate over strong acids (Cl^?+SO₄ ^2?) in majority of the groundwater samples. Ca-Mg-HCO₃ and Ca-Mg-Cl-HCO₃ are the dominant hydrogeochemical facies in the groundwater of the area. The computed saturation indices demonstrate oversaturated condition with respect to dolomite and calcite and undersaturated with gypsum and fluorite. A comparison of groundwater quality parameters in relation to specified limits for drinking water shows that concentrations of TDS, F^?, NO₃ ^? and total hardness exceed the desirable limits in many water samples. Quality assessment for irrigation uses reveal that the groundwater is good for irrigation. However, values of salinity, sodium adsorption ratio (SAR), residual sodium carbonate (RSC), %Na and Kelley index are exceeding the prescribed limit at some sites, demanding adequate drainage and water management plan for the area.     

Shell microstructure of late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) oysters from Ariyalur,Tamil Nadu

The micro-morphological shell characters (both in optical microscope and SEM) have been used to discriminate in between oyster’s sub-families Pycnodonteinae Stenzel 1959, Exogyrinae Vyalov 1936, Ostreinae Refinesque 1815 and Lophinae Vyalov 1936. These sub-families are represented by six constituent genera Phygraea (Phygarea) vesicularis (Lamarck 1806), Hyotissa semiplana (Sowerby1813), Curvostrea rouvellei (Coquand 1862), Ceratostreon pliciferum (Dujardin 1837), Agerostrea ungulata (Schlotheim 1813) and Rastellum (Arctostrea) pectinatum (Lamarck 1810) in the late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) sediments of the Ariyalur area of Tamil Nadu, south India. The optical microscopic observations and SEM studies of the shells of these six genera clearly indicate that all the four sub-families consist of distinctive set of shell-microstructures. Sub-family Pycnodonteinae is characterized by predominance of vesicular, exogyrinae by prismatic, Ostreinae by cross foliated and Lophinae by foliated shell microstructures. Besides their characteristic shell microstructures, some additional microstructures are also visible in the shells of some of the genera of these four sub-families.     

Sources and processes governing rainwater chemistry in New Delhi,India

Rainwater plays an important role in scavenging of aerosols and gases from atmosphere, and its chemistry helps to understand the relative contributions of atmospheric pollution sources. The present work is aimed to understand and explain the sources, seasonal patterns and the processes thereof affecting rainwater chemistry in an urban environment of Delhi, India. Rainwater samples (n = 111) collected throughout the year in New Delhi showed alkalinity in general. Eight rainwater samples, collected in late monsoon and winter season, had pH less than 5.6 indicating that Delhi continues to face the prospects of acid rain despite the introduction of compressed natural gas as the clean fuel in city transport. Organic acids could be the possible contributors of acidity in rainwater samples having the fractional acidity (FA) value of 0.174, which is greater than the annual average FA (0.011) and the (Ca²⁺ + Mg²⁺ + NH₄ ⁺)/(SO₄ ^2? + NO₃ ^?) ration of more than one. Average acid neutralization factors of cations decrease in the order Ca²⁺ (1.01) > NH₄ ⁺ (0.77) > Mg²⁺ (0.10). However, neutralization by Ca²⁺ dominates only in summer season as cation-rich dust is transported from the Great Indian Thar Desert to this region by strong summer S–SW winds, while NH₄ ⁺ dominates in rainwater of other three sampling seasons. Identified dominant sources for soluble ions in rainwater are (1) non-silicate crustal source for carbonates and sulfates of Ca and Mg, (2) emissions from catalytic convertor-fitted vehicles and agriculture fields for NH₃ and (3) mixed anthropogenic sources for SO₄ ^2?, NO₃ ^? and Cl^?. Rainwater chemistry showed significant seasonal variations. This could be due to the changes in relative proportions of natural and anthropogenic sources of soluble ions to rainwater. Dominance of anthropogenic sources over crustal sources can result in acidic rains, which can adversely affect the environment and human health in this region.     

基于仿生视觉的单相机光场成像及3-3维直接转换基础

本文是机器视觉参量下的三维数字摄影测量智能构象第三部分,以仿生复眼运动目标捕获的3-3-2信息处理方式为切入点,提出生物利用复眼进行三维成像的基本原理,然而由于传统仿生视觉受到硬件条件制约,所以本文在仿生复眼3-3-2信息获取理论的基础上,利用新一代微透镜阵列光场相机技术,提出了一种以单张光场影像获取目标场景深度信息的方法,并将其应用至绝对深度测量中。由于光场影像的一个重要的特性在于记录进入相机的不同光线的强度与方向信息,本文提出利用光线信息进行多深度层次重聚焦的方法,通过对物点在不同层次进行聚焦代价计算,确定出物点成像的平面,最终构建基于物点成像平面位置的深度图。与传统的光场深度估计相比,本文方法计算的深度图可以显著提升分辨率,且不依赖于光场微透镜的数目。为了验证本文方法的有效性,利用本文的算法与现有的深度信息的算法进行深度计算的比较。     

Impact of city expansion on hydrological regime of Rispana Watershed,Dehradun, India

Rispana River flows through the heart of Dehradun, the capital city of Uttarakhand State, India. Uttarakhand had separated from Uttar Pradesh State in the year 2000; since then, Dehradun City has witnessed numerous changes. Both urban sprawl and densification were noticed, with around a 32% increase in population. The city had faced recurrent high runoff and urban flood situations in these last 2 decades. Therefore, the study was conducted to detect the change in land use/land cover (LULC), especially urbanization, through remote sensing data; and later to determine the impacts of such changes on the Rispana watershed hydrology. The LULC maps for the year 2003 and the 2017 were generated through supervised classification technique using the Landsat Series satellite datasets. The LULC change analysis depicted that mainly the urban settlement class increased with significant area among other classes from the year 2003–2017. It was noticed that majorly agriculture and fallow land (8.18 km², which is 13.52% of total watershed area) converted to urban, increasing the impervious area. Almost all the municipal wards, falling in the Rispana watershed, showed urbanization during the said period, with an increase of as high as 71%. The change in LULC or effect of urbanization on the hydrological response of the watershed was assessed using the most widely used Natural Resources Conservation Services Curve Number method. It was noticed that the area under moderated runoff potential (approx. 10.23 km²) steeply increased during the lean season, whereas, high runoff potential zones (5 km²) increased significantly under wet season. Therefore, it was concluded that an increase in impervious surface resulted in high runoff generation. Further, such LULC change along with climate might lead to high runoff within the watershed, which the present storm drainage network could not withstand. The situation generally led to urban floods and affected urban dwellers regularly. Therefore, it is critical to assess the hydrological impacts of LULC change for land use planning and water resource management. Furthermore, under the smart city project, the local government has various plans to improve present infrastructure; therefore, it becomes necessary to incorporate such observations in the policies.

     

Impact of climate warming on upper layer of the Bering Sea

The impact of climate warming on the upper layer of the Bering Sea is investigated by using a high-resolution coupled global climate model. The model is forced by increasing atmospheric CO₂ at a rate of 1% per year until CO₂ reaches double its initial value (after 70 years), after which it is held constant. In response to this forcing, the upper layer of the Bering Sea warms by about 2°C in the southeastern shelf and by a little more than 1°C in the western basin. The wintertime ventilation to the permanent thermocline weakens in the western Bering Sea. After CO₂ doubling, the southeastern shelf of the Bering Sea becomes almost ice-free in March, and the stratification of the upper layer strengthens in May and June. Changes of physical condition due to the climate warming would impact the pre-condition of spring bio-productivity in the southeastern shelf.     

Improving the methodology for assessing natural hazard impacts

The impacts of natural hazards such as cyclones have been conventionally measured through changes in human, social and economic capital, typically represented by stock variables such as population, built property and public infrastructure, livestock, agricultural land, etc. This paper develops an alternative approach that seeks to detect and quantify impacts as changes in flow variables. In particular, we explore whether changes in annual agricultural output, when measured at an appropriate spatial level, could be used to measure impacts associated with tropical cyclones in coastal regions of India. We believe that such an approach may have a number of benefits from a policy perspective, particularly with regard to the debate between relief versus recovery as disaster management strategies. A focus on flow variables is also likely to be more relevant and useful in developing countries; the maintenance of economic activity directly affects livelihood and is perhaps of greater importance than loss of built property or other physical capital.     

Linked twist maps in hamiltonian systems

Linked twist maps of ergodic theory are modified to provide a model for chaotic orbits in ‘double bowl’ potentials in conservative systems, e.g. direct ‘exchange’ orbits in the planar restricted problem of three bodies. The maps are typically ergodic (and mixing), and provide a clue to the nature of relaxation or diffusion in chaotic Hamiltonian systems.     

Rapidly rotating polytropes in the post-Newtonian approximation to general relativity

The study of uniformly polytropes with axial symmetry is extended to include all rotational terms of order ⁴, where is the angular velocity, consistently within the first post-Newtonian approximation to general relativity. The equilibrium structure is determined by treating the effects of rotation and post-Newtonian gravitation as independent perturbations on the classical polytropic structure. The perturbation effects are characterized by a rotation parameter = ²/2G _c and a relativity parameter, =p _c / _c C ² , wherep _c and _c are the central pressure and density respectively. The solution to the structural problem is obtained by following Chandrasekhar's series expansion technique and is complete to the post-Newtonian rotation terms of order ². The critical rotation parameterv _c , which characterizes the configuration with maximum uniform rotation, is accurately evaluated as a function of . Numerical values for all the structural parameters needed to determine the equilibrium configurations are presented for polytropes with indicesn=1, 1.5, 2, 2 5, 3, and 3.5.