Assessing the long-term planform dynamics of Ganges–Jamuna confluence with the aid of remote sensing and GIS

Natural Hazards - The confluence of the Ganges, Jamuna, and Padma rivers is one of the most dynamic in the world, an internationally important research area because of the confluence of two of the...     

Assessing the effect of future landslide on ecosystem services in Aqabat Al-Sulbat region,Saudi Arabia

Natural Hazards - Co-occurrence events of droughts and heatwaves characterized by abnormal low soil moisture (SM) and high temperatures may cause more significant impacts on society and natural...     

Liquefaction resistance evaluation of soils using artificial neural network for Dhaka City,Bangladesh

Natural Hazards - Soil liquefaction resistance evaluation is an important site investigation for seismically active areas. To minimize the loss of life and property, liquefaction hazard analysis is...     

Storm protection service of the Sundarbans mangrove forest,Bangladesh

Natural Hazards - Storm protection service of mangrove is often undervalued. This paper empirically assessed the damage avoided by the Sundarbans mangrove forest in 15 villages of southwest coastal...     

The Response of Macrobenthic Communities to Environmental Variability in Tropical Coastal Waters

The relative contributions of spatial and temporal fluctuations are different in shaping natural communities in a tropical coastal/estuarine system. Understanding how coastal communities respond to these fluctuations is still equivocal, and thus, available data are rare. Here, multiple analytical approaches were used to identify key spatial and temporal factors, and to quantify their relative roles in shaping a macrobenthic community through space (contamination degree, physical parameters, and sediment characteristics) and time (climatic factors, season, and year). A dataset of eight sampling times was analyzed over a period of 2 years, in which macrobenthic species abundances were sampled. A total of 33 species were identified, including 18 bivalves, 5 gastropods, and 4 crustaceans. The other taxa were less diverse. The results show that there were no significant temporal changes of macrobenthic community structure, but spatial changes were significant and synchronized with environmental factors (i.e., sediment characteristics, water depth, and the distance from anthropogenic sources). This study demonstrates that spatial factors played a primary role in structuring of macrobenthic assemblages, whereas the influence of temporal factors appeared less across geographically distinct sites. Thus, temporal variation of a coastal macrobenthic community appears to be controlled by partly different processes at different scales.     

Modeling the Population Effects of Hypoxia on Atlantic Croaker (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Micropogonias undulatus</Emphasis>) in the Northwestern Gulf of Mexico: Part 2—Realistic Hypoxia and Eutrophication

Quantifying the population-level effects of hypoxia on coastal fish species has been challenging. In the companion paper (part 1), we described an individual-based population model (IBM) for Atlantic croaker in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico (NWGOM) designed to quantify the long-term population responses to low dissolved oxygen (DO) concentrations during the summer. Here in part 2, we replace the idealized hypoxia conditions with realistic DO concentrations generated from a 3-dimensional water quality model. Three years were used and randomly arranged into a time series based on the historical occurrence of mild, intermediate, and severe hypoxia year types. We also used another water quality model to generate multipliers of the chlorophyll concentrations to reflect that croaker food can be correlated to the severity of hypoxia. Simulations used 100 years under normoxia and hypoxia conditions to examine croaker population responses to the following: (1) hypoxia with food uncoupled and coupled to the severity of hypoxia, (2) hypoxia reducing benthos due to direct mortality, (3) how much hypoxia would need to be reduced to offset decreased croaker food expected under 25 and 50% reduction in nutrient loadings, and (4) key assumptions about avoidance movement. Direct mortality on benthos had no effect on long-term simulated croaker abundance, and the effect of hypoxia (about a 25% reduction in abundance) was consistent whether chlorophyll (food) varied with hypoxia or not. Reductions in hypoxia needed with a 25% reduction in nutrient loadings to result in minimal loss of croaker is feasible, and the croaker population will likely do as well as possible (approach abundance under normoxia) under the 50% reduction in nutrient loadings. We conclude with a discussion of why we consider our simulation-based estimates of hypoxia causing a 25% reduction the long-term population abundance of croaker in the NWGOM to be realistic and robust.     

Observations of AGNs using PACT

We report our observations on 4 AGNs viz, Mkn 421, Mkn 501, 1ES1426+428 and ON231 belonging to a sub-class called blazars. The observations were carried out using the Pachmarhi Array of Cherenkov Telescopes and span about 6 years period from 2000 to 2005. We discuss our methods of analysis adopted to extract the gamma ray signal from cosmic ray background. We present our results on the emission of TeV gamma rays from these objects. Also, we report on the status of the new high altitude experiment, a 7 telescope array at Hanle in the Himalayas at an altitude of about 4200 m above mean sea level for detecting celestial gamma-rays.     

Unsteady magnetic boundary-layer flow of power-law non-Newtonian conducting fluid through a porous medium past an infinite porous flat plate

In this paper, the nonsteady flow of non-Newtonian power-law conducting fluid through a porous medium past an infinite porous plate is investigated. The system is stressed by a constant transverse magnetic field. The velocity outside the boundary layer depends exponentially on time. The rheological effects are shown and discussed on the shear stress in terms of rheological parameter of power-law fluid. The approximate solution in a closed form were obtained by using the Galerkin method. Also the effect of the magnetic field and permeability parameter are discussed.     

The effect of drained pre-shearing on the undrained behaviour of loose sand with a small amount of fines

Stress history is recognised to play a major role in determining stress–strain behaviour of soil in undrained shearing. Most experimental studies on the effects of stress history on undrained behaviour are mainly limited to clean sand. In this paper, an experimental study carried out to investigate the effect of stress history on the undrained behaviour of loose sand with a small amount of fines is presented. Four series of triaxial compression tests, with different types of drained stress histories to near-failure prior to commencement of undrained shearing, were conducted. The experimental results indicate that drained pre-shearing to near-failure affects significantly the undrained behaviour of loose sand. In general, the drained pre-shearing improves the subsequent undrained behaviour of loose sand to the extent that liquefaction may not occur. It is shown that the effect of drained pre-shearing cannot be explained by the reduction in void ratio induced by drained pre-shearing. However, for specimens subjected to drained pre-shearing, $ p_{{{\text{d}}0}}^{\prime } $ / $ p_{{{\text{u}}0}}^{\prime } $ can be used as a parameter for analysing the effects of preloading history. It is also shown that for different preloading histories that brought the same change in void ratio or state parameter, drained pre-shearing to near-failure is the most effective, whereas pre-compression alone is the least effective in improving subsequent undrained behaviour of loose sand.     

Dust-ion-acoustic solitary waves and their multi-dimensional instability in a magnetized dusty electronegative plasma with trapped negative ions

A theoretical investigation has been made on obliquely propagating dust-ion-acoustic solitary waves (DIASWs) in magnetized dusty electronegative plasma containing Boltzmann electrons, trapped negative ions, cold mobile positive ions, and arbitrarily charged stationary dust. The reductive perturbation method has been employed to derive the modified Zakharov-Kuznetsov (MZK) equation which admits solitary wave solution under certain conditions. The multi-dimensional instability of these solitary waves is also studied by the small-k (long wavelength plane wave) perturbation-expansion technique. The basic properties (speed, amplitude, width, instability, etc.) of small but finite amplitude DIASWs are significantly modified by the effects of external magnetic field, obliqueness, polarity of dust, and trapped negative ions. The implications of our results in space and laboratory plasmas are briefly discussed.