Soil Erosion Susceptibility Assessment of the Lower Himachal Himalayan Watershed

Assessment of erosion status of a watershed is an essential prerequisite for integrated watershed management. It not only assists in chalking out suitable soil and water conservation measures to arrest erosion and conserve water but also helps in devising best management practices to enhance biomass production in watersheds. Keeping this in view, the present study has been undertaken by involving geospatial-statistical techniques to determine the critical and priority areas for soil and water conservation in Suketi watershed of the lower Himachal Himalayan region. A novel weighted sum analysis technique was used for ranking each of hydrological unit by obtaining the weightages from various morphometric parameters. This technique offers dynamic, effective and sustainable approach over traditional prioritization methods in which significance of each parameter were considered equally. Considering this approach, sub-watersheds were delineated into low, medium and high priority zones. The results illustrate that about 52 % of sub-watersheds of Suketi watershed are in moderate to high erosion and runoff susceptible zones. Therefore, these potential areas can be considered for preferential soil and water conservation planning. The results obtained from the study will be useful for various stakeholders such as agriculturists, water resource managers, conservation measures planners and decision policy makers for better management practices and decision making. The geospatial-statistical technique can be used for effective estimation of erosion status of watersheds leading to watershed prioritization for taking up soil and water conservation measures in watershed systems. Finally, this technique can be very useful in remote, rugged and inaccessible watersheds with absence of soil erosion and runoff monitoring.     

Analysis of terrestrial naturally occurring radionuclides in soil samples from some areas of Sirsa district of Haryana,India using gamma ray spectrometry

The activity concentration and the gamma-absorbed dose rates of the terrestrial naturally occurring radionuclides (²³²Th, ²²⁶Ra and ⁴⁰K) were determined in soil samples collected from ten different locations of Sirsa district of Haryana, using HPGe detector based on high-resolution gamma spectrometry system. The range of activity concentrations of ²²⁶Ra, ²³²Th and ⁴⁰K in the soil samples from the studied areas varies from 19.18 Bq kg⁻¹ (Moriwala) to 40.31 Bq kg⁻¹ (Rori), 59.43 Bq kg⁻¹ (Pipli) to 89.54 Bq kg⁻¹ (Fatehpur) and 223.22 Bq kg⁻¹ (Moriwala) to 313.32 Bq kg⁻¹ (SamatKhera) with overall mean values of 27.94, 72.75 and 286.73 Bq kg⁻¹ respectively. The absorbed dose rate calculated from activity concentration of ²²⁶Ra, ²³²Th and ⁴⁰K ranges between 8.84 and 18.58, 37.02 and 55.78, and 9.24 and 12.97 nGy h⁻¹, respectively. The total absorbed dose in the study area ranges from 60.40 to 82.15 nGy h⁻¹ with an average value of 70.12 nGy h⁻¹. The calculated values of external hazard index (H _ex) for the soil samples of the study area range from 0.36 to 0.49 with an average value of 0.42.     

Hydrogeological processes controlling the release of arsenic in parts of 24 Parganas district,West Bengal

A study was conducted to understand the hydrogeological processes dominating in the North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas based on representative 39 groundwater samples collected from selected area. The abundance of major ions was in the order of Ca²⁺ > Na⁺ > Mg²⁺ > K⁺ > Fe²⁺ for cations and HCO₃ ^? > PO₄ ^3? > Cl^? > SO₄ ^2? > NO₃ ^? for anions. Piper trilinear diagram was plotted to understand the hydrochemical facies. Most of the samples are of Ca-HCO₃ type. Based on conventional graphical plots for (Ca + Mg) vs. (SO₄ + HCO₃) and (Na + K) vs. Cl, it is interpreted that silicate weathering and ion exchange are the dominant processes within the study area. Previous studies have reported quartz, feldspar, illite, and chlorite clay minerals as the major mineral components obtained by the XRD analysis of sediments. Mineralogical investigations by SEM and EDX of aquifer materials have shown the occurrence of arsenic as coating on mineral grains in the silty clay as well as in the sandy layers. Excessive withdrawal of groundwater for irrigation and drinking purposes is responsible for fluctuation of the water table in the West Bengal. Aeration beneath the ground surface caused by fluctuation of the water table may lead to the formation of carbonic acid. Carbonic acid is responsible for the weathering of silicate minerals, and due to the formation of clay as a product of weathering, ion exchange also dominates in the area. These hydrogeological processes may be responsible for the release of arsenic into the groundwater of the study area, which is a part of North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas.     

Mapping composite vulnerability to groundwater arsenic contamination: an analytical framework and a case study in India

Natural Hazards - Groundwater arsenic (As) contamination affects millions of people in South Asia. In this paper, we propose a composite vulnerability framework to identify, for mitigation, the...     

Initial mass functions of Wolf-Rayet stars

On the basis of evolutionary tracks on the HR diagram the lower limit of initial mass functions for Wolf-Rayet stars are estimated. The lower limit to the initial masses of the Wolf-Rayet stars seems to be 20M and in this respect there is no significant difference between the WN and WC stars.     

Comparison of Two Data Smoothing Techniques for Vegetation Spectra Derived From EO-1 Hyperion

Hyperspectral data are generally noisier compared to broadband multispectral data because their narrow bandwidth can only capture very little energy that may be overcome by the self-generated noise inside the sensors. It is desirable to smoothen the reflectance spectra. This study was carried out to see the effect of smoothing algorithms - Fast-Fourier Transform (FFT) and Savitzky–Golay (SG) methods on the statistical properties of the vegetation spectra at varying filter sizes. The data used in the study is the reflectance spectra data obtained from Hyperion sensor over an agriculturally dominated area in Modipuram (Uttar Pradesh). The reflectance spectra were extracted for wheat crop at different growth stages. Filter sizes were varied between 3 and 15 with the increment of 2. Paired t-test was carried out between the original and the smoothed data for all the filter sizes in order to see the extent of distortion with changing filter sizes. The study showed that in FFT, beyond filter size 11, the number of locations within the spectra where the smooth spectra were statistically different from its original counterpart increased to 14 and reaches 21 at the filter size 15. However, in SG method, number of statistically different locations were more than those found in the FFT, but the number of locations did not changing drastically. The number of statistically disturbed locations in SG method varied between 16 and 19. The optimum filter size for smoothing the vegetation spectra was found to be 11 in FFT and 9 in SG method.     

Assessing the relative packing behaviour of Chandarpur and Khairagarh sandstones of Proterozoic Chhattisgarh Basin

The paper concerns mainly with properties of packing of the Proterozoic Chandarpur and Khairagarh sandstones of Chhattisgarh Basin. An attempt has been made to decipher the nature of boundary between Chandarpur Group and overlying Raipur Group on the basis of grain packing. For the purpose of study based on eight representative thin sections of Chandarpur and Khairagarh sandstones, measurements of grain size distribution, types of grain contacts, packing density (Pd), packing proximity (Pp) and linear regression analysis has been carried out. The relation of packing density with packing proximity of Khairagarh sandstone shows positive correlation coefficient (r) with linear regression equation (y) and no clear trend in packing proximity (Pp) vs grain size (Is) is observed whereas Chandarpur sandstone shows packing density increases and packing proximity decreases with linear regression equation (y) and correlation coefficient (r). Chandarpur grain size tends to increase with packing density (Pd) whereas packing proximity (Pp) increases but Khairagarh sandstone packing density (Pd) decrease with increase of grain size (Is) and packing proximity (Pp) tends to increase with decrease in grain size. Above study indicates that packing behaviour of Chandarpur sandstones and Khairagarh sandstones are entirely different.     

Anisotropy from full waveform inversion of multicomponent seismic data using a hybrid optimization method

Seismic waveforms contain valuable information about the media, but the waveform inversion is a non‐linear problem. We present a waveform inversion method that combines a local optimization method with a genetic algorithm to determine the anisotropic parameters of a horizontally stratified medium. Synthetic seismograms for a horizontally stratified anisotropic medium are calculated using the reflectivity technique. In the initial stage of the inversion, the global space‐sampling properties of the genetic algorithm are used to direct the search to the region close to the global solution. This solution is then further improved using a conjugate‐gradient method. The numerical experiments performed with noisy synthetic data show that our hybrid optimization method satisfactorily reconstructs the anisotropic parameters at a reasonable computing cost while the range of slowness is adequate. We found that (i) for small‐angle data neither single‐ nor multiple‐component data are sufficient to determine the anisotropic parameters uniquely; (ii) for medium‐angle data the multiple‐component data are sufficient to determine the anisotropic parameters exactly whereas the single‐component data are not sufficient; and (iii) for wide‐angle data, either single‐ or multiple‐component data are sufficient to determine the anisotropic parameters accurately.