Improving Indigenous Technologies for Sustainable Land Use in Northern Mountainous Areas of Vietnam

More than 30 ethnic groups are now living in northern mountainous regions, Vietnam, mainly relying on shifting cultivation with the fallow period being shortened from time to time. Naturally, soil fertility reduces from cycle to cycle, entailing the reduction of productivity. Large areas of moderately sloping lands suitable for upland agriculture have become bare after many cultivation-fallow cycles. The soils there have been severely degraded with more toxicity, low porosity, low water retention capacity and poor floral diversity. Normally, these lands cannot be used for food crop cultivation. So farmers in uplands have to rely on slash-and-burn practices for their livelihood. As there is no more forest with good soil in medium slopes, farmers go to cut forests in watershed, high slope lands and old forests up to the mountains‘ top. There are ecologically and environmentally very sensitive areas, so their destruction will inevitably cause hazardous consequences in the whole basin. Meanwhile,cultivation in these areas has low economic efficiency and sustainability because the crop yield may decrease very fast due to severe erosion as the higher the slope, the more serious erosion. Consequently living standards of highland farmers remain low and unstable. Sustainable farming on these lands in the perspective of a seriously deteriorated ecology and environmental is not an easy task. There have been many projects trying to help mountainous farmers get out of their vicious circle. However, due to different reasons, the results gained are low, and in some cases,things ceased to move after the projects phased out. During past few years, based on the farmer experiences, the Vietnam Agricultural Science Institute has cooperated with local and international partners to implement different projects in order to solve the problems by developing simple, easy and cheap cultivation technologies, which can be accepted and applied by local poor farmers for sustainable agricultural production. The first results of our activities offered good opportunities for sustain food production, improve soil health, recharge of aquifers,and enhanced household income for better rural lively hoods in the upland eco-regions of northern Vietnam.     

围垦工程引起多年海岸冲淤演变的经验计算方法

提出了一个改进的经验公式,用以计算围垦工程引起的淤泥质海岸多年冲淤演变。该经验公式假定在年时间尺度上,地形变化与潮流场变化具有密切联系。引入了一个冲刷折减系数,将传统公式的适用范围从淤积计算拓展到可以同时计算冲刷和淤积。建立了冲淤率年际变化与水深变化之间的关系式,可节省计算时间。将改进公式应用于江苏沿海小庙洪水道,较好地复演了边滩围垦工程影响下周边地形在3年时间内的演变,表明所改进的公式具有一定的可靠性。     

A new species Lobophora tsengii sp. nov. (Dictyotales; Phaeophyceae) from Bach Long Vy (Bailongwei) Island,Vietnam

Journal of Oceanology and Limnology - A new species Lobophora tsengii is described from Bach Long Vy (Bailongwei) Island, Haiphong Province, Vietnam. The plants inhabit the subtidal zone and have...     

Ducted propagation of hydromagnetic waves in the F2 layer

Calculations of the properties of the ionospheric duct centered at the F₂ layer are carried out with a view to investigating the ducted propagation of Pc1 micropulsations in directions out of the geomagnetic meridian plane. For a horizontally uniform ionosphere, duct properties are found to be essentially the same in all horizontal directions. Propagation characteristics of ducted waves, however, vary according to ionospheric and sunspot conditions. In practice, therefore, it is expected that horizontal propagation over a large recording network is not isotropic because of the diurnal changes in the ionosphere.     

The Nui Chua layered peridotite-gabbro complex as manifestation of Permo-Triassic mantle plume in northern Vietnam

New data on the age, composition, formation conditions, and ore-geochemical specialization of the Nui Chua layered peridotite-gabbro complex are reported. They evidence that the complex resulted from the Permo-Triassic mantle plume activity in northern Vietnam (southern framing of the Yangtze Platform). Two series of mafic and ultramafic rocks differing in ore productivity—layered (PGE-Cu-Ni) and pegmatoid (Fe-Ti-V)—have been recognized within the complex. The first estimates of the composition of their parental melts have been obtained.     

Ducted propagation of hydromagnetic waves in the upper ionosphere

This paper presents a theoretical investigation of the ducting of Pc1 hydromagnetic waves in an ionospheric layer situated above the F₂ region. Theoretical calculations show that this upper ionospheric duct may also sustain horizontal propagation of Pc1 pulsations over appreciable distances. It is found that there is a low-frequency cutoff as in the case of the F₂ layer waveguide. The group velocity of waves in the upper ionospheric duct is considerably greater, and dispersion is more pronounced compared to the ducted propagation in the F₂ region.     

Learning and climate change

Abstract

Learning—i.e. the acquisition of new information that leads to changes in our assessment of uncertainty—plays a prominent role in the international climate policy debate. For example, the view that we should postpone actions until we know more continues to be influential. The latest work on learning and climate change includes new theoretical models, better informed simulations of how learning affects the optimal timing of emissions reductions, analyses of how new information could affect the prospects for reaching and maintaining political agreements and for adapting to climate change, and explorations of how learning could lead us astray rather than closer to the truth. Despite the diversity of this new work, a clear consensus on a central point is that the prospect of learning does not support the postponement of emissions reductions today.     

Features of the Distribution of Abnormal Gasgeochemical Fields in the Red River Rift (Gulf of Tonkin,South China Sea)

Doklady Earth Sciences - This paper reports the results of the third Russian–Vietnamese expedition (V.I. Il'ichev Pacific Oceanological Institute, Far East Branch, Russian Academy of...     

Groundwater Potential Mapping Using GIS-Based Hybrid Artificial Intelligence Methods

Groundwater is one of the major valuable water resources for the use of communities, agriculture, and industries. In the present study, we have developed three novel hybrid artificial intelligence (AI) models which is a combination of modified RealAdaBoost (MRAB), bagging (BA), and rotation forest (RF) ensembles with functional tree (FT) base classifier for the groundwater potential mapping (GPM) in the basaltic terrain at DakLak province, Highland Centre, Vietnam. Based on the literature survey, these proposed hybrid AI models are new and have not been used in the GPM of an area. Geospatial techniques were used and geo-hydrological data of 130 groundwater wells and 12 topographical and geo-environmental factors were used in the model studies. One-R Attribute Evaluation feature selection method was used for the selection of relevant input parameters for the development of AI models. The performance of these models was evaluated using various statistical measures including area under the receiver operation curve (AUC). Results indicated that though all the hybrid models developed in this study enhanced the goodness-of-fit and prediction accuracy, but MRAB-FT (AUC = 0.742) model outperformed RF-FT (AUC = 0.736), BA-FT (AUC = 0.714), and single FT (AUC = 0.674) models. Therefore, the MRAB-FT model can be considered as a promising AI hybrid technique for the accurate GPM. Accurate mapping of the groundwater potential zones will help in adequately recharging the aquifer for optimum use of groundwater resources by maintaining the balance between consumption and exploitation.     

Total organic carbon fluxes of the Red River system (Vietnam)

Riverine transport of organic carbon from terrestrial ecosystems to the oceans plays an important role in the global carbon cycle. The Red River is located in Southeast Asia where river discharge, sediment loads and fluxes of elements (carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus) associated with suspended solids have been dramatically altered over past decades as a result of reservoir impoundment and land use, population, and climate change. Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and particulate organic carbon (POC) concentrations were measured monthly at four stations of the Red River system from January 2008 to December 2010. The results reveal that POC changed synchronically with total suspended solids (TSS) concentration and with the river discharge, whereas no clear trend was observed for DOC concentration. The mean value of total organic carbon (TOC = DOC + POC) flux in the delta of the Red River was 31.5 × 10¹³ ± 4.0 × 10¹³ MgC.yr^?1 (range 27.9–35.8 × 10¹³ MgC.yr^?1 which leads to a specific TOC flux of 2012 ± 255 kgC.km^?2.yr^?1 during this 2008–2010 period. About 80% of the TOC flux was transferred to the estuary during the rainy season as a consequence of the higher river water discharge. The high mean value of the POC:Chl‐a ratio (1585 ± 870 mgC.mgChl‐a^?1) and the moderate C:N ratio (7.3 ± 0.1) in the water column system suggest that organic carbon in the Red River system is mainly derived from erosion and soil leaching in the basin. The effect of two new dam impoundments in the Red River was also observable with lower TOC fluxes in 2010 compared with 2008. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.