Estimation of spatial patterns of soil erosion using remote sensing and GIS: a case study of Indravati catchment

Soil erosion is a serious environmental problem in Indravati catchment. It carries the highest amount of sediments compared with other catchments in India. This catchment spreading an area of 41,285 km² is drained by river Indravati, which is one of the northern tributaries of the river Godavari in its lower reach. In the present study, USLE is used to estimate potential soil erosion from river Indravati catchment. Both magnitude and spatial distribution of potential soil erosion in the catchment is determined. The derived soil loss map from USLE model is classified into six categories ranging from slight to very severe risk depending on the calculated soil erosion amount. The soil erosion map is linked to elevation and slope maps to identify the area for conservation practice in order to reduce the soil loss. From the model output predictions, it is found that average erosion rate predicted is 18.00 tons/ha/year and sediment yield at the out let of the catchment is 22.30 Million tons per annum. The predicted sediment yield verified with the observed data.     

Groundwater arsenic contamination in Ganga–Meghna–Brahmaputra plain, its health effects and an approach for mitigation

The authors’ survey of the Ganga–Meghna–Brahmaputra (GMB) plain (area 569,749 km²; population >500 million) over the past 20 years and analysis of more than 220,000 hand tube-well water samples revealed groundwater arsenic contamination in the floodplains of the Ganga–Brahmaputra river (Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, and Assam) in India and the Padma–Meghna–Brahmaputra river in Bangladesh. On average, 50 % of the water samples contain arsenic above the World Health Organization guideline value of 10 μg/L in India and Bangladesh. More than 100 million people in the GMB plain are potentially at risk. The authors’ medical team screened around 155,000 people from the affected villages and registered 16,000 patients with different types of arsenical skin lesions. Arsenic neuropathy and adverse pregnancy outcomes have been recorded. Infants and children drinking arsenic-contaminated water are believed to be at high risk. About 45,000 biological samples analyzed from arsenic-affected villages of the GMB plain revealed an elevated level of arsenic present in patients as well as non-patients, indicating that many are sub-clinically affected. In West Bengal and Bangladesh, there are huge surface water in rivers, wetlands, and flooded river basins. In the arsenic-affected GMB plain, the crisis is not over water scarcity but about managing the available water resources.     

Distribution of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in recent sediments of Sundarban mangrove wetland of India and Bangladesh: a comparative approach

The present work is the first attempt to compare the data of a comprehensive study of the origin and distribution of 16 priority pollutant polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in surface sediments (<63 μm) from 18 sampling stations, 9 from Sundarban of Bangladesh and 9 from Indian counterpart. Σ19PAHs concentration in sediments showed wide variations from 208.3 to 12,993.1 ng g^?1 dry weight in Indian Sundarban, whereas 208.4 to 4,687.9 ng g^?1 in the case of Bangladesh. Fluoranthene, pyrene, benzo(b)fluoranthene, benzo(a)pyrene and dibenzo(a,h)anthracene were predominant species for both the countries. The PAH diagnostic ratios indicated that the PAHs in sediments from both the countries were of mixed source of hydrocarbons of both petrogenic and pyrolytic origin. According to the numerical effect-based sediment quality guidelines, the levels of PAHs in the Sundarban wetland of Bangladesh and India should not exert adverse biological effects. The TEQ values calculated for samples from the Bangladesh and Indian Sundarban varied from 13.68 to 1,014.75 and 1.31 to 2,451 ng g^?1 d.w. with an average of 221.02 and 358.63 ng g^?1, respectively. The overall contamination status of PAH was higher in India than Bangladesh.     

Limitations Of The Tangent Plane Approximation For Wide-field Imaging Using The Mauritius Radio Telescope

The Mauritius Radio Telescope (MRT) is a Fourier synthesis, non-coplanar T array. The primary objective of the telescope is to survey the southern sky at 151.5 MHz in the declination range -70^° to -10^°. Due to non-coplanarity, wide-field imaging and deconvolution of wide field images made using MRT are challenging problems in applications of radio interferometric techniques. This paper discusses the usefulness and limitations of the tangent plane approximation in transforming the measured visibilities to wide field images and in estimating the point spread function (PSF) required for the deconvolution. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Generation and Validation of two Day Composite Wind Fields from Oceansat-2 Scatterometer

The Oceansat-2 scatterometer (OSCAT) of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), provides surface wind speed and direction with a spatial resolution of 50 km × 50 km. With a revisit time of 2 days it had provided ocean surface wind vectors over the global oceans. In the present work, an attempt has been made to generate two day composite of OSCAT wind vectors using Data-Interpolating Variational Analysis (DIVA) and compare them with daily composite winds to check how better is the two day composites in comparison to daily composites. The daily and two days composite wind vectors of zonal (U) and meridional (V) components have been validated with wind measurements from in situ buoys and Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) for the year 2012 over the tropical Indian Ocean region. The statistical comparison with the in situ measurements and ASCAT has shown that the two-day OSCAT wind composites are slightly better than the daily composite winds. The improvement in the statistics can be attributed to the use of ascending and descending passes pertaining to two days which results in fewer gaps between passes, thereby reducing the interpolation errors.     

Synergizing community-based forest monitoring with remote sensing: a path to an effective REDD+ MRV system

Background

The reliable monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) of carbon emissions and removals from the forest sector is an important part of the efforts on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+). Forest-dependent local communities are engaged to contribute to MRV through community-based monitoring systems. The efficiency of such monitoring systems could be improved through the rational integration of the studies at permanent plots with the geospatial technologies. This article presents a case study of integrating community-based measurements at permanent plots at the foothills of central Nepal and biomass maps that were developed using GeoEye-1 and IKONS satellite images.

Results

The use of very-high-resolution satellite-based tree cover parameters, including crown projected area (CPA), crown density and crown size classes improves salience, reliability and legitimacy of the community-based survey of 0.04% intensity at the lower cost than increasing intensity of the community-based survey to 0.14% level (2.5 USD/ha vs. 7.5 USD/ha).

Conclusion

The proposed REDD+ MRV complementary system is the first of its kind and demonstrates the enhancement of information content, accuracy of reporting and reduction in cost. It also allows assessment of the efficacy of community-based forest management and extension to national scale.

     

Heavy Mineral Placer Sand Deposits of Kontiagarh Area,Ganjam District,Orissa, India

The Kontiagarh placer deposit in the Ganjam district, Orissa, India extends in northeast direction having a width of 700–1000 m. A total of 187 samples were collected meterwise from 55 bore holes in a grid pattern from beach, frontal, intermediate and back dunes covering an area of approximately 1 km². Light minerals decrease in size from the beach to the back dunes, whereas the size distribution of heavy minerals in the beach and dunes is more or less uniform. The average heavy mineral content in the beach and dunes vary from 9.38% to 24.20%. The heavy minerals are ilmenite, garnet, sillimanite, rutile, monazite, and zircon with trace amounts of magnetite, hornblende, diopside, sphene, tourmaline, and epidote. Heavy minerals are mostly less than 350 µm in size, with a peak distribution in the range between 180 and 125 µm. Ilmenite shows exsolution intergrowth with hematite. Mineral chemistry of ilmenite, hematite, leucoxene, magnetite, monazite and sillimanite are examined by EPMA. Leucoxene is lower in Fe and higher in Ti, Al, Cr and V than ilmenite. The litho‐units of the Precambrian Eastern Ghats Mobile Belt, comprising primarily khondalite, charnockite, calc‐silicate granulite and gneiss, are the source of heavy minerals for this deposit. The bulk sample has 7.30% ilmenite, 5.24% sillimanite, 9.16% garnet, 0.18% rutile, 0.14% monazite, 0.06% zircon and 0.52% other heavy minerals. The deposit has good potential for economic exploitation of ilmenite, rutile, sillimanite, monazite, zircon and garnet.     

Sm-Nd and Rb-Sr ages and P-T history of the Archean Sittampundi and Bhavani layered meta-anorthosite complexes in Cauvery shear zone,South India: evidence for Neoproterozoic reworking of Archean crust

 Sittampundi and Bhavani Archean layered meta-anorthosite complexes occur as tectonic lenses within the Cauvery shear zone (CSZ), a crustal scale shear dividing the Precambrian granulite crust of south India into late Archean (> 2.5 Ga) and Proterozoic (c. 0.55 Ga) blocks. They and their host supracrustal-gneiss rocks record at least two stages of tectonometamorphic history. The first is seen as regional scale refolded isoclinal folds and granulite metamorphism (D₁-M₁) while the second stage is associated with dominantly E–W dextral transcurrent shearing and metamorphic recrystallisation (D₂-M_CSZ). Whole rock Sm-Nd isochrons for several comagmatic rocks of the layered complexes yield concordant ages: Sittampundi – 2935±60 Ma, ɛ_Nd + 1.85±0.16 and Bhavani – 2899±28 Ma, ɛ_Nd + 2.18±0.14 (2σ errors). Our Sm-Nd results suggest that: (1) the magmatic protoliths of the Sittampundi and Bhavani layered complexes were extracted from similar uniform and LREE depleted mantle sources; (2) M₁ metamorphism occurred soon after emplacement at c.3.0 Ga ago. P-T estimates on garnet granulites from the Sittampundi complex characterise the M_CSZ as a high-P event with metamorphic peak conditions of c. 11.8 kbar and 830°C (minimum). The M_CSZ is associated with significant isothermal decompression of the order of 4.5–3.5 kbar followed by static high-temperature rehydration and retrogression around 600°C. The timing of M_CSZ is inferred to be Neoproterozoic at c. 730 Ma based on a whole rock-garnet-plagioclase-hornblende Sm-Nd isochron age for a garnet granulite from the Sittampundi complex and its agreement with the 800–600 Ma published age data on post-kinematic plutonic rocks within the CSZ. These results demonstrate that the Cauvery shear zone is a zone of Neoproterozoic reworking of Archean crust broadly similar to the interface between the Napier and Rayner complexes of the East Antarctic shield in a model Proterozoic Gondwana supercontinent. Received: 5 December 1995 / Accepted: 3 May 1996     

The ambient environment of the Gangetic sediments of chalcolithic period

There is considerable controversy regarding the mode of deposition of the OCP culture-associated sediments in the Gangetic valley and their ecological implications. SEM and sedimentologic studies show a fluvial mode of deposition of sediments originally derived from a glacial environment.