Socio-economic drivers of deforestation in Roghani Valley,Hindu-Raj Mountains,Northern Pakistan

Deforestation and associated ecological disturbances are the issues of global concern.Researchers have investigated a number of driving forces which accelerate the rate of deforestation at local and regional levels.These include poverty,population growth,market demand and prices,political instability,agricultural expansion and changes in property right and ownership regimes.This paper seeks to explore the impacts of population growth,changing tenure system and other socioeconomic factors on the forest cover of Roghani Valley,located in Hindu Raj Mountains,Northern Pakistan.The present study is mainly based on information collected through participatory observation,selfadministered interviews and questionnaire survey.Geographical Information System（GIS） database is also used for mapping and quantification.The results reveal that in the past three to four decades the study area has been subjected to severe deforestation and about half of the forest area has been converted into barren land.Thus,the area under natural forests decreased from 2099 to 1444 hectares in four decades.This large-scale deforestation is attributed to both proximate and under lying causes particularly traditional land tenure system and demographic development.Consequently,forest resources have been degraded and a number of plant species have disappeared from the forests of the study area while several others are in the process of disappearance.     

Transforming local natural resource conflicts to cooperation in a changing climate: Bangladesh and Nepal lessons

ABSTRACT

Since the 1990s, climate change impact discourse has highlighted potential for large scale violent conflicts. However, the role of climate stresses on local conflicts over natural resources, the role of policies and adaptation in these conflicts, and opportunities to enhance cooperation have been neglected. These gaps are addressed in this paper using evidence from participatory action research on 79 cases of local collective action over natural resources that experience conflicts in Bangladesh and Nepal. Climate trends and stresses contributed to just under half of these conflict cases. Nine factors that enable greater cooperation and transformation of conflict are identified. Participatory dialogue and negotiation processes, while not sufficient, changed understanding, attitudes and positions of actors. Many of the communities innovated physical measures to overcome natural resource constraints, underlying conflict, and/or institutional reforms. These changes were informed by improving understanding of resource limitations and indigenous knowledge. Learning networks among community organizations encouraged collective action by sharing successes and creating peer pressure. Incentives for cooperation were important. For example, when community organizations formally permitted excluded traditional resource users to access resources, those actors complied with rules and paid towards management costs. However, elites were able to use policy gaps to capture resources with changed characteristics due to climate change. In most of the cases where conflict persisted, power, policy and institutional barriers prevented community-based organizations from taking up potential adaptations and innovations. Policy frameworks recognizing collective action and supporting flexible innovation in governance and adaptation would enable wider transformation of natural resource conflicts into cooperation.

Key policy insights

• Climate stresses, policy gaps and interventions can all worsen local natural resource conflicts.

• Sectoral knowledge and technical approaches to adaptation are open to elite capture and can foster conflicts.

• Many local natural resource conflicts can be resolved but this requires an enabling environment for participatory dialogue, external facilitation, flexible responses to context, and recognition of disadvantaged stakeholder interests.

• Transforming conflict to greater cooperation mostly involves social and institutional changes, so adaptation policies should focus less on physical works and more on enabling factors such as negotiation, local institutions, knowledge, and incentives.

     

Distribution of heavy metals in the core sediments of a tropical wetland system

Five sediment cores from the fresh water region of the Vembanad wetland system were studied for the trace element contents The average concentration of iron, manganese, nickel, copper, zinc, cadmium, lead, mercury and chromium were determined. The core samples were collected using gravity type corer, digested with a mixture of nitric acid and perchloric acid and analyzed by atomic absorption spectrophotometry. Heavy metals such as iron, copper, nickel and zinc reported enrichment towards the surface of the core sediment sample collected from the centre of the lake. Lead, cadmium and mercury showed uniform distribution through out the core. Quality of the sediments were evaluated based on sediment quality guidelines, pollution load index, sum of toxic units and with effect range low/effect range median and threshold effect level/probable effect level values of Environmental Protection Agency guidelines. The degree of contamination for each station was determined. The concentration of different heavy metals has been compared with the world average concentration of shale values. Results of the analysis showed that Vembanad lake is facing serious metal pollution with increased rate of deposition.     

Six decades of agricultural land use change in Bangladesh: Effects on crop diversity,productivity, food availability and the environment, 1948–2006

This paper provides a detailed analysis of agricultural land use change in Bangladesh over a 59‐year period (1948–2006) and examines how these have impacted crop diversity, productivity, food availability and the environment. The key findings of the analysis are: first, land use intensity has increased significantly over this period, mainly from the widespread adoption of a rice‐based Green Revolution technology package beginning in the early 1960s; second, contrary to expectation, crop diversity too has increased; third, although land productivity has increased significantly, declines in the productivity of fertilizers and pesticides raise doubts over sustaining agricultural growth; fourth, food availability has improved, with a reversal in the dietary energy imbalance in recent years despite a high population growth rate; and finally, the production environment has suffered with widespread soil nutrient depletion experienced in many agroecological regions. The policy implication points towards crop diversification as a desired strategy for agricultural growth to improve resource economy, productivity and efficiency in farming in Bangladesh.     

Scaling property of regional floods in New South Wales Australia

Regional flood frequency analysis (RFFA) is often used in hydrology to estimate flood quantiles when there is a limitation of at-site recorded flood data. One of the commonly used RFFA methods is the index flood method, which is based on the assumptions that a region satisfies criterion of simple scaling and it can be treated homogeneous. Another RFFA method is quantile regression technique where prediction equations are developed for flood quantiles of interest as function of catchment characteristics. In this paper, the scaling property of regional floods in New South Wales (NSW) State in Australia is investigated. The results indicate that the annual maximum floods in NSW satisfy a simple scaling assumption. The application of a heterogeneity test, however, reveals that NSW flood data set does not satisfy the criteria for a homogeneous region. Finally, a set of prediction equations are developed for NSW using quantile regression technique; an independent test shows that these equations can provide reasonably accurate design flood estimates with a median relative error of about 27%.     

Cretaceous Environments of Afghanistan:A Synthesis Based on Selected Sections

1IntroductionThe Late Mesozoic sequences of Afghanistan are important in understanding the geodynamic evolu-tion of the northwestern part of South Asia, in par-ticular the transgressive and regressive history of the northwestern part of the Tethys connecting Iran to the west and the northern Indian Subcontinent to the east. Jurassic to Upper Cretaceous sedimentary seque-nces were initially studied by Griesbach (1885 ~1887) and Hayden (1880~1901) through several traverses in northern an…     

A study of Coriolis effects on long waves propagating in an unbounded ocean, channel and basin

The effects of Coriolis force on long waves have been discussed based on gravity waves propagating in an unbounded ocean, channel and basin. In case of ocean, results show that the Coriolis effect will be significant and negligible, when the wave period is comparable to 2π/f and much shorter, respectively. Results also show in a channel, the wave amplitude and water particle velocity decrease exponentially in the positive y direction in the northern hemisphere (where f is positive). Moreover, in a basin, the Cotidal lines have been found as curves and rotate counterclockwise around the origin.     

Development of Tide–Surge Interaction Model for the Coastal Region of Bangladesh

In this paper, a two-dimensional, vertically integrated hydrodynamic model is developed taking into account entrained air bubbles during storm surges as well as incorporating inverted barometer, and river and land dynamics. The model is specifically designed for the coastal region of Bangladesh. A nested scheme method with a fine mesh scheme (FMS), capable of incorporating the complex coastline and all major offshore islands accurately, nested into a coarse mesh scheme (CMS) covering up to 15° N latitude in the Bay of Bengal is used. To incorporate the small and big offshore islands in the Meghna estuarine region with its complex coastline accurately, a very fine mesh scheme (VFMS) is again nested into the FMS. Along the northeast corner of the VFMS, the Meghna river discharge is taken into account. The coastal and island boundaries are approximated through proper stair steps. The model equations are solved by a semi-implicit finite difference technique using a staggered C-grid. A stable appropriate tidal condition over the model domain is generated by applying tidal forcing with the four major tidal constituents M ₂, S ₂, K ₁, and O ₁ along the southern open boundary of the CMS. This tidal regime is introduced as the initial state of the sea for nonlinear interaction of tide and surge. The model is applied to simulate water levels due to the interaction of tide and surge associated with the cyclones April 1991 and Aila at different coastal and island locations along the coast of Bangladesh. The results are found to be quite satisfactory with root mean square error of ～0.50 m as calculated for both the storm events. Tests of sensitivities on water levels are carried out for air bubbles, offshore islands, river discharge, inverse barometer, and grid resolution. The presence of air bubbles increases simulated water levels a little bit in our model, and the contribution of air bubbles in increasing water level is found around 2 %. Further, water levels are found to be influenced by offshore islands, river discharge, inverse barometer as well as grid resolution.