Surface cyclopoid copepod assemblages in relation to environmental conditions near undisturbed coral reefs of Minicoy,southeastern Arabian Sea,a part of the Indian Ocean

The cruise conducted in the spring inter-monsoon (pre-monsoon) of April 2015 in the frame of a funded project epitomized an open ocean survey that allowed procuring a quasi-synoptic picture of cyclopoid copepod community structure in 18 open ocean stations of the Minicoy Island, Lakshadweep archipelago, off the southwestern Indian coast, based on the analysis of standing stock and composition in the integrated 0–10 m water column. The main objective was to explore the community structure of cyclopoid copepods prevailing here and which environmental variable influences the same. It is witnessed that sea surface temperature (SST) (30.42 ± 0.19°C), sea surface salinity (SSS) (33.56 ± 1.15 psu), and dissolved oxygen (DO) (4.32 ± 0.06 ml/L) with SSS and DO are the best matching variables diversifying cyclopoid copepod species (av. abundance 700 ± 386 no. of individuals/100 m³). Average zooplankton biomass (0.03 ml/m³) and abundance (8,989 ± 3,866 no. of individuals/100 m³) were also observed. Fifty-one cyclopoid copepod species belonging to four families and seven genera were identified, with the dominance of high saline species such as Sapphirina, Copilia, Farranula, and Oncaea. An abundance biomass curve (ABC) plot analysis indicated an undisturbed community with normal environmental conditions. TAXDTEST (taxonomic distinctness) depicted a diverse condition where all points clustered together within a 95% confidence level. Our results indicate that the cyclopoid copepod assemblage near Minicoy Island is a diverse, undisturbed community and hypothesize that the stable environmental conditions during pre-monsoon (spring inter-monsoon) preferred the diversification of cyclopoid copepods with the prevalence of high saline species. The data evolved could be used as a standard reference/benchmark to detect any deviation from an undisturbed/diverse community status of Minicoy Island in the looming scenario of climate change in and around the Indian Ocean.     

Regional Groundwater Assessment of Krishna River Basin Using Integrated GIS Approach

The groundwater occurrence and movement within the flow systems are governed by many natural factors like topography, geology, geomorphology, lineament structures, soil, drainage network and land use land cover (LULC). Due to complex natural geological/hydro-geological regime a systematic planning is needed for groundwater exploitation. It is even more important to characterize the aquifer system and delineate groundwater potential zones in different geological terrain. The study employed integration of weighted index overlay analysis (WIOA) and geographical information system (GIS) techniques to assess the groundwater potential zones in Krishna river basin, India and the validation of the result with existing groundwater levels. Different thematic layers such as geology, geomorphology, soil, slope, LULC, drainage density, lineament density and annual rainfall distribution were integrated with WIOA using spatial analyst tools in Arc-GIS 10.1. These thematic layers were prepared using Geological survey of India maps, European Digital Archive of Soil Maps, Bhuvan (Indian-Geo platform of ISRO, NRSC) and 30 m global land cover data. Drainage, watershed delineation and slope were prepared from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission digital elevation model of 30 m resolution data. WIOA is being carried out for deriving the normalized score for the suitability classification. Weight factor is assigned for every thematic layer and their individual feature classes considering their significant importance in groundwater occurrence. The final map of the study area is categorized into five classes very good, good, moderate, poor and very poor groundwater potential zones. The result describes the groundwater potential zones at regional scale which are in good agreement with observed ground water condition at field level. Thus, the results derived can be very much useful in planning and management of groundwater resources in a regional scale.     

Hazardous area map: an approach of sustainable urban planning and industrial development—a review

Natural Hazards - A hazard map is a map which shows about all the vulnerable regions present in any country or at any specific place or location which is affected or will be affected by natural...     

Scattering of internal waves in a two-layer fluid flowing through a channel with small undulations

Using two-dimensional linear water wave theory, we consider the problem of normal water wave (internal wave) propagation over small undulations in a channel flow consisting of a two-layer fluid in which the upper layer is bounded by a fixed wall, an approximation to the free surface, and the lower one is bounded by a bottom surface that has small undulations. The effects of surface tension at the surface of separation is neglected. Assuming irrotational motion, a perturbation analysis is employed to calculate the first-order corrections to the velocity potentials in the two-layer fluid by using Green’s integral theorem in a suitable manner and the reflection and transmission coefficients in terms of integrals involving the shape function c(x) representing the bottom undulation. Two special forms of the shape function are considered for which explicit expressions for reflection and transmission coefficients are evaluated. For the specific case of a patch of sinusoidal ripples having the same wave number throughout, the reflection coefficient up to the first order is an oscillatory function in the quotient of twice the interface wave number and the ripple wave number. When this quotient approaches one, the theory predicts a resonant interaction between the bed and the interface, and the reflection coefficient becomes a multiple of the number of ripples. High reflection of the incident wave energy occurs if this number is large. Again, when a patch of sinusoidal ripples having two different wave numbers for two consecutive stretches is considered, the interaction between the bed and the interface near resonance attains in the neighborhood of two (singular) points along the x-axis (when the ripple wave number of the bottom undulation become approximately twice as large as the interface wave number). The theoretical observations are presented in graphical form.     

Wheat Monitoring by Using Kernel Based Possibilistic <Emphasis Type="Italic">c</Emphasis>-Means Classifier: Bi-sensor Temporal Multi-spectral Data

The existence of mixed pixels in the satellite images has always been an area of concern. Adding to the challenge is an occurrence of non-linearity between the classes, which is generally overlooked. The study makes an attempt to solve the two frequently occurring problems by kernel based fuzzy approach. This research work deals with Possibilistic c-Means (PCM) classifier with local, global, spectral angle and hyper tangent kernels for wheat crop (Triticum aestivum) identification in Haridwar, Uttarakhand, India. The multi-temporal vegetation index data of Formosat-2 have been used which covers the whole phenology of wheat crop. The additional sensor Landsat-8 OLI imagery has been filled the crucial gap of Formosat-2 temporal datasets. Nine types of proposed kernels based PCM classifier have been applied on three temporal datasets (four, five and six date combinations) to classify two classes early sown and late sown wheat crop. These test results have been concluded that at optimized weighted constant KMOD and polynomial kernel was found effective to separate wheat crop. The five and six date combination were sufficient to discriminate early sown and late sown wheat crop.