Order of the National Green Tribunal (Eastern Zone Bench, Kolkata) in the matter of Sridhar Samal Vs State of Odisha & Others dated 06/03/2024. The matter related to pollution caused by Talcher Coalfield under Mahanadi Coalfields Limited in the course of its operation. It was said that on a daily …
India has the worst air quality in the world, beating even its neighbour China, according to an annual survey based at Yale and Columbia universities in the United States. Of all the countries surveyed in the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), which measures the effects of polluted air on human health, …
India has the worst air pollution in the entire world, beating China, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh, according to a study released during this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos. Of 132 countries whose environments were surveyed, India ranks dead last in the ‘Air (effects on human health)’ ranking. The annual …
Conservationists working in Central Africa to save the world's rarest gorilla have good news: the Cross River gorilla has more suitable habitat than previously thought, including vital corridors that, if protected, can help the great apes move between sites in search of mates, according to the North Carolina Zoo, the …
We assessed a donor-funded grassland management project designed to create both conservation and livelihood benefits in the rangelands of Mongolia's Gobi desert. The project ran from 1995 to 2006, and we used remote sensing Normalized Differential Vegetation Index data from 1982 to 2009 to compare project grazing sites to matched …
Heat waves have a drastic impact on urban populations, which could increase with climate change. The authors evaluated new indicators of elderly people’s exposure to heat in Paris, from a public health prevention perspective, using satellite thermal images.
Extreme heat can cause wheat crops to age faster and reduce yields, a U.S.-led study shows, underscoring the challenge of feeding a rapidly growing population as the world warms. Scientists and farmers have long known that high heat can hurt some crops and the Stanford University-led study, released on Monday, …
An important source of uncertainty in anticipating the effects of climate change on agriculture is limited understanding of crop responses to extremely high temperatures. This uncertainty partly reflects the relative lack of observations of crop behaviour in farmers’ fields under extreme heat. We used nine years of satellite measurements of …
Heavy rains on 18 and 19 September 2010 in the Ganga watershed associated with a regional monsoon event that occurred between Myanmar and Middle East caused disastrous landslips in Uttarakhand, Indian Central Himalaya and floods in the plains of Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. Relation between quantum of rainfall per …
Recent clusters of outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases (Rift Valley fever and chikungunya) in Africa and parts of the Indian Ocean islands illustrate how interannual climate variability influences the changing risk patterns of disease outbreaks. Although Rift Valley fever outbreaks have been known to follow periods of above-normal rainfall, the timing …
For long we have been fed lies. Mumbai has no scarcity of houses and the key to the truth lies in using digital technology to unlock the city's housing potential.
The change in the land use pattern due to rapid urbanization adversely affects the hydrological processes in a catchment, leading to a deteriorating water environment. The increase in impervious areas disrupts the natural water balance. Reduced infiltration increases runoff and leads to higher flood peaks and volumes even for short …
Rice paddies have been identified as major methane (CH4) source induced by human activities. As a major rice production region in Northern China, the rice paddies in the Three-Rivers Plain (TRP) have experienced large changes in spatial distribution over the recent 20 years (from 1990 to 2010). Consequently, accurate estimation …
The Kawal Wildlife Sanctuary in Adilabad district — where a new tiger reserve is being established but is opposed by tribals — has lost 27 sq km of dense forest area between 2000 and 2010 due to cutting of trees and encroachments. In the Jannaram Forest Division, in which Kawal …
Understanding the growth dynamics of urban agglomerations is essential for ecologically feasible developmental planning. The inefficient and consumptive use of land and its associated resources is termed sprawl. By monitoring changes in the urban sprawl over a period of time, the impact of changing land use on land, ecology and …
Agro-climatic resource inventory characterization in spatial domain can play a great role in site specific suitability of sustainable agricultural crop production. An attempt has been made for creation of spatial database and zoning of agro-climatic resources of Punjab in spatial environment using GIS approach. This zoning approach divided Punjab into …
India has made a long journey in the field of irrigation by raising the irrigation coverage from 22.6 million ha in 1951 to 100 million ha in 2005. Consequently the food-grain production was raised from 50 million tons to 210 tons in above period. However from the past experience, it …
Monitoring of water and land objects enters a revolutionary age with the rise of ubiquitous remote sensing and public access. Earth monitoring satellites permit detailed, descriptive, quantitative, holistic, standardized, global evaluation of the state of the Earth skin in a manner that our actual Earthen civilization has never been able …
Simulation based on data from the GRACE satellites and historical weather records reveals the effects of this year's drought in Texas (driest conditions shown in dark red) Groundwater levels have dropped in many places across the globe over the past nine years, a pair of gravity-monitoring satellites finds. This trend …
The goal of preserving nature is often in conflict with economic development and the aspirations of the rural poor. Nowhere is this more striking than in native grasslands, which have been extensively converted until a mere fraction of their original extent remains. This is not surprising; grasslands flourish in places …
The aim of this paper is to develop a methodology for estimating flood risk, considering Noida as a case study. This paper examines the impact of different methods for estimating impervious surface cover on the prediction of peak discharges as determined by a fully distributed rainfall-runoff model (WetSpa). The study …
