With the consequence of climate change, it gradually extends towards inland water and soil. This scenario of gradual salinity intrusion into the coastal areas of Bangladesh is very threatening to the primary production system, coastal biodiversity and human health, said researchers. The total amount of salinity affected land in Bangladesh …
Cyclone Aila seemed to have broken the back of agriculture in the Sunderbans. Most observers, including Santadas Ghosh, felt it would be years before agricultural activity got back to normal. But just three months after the cyclone, salinity notwithstanding, seeds were sprouting and the freshwater ecology stirring with life.
Land degradation is a serious menace to food security. Salinity-related land degradation is becoming a serious challenge to food and nutritional security in developing countries. Order vertisols has problem of salinity throughout the country. The vertisols and their associates cover nearly 257 m ha of the earth
The conservation broth has got eager hands to stir it. Some throw in extra spices to experiment with the taste. But that sometimes spoils the broth. For instance, the forest department’s prescription to tackle the dearth of prey base for tigers in the Sunderbans: release deer in the mangroves. The …
THE Great Indian Desert, Thar, is expanding, swallowing and degrading about 12,000 hectares of productive land every year. An alarmed Rajasthan government recently asked the state pollution control board to suggest how to arrest the land degradation and soil erosion. The board reviewed about 200 research papers on the impact …
Kachchh, the 2nd largest district in India (45,652 km2) and located in the north-western region of Gujarat, experiences tropical arid climate (13 average rainy days in a year) with high evapotranspiration rate resulting in degradation of land. Higher dependence on groundwater for agricultural and industrial activities has accelerated the salinity …
Cultivation of salt-tolerant varieties of rice and other crops has helped increase crop yield and farm income Surinder Sud / New Delhi June 29, 2010, 0:42 IST High salt content of the soil is a major problem that confronts farmers in several parts of the country. Commonly referred to as …
The capacities of developing countries to increase food production for its people and alleviate rural poverty is largely threatened by hungry and thirsty lands which shows clear evidence of advanced and continuing degradation seriously affecting its productive resource base. Soil is a vital natural resource the proper use of which …
APPROXIMATELY 6.73 million hectares of India’s agricultural land is affected by varying degrees of soil salinity. About 130 million hectares are under agriculture. “Estimates indicate that by 2025 the country may have an area of about 13 million hectares under salt-affected soils,” said Suresh K Chaudhari, a scientist in the …
There was a time when desert in India was synonymous with the Thar in Rajasthan. But the sands have flown across—unchecked and uncontained—and taken over parts of Haryana, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh as they advance by half a kilometre every year. There would soon be more contenders on …
KOLKATA 6 April: The West Bengal Pollution Control Board (WBPCB) is going to provide technical assistance to farmers in the Aila-affected regions where they could not sow seeds due to high salinity. The initiative was taken after it was found that 80 per cent of the farmers of that area …
In the present study, efforts have been made to identify and map areas affected by various soil degradation processes in Hanumangarh district of western Rajasthan. Soil degradation processes were identified by using IRS-1B satellite image of the year 1998, SOI topsheets, ground truth verification and soil studies.
As scientists worry about the prospect of a catastrophic flood from Lake Sarez in the Pamir Mountains, agricultural communities on the plains below face a very different problem. This arid region in Central Asia has inherited a set of resource blunders made decades ago by the Soviet Union. And since …
Shajarana village, located some 15 km from Fazilka, is slowly discovering the benefits of aquaculture. Badly affected by soil salinity and waterlogging, agriculture here means a single crop in a year and that too only in soil having low salt deposits. This isn
Desertification is the process of land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry-subhumid areas. This communication describes the classification system, methodology and the results of desertification and land degradation status mapping carried out for the entire country on 1 : 500,000 scale using multi-temporal Resourcesat AWiFS data.
There has been growing concern over conversion of coastal rice paddies to shrimp farms. This study estimates the external cost of shrimp-induced salinity on crop production by comparing two villages in southern India: Poovam, which is affected by salinity, with Thiruvettakudy, which is not. Data show that the soil salinity …
The ongoing global climate change (CC) has already caused a grave concern to the country's agriculture, irrigation, navigation, ecology, bio-diversity, weather, environment and underground water levels, concerned experts said. As a result, rainfalls, floods, cyclones, droughts, cold and hot spells, sea and surface warming, water contamination, water and soil salinity, …
