Open Water Bodies Research Articles

Modeling and simulation of a wetland park: An application to Keoladeo National Park, India

In this paper, three mathematical models are proposed and analyzed to study the degradation and conservation of a wetland park. The first model describes the interaction of bird populations with the good biomass. The interaction is considered to be Crowley–Martin type. The good biomass is the cumulative densities of floating vegetation, fishes, waterfowl and other useful species. The model is further extended to study the effect of bad biomass such as Paspalum distichum on the dynamics of the previous system. The Paspalum distichum is a wild grass which depletes the level of oxygen in the open water bodies affecting severely the good biomass and consequently the bird populations. The carrying capacity of bad biomass is one of the most vital parameter. Keeping the low value of the carrying capacity, one can maintain the ‘good health’ of the park. At the situation of ‘bad health’ of the park, some efforts are needed to control the bad biomass. Hence the second model is again extended to control the growth of bad biomass and to maintain the good biomass and the bird populations at an appropriate level. In each case, numerical simulations are carried out to illustrate the analytical results. These models suggest to control the bad biomass in an efficient manner and to maintain the eco-system of the wetland park.

Characterization of cores and organic remains in Iron Age gold objects: The Recouso treasure

ABSTRACTThe study of the gold earrings from the Recouso Treasure (NW Iberia) led us to identify the use of non-metallic fills in the manufacturing process. This article offers an initial characterization of these core materials and discusses their possible purpose. Based on the identification of diatom skeletons in the fill of one earring and the Py-GC-MS analysis of a sample from another, we suggest that sediment from a stagnant open body of water was used as core material. This sediment was subjected to thermal modification. Although the use of non-metallic cores in goldworking processes has been documented in other areas of Atlantic Europe, such as the British Isles, studies of their nature and composition are few. The identification and radiocarbon dating of charcoal samples from an Ag–Au–Cu melting mass from the same hoard are also included in this article. The charcoal fragments were identified as oak (Quercus sp. deciduous) and dated to the second to first centuries BC.

The Daudkandi model of community floodplain aquaculture in Bangladesh: a case for Ostrom’s design principles

Floodplain water-bodies are major common-pool resources (CPRs) of Bangladesh and constitute more than fifty percent of inland open water bodies. Throughout the British colonial period, Pakistani rule and the first one and half decades of independent Bangladesh, a majority of inland water-bodies remained under direct government management, though the floodplains by getting heavily inundated during the monsoon turn into open access resource. In the mid-1980s co-management was introduced on a small scale with the help of NGOs as providers of management styles and credit to communities of fishers or villagers. NGOs also got involved in floodplain water-bodies and came up with different models of user-managed fishery bodies. This paper examines a specific management system of community-governed floodplain aquaculture (FPA) known as the Daudkandi model, developed by a local NGO in the Daudkandi sub-district of the Comilla district. Applying the design principles developed by Ostrom (1990) characterizing long surviving successful user-managed common-pool resource institutions, this paper explores the rules devised by partners in the management of a FPA under the Daudkandi model. Though the FPA management model is relatively new as it has been adopted in 1996, it has been found to follow the design principles in devising its management rules. However, because of its unique features in terms of seasonality, NGO-community partnership, exclusion of past users, and numerous replications, etc. the future of the model as a CPR governance system holds many challenges and deserves continuous research focus.

Rainfall induced groundwater mound in wedge-shaped promontories: The Strack–Chernyshov model revisited

An analytical solution to the Poisson equation governing Strack's discharge potential (squared thickness of a saturated zone in an unconfined aquifer) is obtained in a wedge-shaped domain with given head boundary conditions on the wedge sides (specified water level in an open water body around a porous promontory). The discharge vector components, maximum elevation of the water table in promontory vertical cross-sections, quantity of groundwater seeping through segments of the wedge sides, the volume of fresh groundwater in the mound are found. For acute angles, the solution to the problem is non-unique and specification of the behaviour at infinity is needed. A “basic” solution is distinguished, which minimizes the water table height above a horizontal bedrock. MODFLOW simulations are carried out in a finite triangular island and compare solutions with a constant-head, no-flow and “basic” boundary condition on one side of the triangle. Far from the tip of an infinite-size promontory one has to be cautious with truncation of the simulated flow domains and imposing corresponding boundary conditions. For a right and obtuse wedge angles, there are no positive solutions for the case of constant accretion on the water table. In a particular case of a confined rigid wedge-shaped aquifer and incompressible fluid, from an explicit solution to the Laplace equation for the hydraulic head with arbitrary time-space varying boundary conditions along the promontory rays, essentially 2-D transient Darcian flows within the wedge are computed. They illustrate that surface water waves on the promontory boundaries can generate strong Darcian waves inside the porous wedge. Evaporation from the water table and sea-water intruded interface (rather than a horizontal bed) are straightforward generalizations for the Poissonian Strack potential.

Urban Built-up Area Extraction and Change Detection of Adama Municipal Area using Time-Series Landsat Images

Urban built-up area information is required in various applications of land use planning and management. However, urban built-up area extraction from moderate spatial resolution Landsat time-series data is challenging because of significant intra-urban heterogeneity and spectral confusion between other landcover types. This paper proposes a technique to extract urban built-up area from time-series Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) imageries and determines urban area changes between 1984 to 2015 of Adama Municipal Area of Ethiopia. The study selected three indices, the Enhanced Built-Up and Bareness Index (EBBI), Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI) and Modified Normalized Difference Water Index (MNDWI), to represent three major urban land-use classes: built-up and barren/bare land, open waterbody, and vegetation, respectively. The built-up area was extracted by taking the difference between EBBI, SAVI and MNDWI to remove the vegetation and water noises, and the resulted index image was spectrally segmented to separate built-up area from the non-urban built-up lands. The derived index was used to map built-up area for 1984, 1995, 2005 and 2015 periods. The expansion of the built-up area has been revealed as a major change in the area when city area expanded substantially by 293% between 1984 to 2015 periods. The advantage of the method was to use almost the entire spectral range of Landsat imageries which cause less spectral confusion between land cover classes and hence resulted in higher accuracies compared to other indices. The method was effective and simple to implement, and can be used for built-up extraction in other areas.

Estimating the evaporation from irrigation reservoirs of greenhouses using satellite imagery

The agricultural system in south‐eastern Spain is based on intensive horticulture in greenhouses. Public and private organizations have spent substantial resources on optimizing irrigation, due to the scant annual precipitation (close to 250 mm). In order to preserve natural water resources, avoiding overexploitation and salinization aquifers, the water loss has to be minimized. Farmers save water in irrigation reservoirs, which are open to the atmosphere most of the time. In this work, the loss to evaporation from open water reservoirs was estimated in a typical agricultural greenhouse area in Almeria province, south‐eastern Spain. The data source was both a high‐resolution satellite image, and a set of climatic data from the Agro‐climatic Information Network of Andalusia (AINA) and from a Class‐A pan evaporimeter. The image was used for detecting and delineating open water bodies applying a supervised classification algorithm based on an artificial neural network. The climatic data were used to estimate the distribution of monthly evaporation. It was concluded that irrigation water reservoirs can evaporate 3.76% of the input water used for crops. If all of the water bodies were covered with shade materials and if the precipitation intercepted by the roofs of greenhouses were saved in the irrigation water reservoirs, 49.87% of water annually consumed by greenhouse crops could be saved. © 2016 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 35: 1750–1757, 2016

Diversity and status of carnivorous plants in Uganda: towards identification of sites most critical for their conservation

Available records show that carnivorous plants in Uganda have been collected since 1941. Places that harbor them are either damp or open water bodies. They are autotrophic plants that trap and ingest small animals, especially insects, as a means of supplementing their nutrient supply (Givnish in PNAS 112:10–11, 2015). This insect capture habit has been investigated in Uganda to assess their potential to control malaria by reducing mosquito populations. But this investigation requires good and current knowledge about the availability of the carnivorous plants, their status and distribution. In this study we assess the range of their geographical distribution and diversity and identify the most important areas for their occurrence in Uganda. A total of 23 species of carnivorous plants distributed in two families are known from Uganda. The Lake Nabugabo area and north western shores of Lake Victoria display the highest species richness in Uganda whilst Lake Nabugabo and Mabamba are the most diverse. Six of the species are ‘extremely rare’, occurring in only one ‘location’ (in the sense of International Union for Conservation of Nature—IUCN). ‘Reserve selection’ analysis clearly points out Lake Nabugabo area as the most important for carnivorous plants. This is only a Ramsar Site with no higher conservation status. Only two species occur in well protected areas, but these are widespread.

Urban Sprawl Monitoring using Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques of the City Jaipur, India

The rapid increase in population of India forced people to migrate from rural areas and small towns to metropolitan cities for better employment, education, and, good lifestyle. Major cities of India were industrialized and required more work force in metropolitan cities, leading to uncoordinated and unplanned growth, often termed as urban sprawl. Urban sprawl destroyed the natural resources such as open green space, agricultural land, open water bodies and ground water. In this paper, an attempt has been made to monitor urban sprawl using Shannon's Entropy model, Remote Sensing, and GIS for city Jaipur, India. The changed entropy value during the years 1972–2013 proves more dispersed growth in the city. The built-up area of Jaipur has increased from 40 km2 in 1972 to 400 km2 in 2013. Land use percentage of urban settlement is doubled as compared to the urban population of Jaipur during 1972–2013. This study shows remarkable urban sprawl in fringe areas of Jaipur city in the last 41 years.

Conservation of Underground Water with the Ecosystem Approach to the Development of the New Towns in Bogor, Tangerang, Bekasi (Botabek) Region

The limited supply of clean water led to some residents in the city, as well as business and trade areas using underground water. Optimization of land used in the development of new towns and expanded impervious land surface, thus reducing infiltration capacity, resulting in an increased volume of runoff. The use of underground water and the reduced infiltration of rainwater resulted in a decrease in the underground water table. To maintain the underground water table and preventing land subsidence resulted from the use of underground water as raw material for clean water. The effort required is how doing underground water conservation. This paper discusses the development of new towns to assess the natural landscape as underground water conservation efforts on the development of the new town. The research method uses a quantitative approach to calculate the potential runoff using a soil conservation service, while to analyze the trend of changes in land cover using temporal spatial analysis, using descriptive analysis. The data used satellite imagery. The study found open green spaces, water bodies, and infrastructure in the form of green corridors can reduce runoff and maintain the underground water table.

PROCUREMENT OF SANITARY AND EPIDEMIOLOGICAL WELFARE IN THE REGION OF CITY-RESORT SOCHI FOR DANGEROUS AND NATURAL-FOCI INFECTIOUS DISEASES IN 2015

Analysis ofresults of epidemiologic monitoring especially dangerous, natural-foci and other infectious diseases, asill as epizootologic activity of natural foci of infection on,the terri- tory, of city-resort Sochi. Laboratory studies of 820. samples by PCR; im- mune- and bacteriologic methods were carried out, among those 344 - clinical material, 12 - water from open bodies and 321 - field material. Molecular-genetic identification of-143 strains of Vibrio-cholerae, isolated from open water bodies of city-resort Sochi, was-carried out,. Circulation of causative agents of Q fever, tularemia and hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome of Dobrava-Adler genotypes was established, -as well as rickettsia of tick spotted fever group Predomination of rotaviruses (70.9%) was detected during study of samples of clinical material in etiologic structure of sporadically emerging acute intestine infections. Relatively high temperature values of river water during summer months (from 18, to 30 C), exit of sulfide mineral waters into the riverbed, that create-alkaline medium, seasonal reduction of river debit and speed of water current facilitated sustenance of contamination of water of Agura river by V.cholerae. Activity of natural foci of the infectious disease and contamination of Agura iver by V.cholerae Ο1, (atoxigenic) gives evidence on the necessity of constant control of epidemiologic situation by dangerous and natural-foci infectious diseases on the territory of city-resort Sochi, as well as study regional features, of their causative agents, including using genetic methods.

Detection of Inland Open Water Surfaces Using Dual Polarization L-Band Radar for the Soil Moisture Active Passive Mission

A dual-copolarization algorithm to classify inland open water bodies free of flooded vegetation using an L-band radar is presented and evaluated, with a view to applying the method to the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission for hydrological science and soil moisture retrieval applications. Past radar-based water body detection algorithms have applied a threshold to a single-polarization measurement, with water body detection declared if the observed cross section is less than the specified threshold. However, such methods are subject to ambiguities associated with scene variability and terrain slopes, making a universal threshold value difficult to derive and complicating the global application of such methods. Because SMAP will provide measurements in both HH and VV polarizations, the copolarization ratio is also available for water body detection. A threshold of −3 dB applied to the HH/VV polarization ratio is found effective in detecting water bodies at 40° incidence angle based on analysis of theoretical model predictions and measurements from airborne synthetic aperture radar and the spaceborne Aquarius scatterometer. When the water surface is calm and its radar response is very small (i.e., at the radar thermal noise level), the HH/VV ratio method fails. However, a combination of an HH/VV threshold (at −3 dB) and an HH threshold (at −25 dB) is shown to allow water body classification even in this situation. This proposed “combined” algorithm is assessed in four different geophysical scenarios. The resulting water body detection error is shown to be less than 10% for these cases, which satisfies SMAP requirements to allow accurate soil moisture retrieval, and the corresponding false alarm rate is smaller than 2%. The robustness of the proposed approach to subpixel heterogeneity has been also investigated. The performance of the algorithm remains sensitive to the noise level of the radar observations: for SMAP, a radar noise-equivalent sigma0 of −28.5 dB or less is required in order to facilitate acceptable performance.

Anopheles coluzzii larval habitat and insecticide resistance in the island area of Manoka, Cameroon.

BackgroundThe effectiveness of Long-Lasting Insecticidal Nets and Indoor Residual Spraying in malaria vector control is threatened by vector resistance to insecticides. Knowledge of mosquito habitats and patterns of insecticide resistance would facilitate the development of appropriate vector control strategies. Therefore, we investigated An. coluzzii larval habitats and resistance to insecticides in the Manoka rural island area compared with the Youpwe suburban inland area, in Douala VI and II districts respectively.MethodsAnopheline larvae and pupae were collected from open water bodies in December 2013 and April 2014 and reared until adult emergence. Two to four day old emerging females were morphologically identified as belonging to the An. gambiae complex and used for WHO susceptibility tests with 4 % DDT, 0.75 % permethrin, and 0.05 % deltamethrin, with or without piperonyl butoxide (PBO) synergist. Control and surviving specimens were identified down to the species using a PCR-RFLP method. Survivors were genotyped for kdr L1014 mutations using Hot Oligonucleotide Ligation Assay.ResultsIn both study sites, ponds, residual puddles, boats, and drains were identified as the major An. gambiae s.l. larval habitats. A total of 1397 females, including 784 specimens from Manoka and 613 from Youpwe, were used for resistance testing. The two mosquito populations displayed resistance to DDT, permethrin and deltamethrin, with variable mortality rates from 1 % to 90 %. The knock-down times were also significantly increased (at least 2.8 fold). Pre-exposure of mosquitoes to PBO did not impact on their mortality to DDT, conversely the mortality rates to permethrin and deltamethrin were significantly increased (7.56 ≤ X2 ≤ 48.63, df = 1, p < 0.01), suggesting involvement of P450 oxidases in pyrethroid resistance. A subsample of 400 An. gambiae s.l. specimens including 280 control and 120 survivors from bioassays were all found to be An. coluzzii species. Only the kdr 1014 F mutation was found in survivors, with 88.5 % (N = 76) and 75 % (N = 44) frequencies in Youpwe and Manoka respectively.ConclusionThis is the first report of An. coluzzii resistance to insecticides in an insular area in Cameroon. Since permanent larval habitats have been identified, larval source management strategies may be trialed in this area as complementary vector control interventions.

Evaporation mitigation by floating modular devices

Prolonged periods of drought and consequent evaporation from open water bodies in arid parts of Australia continue to be a threat to water availability for agricultural production. Over many parts of Australia, the annual average evaporation exceeds the annual precipitation by more than 5 times. Given its significance, it is surprising that no evaporation mitigation technique has gained widespread adoption to date. High capital and maintenance costs of manufactured products are a significant barrier to implementation. The use of directly recycled clean plastic containers as floating modular devices to mitigate evaporation has been investigated for the first time. A six-month trial at an arid zone site in Australia of this potential cost effective solution has been undertaken. The experiment was performed using clean conventional drinking water bottles as floating modules on the open water surface of 240-L tanks with three varying degrees of covering (nil, 34% and 68%). A systematic reduction in evaporation is demonstrated during the whole study period that is approximately linearly proportional to the covered surface. These results provide a potential foundation for robust evaporation mitigation with the prospect of implementing a cost-optimal design.

Assessing methods of identifying open water bodies using Landsat 8 OLI imagery

Remote sensing is an effective technology for monitoring water resources. However, many methods in remote sensing imagery used to identify open bodies of water have often been shown to produce varying water body classification results for the same bodies of water. Therefore, it is necessary to have measures to assess these methods. In this study, we used datasets collected in the field to assess methods for identifying open water bodies using images from the Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager. From this, we clarified the difference in the performance between the use of spectral reflectance images and that of digital number (DN) value images for the classification of water bodies. The results showed that the normalized difference water index (NDWI), calculated using green and near-infrared bands (NDWIGreen/NIR) with reflectance, captured correct control points with an accuracy of greater than 95 % and was therefore the superior method. The result of a comparison in performance in terms of the NDWI between reflectance images and DN value images was consistent with their initial definitions. The NDWI indices calculated by the initial definitions yielded more reasonable results in the classification of water bodies. The optimized threshold, calibrated and validated by 737 field control points, generated water classification results with a higher confidence in this study. We think that it might be better to set the optimized threshold of NDWIGreen/NIR to −0.05 instead of the value of zero used in many studies. However, more optimized thresholds for other regions need to be calibrated and confirmed if data are available. Our results indicated that NDWI methods are more suitable for water body classification than single-band methods when the frequency histogram method is used.

Water Bodies’ Mapping from Sentinel-2 Imagery with Modified Normalized Difference Water Index at 10-m Spatial Resolution Produced by Sharpening the SWIR Band

Monitoring open water bodies accurately is an important and basic application in remote sensing. Various water body mapping approaches have been developed to extract water bodies from multispectral images. The method based on the spectral water index, especially the Modified Normalized Difference Water Index (MDNWI) calculated from the green and Shortwave-Infrared (SWIR) bands, is one of the most popular methods. The recently launched Sentinel-2 satellite can provide fine spatial resolution multispectral images. This new dataset is potentially of important significance for regional water bodies’ mapping, due to its free access and frequent revisit capabilities. It is noted that the green and SWIR bands of Sentinel-2 have different spatial resolutions of 10 m and 20 m, respectively. Straightforwardly, MNDWI can be produced from Sentinel-2 at the spatial resolution of 20 m, by upscaling the 10-m green band to 20 m correspondingly. This scheme, however, wastes the detailed information available at the 10-m resolution. In this paper, to take full advantage of the 10-m information provided by Sentinel-2 images, a novel 10-m spatial resolution MNDWI is produced from Sentinel-2 images by downscaling the 20-m resolution SWIR band to 10 m based on pan-sharpening. Four popular pan-sharpening algorithms, including Principle Component Analysis (PCA), Intensity Hue Saturation (IHS), High Pass Filter (HPF) and À Trous Wavelet Transform (ATWT), were applied in this study. The performance of the proposed method was assessed experimentally using a Sentinel-2 image located at the Venice coastland. In the experiment, six water indexes, including 10-m NDWI, 20-m MNDWI and 10-m MNDWI, produced by four pan-sharpening algorithms, were compared. Three levels of results, including the sharpened images, the produced MNDWI images and the finally mapped water bodies, were analysed quantitatively. The results showed that MNDWI can enhance water bodies and suppressbuilt-up features more efficiently than NDWI. Moreover, 10-m MNDWIs produced by all four pan-sharpening algorithms can represent more detailed spatial information of water bodies than 20-m MNDWI produced by the original image. Thus, MNDWIs at the 10-m resolution can extract more accurate water body maps than 10-m NDWI and 20-m MNDWI. In addition, although HPF can produce more accurate sharpened images and MNDWI images than the other three benchmark pan-sharpening algorithms, the ATWT algorithm leads to the best 10-m water bodies mapping results. This is no necessary positive connection between the accuracy of the sharpened MNDWI image and the map-level accuracy of the resultant water body maps.

Quantifying Iron Concentration in Local and Synthetic Acid Mine Drainage: A New Technique Using Handheld Field Spectrometers

Pit lakes present a concern for public safety and environmental quality. With continuing advancement of imaging satellites, remote sensing spectroscopy may provide a useful tool for monitoring pit water quality across vast mining districts. Visible to shortwave infrared remote sensing has been widely used to monitor acid mine drainage (AMD) mineralogy at mine sites. However, few studies have examined the spectral signatures of mine-affected waters and open pit water bodies from a remote platform. The motivation for this study was to identify the spectral characteristics of AMD in a controlled laboratory setting in order to better interpret mine water bodies in remote sensing imagery. The spectral response of synthetic and local AMD were measured using a field spectrometer. Solutions with increasing Fe3+ and Fe2+ concentrations were mixed to mimic the chemical properties of local AMD. Synthetic solutions with known Fe concentrations were compared with local AMD for quantitative assessment. The spectral signatures of Fe3+ dominated waters possessed distinct characteristics that may be used for diagnostic identification. Specifically, the region between 0.35 and 0.625 µm was used to approximately quantify Fe3+ concentrations. Subtle changes in Fe concentrations in local AMD were identified using a field spectrometer alone. These findings suggest that subtle changes in open pit water quality may also be qualitatively and quantitatively measured by remote sensing spectroscopy.

Effects of &lt;i&gt;Balanites aegyptiaca&lt;/i&gt; on tadpoles and &lt;i&gt;Oreochromis niloticus&lt;/i&gt;

Objective: Fingerlings of Oreochromis niloticus and tadpoles were exposed to the acute concentrations of aqueous extract of the bark of Balanites aegyptiaca (date palm desert) to determine the 96h-LC50 (lethal concentration 50, concentration that will kill half of the test animals exposed).Methodology and results: The O. niloticus (Nile tilapia) was further subjected to sub-lethal concentrations of the plant extract to determine the effect on growth and haematological indices. The time for toxicity disappearance (TTD) was also estimated. The experiments were conducted using the static renewal bioassay technique at UNAAB Fish Laboratory. The 96h-LC50 for O. niloticus was estimated to be 26.22 mg l-1 while that of Tadpole (Rana species) was13.77 mg l-1. The TTD of B. aegyptiaca was estimated to be 48 hours. During sub-lethal exposure, there was a slight decrease in the mean body weight and all the haematological parameters as the concentration of the toxicant increased except MCV, MCH, MHC that were more or less equal. However, statistical analysis on these values of haematological indices did not show any significant difference at 5%. The use of Balanites aegyptiaca is recommended in control of predators e.g. tadpoles in pond fish culture system because the product is non-toxic to fish at lower concentration, biodegradable and very cheap. The uncontrolled use in open water body for fishing should be prohibited, as the resultant deleterious effects will subsequently lead to death of not only target fish but also other aquatic organism. Hence, contribute to reduction in the biodiversity.Conclusion and application of results: The results of this study show the toxic effect of B. aegyptiaca on O. niloticus and Tadpoles. The lethal doses (96h-LC50) obtained are 26.22 mg l -1 and 13.80 mg l-1 respectively. Therefore, B. aegyptiaca powder can be use in selective eradication of aquatic organism to control unwanted predatory species i.e. tadpoles. B. aegyptiaca bark powder can be recommended because it is biodegradable and leave no adverse effect on environment.Keys words: Balanites aegyptiaca, Oreochromis niloticus, Tadpoles, haematological parameters

Climate adaptation and urban planning for heat islands: a case study of the Australian Capital Territory

ABSTRACTUrban heat island (UHI) describes the higher temperature that occurs in built-up areas compared to surrounding natural landscapes. The article identifies the evidence of UHI in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and the extent to which the Territory is addressing this through urban planning and climate adaptation regimes. Remotely sensed data were used to retrieve land surface temperature to outline the spatial form of surface heat hotspots. It was found that established town centres in the Territory have hotspots. Hotspots were also found in grasslands, bare ground and dry forests. Research from other jurisdictions provides insights on potential UHI responses at city, neighbourhood and building scales. Whilst current ACT Government planning and adaptation regimes do not address UHI explicitly, they do promote urban forests, integrated open space and urban water bodies which, along with various building standards and guides, can help ameliorate UHI. The ACT has adopted the ‘compact city’ as a future development strategy. Urban intensification will occur in areas that are already identified as hotspots. This, along with the potential impacts of climate change, will require more explicit and increased focus on UHI in the future.

Land Treatment as Viable Solution for Waste Water Treatment and Disposal in India

The enormous increase in the generation of waste water on account of rapid growth of industrialization and urbanization has posed serious threat on human and natural resources. Wastewater has become a significant issue in urban areas especially in developing countries. Developed countries have the capacity to bear the water purification cost but developing countries don’t have that capacity in as much as that they dispose untreated wastewater in to the open source water bodies. The authors of the present paper thus focus on land treatment of wastewater which is economical among other conventional methods which is viable solution for the treatment and disposal of water particularly for the developing countries including India.

Use of High Resolution Google Earth Satellite Imagery in Landuse Map Preparation for Urban Related Applications

The fundamental data required by urban planners and policy makers is accurate information on current landuse practices in a city or town and how it changes over the past for carrying out various urban planning and management activities. The free satellite imagery provided in global landcover facility (GLCF) which can be used to prepare the landuse maps as attempted in many studies has certain limitations. The images are of lower or medium resolution type and in many cases it may not be possible to obtain the latest image. To overcome this, one has to buy latest high resolution satellite image which is more expensive to purchase and sometimes it may not be possible to get the data due to security reasons. An alternative solution is to utilize Google earth imagery which is open source and provides clear view of buildings, roads, etc. and hence can be best utilized for urban related applications. The present study is an attempt in this direction, in which 340 individual tiles of Google earth images covering Vellore in Tamilnadu were extracted using Elshayal Smart open source software. They were then mosaicked and clipped to facilitate onscreen digitizing using GIS software. The area of various landuse classes was found using the prepared landuse map and zone-wise/ward-wise analysis was also performed. It was found that the area occupied by open land is 56.07 sq.km, which is the highest when compared to other landuse classes. Next to open land, built-up area occupies an area of 28.83 sq.km. The percentage split of all the four landuse classes were 60.69, 31.21, 7.83 and 0.26 for open land, built-up, agricultural and water bodies respectively. Use of Google earth imagery in urban change detection analysis was also explored by utilizing the images of 2007 and 2014. If budget is a constraint in purchasing high resolution satellite imagery, then one could consider utilizing free Google earth images as proposed in the present study for urban related applications.