Climate Change and Biodiversity

The paper deals with relationship between climate change and glacial lake outburst in Himachal Himalaya, India. To qualify this objective primarily temperature and rainfall data of Bhuntar, Manali, Dharamsala and Mandi for a period of 30 years (1977–2007) has been obtained. A land surface temperature map has been derived using Landsat TM thermal band-6 to show changes in surface temperature between year 1989 and year 2011. Mean minimum temperatures of all stations show increasing trend with varying degrees ranging from 0.1 °C at Dharamsala to 2 °C at Mandi. In the Spiti valley, maximum surface temperature increase has been noticed between the heights of 4,000–5,000 m. The total annual rainfall for the state is 149 cm and the total annual number of rainy days is 65. Glacial lakes are a common feature at altitudes of 4,500–5,500 m in many river basins of the Himalaya. In order to identify potential Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs), the present paper uses a technique adopted by Clague and Mathews (1973) for estimating maximum instantaneous discharge from a lake at the time of outburst. A total of 65 glacial lakes have been mapped in Chamba, Lahaul & Spiti and Kinnaur district, of which 23 have been identified as potential GLOFs.

Climate change is one of the biggest environmental threats to food production, water availability, forest biodiversity and livelihoods. It is widely believed that developing countries such as India will be impacted more severely than developed countries. Global warming and Climate Change is projected to increase the number of extreme temperature and rainfall events, and hence climate variability is expected to show an upward trend. It is very important to understand the past trends and variability in rainfall, minimum and maximum temperature in Karnataka since the knowledge on the past could provide guidance for the future. The Arabian Sea and the North Kanara coast belong to the “Indo-Australian Marine Bio-geographic Region” considered to be the richest in the world for biodiversity. The coastal backwaters, estuaries, river-mouths are well known for their productivity. Some of them like the Aghanashini, Kali and Sharavati river backwaters, are even today so. The rivers from the Western Ghats carry great quantity of forest organic matter and deposit the same in the coastal waters including the sea. The current climate variability in Karnataka has been analyzed using the IMD daily rainfall data for the period of 1971–2005 and CRU data for the temperature for the period 1901–2002. The Costal Karnataka districts have an average rainfall of >25 mm/day. Decrease in precipitation trend has been observed in Coastal Karnataka. Rainfall has decreased by 17.69, 1.87 and 22.38 mm/day/100 year in Mangalore, North Kanara and Udupi respectively. The Increase in minimum temperature is 0.141, 0.146 and 0.111°C/100 year, whereas increase in maximum temperature is observed as 0.148, 0.146 and 0.113°C/100 year in districts of Mangalore, North Kanara and Udupi respectively.

Climatic variability and occurrence of extreme climatic events are a major concern of the Indian Sundarbans. The impact of climate change could hinder development and delay the processes in eradicating poverty, hence potentially aggravating the social and environmental conditions in these areas. Crop productivity has either become static or shown a decline in some locations. Ecological degradation due to salinization has also affected the types and productivity of the crops and freshwater fishes. It is understood from the tonal variation in multi-dated satellite images of the area affected by Aila, a severe cyclonic storm that occurred on 25th May, 2009, that the ingress of saline water on agricultural land and subsequent infiltration and evaporation of water has left large areas fallow. Food crops have to be produced on the shrinking land resources as few suitable lands are available for cultivation. The perceived rising temperatures and uncertainties in rainfall may have serious direct and indirect consequences on crop production and hence food security of this region. At this point, innovations in the type of crops and process of cropping are of utmost necessity. This paper highlights the geographical impacts of Aila on the agriculture, occupation and life of the people in Gosaba Block in the Indian Sundarbans.

Climate change has aroused serious consciousness among human beings as it has a strong impact on different parameters like rainfall, temperature, evapotranspiration etc. Change in climatic parameters also affects the agriculture and water demand of an area. The changed pattern of rainfall leads to extreme conditions like flood, drought and cyclones which have increased in frequency in the last few decades making the rainfall trend analysis extremely important for India where a large part of the economy depends upon rain-fed agriculture. The trend of rainfall for 141 years of India was analyzed in the present study from 1871 to 2011. Detection of trend was done by analyzing 306 stations of India divided into seven regions of Homogeneous Indian Monsoon, Core-Monsoon India, North West India, West Central India, Central Northeast India, North East India and Peninsular India. Temporal as well as spatial rainfall variability was shown on monthly, seasonal and annual basis. The Mann–Kendall (MK) Test and Sen’s slope was applied in the study. Mann–Whitney–Pettitt (MWP) test was used to give the break point in the series. Annually, 5 regions have decreasing trend except for core-monsoon and north-east India. Monsoon season depicted decrease in the rainfall magnitude in most of the regions. This result is extremely significant as monsoon rainfall serves the major water demand for agriculture. Change Percentage for 141 years had shown rainfall variability throughout India with the highest increase in North-West India (5.14 %) and decrease in Core-monsoon India (−4.45 %) annually.

The impact of drought on vegetation can have significant consequences on livelihood and socio-economic development. Delay in monsoon, high temperature and lack of water resources lead to recurrent droughts in Gujarat. The present work attempts to study the spatio-temporal coverage of drought and its characteristics. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) Anomaly and Rainfall Anomaly Index (RAI) derived through CRU Global Climate dataset and NOAA-AVHRR data respectively for the period 1982–2001 were used for monitoring and comparison of meteorological and vegetative drought situations. Drought patterns, thus delineated, were found to have very good correlation with rainfall. It was observed that both Rainfall Anomaly Index and NDVI Anomaly Index can be used as an indicator for assessment of area affected by meteorological and vegetative drought. The latter showed a high correlation with Rainfall Anomaly Index. The impact of rainfall on vegetation health is, thus, clearly visible. The study was able to delineate the zones more prone to drought with the help of these two indices. This technique proved useful for analysing the spatial and temporal trend of drought, its prevalence, severity level and persistence with the help of freely available meteorological and satellite data. The findings will be of great value for planners and resource managers in quick decision making and forecasting.

The climate impact studies, particularly in hydrology, often require climate information at fine scale for present as well as future scenario. Global Climate Model (GCM) estimates climate change scenarios on coarse spatial resolution. Therefore, different techniques have been evolved to downscale the coarse-grid scale GCM data to finer scale surface variables of interest. In the present study, the Statistical Downscaling Model (SDSM) has been applied to downscale daily precipitation from simulated GCM data. SDSM utilizes Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) technique. The daily precipitation data (1961–2001) representing Tawa region has been considered as input (predictand) to the model. The model has been calibrated (1961–1991) and validated (1992–2001) with screened large-scale predictors of (National Centre for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) reanalysis data. The prediction of future daily rainfall for the study area has been carried out for the period 2020s, 2050s and 2080s corresponding to HadCM3 A2 variables. The calibration and validation results confirm the SDSM model acceptability slightly at a lower degree. The results of the downscaled daily precipitation for the future period indicate an increasing trend in the mean daily precipitation.

The mid-latitude and new born state Chhattisgarh faces drought due to poor and delayed monsoon, very high summer temperature and in sufficient water resources. In the present study detailed analysis of vegetative and meteorological drought indicative indices of the study area, has been carried out for the years 2009–2012. Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) has been used to quantify the precipitation deficit. It is calculated using TRMM Monthly gridded rainfall data. Vegetative drought indices like Vegetation Health Index (VHI) obtained from Global Vegetation Index (GVI) of NOAA AVHRR satellite. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) obtained from MODIS. Detailed analyses of spatial and temporal drought Indices during monsoon and non-monsoon seasons have been carried out through. Drought Index Maps generated in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) environment. Analysis and interpretation of these maps reveal that there is severe drought condition in Chhattisgarh on 2009, 2011 and 2012. Mainly pre-monsoon condition have faced drought due to lack of rainfall. So, Drought and precipitation are interdependent. There is good correlation between SPI and VHI, and Poor correlation between SPI and NDVI. Also there is some correlation between VHI and NDVI. These indices are also inter-dependent, interrelated and good indicator of drought.

The study was conducted in Sirsi taluka (14°28′0″ N to 14°51′30″ N Latitude and 74°34′0″ E to 75°03′30″ E Longitude) of Uttar Kannada district of Karnataka in India to assess the influence of forests on soil organic carbon. IRS P6 LISS-III imageries for the study area was procured from NRSC, Hyderabad and different land use systems in Sirsi taluka were identified with the ground truth data processed in ERDAS software. The land use classes viz., dense forest, sparse forest, plantation, Agriculture and open land were identified. The total area in each class was assessed through supervise classification. The soil samples at one meter depth were drawn at grid point in flat land and along the profile in sloppy land in different land use system. The SOC was estimated using Walkley and Black rapid titration method. The pattern of Organic carbon distribution in Sirsi taluka is determined using Inverse Distance Weight (IDW) technique in Arc GIS software. The total area in five land use classes is 1,29,964 ha with SOC of 32.38 million tonnes. Among different classes dense forest covers highest area (63,763 ha) and highest SOC pool (21.38 million tonnes). Among the different land use classes, higher SOC was sequestered in horticulture plantations (361.05 t/ha) followed by Dense forest (335.25 t/ha). The SOC in sparse forest and barren land is 239.39 t/ha and 168.74 t/ha respectively. The lowest SOC was recorded in Agriculture land (76.50 t/ha). The CO₂ mitigation potential of horticulture plantation is 4.72 times higher followed by dense forest (4.38 times), sparse forest (3.13 times) and open land (2.21 times) as compared to agriculture land. The study indicated that horticulture plantation and dense forest are the sinks of carbon.

Kaziranga National Park in Assam is a habitat for the highest population of one-horned rhino in the world. Conservation management of the park has become a serious concern to maintain the wildlife in the park. The present study investigates land cover change within Kaziranga National Park during the last two decades (1990–2009) using remote sensing-GIS techniques and analyses habitat suitability for rhino to understand possible effect of land cover change on the rhino habitat. The change detection analysis has shown considerable reduction of grasslands areas and small water bodies. Furthermore, Habitat Suitability Model for rhino has been developed based on semi-quantitative Analytical Hierarchy Process. The result shows decline in the suitable habitats for rhino during this period. Assessment of rhino habitat change indicates that any change in the land cover trigger substantial change in the suitable habitats for rhino. Moreover, increase in rhino population as reported by census and reducing suitable habitat further limit the carrying capacity of the national park. The results from the present study may be used as baseline for future rhino habitat monitoring.

In the past two centuries the impact of human activities on the land has grown enormously, altering almost entire landscapes, and ultimately impacting the earth’s nutrient and hydrological cycles as well as climate. Humans have been altering land cover since pre-history, through the use of fire to flush out game and, since the advent of plant and animal domestication, through the clearance of patches of land for agriculture and livestock. Land-use and land-cover changes are local and place specific, occurring incrementally in ways that often escape our attention. Yet, collectively, they add up to one of the most important facets of global environmental change. The present study is intended to study the area along the Shivaliks hills, between river Ghagghar and Yamuna. The developmental blocks of the foothill zone of Shivaliks bordering Haryana have been taken for the study. The objective of the study is to study the patterns of land use and land cover in the area during year 1990, 2000 and 2010 detect the changes in the land use and land cover pattern during this period and to identify and investigate the factors responsible for the change. The satellite based remotely sensed data is used to collect the land use and land cover pattern and the analysis of the data in done in GIS software. The results portraits that there remain only few landscapes in the study area those are still in their natural state. Due to anthropogenic activities, the study region is being significantly altered in some manner and man’s presence on the area, his use of land has had a profound effect upon the natural environment thus resulting into an observable pattern in the land use/land cover over time. The land use/land cover pattern of a region is an outcome of natural and socio–economic factors and their utilization by man in time and space. The main objective of the study was to test the remote sensing and GIS for the purpose of detection of change in land use and land cover. When the results from remote sensing and GIS were compared with the ground reality they are found quite reliable. The results are found near to the reality. Different time period satellite imageries are very useful for the detection of changes. This method saves efforts and time of the researcher who wants to investigate the changes taking place over an area.

The results of land use/cover and biodiversity change and people well-being study in Russia are presented. Agriculture is one of the major driver of land cover and biodiversity change. The main agricultural territory belongs to the steppe zone, where more than 40 % of agricultural production is produced on fertile soils and the major part of the rural population is concentrated. Agriculture restructuring started in country from 1991–1993 have put severe strains on the agricultural production and creates dramatic threats to biodiversity because of plowing mostly of all tillable lands, abandonment or transformation part of them to grazing lands, accelerating of soil erosion, overgrazing and pasture degradation, landscape fragmentation by the fields and infrastructure. Between the global factors that shape the land cover and biodiversity in Russia, climate is the most important one. Climate change scenarios on the base show significant increase of temperature and moderate increase of moistening, that will influence the agriculture production. A complex present-day landscape methodology is used to study land cover and biodiversity changes under agricultural impact in Russia. Due to the ongoing agriculture restructuring reforms in Russia local communities have to manage an outdated and inefficient economic and social infrastructure that previously was maintained by federal budget money and the living standards of people are still lower than in the most developed countries. The ecologically sound land use practice and biodiversity conservation should help to reconcile social needs with the requirements of the environment and to avoid the unfavorable consequences of land degradation.

The present paper makes an attempt to give an overview of various species of hornbills being found and its distribution across the Arunachal Pradesh. Further, it makes detail discussion on public’s perceptions of Upper Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh on endangerment of hornbills.

The generation of waste materials is increasing proportionately with the growth of human population and increasing pace of industrialisation. Millions of tonne of solid waste generated from the modern society are ending up in the landfills every day, creating extraordinary economic and environmental problems for the local government to manage and monitor them for environmental safety. The methodology of solid waste management has shifted from conventional disposal strategies such as incineration, landfill etc. to conversion of waste into value added products during recent years. The usage of solid waste by recycling can supply nutrients to vegetative plants and also improve soil physical conditions and its fertility. Earthworm with their marvellous capability of ingestion, digestion and excretion are nature’s most useful converters of wastes. Earthworm participation enhances natural biodegradation and decomposition of solid waste from 60 to 80 % thus significantly reducing the composting time by several weeks. To reduce the cost of disposal of solid waste and best utilization, it was planned to convert the solid waste into a valuable vermicompost. Consumption of organic waste earthworm culture is an ecologically safe and economically viable process to get beneficial products. While they devour our organic waste, thus decreasing our disposal problems, they are also and concurrently manufacturing two new products- earthworm biomass and vermicompost.

One of the important indicators of soil quality is the soil organic matter which influences the soil microbial population dynamics and enzyme activities, which in turn affect the soil fertility. Present study was conducted in the soil microbiological section, Department of Soil Science, CSKHPKV, Palampur in rice-lentil cropping sequence with organic, integrated and inorganic nutrient management. There were eight treatments with three replications and randomized block design. The surface and subsurface soil samples were collected before sowing and after harvesting from each treatment (0–15 and 15–30 cm) deep samples. The soil samples were analyzed to study how the microbial properties changed with changing the inputs in soil. An addition of organics along with in-organics improved urease and phosphatase activity in the soil. Whereas the application of only organic inputs was found to improve the soil biological properties such as microbial population, biomass carbon, microbial respiration and dehydrogenase activity. These microbial properties play a significant role in nutrient cycling, improvement of soil structure and many other functions, which directly and indirectly improve the soil health.

The North-Eastern part of India has been one of the richest regions of the world in respect of bio-diversity. The geographical location, physiographic and climatic characteristics of this region have together favoured the existence of rich, large and resourceful diversity of flora and fauna. The recent trend of human encroachments, followed by degradation through natural calamities of flood, soil erosion, etc. have been creating the risks of existence of environment and the species as well in the region. In the world map, this part of India’s north-east covers only 0.05 % (equivalent to 255,036 km²) of geographical area between 20°N and 29°30′N parallels and 89°46′E and 97°30′E meridians.

The integrated tools of Geoinformatics provided facilities for accurate mapping, management of large volume of data, capabilities of complex geo-spatial problems analysis, etc.

Assam is one of the states in North East India consisting naturally of micro variations in topography, climate, soil, flora and fauna, etc. Here, exist famous national parks, viz. Kaziranga, Manas, Nameri, Dibru-Saikhowa, and Orang. In addition to that the state has a large number of wildlife sanctuaries and along with some wildlife protected areas. These parks, sanctuaries and protected areas in the state have been confronting threats because of rapid population growth, encroachment and unplanned space management.

In this paper an attempt has been made to highlight the current scenario of the degradation of Biodiversity in North-East India and application of Geoinformatics for problem solving in the case study area of Assam.

Animal migration involves two aspects- the behavioural characteristics of the animal species and the ecological carrying capacity where it colonizes. Anthropogenic perturbations in the form of agriculture and settlement expansion result in depletion or loss of natural habitat, forest corridors and biodiversity. Disproportionate sharing of forest resources between man and animal causes shrinkage of the sojourn ground and generates food scarcity for wild animal which ultimately forces animals to be evicted from their home habitat and migrate to a new habitat. In course of this migration man-animal conflict becomes inevitable in the forest corridors and edges. Such a typical situation of migration event and man-elephant conflict has arisen in the Panchet Forest Division of Bankura District, West Bengal since 1980s. This paper aims to assess the ecological characteristics of both the source region (Dalma Wildlife Sanctuary, Jharkhand) from where the elephants are forced to migrate and the destination region (Panchet Forest Division, West Bengal) which attracts the elephants to invade. Multi-date satellite images have been analyzed and ecological surveys at selected sites have been carried out to trace changes in ecological characteristics of both Panchet and Dalma areas. Secondary data on damages due to elephant invasion and number of elephants in a herd have been collected from respective Government departments. Field survey has been conducted to understand nature and pattern of elephant migration and its changes over the years. The study reveals that number of migrating as well as residential elephants have significantly increased and so is the trend of damage volume. Change of landuse along forest margin tracts has been instrumental in migration-route shifting. Outcomes of this study may help to identify the causes behind elephant migration and formulate management strategies by judging feasibility of management alternatives.

The discipline of Geography may be one of the most prominent and oldest disciplines in the conceptualization of human–environment interactions that integrates elements from both natural and social sciences. Yet, much research on society–environment interactions on climate change reduces human behaviour to economic rationality when construed in sophisticated climate models and sometimes in non-geographical representations. The need to comprehensively take into consideration methodological approaches concerning the interface of society-environment interactions seems highly relevant to contemporary conceptual modelling of climate change adaption and mitigation. In other words, geographical representations do matter. In the following we will first reflect upon what I shall call spatio-temporal tides and waves of the human environment theme to examine the methodological grounds on which climate change models is based. From a history-geographical perspective the article shows that notions of objective models are increasingly challenged in an era of the anthropocene. It points toward a discussion of interdisciplinary challenges and the ways in which different traditions interpret and explain regularities, rationalities, and pre-analytic assumptions. Lastly we discuss challenges of constructing nature(s) and how we better understand the (geo) politics of climate change modeling.

Kolasib district is located in the northern most part of the state of Mizoram. The state of Mizoram is lying in the far north east corner of India. In order to analyze the dynamic relationship between socio-economic changes and deforestation in Kolasib district of Mizoram, regression model has been adopted. The main purpose of applying regression model is to establish a functional relationship between the two variables (socio-economic and forest and non forest land use), which will enables us to determine the magnitude of one variable as determined by the others. The estimation is made on the basis of the cross sectional data. An attempt is made to estimate the log-linear regression change model; it is observed that the estimated coefficient is significantly negative indicating that change in the socio-economic is negatively responded to by forest cover. So, it may be concluded that the Logarithmic Model being proposed here to fit the forest land use change is significantly valid in case of time series as well as cross section data; and hence it may be considered as appropriate model to fit the observed forest land use change.

One of the relevancies of the Northeast India for scientific investigations has been its richness in biodiversity but the foremost important germane arises from degradation of the same, especially soil resources, due to the existence of fragile ecosystems which include combinations of hostile physical and cultural environments within the hilly forested milieu of the tribal people. Great efforts have been made by agencies for implementation of alternative farming systems to do away with the traditional shifting cultivation to menace rapid rate of degradation to resources, but have failed. An attempt has been made to quantify soil loss from the hilly regions using a mathematical model and efforts have been rendered to measure the spatial extent under degradation of resources and different land use systems with the applications of advanced techniques. Special attention has been given to shifting cultivation and measures to control soil erosion have been suggested which could be socially acceptable and economically affordable by the poor tribal farmers in hilly forested terrain.