Olive Landscape Affects Bactrocera oleae Abundance, Movement and Infestation

The economic importance of Bactrocera oleae (Rossi) and the problems associated with insecticides make necessary new management approaches, including deeper biological knowledge and its relationship with landscape structure. Landscape complexity reduces B. oleae abundance in late summer–autumn in areas of high dominance of olive groves, but the effect of landscape structure in spring and in areas less dominated by olive groves has not been studied. It is also unknown whether the insect disperses from olive groves, using other land uses as a refugee in summer. This work evaluates the effect of landscape structure on olive fruit fly abundance and movement in spring and autumn, and infestation in autumn, in central Spain, an area where the olive crop does not dominate the landscape. A cost–distance analysis is used to evaluate the movement of the fly, especially trying to know whether the insects move away from olive groves in summer. The results indicate that B. oleae abundance is consistently lower in complex landscapes with high scrubland area (CAS), patch richness (PR) and Simpson landscape diversity index (SIEI), and low olive grove area (CAO). The cost–distance analysis shows that the fly moves mainly in spring, and amongst olive groves, but there is no evidence that land uses other than olive groves serve as a summer refuge. Olive fly infestation decreased with decreasing CAO and increasing CAS and SIEI, accordingly with the effect of landscape on abundance. Thus, mixing olive groves with other land uses, which are not a source of flies, can help improve control of this important pest.

Does the accessibility of a farmer predict the delivery of extension services? Evidence from Rwanda

To determine whether a farmer’s accessibility predicts the delivery of extension services, this study used banana Xanthomonas wilt (BXW) disease-management advisory as a typical case with which to collect extension-delivery information from 690 farmers, distinguished by their respective accessibility. Cost–distance analysis was applied to define each farmer’s accessibility. The results revealed that a farmer’s accessibility does not predict extension delivery to that farmer in all forms of the examined extension parameters. Significant factors contributing to the delivery of extension services included BXW incidence and membership in Twigire Muhinzi groups. Given the results of this paper, I argue that the nature of the advisory and the type of farmers’ networks are more predictive factors than physical proximity. The findings of this study support the argument that the group-based extension approach is more effective; therefore, the Twigire Muhinzi initiative is recommended as a suitable model for delivering agricultural advisory services. The absence of a significant association between extension delivery and distance (accessibility) suggests that extension agents do not follow the first-reached, first-served rule but instead follow the problem-solving-based approach.

A Brief Survey on Important Interconnection Standards for Photovoltaic Systems and Electric Vehicles

The consumer adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) has become most popular. Numerous studies are being carried out on the usage of EVs, the challenges of EVs, and their benefits. Based on these studies, factors such as battery charging time, charging infrastructure, battery cost, distance per charge, and the capital cost are considered factors in the adoption of electric vehicles and their interconnection with the grid. The large-scale development of electric vehicles has laid the path to Photovoltaic (PV) power for charging and grid support, as the PV panels can be placed at the top of the smart charging stations connected to a grid. By proper scheduling of PV and grid systems, the V2G connections can be made simple. For reliable operation of the grid, the ramifications associated with the PV interconnection must be properly addressed without any violations. To overcome the above issues, certain standards can be imposed on these systems. This paper mainly focuses on the various standards for EV, PV systems and their interconnection with grid-connected systems.

Pedestrian Evacuation Time Calculation against Tsunami Hazard for Southern Coasts of Bodrum Peninsula

Historical records with recent events reveal that tsunamis are threatening the western coast of Turkey due to intensely active seismicity of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. The most recent tsunami events in the region (30 October 2020 Izmir-Samos and 20 July 2017 Bodrum-Kos) restated that the cities located near the Eastern Mediterranean and connected seas should consider tsunami events in their disaster mitigation plans. Bodrum is one of the most critical coastal districts, vulnerable to marine hazards with popular hotels, numerous coastal facilities, long and famous beaches, cultural, historical and touristic places. Tsunami evacuation planning is required for Bodrum district to mitigate the damage caused by destructive tsunami waves inundating on land. In this study, the geospatial distribution of pedestrian evacuation time is calculated based on selected credible worst-case scenarios. A widely used anisotropic least-cost-distance (LCD) model is applied via the Pedestrian Evacuation Analyst Tool (PEAT) to calculate the required time for a pedestrian to evacuate the region under tsunami threat based on the selected scenarios. The model includes landscape properties that affect the walking pace of pedestrians during an evacuation, such as elevation, slope, land cover, and land use types (beach, road, bushes, water bodies, any barriers). The resultant pedestrian evacuation time maps show that the maximum time needed for a pedestrian is 8, 6, 5, 4, 3 minutes for highly populated coastal settlements of Bodrum, which are Central Bodrum, Yahsi, Akyarlar-Karaincir-Aspat Bays, Bitez, and Gumbet Bays, respectively.

Olive Landscape Affects Bactrocera Oleae Abundance, Movement and Damage

The olive fruit fly, Bactrocera oleae (Rossi) (Diptera: Tephritidae), is a key pest of olive groves. Because of its economic importance and problems associated with chemical control, new approaches to reduce the damage caused by this pest and a deeper knowledge of the biology of the insect and the relationship of landscape structure to different biological parameters are needed. B. oleae can fly long distances and its ability to move within the landscape can determine the damage caused to olive groves. This work evaluates the effect of landscape structure on olive fruit fly abundance, movements and damage at three times of year—spring, early autumn and late autumn—in central Spain. This area is less dominated by olive groves than southern Spain, where the relationship between olive grove area and B. oleae abundance is already known. A cost-distance analysis is used to evaluate the landscape effect on the movement of the fly along the crop cycle. The olive grove area is the landscape composition factor with the greatest effect on the parameters studied, with a decrease in B. oleae abundance in a more complex landscape during spring and early autumn. The cost-distance analysis shows that the olive fruit fly moves mainly in spring, and amongst olive groves. There is no evidence that land uses other than olive groves serve as a summer refuge for B.oleae in the studied landscape context. Olive grove area and land use diversity index had significant effects on olive damage in more than one year.

Gis-Based Multi Criteria Model for Location of Rice Aggregation Centers in Anambra State

Rice aggregation centers are tasked with checkmating substandard agricultural produce that are often encountered by the integrated millers during the course of buying from farm to farm to ensure already made market for their produce. Thus, it must be well placed to occupy strategic positions such that all different rice cultivating zones of the state get access to the facility. Given that these facilities will provide salient services, sets of demand points tasked with the provision storage, processing capability and a constant market for various rice farmers within the state. It is pertinent that these facilities are located properly considering all unique factors on ground. This study therefore aimed at a GIS-based multi criteria model for location of rice aggregation centers in Anambra State. The study was carried out using Geographical Information System (GIS) technology. Several GIS thematic layers were obtained and considered important factors in citing rice aggregation centers such as road network, Land Use and Land Cover (LULC), slope, river, cost distance, electricity network, floodplains, erosion plains and proximity to rice farms. It revealed optimal locations for siting a modular aggregation rice center at Nzam, Onoia, Aguleri, Nando, Akenu, Achalla, Ezira, Ndiokpalaeze, Ogbakuma and Uli. The goal throughout this study was to provide a reliable and complete analysis of siting modular rice aggregation centers in the agricultural zones in Anambra State. The approach and results obtained in this study are recommended as a spatial decision tool for site selection of modular rice aggregation centers in developing countries.

A Stepwise GIS Approach for the Delineation of River Valley Bottom within Drainage Basins Using a Cost Distance Accumulation Analysis

River valley bottoms have hydrological, geomorphological, and ecological importance and are buffers for protecting the river from upland nutrient loading coming from agriculture and other sources. They are relatively flat, low-lying areas of the terrain that are adjacent to the river and bound by increasing slopes at the transition to the uplands. These areas have under natural conditions, a groundwater table close to the soil surface. The objective of this paper is to present a stepwise GIS approach for the delineation of river valley bottom within drainage basins and use it to perform a national delineation. We developed a tool that applies a concept called cost distance accumulation with spatial data inputs consisting a river network and slope derived from a digital elevation model. We then used wetlands adjacent to rivers as a guide finding the river valley bottom boundary from the cost distance accumulation. We present results from our tool for the whole country of Denmark carrying out a validation within three selected areas. The results reveal that the tool visually performs well and delineates both confined and unconfined river valleys within the same drainage basin. We use the most common forms of wetlands (meadow and marsh) in Denmark’s river valleys known as Groundwater Dependent Ecosystems (GDE) to validate our river valley bottom delineated areas. Our delineation picks about half to two-thirds of these GDE. However, we expected this since farmers have reclaimed Denmark’s low-lying areas during the last 200 years before the first map of GDE was created. Our tool can be used as a management tool, since it can delineate an area that has been the focus of management actions to protect waterways from upland nutrient pollution.

Open capacitated arc routing problem by hybridized ant colony algorithm

The Open Capacitated Arc Routing Problem OCARP is a well-known NP-hard real-world combinatorial optimization problem. It consists of determining optimal routes for vehicles in a given service area at a minimal cost distance. The main real application for OCARP is the Meter Reader Routing Problem (MRRP). In MRRP problem, each worker in the electric (or gas) company must visit and read the electric (or gas) meters to a set of customers by starting his route from the first customer on his visit list and finishing with the last one. The worker leaves where he wants once all the associated customers have been visited. In this paper, a meta-heuristic called an Hybridized Ant Colony Algorithm (HACA) is developed and hybridized with a local search algorithm that involves the 2-opt, Swap, Relocate and Cross-exchange moves to solve OCARP problem. Computational results conducted on five different sets of OCARP-instances showed that our proposed algorithm HACA has reached good and competitive results on benchmark instances for the problem.