People’s Participation in Farm Pond Programmes in Dry Land Areas of Tamil Nadu

People’s participation in planning, implementation and maintenance stage is important for making any programmes successful. Realizing it, Government of India (2011), issued a Common Guidelines for Watershed Development Projects, Revised Edition, 2011 in which participation of beneficiary farmers was made as mandatory. Hence, here an attempt has been made to study the extent of participation of beneficiaries in involvement of farm pond programmes under three stages such as planning, implementation and maintenance were studied. The study was conducted during 2020 in dry land areas of Tamil Nadu to measure the extent of people’s participation in farm pond development programme. The results revealed that overall participation Index score was 64.75 per cent. It means that moderate level of participation was observed among the farmers in farm pond development programmes. Further it is noted that high level of participation was exhibited by farmers in planning stage (72.12%) and moderate level was exhibited by farmers in implementation stage (63.78%) as well as maintenance stage (58.36%) of farmers in farm pond programmes. It means farmers were participated and contributed more during planning followed by implementation and maintenance stages of programme.

Integrated watershed development plan for a sub-basin, central India

The present study aims to propose an integrated watershed development plan for the Wainganga basin situated in Maharashtra, India. Also, the study involves evaluating the performance and applicability of SWAT (Soil and water assessment tool) as a runoff model along with the trend analysis of rainfall for the above mentioned study area. The decadal land-use/land-cover (LULC) variation from 1985 to 2005 has been studied using data procured from Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES-DISC) and groundwater table level of the study area was monitored using dug/bore well data collected from Central Ground Water Board (CGWB). Rainfall trend analysis for a period of 101 years using historic rainfall data procured from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has been analyzed to foresee the future scenario. It was observed that the rainfall-runoff relationship of the area is getting affected by the LULC variation and thereby affecting the groundwater regime. There is a significant deterioration in the forest cover and water bodies which is alarming. The study devises the importance of an immediate master plan to be implemented in the basin to avoid any future crisis. Also, the study emphasizes the advancement of remote sensing in the use of hydrologic models like SWAT more realistically.

Land Resource Inventory (LRI) for Sustainable Watershed Development-A Case Study of Bisarahalli-1 Microwatershed of Semiarid Region of Koppal District, Karnataka, India

A land resource inventory (LRI) of Bisarahalli-1 microwatershed was located in the central part of northern Karnataka in semiarid region of Koppal taluk and district. A case study was taken under Sujala III project sponsored by the Watershed Development Department of Karnataka and funded by the World Bank. The analysis and interpretation of the spatial and non-spatial database generated has revealed that most of the areas suffer from major problems. In most of the areas, very gently sloping and alkalinity affected even up to 80% of the microwatershed area followed by gravelly and low available water capacity, thus reducing the production potential and crop choices. The soils are either moderately or marginally suited for growing most of the agricultural and horticultural crops. By interfacing land resource data with Remote Sensing, GIS and GPS, different management scenarios were analysed to arrive at the best management alternatives (optimum land use plans) that would be most suitable. This data handling system will be useful for making land use decisions and providing proactive advice to farmers on a real time basis protecting the health of natural resources.

Analysis of Flood Disaster Mitigation in West Sumatra

Watershed development based on sustainable development requires open management that ensures the continuity of the coordination process between related institutions. This development is characterized by cross-sectoral and multidisciplinary. This research problem answers about 1) What is the cause of flooding in West Sumatra?; 2) What are the alternative mitigations for the flood disaster management?; 3) What are the impacts of the flood?; and 4) What are the strategic steps that can be taken?. The research study uses the library method, which is based on data obtained from the Agency of Regional Disaster Management (BPBD) West Sumatra Province in 2019. The results of this study indicate that the principles of disaster mitigation in West Sumatra have not been fully implemented, such as before a disaster, during a disaster, and after a disaster.

Landuse and Water Quality Threats to Current and Historical Cryptobranchus Alleganiensis Streams Across Multiple Ecoregions

The hellbender (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis) is a large, long-lived, and fully aquatic salamander species endemic to streams and rivers across 15 states in the Midwest and Eastern United States. Hellbender populations have experienced drastic declines due to habitat degradation, accelerated sedimentation, aquatic contaminants, and infectious diseases. Although declining water quality is often suggested as a major contributing factor to hellbender population declines, few studies have evaluated the presence of aquatic contaminants at sites with current and historical C. alleganiensis populations. We used a novel passive sampling technique to assess the presence and concentration of two herbicides (glyphosate and atrazine) in the water and analyzed heavy metal (cadmium (Cd), mercury (Hg), and lead (Pb)) concentrations in stream sediment samples at 30 sites across a watershed development gradient throughout the C. alleganiensis range in Tennessee (TN) and North Carolina (NC). Our results indicated the presence of atrazine in 23% of our sites. All 30 sites contained Cd and Pb, and 26 sites contained Hg. Levels of glyphosate were too low to detect using our methods. Although percent watershed development was not significantly different among ecoregions, Blue Ridge watersheds were overall less developed than watersheds in the Ridge and Valley and Interior Plateau ecoregions. The model with greatest support suggested that percent watershed development and specific conductivity were negatively correlated with hellbender population status. Because this research focused on assessing the prevalence of commonly encountered aquatic contaminants, our results and study design are broadly applicable to C. alleganiensis populations across the species range.

Xi Jinping Confronts the Network Society

Xi Jinping’s radical reconcentration of power is widely seen as a watershed development in the history of PRC politics. Xi’s effort can be interpreted from an international relations perspective as a complex “securitization move” in which an elite figure defines some trend, tendency, or other development as a security threat so severe that it becomes necessary to deploy special, extraordinary measures to address it. But what in China’s case was the perceived threat or configuration of threats that Xi could use to justify his reconcentration of power? Analysis of articles published in neibu (internal-circulation-only) policy journals from 2012 through 2015 reveals a primary concern among members of the broader CCP elite to be a threat to the stability and integrity of the political order itself resulting from the dislocations caused by trying to fuse a Leninist political system with what was, by 2010, a well-developed network society.