Tsamdro (Rangeland) as a Source of Livelihood to the People of Bhutan

Tsamdro plays an essential role in providing resources for the survival of yaks, cattles and horses as these animals provide continuous support to herders in Naro, Merak and Logchina gewogs. There has been numerous change in land tenure system of ownership in tsamdro since 1960s of the ownership of tsamdro. However, in Land Act 2007; it was stated that tsamdro will be nationalized and policy will be implemented by 2017, yet the policy has not been implemented and herders still use the tsamdro as used earlier, where the owners had to obtain written permits from the Dzongkhag authorities to graze one’s livestock on one’s own grazing land by paying an annual grazing permit fee. This study aimed at determining whether tsamdro is a source of livelihood for the herders in Naro, Merak and Logchina gewogs. It was carried out in Naro, Logchina and Merak subdistricts (gewogs) of Bhutan. It employed a quantitative method by distributing questionnaire survey. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and the data was collected from a convenience sampling method of (N=75) herders through moderation analysis. The moderation analysis showed that tsamdro is a source of livelihood (land asset 571.526*** and livestock 37.670***) to herders. Further research is limited to study area and findings are likely to hold good for similar area only. Further research to find other sources of livelihood and their socio-economic impact on herders is recommended.

Conceptualizing the key processes of Mindful Parenting and its application to youth mental health

Objective: Youth mental health disorders are rising across the world. Mindful Parenting could be a potential tool to promote youth mental health. The primary distinction between Mindful Parenting programs and other behavioral parenting programs is the focus on emotional literacy and compassion. However, this emerging field has gaps in its theory and evidence. In order to objectively evaluate the impact of Mindful Parenting, it is important to identify how it promotes change. This theoretical paper aims to articulate the key change processes of Mindful Parenting that promote positive outcomes. Method: A literature review was conducted to synthesize the change processes outlined by different authors in the field. Results: Key processes argued to promote Mindful Parenting were aligned with five main categories, namely attention, intention, attitude, attachment and emotion. More specifically the change processes were listening, emotional awareness, emotional regulation, attentional regulation, attunement, attention to variability, intentionality, reperceiving, compassion and non-judgmental acceptance. Conclusions: This preliminary analysis attempted to understand how Mindful Parenting fosters change and transformation. Whilst there are numerous change processes, the essence of Mindful Parenting appears to be the ability to be responsive to a child’s needs.

Automatic Building Map Updating Using Worldview-2 Stereo Images and Existing Outdated Building Map

Updating of existing geo-database, particularly in developing countries, is one of the important and essential issues in geospatial information systems. Numerous change detection methods have been proposed to resolve this issue. In this study, a novel approach is proposed for automatic building change detection and updating from available outdated building map and products of satellite stereo images. The proposed method consists of four steps. In the first step, preliminary building outline for a candidate building is extracted from available old polygon and DSM based on an active contour model. Then, some change detection rules are considered to find out whether or not the building has been changed. If changes are detected, the following third and fourth steps based on a hierarchical approach, run to generate precise changed building outline. The proposed method is tested and evaluated using sample dataset from Tunis City and the obtained results prove the feasibility of this algorithm for automatic building map updating using high resolution stereo satellite images.