National Geographical Journal of India

Crop diversification pattern in Haryana: A comparative study of organic and inorganic farmers

Satish Kumar, Mahabir Singh Jaglan — Sat, 31 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The adoption of organic farming helps increase agriculture's profitability, enhancing food's nutritional value and sustaining the health of soils, ecosystems, and people. It has become popular in Haryana during the recent period. The present study analyzes the salient features of the adoption process of organic farming, and its impact on cropping patterns, crop combinations, and diversification. It is a primary data-based comparative study of organic and inorganic farmers of the state. The data has been collected from 234 farm households with the help of a structured questionnaire. The study analyses the main factors in the adoption of organic farming in the state. The comparisons of cropping patterns, crop combination, and crop diversification have been done by applying statistical techniques such as Doi method, and Herfindahl Index. The study reveals that farmers with small land holdings but higher education levels prefer organic farming. Though organic farming is carried out at a small scale in the state, it has been pursued earnestly as about half of the organic farmers devote more than three-fourths of their land to this form of farming. Organic farmers grow a larger number of crops and have quite a diversified cropping pattern compared to inorganic farmers. There is a perceptible difference in this regard in organic farming across agro-eco regions. The lesser irrigated mixed-crop region has much more diversified than the wheat-rice region of the eastern parts of the state.

Limno-geographical characteristics of Sarua Lake, Gorakhpur, India

Alka Singh, Vishwambhar Nath Sharma — Sat, 31 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Lakes have immense ecological, social, cultural and economic value, but eutrophication and siltation in the lake, reduction in area, and depleted water quality have led to a significant deterioration of the lake. This study found the cause-effect relationship between the increasing anthropogenic actions on lake beds to know about the status of lake ecology through limno-geogarphical studies. This study analyzed the spatio-temporal distribution of fifty years, ten types of utility, limno-geographical characteristics (area, average depth, circumference, volume, maximum length, and width), physical quality (EC, pH, TDS, water colour) of lake water lake ecology (TSI), causes and consequences of the deterioration of lake, and stewardship of Sarua Lake in the Gorakhpur district. The ecology of Sarua lake is eutrophic based on Secchi depth due to enter of surface runoff, agricultural runoff which came with a huge amount of nitrate and phosphate and increase the productivity in bottom deposits materials and flourished the immense coverage of littoral plants. The extent of Sarua lake is reduced by 1.65 kilometres squares within 50 years and the average depth decreased by 33 percent within 30 years due to the entry of natural surface runoff and the impact of anthropogenic activities (expansion of human habitat, entering of sewage, expansion of agricultural runoff, reduction of lake extent). These anthropogenic activities generated some opportunities and threats to local livelihoods and altered the social action which was dependent on lake beds from a very primitive time.

Patterns and reasons of migration to urban Odisha

Sumita Bera, Sibabrata Das — Sat, 31 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The study of changing patterns and reasons for migration has tremendous policy implications. Odisha as an economically developing state of India represents a very low level of urbanization but around fifty percent of the urban population are migrants. Analysing census of India data through commonly used measures of descriptive statistics, this paper studies the changing patterns and reasons for migration to urban places of Odisha. This paper is descriptive, yet has come up with new findings and raised a few questions requiring further investigation. The rising trend of urban-to-urban migration along with the feminisation of migration are two such issues.

Hydro-geomorphological research in Earth Sciences: A review

Kaushalendra Prakash Goswami, Himanshu Shekher — Sat, 31 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Water is the most important geomorphic agent for geomorphological action. Hydro-geomorphology is a sub-field of geomorphology that provides a scientific description of the evolution of landforms. The former deals with the study of the spatial interaction of water with the earth's surface. The introduction and implementation of new techniques make descriptions more useful and informative. Remote sensing and GIS provide highly dynamic space through which assessment and analysis of these geomorphic forms become feasible. The application of hydro-geomorphological study is most useful in management and planning. The present paper focuses on a review of literature on geomorphology, hydro-geomorphology, and mapping, and explains how sub-discipline such as fluvial geomorphology is different from hydro-geomorphological.

Integrated water resource development in the Subarnarekha river basin

Rameshwar Thakur, Swati Thakur — Sat, 31 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The Subarnarekha, an important rain-fed river basin in Eastern India, faces a large number of hydrological, utilization and managerial problems. The attributes and practical application of integrated water management require a detailed evaluation of its components to state its changing need. This paper presents a conceptual note on the status of water resources, problems associated with and perspectives on the integrated river water management in the Subarnarekha river basin. The study has used primary and secondary data sources to analyze the stated purpose. It was found that the key to mitigating water stress is to adopt a bottom-up approach by linking the watershed programme to the irrigation management project within IWRM at the sub-basin level which could address the participation of all stakeholders and strengthens local governance instead of a centralized administration. Intra-basin water transfer other than inter-linkages of rivers was also emphasized.

Geomorphological analysis of landform in Jonk river basin, Eastern India: A geospatial approach

Km.Shiwani, Roohi Rawat — Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Basin geomorphology typically involves the study of landforms of the basin. Geomorphology controls the movement of water in the basin. Quantitative interpretation of the geomorphology of a basin is significant to understand the surface run-off behaviour and to analyse the basin issues like soil erosion which will be helpful for the prediction of water retention function and making prevention and conservation strategies to stimulate water infiltration. The study focuses on analysing the complex geology, gradient behaviour, and characteristics of different geomorphic units of the Jonk river basin with geospatial techniques. ALOS PALSAR DEM is used for slope and relief analysis, and preparation of the Topographic Position Index (TPI). The slope direction is from south to northeast. The pediment-peneplain complex is the most extensive geomorphic unit observed in the basin, covering 72.79% of the basin. Anthropogenic terrain with 0.24% of the basin’s surface is the smallest geomorphological unit of the basin. TPI gives a clear understanding of the hills and valleys configuration of the southern and northern highlands of the Jonk river basin.

Climate change and mapping hazard risk and vulnerability in mountain ecosystem: A case study of Himachal Himalaya

Sneh Gangwar — Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The Himalayas represents a vast mountain system and is globally valued for their significant role in the regulation of global as well as the regional climate that has a direct impact on biodiversity and ecosystem services crucial for the sustenance of millions of people in the Himalayas and adjoining areas. Climate change in the Himalayan region has implications for food production, natural ecosystems, the retreat of glaciers, water supply, human and animal health and overall human well-being. There is a severe gap in the dissemination of knowledge of the short and long-term implications of climate change in the Himalayas and in downstream. An introspection of the status of the vulnerability of the Western Himalayan ecosystem to climate change due to ecological fragility, scarcity of resources and increase in disaster occurrence shows a need to strengthen local knowledge, innovations, and practices within social and ecological systems as well as strengthening the functioning of institutions relevant for adaptation. The study is useful to policy makers to design appropriate adaptation strategies to cope with the impacts of climate changes in the area.

Morphometric study and watershed prioritization for soil conservation in Kalinjar micro-watersheds, Odisha

Sajal Barh — Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The detailed study of morphometry is very important to understand the hydrological comportment and characteristics of the watershed. The morphometric parameters are used for prioritization of the micro-watersheds based on WSA (weighted sum analysis) for sustainable watershed management. In this study, a collective approach of using remotely sensed DEM, topographical map and ArcGIS (10.1) has been applied to define morphometric parameters of the Kalinjar river basin, a sub-basin of Baitarani River which is prone to gully erosion. Seven micro-watersheds of Kalinjar River have been prioritized by applying the morphometric parameters and ranking them according to their liability to soil erosion. According to results, Kalinjar River is a 6^th order stream having four 5^th order and one 6^th order sub-watershed, having a total drainage area of 506.34 km². High values of infiltration number are indicative of low infiltration which may cause high surface runoff and soil erosion. The micro-watershed prioritization implied that MW-4 (16.79% area) is an extremely vulnerable micro-watershed that requires better attention for soil and water conservation measures. The result of the prioritization shows that micro-watersheds MW-1 and MW-3 (13.33% area) are the most vulnerable micro-watersheds to erosion, micro-watersheds MW-2 and MW-5 (13.97% area) are moderately vulnerable and micro-watersheds MW-6 and MW-7 (23.16% area) are the least vulnerable to erosion.