Älert : ""Fresh water getting saltier

Another tweet highlighting the impact of mining and uncontrolled extraction of natural resources.Tweeted by IISD Water

“I saw a white film on the glass. After trying to scrub it off it turned out to be a thin layer of salt crusting the glass.” Is our fresh water getting saltier? And if so, why? @NewsHour takes a look... https://t.co/9Kn9xi3rOT

— IISD Water (@IISD_Water) December 27, 2018

The Photo Synthesis Movie by Berkley Lab

See the movie on Photosynthesis as tweeted by Energy Department

✨ MOVIE MAGIC: #NationalLab researchers have created the most complete high-resolution atomic movie of photosynthesis ever. @BerkeleyLab @advlightsource @SLAClab

👉 https://t.co/lTLI7ROcTs pic.twitter.com/9QtQpOiR0O

— Energy Department (@ENERGY) December 28, 2018

Cloaned Giant Coast Redwoods

History Revisited,see the following tweet by Geoff Manaugh

“Many arborists assumed these stumps were dead, but Milarch and his son, Jake, discovered living tissue growing from the trees’ roots...” Giant coast redwoods, cut down in the 19th century, successfully cloned. https://t.co/FHL7Nzgj6H pic.twitter.com/dsAFkVoUp2

— Geoff Manaugh (@bldgblog) December 27, 2018

The Top three software that you must learn to apply GIS

Recently the Water Resources and hydro power portal published a list of software that you must learn if you want to apply the advantage of GIS and Remote Sensing in your project.

The list was not extensive but selective.

While preparing the list the following factors were given weightage of importance where the first factor was given the highest importance and last one the opposite:

1.Ease of Use
2.Price in INR
3.Support
4.Features
5.Frequency of use in related problems
6.Number of Updates per Year
7.Probability of Bugs

The list can be seen in Baipatra home page.

Research Ideas on Water Reuse

(Image Source)

The "Impact of Urbanization on Water Reuse Potential" and "Water Reuse Potential of Hydro-Power plant" can be two of the most important topic of research  related to water reuse.

In the first topic the urbanization impact on Water Reuse Potential(WRP) is estimated.As world wide rapid urbanization is going on, the stress on "available water" of any region is immense.Due to the uneven distribution of water resources the problem is more acute where concentration of population is high but availability of water is low.According to Falkenmark's Water Stress Indicator,a region is said to be water scarce if per capita water availability is less than 5000cubicm.

Again availability of water will imply not only the quantity but also the quality of water available.The water must be qualitatively suitable for consumption.Otherwise, it will not be added to water resources potential of a region.

Due to urbanization there is an immense stress on this "available water".That is why mitigation measures like recycling water is given a lot of importance so that this increased population can be sustained and their demand for water can be somewhat satisfied.

But amount of water available for consumption is constant.Thus the supplied water must be recycled or reused.Hence,the interrelationship between rate of urbanization and WRP will be an interesting aspect to determine.The potential of urban population in degrading the quality of water is also another potential area of research which can enlighten us to determine the amount of water we have and can reclaim for reuse,

The second topic,the potential of water reuse in a hydro power plant will help to install a zero discharge hydro power plant which will be beneficial for both water as well as energy conservation of a region.In the study one objective will be to find the amount of water available for reuse.

Another aspect will be to determine the types of use that can be carried out with the reused water.Actual potential of water reuse can be given by a weighted index of all the purposes of water reuse.Each of the purposes can be weighted with respect to each other following some Multi-Criteria Decision Making approaches.

Once the amount of the water that can be reused for specific purposes are known,it can be multiplied by the weightage of the same purpose and total of the product of weights of all the purposes and available water for that purposes can be used to determine the WRP Index of the hydropower plant.

The index can represent the exact WRP of the plant in terms of the potential of the reused water to mitigate the demand of the plant intself.

New Research Idea : Selection of Conceptual Hydrologic Models for Estimating Runoff from Arid Watersheds

Abstract : 

The selection of ideal conceptual hydrologic model for prediction of surface runoff from any type of watershed is useful for the estimation of future hydrologic conditions of the basin.The predicted runoff is also important for design of hydraulic structure,preparation of watershed management plans ,disaster management etc. related activities.The future runoff will give an idea of future uncertainties that may trouble the watershed and its inhabitants.The hydrologic models which follows the basic physical laws of water balance to estimate the desired output cannot exactly estimate the runoff.There will be some differences with the actual situation and the predicted one.The deviations between the two is allowable but to a certain extent.There are many factors for this deviation.Some models are suitable for some specific types of watersheds.The availability of required dataset is also another important issue.The equalizing constants that are used to linearize interrelationships are also a factor for the error produced by the hydrologic model.That is why  selection of a suitable hydrologic model which can estimate at a desired accuracy under the restrictions imposed by the study watershed  and dataset availability is important for successful execution of projects involving runoff predictions.The present study tries to select a suitable hydrologic model based on the related factors and decision making algorithms for predicting surface runoff from an arid watershed.The decision making algorithms are popular for their impartial and scientific decision making based on historical,social and expert inputs.The advancements of such algorithms can be utilized to select an ideal hydrologic model which can minimize the error between the predicted and actual output.

Tools Utilized : AHP and Fuzzy,various hydrologic models

Keywords : hydrologic models,decision making algorithms,arid watershed.

Baipatra: Fractal Analysis

Baipatra: Fractal Analysis: Fractal Analysis is a relatively new concept for spatial analysis of a data pattern. Mainly used in detection of set of features in an im...