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Topic Review
Multiple Attribute-based Decision-making Models
Sustainability of agricultural practices depends on economic, environmental, and social conditions. The Rajasthan state of India has arid climatic conditions where kharif crops are commonly grown. In this work, the four major criteria are considered such as the farm area, crop yield per unit area, the cost prices, and the market sales price. Merged analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and entropy techniques have been employed to give reasonable weight coefficients for the objective and subjective weights to each criterion. Multiple attribute-based decision-making models (MADM) have been developed using three proven techniques, namely the Exprom2, the technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS), and the VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I KompromisnoResenje (VIKOR). The crop Pennisetum glaucum emerged as the most productive kharif crop in the arid climatic conditions of Rajasthan, India under the given criteria. The sensitivity analysis of the three methods identifies the most significant criteria and validates that Pennisetum glaucum is the first ranked crop despite the interchange of the weights. The methodology used in this study may be applied across the globe to select appropriate crops for maximizing the profit, optimizing the natural resources, and promoting sustainable agricultural practices. This study may be used to enhance the agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) to make the agriculturalists self-sufficient and to help the state policymakers in making elective regional policies.
  • 1.8K
  • 05 Nov 2020
Topic Review
Measuring Urban Shrinkage
Most of the shrinking cities experience an unbalanced de-urbanization across different urban areas in cities. However, traditional ways of measuring urban shrinkage are focused on tracking population loss at the city level and are unable to capture the spatially heterogeneous shrinking patterns inside a city. Consequently, the spatial mechanism and patterns of urban shrinkage inside a city remain less understood, which is unhelpful for developing accommodation strategies for shrinkage. The smart city initiatives and practices have provided a rich pool of geospatial big data resources and technologies to tackle the complexity of urban systems. Given this context, we propose a new measure for the delineation of shrinking areas within cities by introducing a new concept of functional urban shrinkage, which aims to capture the mismatch between urban built-up areas and the areas where significantly intensive human activities take place. Taking advantage of a data fusion approach to integrating multi-source geospatial big data and survey data, a general analytical framework is developed to construct functional shrinkage measures. Combining geospatial big data with urban land-use functions obtained from land surveys and Points-Of-Interests data, the framework further enables the comparison between cities from dimensions characterized by indices of spatial and urban functional characteristics and the landscape fragmentation; thus, it has the capacity to facilitate an in-depth investigation of fundamental causes and internal mechanisms of urban shrinkage. 
  • 966
  • 05 Nov 2020
Topic Review
Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment
Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), or e-waste, faces significant sustainability challenges. Characterised by high economic elasticity, i.e. a close correlation between WEEE generation and Gross Domestic Product (GDP), WEEE is one of the fastest growing waste streams worldwide. Hazardous components require attention, while at the same time the potential to implement circular economy schemes with recuperation of valuable components is particularly high for e-waste. An overview on key aspects related to sound management of e-waste is provided in the following.
  • 1.6K
  • 05 Nov 2020
Topic Review
Rangelands Livestock Production Systems
Rangelands as referred to herein can be defined as uncultivated lands that provide multiple ecosystem services for society, sustain habitat for grazing and browsing animals, and support the livelihoods of pastoralists and ranchers [1][2]. Under this definition rangelands comprise up to 70% of the world’s land area and include natural grasslands, deserts, temperate forests, and tropical forests [1]. Greenhouse gases (GHGs) released into the lower atmosphere mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and other anthropogenic activities have caused the earth’s temperature to rise by 1 °C since the 1860s [3][4]. If GHG emissions continue to rise, an increase in global temperature up to 3 to 5 °C is projected by the end of this century [4]. Extreme weather events are already increasing in frequency and severity in the US and globally [3][4][5]. Global concern is growing over the possibility that eventual irreversible, catastrophic climate change will result in massive loss of human livelihoods and mortality through adverse impacts on food production systems over both croplands and rangelands [3][4][6][7][8][9][10][11][12].
  • 1.5K
  • 05 Nov 2020
Topic Review
Reducing Phosphorus Loads
The wide application of fertilizers in tile-drained agricultural systems commonly results in the loss of phosphorus (P) to the underground tile drains during precipitation events and emission to downstream surface waters. As different catchments are subject to local geological and climatic conditions, among other factors, it is observed a large spatiotemporal variation in the dynamics of P emissions, including the load and dominant form (i.e., particulate or dissolved). In-farm practices may be able to mitigate this problem to some extent (e.g. by optimizing the P application), but may not suffice in areas saturated with P. Therefore, systems designed to reduce the excess P loads at relatively low costs and located at the edge of tile-drained catchments have been tested and implemented. This has been done by increasing the hydraulic residence time of the drainage discharge, allowing sedimentation of particles and biogeochemical processes between the water, soil/sediments and biota to occur; by trapping P at the bank of watercourses; and by enhancing the retention of dissolved P with filters rich in P sorbents. The retention of P by these measures, however, can be rather variable and largely depends on the catchment conditions. Thus, a series of considerations, e.g., in regards to design parameters, long-term stability of the P retained and retention of different P forms, must be taken into account, including major constraints (e.g., use of agricultural land), to ensure successful application of edge-of-field measures and achieve the desired cost-efficiency.
  • 1.4K
  • 01 Nov 2020
Topic Review
Ionic and Excited Species
Experimental and theoretical studies of either characterization and reactivity of ionic and excited species with atoms, molecules, and radicals of interest in the chemistry of plasmas and energy production. Single and ionized species with single or multiple charge (H+, He+, H3+, HCO+, H3O+, He22+, CO22+, etc.), excited atoms and molecules (e.g. O(1D), N(2D), H*(2s2S1/2), He*(21,3S0,1), N2*(A3Σu+), etc.) play a crucial role in various important chemical systems such as flames (i.e. chemi-ionizations), natural plasmas (i.e. planetary ionospheres, comet tails and interstellar clouds), and biological environments (e.g. damaged biological tissues via the interaction between ionizing radiation and living cells). Such processes are very interesting from a fundamental point of view in Physical Chemistry and attracted the attention of a wide scientific community, since many applications to important fields: radiation chemistry, plasma physics and chemistry, combustion processes, development of laser sources. In particular, the conversion of waste carbon dioxide via assisted plasma technology gained recently increasing interest due to the possibility of obtaining value-added products, like gaseous or liquid fuels. Such characteristics make this an encouraging strategy for the storage of electrical energy from renewable sources into chemical energy in a circular economy scheme.
  • 1.5K
  • 01 Nov 2020
Topic Review
Land Suitability Assessment
Land suitability assessment is a method of land evaluation, which identifies the major limiting factors for planting a particular crop. Land suitability assessment includes qualitative and quantitative evaluation. In the qualitative land suitability evaluations, information about climate, hydrology, topography, vegetation, and soil properties is considered and in quantitative assessment, the results are more detailed and yield is estimated. At present study we prepared land suitability assessment map for rain-fed wheat and barley crops based on FAO "land suitability assessment framework" using parametric method and machine learning algorithms in Kurdistan Province, located in west of Iran. This is a unique study that compared two machine learning-based and traditional-based approaches for mapping current and potential future land suitability classes. Moreover, potential yield of rain-fed wheat and barley crop were computed by FAO model.
  • 5.8K
  • 30 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Optimal Interpolation for infrared satellite data
Thermal infrared remote sensing measurements are blinded to surface emissions under cloudiness because infrared sensors cannot penetrate thick cloud layers. Therefore, surface and atmospheric parameters can be retrieved only in clear sky conditions giving origin to spatial fields flagged with missing pieces of information. Motivated by this we present a methodology to retrieve missing values of some interesting geophysical variables retrieved from spatially scattered infrared satellite observations in order to yield level 3 (L3), regularly gridded, data. The technique is based on a 2-Dimensional (2D) Optimal Interpolation (OI) scheme. The goodness of the approach has been tested on 15-min temporal resolution Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) emissivity and surface temperature (ST) products over South Italy (land and sea), on Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) atmospheric ammonia (NH3) concentration over North Italy and carbon monoxide (CO), sulfur dioxide (SO2) and NH3 concentrations over China. Sea surface temperature (SST) retrievals have been compared with gridded data from MODIS (Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) observations. For gases concentration, we have considered data from 3 different emission inventories, that is, Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research v3.4.2 (EDGARv3.4.2), the Regional Emission inventory in ASiav3.1 (REASv3.1) and MarcoPolov0.1, plus an independent study.
  • 776
  • 30 Oct 2020
Topic Review
Toxic Metals Contamination
Concentrations of potentially toxic metals including Cd, Cu, Pb, Cr, U, Th in surface water and sediment samples collected from a river were analyzed to assess the contaminations, distribution characteristics and sources of these metals. The contents of the metals were lower than the standard levels set by WHO for drinking water. However, U and Th contents were far beyond the background values of surface water. The concentrations of Cd, Cr and U in sediments were higher than the background values and the Probable Effect Level (PEL) of sediment quality guidelines (SQGs) which may result in high potential harmful biological effects to aquatic ecosystem. Based on the contamination factor (CF), geo-accumulation index (Igeo) and potential ecological risk index (RI), Cd, Cr and U were considered to be the metals that mainly contribute to the contamination of sediments. The calculation results also indicated that the sites adjacent to the uranium ore field were highly polluted. Results of cluster analysis, principal component analysis and correlation analysis revealed that Cr, Pb, U, Th were highly correlated with each other. These metals were mainly originated from both anthropogenic source and natural processes, especially emissions from uranium mining and quarrying, whereas Cd mostly came from anthropogenic source (agricultural activities) of the upper reaches of the river.
  • 1.2K
  • 30 Oct 2020
Topic Review
DPSIR Model
       The Driving force – Pressure – Status – Impact - Response (DPSIR) framework has been widely used in literature to analyse environmental problems. The DPSIR facilitates the investigation of all the possible cause-effect relationships and to plan appropriate technological responses.  This contribution shows an application of the DPSIR to the remediation of contaminated sites, exploiting the case study of the Mar Piccolo di Taranto (Southern Italy). Methodologically, several references were considered, whose information was classified according to the logical scheme of the DPSIR. Among the results it is interesting to observe how, due to its natural hydrogeological network conformation, the Mar Piccolo represents the final receptor of pollutants from industrial, anthropic and agricultural activities. The mobility of contaminants from sediments to the water column and the subsequent bioaccumulation into marine organisms pose a serious threat of unacceptable magnitude to human safety. Responses may concern restriction of area use, control of pollution fonts as well as the implementation of suitable contaminated marine sediment remediation measures. It is noted that the preliminary organization of the existing data can lead to the development of a DPSIR-based Environmental Decision Support System (EDSS). 
  • 8.4K
  • 30 Oct 2020
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