eChapters

3.1 INTRODUCTION

Geographic Information System handles large volumes of data. It is important to know the nature of data, instruments from which the data is collected and represented in computers. GIS data is either spatial or aspatial. Data is an important component in GIS. Digital data are available for some projects. but for many projects, input data may not be available. Now-a-days, data is supplied by many government, private organizations and also available on internet. If data for a particular project is not available, then the user has to collect the data from satellite imageries, GPS and other instruments and maps from various sources.

Spatial Data

All locations in the earth surface are spatial data. Location of a city, location of a river, location of a lake are represented in earth by their latitude or longitude in global coordinate system or as x,y coordinate in Cartesian coordinate system. Spatial data consists of location, shape and size in earth. A village boundary is represented as a polygon in map. The village is having certain shape of irregular polygon with definite area. As all these are mappable , they are called as spatial data. But name of the village, revenue of a village and description about a village and called as non-spatial or aspatial data.

Abstract

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) application in plant genetic resource management allow capture, manipulate, process and display of georeferenced data integrated with genetic resource database for operations such as query and statistical analysis, visualization and geographic representation. GIS based several spatial tools have been developed that model species’ ecological niches finding a relationship between crop or variety with a set of environmental parameters and useful for planning exploration, evaluation trials, in situ and ex situ conservation sites. GIS technologies have direct practical application in elucidation of genetic, ecological and geographic patterns in the distribution of crops and wild relatives; mapping of richness, diversity, distribution of useful traits and, location of areas with complementary diversity; gene bank information management and strategies for future explorations and gap analysis; selection of suitable accessions/sites for ex situ evaluation; searching germplasm for abiotic stress tolerance and developing core collections. With the increasing availability of high- speed computers and software development in the area of GIS tools specific to PGR management increasing trend in application of these is expected. Apart from ecogeographic survey for locating diversity and germplasm collection and design, management and monitoring of in situ reserves, introduction of new varieties, and development of core collection, locating gene donors for biotic and abiotic stresses are the areas to be benefited with the GIS application.

Keywords: GIS, genetic resource, distribution, diversity, core collection, gap analysis, mapping

Introduction

Rainfall is one of the climatic variables that varies very highly spatially and temporally. Understanding this micro-level variation is a crucial indicator for planning future water requirements and preparing for management strategies. Numerous researchers have delved into the distribution, variability, and trends of rainfall across diverse spatial scales, ranging from global to regional and basin levels. Nair et al. (2014) analyzed the rainfall trend and seasonality index for Kerala state in India over the last 100 years. The rainfall trend was found to be decreasing significantly in almost all the regions of the state. Nischitha et al. (2013) provide insights into the spatial and temporal variability of daily monsoon rainfall in the Tunga and Bhadra River basins in Karnataka state. Paradkar et al. (2019) evaluated the pattern of weekly rainfall by using statistical parameters such as mean, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis for five stations in Pratapgarh district.

Geographical Information System (GIS) proved to be an effective tool in handling information and analyzing rainfall patterns, providing visual representations, and facilitating the decision-making process (Kadir et al. (2016) and Rao et al. (2017)). Anand et al. (2020) analyzed the long-term spatial and temporal trends of rainfall in the Lower Bhavani basin in Tamil Nadu, India using GIS and statistical methods. Earls et al. (2007) compared different interpolation methods such as Inverse Distance Weighting, Spline, and Kriging (ordinary and universal) to generate a 30 m representation of the rainfall data. Spatial interpolation techniques perform differently and their evaluation should not rely solely on quantitative assessment. Wu & Hung (2016) compared the performance of three spatial interpolation techniques i.e., IDW, kriging, and spline using quantitative assessment, 2D visualization, and 3D visualization. IDW and kriging performed similarly in terms of quantitative assessment, while spline performed worse. IDW and spline performed similarly in 2D visualization, while kriging showed different behavior. Kriging was observed to be an inexact interpolation in 3D visualization, while spline tended to create extreme values along the edges of the study area. Some studies discovered that the accuracy of Kriging in the study area is higher than that of IDW or Thiessen interpolations (Earls et al. 2007; Song et al. 2008; Chen et al. 2010). GIS applications have the capability to integrate spatial data and non-spatial data like rainfall and to visualize, model, and analyze how rainfall distribution varies across space and over time, providing insights into climate change, water resource management, agricultural planning, and disaster management. The present study aims to analyze annual rainfall data pertaining to Kerala state in the GIS environment.

Introduction

A system is a simplified version of reality and is defined as a collection of interrelated parts that work together. Most systems share certain common characteristics. These common characteristics include the following:
Systems have a structure that is defined by its parts and processes. Systems are generalizations of reality.
Systems tend to function in the same way as nature. This involves inputs getting changed in a process and realization of new outputs.
The various parts of a system have functional as well as structural relationships between each other.
Owing to the functional relationships that exist between the parts there is a flow and transfer of some type of energy and/or matter. In case of information systems there is a flow of information in the structure.
The parts that make up a system show certain degree of integration. In other words the parts work well together.

Abstract

The rapid development and integration of spatial technologies viz., Geographical Information System (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS) along with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) provide functional alternatives to revolutionize the conventional entomological approaches like surveillance, spatial/temporal distribution of insect populations, pest distribution mapping and predictive modeling. Application of these technologies for insect problems is well established in the fields of forest, range land, medical and agricultural entomology elsewhere. Nevertheless, in India its field relevance in agricultural entomology is still limited owing to lack of proven field prototype studies and collaborative efforts among stakeholders. It’s time to gain real momentum to integrate these progressive technologies to formulate sustainable integrated pest management programs.

Key words: GIS, Remote Sensing, Insect Populations, Field Applications

This chapter introduces the integration of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), remote sensing, and artificial intelligence (AI) for modern forest monitoring and management. It explains how remote sensing provides spatially continuous information, GIS functions as a spatial database and decision-support environment, and AI and machine learning enable prediction and pattern recognition. Applications include forest inventory, carbon estimation, biodiversity assessment, forest-fire detection, insect monitoring, and disturbance mapping. The chapter also examines GeoAI, smart forestry, emerging technologies, data challenges, and future opportunities such as cloud-based geospatial platforms and explainable AI.

The escalating global threat of drought, characterized by increasing frequency and severity, demands a comprehensive and coordinated response. These prolonged periods of water scarcity not only endanger human lives and erode livelihoods but also inflict lasting damage on fragile ecosystems. Recognizing the scale and complexity of this challenge, a multitude of global initiatives have emerged, uniting international organizations, governments, research institutions, and civil society in a collective endeavor. This chapter will delve into the landscape of these crucial efforts, exploring the key organizations driving change, the diverse strategies being implemented, and the pivotal role of technological advancements in mitigating the devastating consequences of drought. By examining the framework of these global collaborations, we aim to provide a comprehensive understanding of the ongoing work to build resilience and ensure a more water-secure future for all.

Monsoons are vital atmospheric circulations that govern the climate and livelihoods of vast populations across the globe. Characterized by seasonal reversals in wind direction and associated shifts in precipitation patterns, these systems are critical for agriculture, water resources, and overall socio-economic stability in many regions. However, the delicate balance of monsoon systems is increasingly threatened by climate variability, leading to significant disruptions and challenges, particularly in the form of severe droughts. Recent years have witnessed the devastating impact of drought in numerous monsoon-dependent regions across the world. In India, heavily reliant on the summer monsoon, failures have caused significant water shortages and poor crop yields, particularly in vulnerable regions like southeastern Maharashtra and Rajasthan. The consequences extend to groundwater depletion and increased irrigation demands. The impact of recent droughts is not limited to Asia. The African continent has also faced severe consequences. The Horn of Africa experienced a particularly devastating drought from October 2020 to 2023, resulting in widespread harvest failures, livestock losses, and displacement, marking the worst drought in four decades. West Africa has similarly suffered from frequent droughts causing crop failures, rising food prices, and exacerbating income inequality. South America, too, has experienced significant impacts. Argentina faced a severe drought in late 2022 and early 2023, halving wheat and soy harvests and impacting exports. In Uruguay, this drought led to a lack of access to drinking water for thousands. Brazil has seen harvest failures and reduced agricultural GDP due to drought, also threatening its hydroelectric power generation. Furthermore, the Amazon rainforest has been affected by intensifying droughts, leading to increased tree mortality, a higher risk of forest fires, and significant impacts on biodiversity and local communities due to drastically reduced river levels. Recent years have witnessed the dual impact of extreme weather events in numerous monsoon-dependent regions. In India, while facing drought in many areas, heavy monsoon rains have also caused catastrophic flooding. In July 2021, the coastal regions of Maharashtra experienced severe flooding affecting millions and causing hundreds of deaths. Major events like the 2022 Assam floods and the 2023 North India floods further exemplify the destructive potential of intense monsoon rainfall. The African continent also experiences significant flooding during its monsoon seasons. In 2024, West and Central Africa, including countries like

GPS stands for Global Positioning System, basically Navstar GPS is a radio based space aviation system developed by United state government which was operated by United State Air Force. It provides geographic location and time related information to GPS receivers under global navigation satellite from anywhere of earth where unobstructed line of sight to 4 or more GPS satellite co-ordinate (Anonymous, 2018). Even GPS not required any user for transmitting data, with working independently on any telephonic or internet receivers; through these technologies we can enhance usefulness of the GPS location based information. The GPS serves as critical positioning capacity to various fields like army operation, civil aviation, and commercial scope to wider scope in around world.

Introduction

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a space-based navigation system that provides location and time information in all weather conditions, anywhere on or near the Earth where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites. The system provides critical capabilities to military, civil, and commercial users around the world. The United States government created the system, maintains it, and makes it freely accessible to anyone with a GPS receiver. The US began the GPS project in 1973 to overcome the limitations of previous navigation systems, integrating ideas from several predecessors, including a number of classified engineering design studies from the 1960s. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) developed the system, which originally used 24 satellites. It became fully operational in 1995. Roger L. Easton, Ivan A. Getting and Bradford Parkinson of the Applied Physics Laboratory are credited with inventing it.
 
Advances in technology and new demands on the existing system have now led to efforts to modernize the GPS and implement the next generation of GPS Block IIIA satellites and Next Generation Operational Control System (OCX). Announcements from Vice President Al Gore and the White House in 1998 initiated these changes. In 2000, the U.S. Congress authorized the modernization effort, GPS III. In addition to GPS, other systems are in use or under development. The Russian Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) was developed contem-poraneously with GPS, but suffered from incomplete coverage of the globe until the mid-2000s. There are also the planned European Union Galileo positioning system, China’s BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, the Japanese Quasi-Zenith Satellite System, and India’s Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System.

Introduction

Global Positioning System (GPS) is a system of satellites and ground stations that provide location and time information for any place on earth, regardless of the weather. GPS is a type of GNSS, which stands for global navigation satellite systems. GPS has many applications in precision farming, such as farm planning, field mapping, soil sampling, tractor guidance, crop guidance, variable- rate applications (VRAs) and yield mapping. GPS helps farmers work in low- visibility conditions such as rain, dust, fog, and darkness. India has its own GPS system called IRNSS or NavIC, which uses about seven satellites. GPS is owned and operated by the U.S. government, specifically the U.S.

Particulate Matter

Anthropogenic emissions of particulate matter include fossil fuel (diesel and petrol) combustion from mobile and stationary sources (Rogge et. al., 1993a-c), biomass burning (Forest fires, landfills, agricultural activities and incinerators) (Oros and Simoneit, 1999) natural gas (Rogee et. al., 1993c), wood (McDonald et. al., 2000) and coal combustion (Mastral and Callen, 2000).

Global warming is the hottest issue facing life in our times. The gradual average increase in air temperatures near Earth’s surface over the past one to two centuries is leading to the phenomenon called global warming. It is this global phenomenon that triggers climate change, threatening the entire life on Earth. Earth’s climate has changed over all conceivable geological timescales, but that was all on account of the natural phenomenon. But, human activities are making the phenomenon more pronounced since the beginning of the Industrial Age, now emerging as a dominant triggering factor in influencing the overall climate fabric of the planet.

Introduction 
Chapter 16, “Global Warming and Food Security” delves into the intricate relationship between global warming and food security. The chapter opens by defining the multifaceted concept of food security, which includes availability, access, utilization, and stability. It emphasizes the critical importance of these components in ensuring a stable and reliable food supply. The chapter then explores various challenges to food security, highlighting the impact of rapid population growth, climate change, land and water scarcity, poverty, inequality, and conflicts. It underscores how these challenges are compounded by global warming, which exacerbates environmental stressors such as rising temperatures, altered weather patterns, and extreme weather events. The implications for agriculture are profound, affecting crop yields, livestock health, and overall food production. The section on the causes and consequences of global warming outlines key phenomena such as risi ng temperatures, changing weather patterns, melting glaciers, and ocean acidification. It illustrates how these factors disrupt agricultural systems and food distribution networks, leading to increased food insecurity. To address these issues, the chapter discusses various strategies for enhancing food security in a changing climate. These include adopting climate-smart agricultural practices, diversifying crop and livestock systems, developing climateresilient crop varieties, and implementing efficient water management strategies. It also highlights the importance of policy and institutional interventions, supportive measures for smallholder farmers, and research and development initiatives. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the need for collaboration and partnerships among various stakeholders, including governments, international organizations, and the private sector, to effectively address the dual challenges of global warming and food security. Global warming, a consequence of human-induced climate change, has emerged as one of the most pressing challenges of our time. As the Earth’s average temperature continues to rise, it brings about far-reaching impacts that extend to various sectors, including food and agriculture. The intricate relationship between global warming and agriculture is of paramount importance, as agricultural systems are both vulnerable to climate change and significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Understanding the impacts of global warming on

The weather parameters that may occur outside India will also play a dominant role on weather conditions in India. Such weather parameters are called as global weather parameters and were found to play very important role on weather even in most parts of the world. During normal conditions in the Pacific Ocean, trade winds blow west along the equator, taking warm water from South America towards Asia. To replace that warm water, cold water rises from the depths-a process called upwelling. These global parameters are popularly known as El Ni?o, La Ni?a, Southern Oscillation, and ENSO (combination of El Ni?o and Southern Oscillation).

Building upon the foundation laid in earlier chapters, perhaps exploring local weather dynamics and regional climate patterns, the present chapter “Global Weather Parameters and Teleconnections,” takes a significant step back to examine the Earth’s weather systems on a truly planetary scale. Here, we shift our focus to the fundamental forces and patterns that orchestrate the global climate ballet. We will delve into the key global weather parameters – think of these as the vital signs of our planet’s atmosphere – such as the overall distribution of temperature across latitudes and altitudes, the major global pressure belts that drive air movement, and the resulting large-scale wind systems that circulate heat and moisture around the globe. These parameters, born from the interplay of solar radiation, the Earth’s spherical shape, and its continuous rotation, are the primary drivers of our planet’s diverse climates. Beyond these fundamental parameters, this chapter will illuminate the fascinating world of teleconnections. Imagine the atmosphere and oceans as an intricate network, where events in one distant region can have a ripple effect on weather patterns thousands of kilometers away. Teleconnections represent these long-range linkages, acting as the “threads” that connect seemingly disparate weather phenomena. We will explore prominent examples like the El Niño- Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which has profound impacts on rainfall and temperature across the Pacific and well beyond, including potential influences on the Indian monsoon – a topic likely of particular interest given your previous research. Similarly, we will examine phenomena such as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), influencing weather across Europe and North America, and the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), a traveling wave of thunderstorms in the tropics that can affect global circulation. For those interested in agricultural meteorology, the understanding of global weather parameters and teleconnections is paramount. These largescale patterns and their interconnections play a critical role in shaping regional climate variability, influencing the onset and intensity of droughts and floods – events you’ve extensively researched – and impacting crop yields and water availability. By grasping these global drivers, we can enhance our ability to forecast seasonal weather patterns, anticipate potential climate-related risks to agriculture, and develop more informed strategies for long-term agricultural planning and adaptation in a changing world. This chapter aims to provide you

Plants play an important role in maintaining ecological balance by actively participating in the cycling of nutrients and gases like carbon dioxide, oxygen and air pollutants. Sensitivity and responses of plants to air pollutants is variable. Some plants are sensitive and act as bio indicators of air pollution (Kozhouharov et. al. 1985, Guderian, 1998). Others which are tolerant may act as sink to air pollutants. However this aspect needs more investigation for their use as indicators of air pollutants and in abatement of air pollution.

1.1 Introduction

Greenhouse effect, regulated by the presence of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere, is a natural process that plays a major part in shaping the earth’s climate. A continued rise in concentration of the greenhouse gases has led to enhanced greenhouse effect resulting in global warming and global climate change. The impact of human activities on greenhouse gases (GHGs) emission through fossil fuel burning, agriculture and industrial processes is important and familiar to people. This chapter addresses basic principles and physics of greenhouse effect and the role of Indian agriculture in GHG emissions. Agriculture is a potential source and sink to GHGs in atmosphere. It is a source for three primary GHGs: CO₂, N₂O and CH4 and sink for atmospheric CO₂ . Management of agricultural land, land use change and forestry has a profound influence on atmospheric GHGs concentration. The two broad anthropogenic sources of GHGs emission from agriculture are the energy use in agriculture (manufacture and use of agricultural inputs and farm machinery) and the management of agricultural land. Large sections of the India’s population depend on biomass resources like wood, crop residues and cattle dung for energy. In the agriculture sector, besides the CO₂ emissions due to burning of crop and animal waste, India’s large ruminant population and rice fields are significant contributors to CH₄ emissions. An understanding of GHG emissions by sources and removal by sinks in agriculture is important to take appropriate mitigation and adaptation strategies and to estimate and create inventory of GHGs.

3.1 Chemistry of greenhouse gases (ghgs)

Greenhouse gases (GHGs) are atmospheric-gases that have capabilities to absorb and radiate-back the infrared (IR) radiation in the earth-atmosphere system (Figure 3.1). In this process the atmospheric-gases absorb and radiate- back IR radiation in lower atmosphere effectively emitting and absorbing heat energy heat energy. They maintain the heat budget of earth-atmosphere and keep our plant warm. If we typically see the chemistry of those gases, the key point is that they should have dipole moments. This is the property which makes them capable to absorb and radiate-back the range of IR radiation. In a molecule when valence-electrons are not equally shared in a bond between the two atoms, a slight positive charge is developed above one atom and a negative charge on the other atom. That charge difference of the different atoms in a molecule generates the dipole moment. For instance, in water vapour (H₂O- vapour), an unequal sharing of electrons and or separation of charge causes dipole moment. In H₂O, the centre has a positive charge at the hydrogen atoms and negative charges are located on the oxygen atom. The magnitude of dipole- charges, vibration and stretching of O-H bond generates certain frequency of the oscillating dipole moment that actually regulates the absorption capacity of IR radiation by H₂O vapour.

Naturally Greenhouse gases are cover as blanket on the Earth and kept it about 33⁰C warmer than it would be without these gases in the atmosphere. This is called as the “Greenhouse Effect”.

Over the past century, the Earth has increased in temperature by about 0.5⁰C and many scientists believe that this is because of an increase in concentration of the main greenhouse gases viz., carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and fluorocarbons. People are now calling this climate change over the past century the beginning of “Global Warming”.