eChapters

One Health is defined as “the collaborative effort of multiple disciplines working locally, nationally, and globally to attain optimal health for people, animals and the environment.” The concept of ‘One Health’ dates back to the Greek physician Hippocrates (ca. 460 BCE–a.370) who in his text “On Airs, Waters and Places” stated:

Whoever wishes to investigate medicine properly, should proceed thus: in the first place to consider the seasons of the year, and what effects each of them produces, for they are not all alike, but differ much from themselves in regard to their changes.

The climatic changes and global warming may impact the economic viability of livestock production systems in a significant manner. The possible consequences of increased ambient temperature on the livestock include reduced feed intake, reduced weight gains, lower milk production and lower conception rates during summer periods. Though animals can, to some extent, adapt to higher temperatures with prolonged exposure, the production losses are likely to be exhibited in response to higher temperature events. However, potential direct and indirect impacts of climate change on livestock production have not yet been thoroughly explored. Changes in availability and quality of fodder have also been identified as one of the major impacts of climate changes leading to lowered productivity of livestock species. Climate change could also affect the distribution of vector-borne livestock diseases. These changes occur as a result of shifts in the geographical ranges of ticks, mosquitoes, flies and other vectors.

Over the past decades climate change and climate related disaster risks have become more important than ever. The effects of climate change are unprecedented today and thus pose serious risks for human wellbeing, livelihoods and life-supporting systems. They also present serious challenges to society, in addition, increased climate variability significantly undermine the socio-economic development and environment. The consequences of climatic change, such as increase in frequency and extent of droughts, floods, cyclones, mudslides and avalanches have impacts on all sectors of economy including water, agriculture, fisheries, health, forestry, transport, tourism and energy sectors. Amongst these sectors, the agricultural sector is one of the most vulnerable sectors to impacts of climate change, which can have multiplicative effects on other sectors, as well as the economy and overall human being. The projected climate change towards warming may affect not only the crop cultivation but also on agro-climatic conditions for growing pasture vegetation, forming of feed stocks in pastures and conditions for grazing livestock. Favourable conditions for grazing livestock are determined, on the one hand, by sufficient amount of forage in pastures and on the other, by the extreme weather conditions that restrict the use of these fodders.

Increase in ambient temperature, drought, rainfall, desert, feed and fodder scarcity, water scarcity and other climatic stresses are very common to tropical climatic conditions. The animals living in tropical climate have to undergo some modification for their survival under such extreme conditions. Interestingly, higher percentage of livestock is found in tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world. These areas are rich in animal resources. There are several descriptive and non-descriptive breeds of bovine distributed in different agro-climatic conditions of India. They possess several traits which make them adaptive to such climatic conditions. Identifying those traits and propagation of such traits is beneficial in near future in respect of climate change scenario. Climate change is the major concern for the improvement and sustainability of livestock under tropical climatic conditions. The rising of temperature and humidity is one of the major threats to animal’s productive performance that leads to great economic losses. Upadhyay et al. (2009) estimated 2% loss of milk production due to thermal stress in India. It has also been expected that 3.2 million tons reduction by 2020 and more than 15 million tons by 2050. The decline in milk production reported to be higher in crossbreds (0.63%) followed by buffaloes (0.5%) and indigenous cattle (0.4%) (Upadhyay et al., 2009). 

We are entering an era when certain environmental conditions will exert a degree of concern which has never been before encountered by man in the course of human history.

The survival of human beings depends on the realisation that they have to live in harmony with the various elements of the environment which are interconnected.
    
(i)     An understanding of the components and processes which takes place in the environment.
    
(ii)     The relationship between different abiotic and biotic components and the assessment of resources with reference to needs of people in a region is essential for their survival.
    
(iii)     A reduction in rate of growth of population in developing countries and a reduction in consumption of resources by developed countries would lead to a balance between population and resources. In this manner, the awareness of the problems faced by environment would enable people to take appropriate decisions. This makes the earth habitable for future generations.

“Natural” means an ecosystem not influenced by man and resources means that reserve stock of supply which living things can take from nature for sustenance of life. In reference to man, natural resources can be defined as those natural reserve stocks of supply which man utilizes for his sustenance and welfare. The reservoirs of natural resources are the sun,  the  atmosphere,  the  lithosphere  and the  hydrosphere.  Natural resources include energy, air, water, soil, minerals, plants and animals. The nature of resource depends upon many factors such as scientific and technological development of the society, profession of that particular society, and culture.

Conservation has always been one of the most important applications of ecology.Unfortunately, the term “conservation” suggest “hoarding”, as if the idea were simply to ration static supplies so that there would be some left for the future. In the eye of the general public the “conservationist” is too often presumed to be an antisocial person who is against any kind of “development”. What the real conservationist is  against  is unplanned  development  that breaks  ecological  as  well as human laws. The true aim of conservation, is two fold–
    
(1)     To ensure the  preservation of a  quality  environment that considers esthetic and recreational as well as product needs; and  
    
(2)     To ensure as continuous yield of useful plants, animals and materials by establishing a balanced cycle of harvest and renewal.

The ‘greenhouse effect’ earns its name from the rough similarity between the way it works and the way the glass of a greenhouse works. Glass too, is transparent to short-wave radiation but opaque to long-wave radiation, so the greenhouse traps heat.
Carbon dioxide plays a critical role in controlling the Earth’s climate because as an aerosol it absorbs and reflects or scatters incoming radiation on the one hand and absorbs and reradiates outgoing infrared radiation on the other. This latter phenomenon results in what is popularly called the Greenhouse Effect, an analogy to what happens in a greenhouse.

The ozone layer is a region in the Earth’s stratosphere where a certain amount of incoming solar radiation is absorbed. Over the last twenty years or so a series of man-made threats to it have been reported and each has been treated  with more gravity than the last. Now a-days such threats feature  regularly on the agendas of international conferences.

Ozone, Positive and Negative : Ozone, or trimolecular oxygen (O3) can be advantageous or exert harmful influence on human health, as well as that of other organisms. It is all depends on whether it is present in the troposphere or stratosphere (Fig. 8.1). In the stratosphere, ozone is a beneficial serving as a shield in screening out most of the damaging portions of ultraviolet radiation which have wavelengths between 290 and 320 nanometers. In the troposphere, ozone is a negative as it appears as a component of smog with a number of deleterious effects, as will be discussed below.

Water is indispensable for our life. About 2/3 of earth is covered with water. No organism can survive without water. So keeping water free from any pollutant is very important. Water is said to be  “polluted” when it is hanged in its quality and composition directly or indirectly by man’s activity so that it becomes less suitable for drinking, domestic, agricultural or any other purpose. Polluted water transmits a large number of diseases in man. They are cholera, typhoid, dysentery, jaundice and other bacterial or viral diseases.  Water becomes polluted by the presence or addition on inorganic or organic substances or biological agents. Soil erosion, leaching of minerals from rocks, decaying of organic matter are natural sources of water pollution. There has been an alarming increase in the degradation of water quality in the recent past in the large cities and industrial areas.

Water pollution can be studied under the following heads—  (i) medium in which it occurs (surface water, ground water); (ii) habitat (lakes, estuaries and open seas); and (iii) type of pollutants (bacterial, metallic, thermal and radioactive).

Soil pollution happens when we destroy the thin layer of healthy and productive soil, which covers the earth’s surface. Most of the world’s food is produced using this resource and if we don’t protect it the world’s farmers will be unable to grow enough food to support the worlds people.
 
Healthy soil depends on bacteria, fungi, and small animals (such as worms) to break down wastes in the soil and release its nutrients which help plants grow. The over use of fertilizers and pesticides can limit the ability of soil organisms to process wastes, which in turn makes the soil less productive or in the worst case scenario useless or even poisonous. 

For the hundreds of thousands of years that we lived on earth,there were few rapid changes in the atmosphere. It is only in recent times, particularly since the Industrial Revolution, that our activities on earth began to modify our environment in a significant manner.  Industrial pollution has affected the water we drink, the air we breathe, and in general,the biosphere itself.Now noise has joined the bandwagon of pollutants.

Noise certainly comes within the scope of definition of a pollutant that “..... any undesirable change in the physical, chemical or biological characteristics of our air, land and water that may or will harmfully affect human life or that of any other desirable species or industrial process, living conditions or cultural assets, or that may or will waste or deteriorate our raw material resources.”

Pesticides are used to control plant growth (herbicides), insects (insecticides), worms  (vermicides), bacteria (bacteriocides), fungi (fungicides), and other organisms. Almost without exception, pesticides are used to benefit humans by the control of unwanted species of plants (e.g. weeds in a lawn), disease-causing bacteria (e.g., Pneumococcus, the causative agent of pneumonia), disease-carrying insects (e.g. malarial or yellow fever mosquitoes) or in controlling destruction of agricultural products by disease-causing organisms (e.g., corn-borers, the virus of anthurium blight). Although they are by and large mostly beneficial, pesticides used both properly and improperly are also “resources out of place”, that is pollutants, that are subject to normal ecological processes.

It is a well known fact that natural disasters strikes countries, both developed and developing, causing enormous destruction and creating human sufferings and producing negative impacts on national economies. Due to diverse geo-climatic conditions prevalent in different parts of the globe, different types of natural disasters like floods, droughts, earthquakes, cyclones, landslides, volcanoes, etc. strikes according to the vulnerability of the area. India is considered as the world’s most disaster prone country. It has witnessed devastating natural disasters in recent past like droughts, floods, cyclones, earthquakes, landslides, etc. 

The phenomenon we call tsunami is a series of large waves of extremely long wavelength and period usually generated by a violent, impulsive undersea disturbance or activity near the coast or in the ocean. A tsunami is a very long-wavelength wave of water that is generated by sudden displacement of the seafloor or disruption of any body of standing water.  Tsunami are sometimes called “seismic sea waves”, although, as we will see, they can be generated by mechanisms other than earthquakes.  Tsunami have also been called “tidal waves”, but this term should not be used because they are not in any way related to the tides of the Earth.  Because tsunami occur suddenly, often without warning, they are extremely dangerous to coastal communities.

Continental drift is the theory that continents move slowly about the earth’s surface, changing their positions relative to one another and to the poles of the earth. It includes the idea that former continents may have broken apart and that the fragments have recombined in different patterns (Fig. 15.1). Some authorities have considered that this happened only once, beginning within the past 200 million years; others believe that it has long been a continuous process, so that all existing continents are mosaics. Those who accept the theory believe that the rates of motion have been only a few inches a year. Earlier, it was considered that the continents moved like ships through a slightly plastic ocean floor. Today some consider that the continents are frozen into the earth’s surface like rafts in ice, and that the motions are the result of growth of the sea floor along certain midocean ridges and reabsorption of the sea floor elsewhere beneath deep ocean trenches and young mountains. The continents are carried passively about embedded in moving plates of the surface. Some authorities  now  agree  that  there  is  a  deformable  layer,  called  the asthenosphere, at depths of from about 50 to 400 kilometers within the earth. It is white hot, and slightly viscous, and many believe that the surface can break into plates which slide over it.

HUMAN POPULATION GROWTH

The evolution of man took place about one million years ago in response to changes in the physical environment. We learnt gradually to adapt different modes of life to varying environments and migrated different parts of the world. Human activities have had their impact on the environment, which was depending on the number of people living in  the area and  their level  of economic development. Per capita consumption of food, energy and other resources in developed countries is larger and its impact on the environment is much greater than equal number of persons living in developing countries in Africa or Asia. Therefore, the distribution of population needs to be examined in detail.

Energy, food production and various other natural resources are the limiting factors on this earth. The result of this bitter truth has been published in a book titled ‘The Limits to Growth’ in 1972. If the enormously growing population and the industrial process is not checked, then the earth’s civilization may come to an end within next hundred years.

By considering the space travel, we can very well understand about the Ecosystem. When we go away from the biosphere, it will be appropriate to develop unlimited environment through the energy accumulated from the sunlight in space. For the space travel for some days to moon and back to earth, we need not establish the entire ecological system as greater quantity of O₂ and food stuffs can be stored and CO₂ and other unwanted materials can be fixed for establishing space colonies, we have to build a special space ship with important abiotic components which can be recycled for use again and again. The vital processes of production, consumption and decomposition can be established and balanced through biotic components. In other words we are creating a complete mini human ecological machine. Before we established this system, we should be quite familiar about the space problems and its implications.

3.1.Processes
                    
    Leaching                    
    Fragmentation/Comminution
    Catabolism                    
    Decomposition models
                
3.2. Patterns
                    
    Litter decomposition
    Root decomposition                    
    Limit values for decomposition            
    Decomposition pattern in ecosystems

1.1    General Circulation of the Atmosphere
    
1.2    World Climates
    
1.3    World Climate Classification by Köppen’s method
    
1.4    Climatic Classification over India
    
1.5    Asian Summer Monsoon and Rainfall Distribution
    
1.6    The Indian Monsoon
    Features of monsoon
    Monsoon circulation
    Onset of monsoon
    Withdrawal of monsoon
    Southwest monsoon rainfall
    Active phase of monsoon
    Break monsoon conditions
    Winter monsoon

1.7    Causes for Failure of Monsoon
    
    Prediction of onset of monsoon rainfall

1.8    Spatial Distribution of Weather Parameters over India
    Rainfall
    Temperature
    Humidity
    Sunshine and Radiation
    Wind speed

1.9    Famines in India
    
1.10    Historical Evidences of Droughts
    
1.11    Distribution of Drought Prone Regions over the Globe
    1.11.1    Occurance of drought in different countries
    
1.12    Distribution of Drought Prone Regions in India
    
1.13    Weather Phenomena Associated with Droughts
    
1.14    Effect of Droughts on Natural Resources
    1.14.1    Surface water resources
    1.14.2    Groundwater sources
    
1.15    Impact of Latest Droughts on Crop Production in India
    
1.16    Economic Impacts of Droughts in India
    
1.17    Economic Impacts of Droughts in other Nations
        
References