eChapters

A sound is a form or energy. Therefore, it has to have an impact on life in one way or the other. Most of the organisms of Kingdom Animalia communicate with each other creating a peculiar sound. Creating sound is inevitable for performing various life activities. Every animal species has the characteristic sound it reflects through its behavior. Whatever all the animals communicate through creating specific sounds is all-natural. Nature, as such is a stupendous repository of a diversity of sounds, all being specific characteristics of life.

Human behavior, however, is highly evolved in terms of creating a variety of sounds. Communication, entertainment, and many behavioral activities are expressed through creating distinctive sounds. There is a difference between natural sounds and the ones human beings create or can create. Humans often generate sounds, not just in a natural manner, but also with various technical aids, that often become unpleasant what we call noise. Creating noise, or noise pollution, seems to be an exclusive characteristic of the human species. Of course, there could be some natural sounds that might occasionally cause havoc to life. Examples are the sounds generated at the time of the volcanic eruption, during an earthquake

Radioactive pollution is largely attributable to radioactivity, a natural property of certain elements, such as radium, uranium, thorium, etc. of spontaneously emitting protons (alpha particles), electrons (beta particles), and gamma rays (short-wave electromagnetic waves) through the disintegration of their atomic nuclei (nuclides).

An alpha particle consists of two protons and two neutrons, which is akin to a helium nucleus. Alpha particles travel at a very slow speed, whereas gamma rays propagate at the speed of light. The alpha particles have less penetration power than the beta and gamma rays. In human tissues, alpha particles can penetrate up to a depth of about 0.005 to 0.008 cm. The gamma rays, on the other hand, are the most penetrating and can easily pass through a human body without striking anything in between. The high penetration power of gamma rays is because they have no charge; therefore, they do not interact with anything as the charged alpha particles would do

Temperature influences most plant processes, including photosynthesis, transpiration, respiration, germination, flowering, adaptation and distribution of crops. As temperature increases (up to a point), photosynthesis, transpiration, and respiration increase. When combined with day-length, temperature also affects the change from vegetative (leafy) to reproductive (flowering) growth. Depending on the situation and the specific plant, the effect of temperature can either speed up or slow down this transition.

Temperature is the measure of mean kinetic energy per molecule of the molecules in an object, while the heat is the measure of total kinetic energy of all the molecules of that object. A large object may  have a much lower temperature than a small object and may still have greater heat content by virtue of larger number of molecules in it. Thus heat and temperature are not the same.

Abstract

Geomorphology not only provides the panorama on the external architecture of the Earth surface, but also it is the record of the past geological events including the climate, especially of the Quaternary period. Detailed geomorphology map was prepared using the IRS LISS IV FCC and SRTM data showing the tectonic, denudational and fluvial landforms of Kollai hill, Eastern Ghats, Tamil Nadu. The geomorphic features showed that the Kollai hill can be divided into two as northern and southern blocks separated by a NE-SW active sinistral fault in the overall N-S rectangular hill. The integration all the geological , structural and geomorphic features show that the Kolli hill is under the grip of uplift in the south west with hinge towards north easterly. Because of this, the northern block/rim of the hill is fragmented into a series of East-West trending fracture/ fault swarms which are sympathetic tectonic grains to the Attur graben rimming the Kollai hill to its north. This phenomenon seems to control the overall resources and environment of the hill.

Introduction

The mountains are not only the store houses of natural resources like minerals, water, geothermal springs, forest & biomass etc., but also possesses unique & self-styled ecosystems drafting the mankind from the plains for comfort and livelihood. Further, the tourists are highly attracted by the mountain regions due to the ecosystems, climate and scenic beauty. Due to all these, the resources of the mountains are exponentially exploited during the recent 6–7 decades thus causing phenomenal depletion of natural resources and initiation of chains of environmental disorders, viz., deforestation triggered soil erosion, landslides, debris dumping along the slopes and foot hills, sedimentation of the downhill reservoirs & drainages, all of which in turn induce haphazard flooding. Hence, the Union and various Federal Governments have started working on the restoration of the ecosystems of their respective mountain regions in several nations. In the Indian sub- continent too, both under the Centrally sponsored schemes and the State funding, number of Hill Area Development Programmes have been initiated and going on especially in Himalayas, Easternghats and Westernghats. The state of Tamil Nadu possesses both Easternghats and Westernghats. While the Westernghats are found along the western part of the state with NNW-SSE orientation, the Easternghats represented by the Kollai- Pachhamalai hills, Shevroy - Chitteri – Kalrayan hills and Javadi hills, aligned in N-S direction, are traversing the Central part of Tamil Nadu. To comprehensively understand the resources, hazards potential, the ecosystems and also the modern geological processes which only control and tutor them, a geomatics based study was carried out in Kollai hills so that it can be used as a reference study to all those who are engaged in eco-restoration and hill area development programmes in India.

The extreme weather events being experienced at a greater frequency now a days are due to accelerated climate change caused mostly due to global warming. Global warming is basically a change in the climatic conditions of the Earth, brought about by a considerable rise in the near-surface temperature of the planet. Earth’s surface and the troposphere become warmer due to absorption of infrared radiation emitted by the Earth’s surface by Green House Gases(GHGs). The important green house gases include carbon dioxide(CO₂),methane(CH₄) nitrous oxide(N₂O), chloro-?uoro-carbons(CFCs), ozone(O₃) and water vapour(H₂O). Various climate models predict major changes in our weather patterns, environment, and way of life in absence of efforts for substantial reductions in GHG emissions. The CO₂ gas concentration of atmosphere has increased to 385 ppm as against the normal concentration of 300 ppm. The atmosphere contains only 1 % of the total global carbon pool. The undesirable changes can be reversed by increasing soil and eco system carbon pools, increasing mean resident time(MRT) of sequestered carbon and decreasing GHG emission to atmosphere.

AERATION, SOIL: The exchange of air in soil with air from the atmosphere. The air in a well aerated soil is similar to that in the atmosphere; the air in a poorly aerated soil is considerably higher in carbon dioxide and lower in oxygen.

The Review of literature is a critical summary of published academic research and other sources on a particular topic or research question. It involves identifying, analyzing, and synthesizing relevant research studies, books, articles, and other sources to provide a comprehensive overview of what is known and not known about the topic.

A good review of literature should be well-structured, focused, and provide a balanced and objective analysis of the existing literature. The following are the key elements of a literature review:

1. Introduction: The introduction should provide background information on the topic and highlight the importance of the research question.

2. Search Strategy: The search strategy should outline the databases and search terms used to identify relevant literature.

3. Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria: The inclusion and exclusion criteria should be clearly defined to ensure that only relevant studies are included in the review.

The solar energy is the main source of energy for the processes occurring at the earth surface and in its atmosphere. Crop production, is in fact an exploitation of solar radiation and plants are the converters of solar energy into a useful form of energy which is biomass and sustain life providing food, fodder, fiber, fuel, fruits etc. Sun energy fulfills two essential needs of the plants i.e.  (i) light for photosynthesis including many other photo processes and functions of the plants, (ii) thermal conditions required for the normal physiological functions of the plant. Thus, the crop production and agriculture is basically dependent on quality and quantity of radiation.

A model is something that mimics the behavior of some real system of interest. Our interest here will be in water quality models, which are usually equations, and which predict some result based on factors that influence that result. A water quality model is a representation of a real system. The essence of a good water quality model is that it is simple in design and exhibits the basic properties of the real system that we are attempting to understand. The model should be testable against empirical data. The comparisons of the model to the real system should ideally lead to improved mathematical models. The model may suggest improved experiments to highlight a particular aspect of the problem, which in turn may improve the collection of data. Thus, modeling itself is an evolutionary process, which continues toward learning more about certain processes rather than finding an absolute reality.

Water pollution is a large set of adverse effects upon water bodies such as lakes, rivers, oceans, groundwater caused by human activities. Although natural phenomena such as volcanoes, storms, earthquakes etc. also cause major changes in water quality and the ecological status of water while these are not deemed to be pollution. Water pollution has many causes and characteristics. Increases in nutrient loading may lead to eutrophication. Organic wastes such as domestic sewage and farm waste impose high oxygen demands on the receiving water leading to oxygen depletion with potentially severe impacts on the whole ecosystem. Industrial discharge a variety of pollutants in their wastewater including heavy metals, organic toxins, oils, nutrients, and solids. Discharges can also have thermal effects, especially those from thermal and nuclear power stations, and these too reduce the available oxygen. Siltbearing runoff from many activities including construction sites, forestry and farms can inhibit the penetration of sunlight through the water column restricting photosynthesis and causing blanketing of the lake or river bed which in turns damages the ecosystems the process is called as eutrophication.

Pollutants in water include a wide spectrum of chemicals, pathogens, and physical chemistry or sensory changes. Many of the chemical substances are toxic or even carcinogenic. Pathogens can obviously produce waterborne diseases in either human or animal hosts. Alteration of water’s physical chemistry include acidity, conductivity, temperature, and excessive nutrient loading. Even many of the municipal water supplies in developing countries can present health risks leads to many diseases.

2.1 Historical Development

We have seen in Chapter 1 that modeling is about establishing cause effect relationship. Perhaps one of the earliest attempts in this direction is made as early as 1848 in Germany where it was tried to establish a relation between purity and pollution to the occurrence of certain biological organism. But as far as water quality modeling is concerned the first major breakthrough in this direction is the effort of Streetor and Phelps (1925) in oxygen sag curve. They developed model for estimating DO and BOD in Ohio River. The work of O’Conner (1962) for bacteria models are major milestone in pre-computer era modeling.

With the advent of computer during 1960s complicated kinetics and time variable simulation came into being. Most of the workers presented their efforts in terms of linear programming based water management models concerning waste discharge. Thomann(1963) has formulated linear programming based models for dissolved oxygen in an estuary. So a stage is set for study of eutrophication through modeling, but the problem is determination of values of various parameters in these equations.

During 1970s models expanded in terms of complexities mainly because of enhanced computational facilities. Two dimensional and dynamic framework has started replacing one dimensional steady state configurations. In the same year, Di Toro presented an analysis of the steady state two dimensional concentration distribution that results in the horizontal plane from the continuous discharge of a non-conservative substances (DO and BOD) into an infinite body of water.

Abstract

With increasing population and subsequent human requirements; the generation of municipal solid waste (MSW) has increased all over the world. In India, the safe disposal of the municipal solid waste still remaines a problem for the authorities concerned. Depending upon the nature and type of the MSW, there are physical and chemical methods for the disposal of the waste, but these methods have their own limitations. Those limitations may be overcome by biological methods. Higher number of microorganisms are present in MSW which may either be pathogenic or nonpathogenic. These microorganisms may play a vital role in bioconversion of MSW into compost. The compost thus produced is useful in increasing soil fertility and reducing the concentration of the waste.

Introduction

In order to cater to the nutritional needs of a rapidly growing population, it is imperative to increase food grain production on the same land while maintaining the soil’s productive capacity. This necessitates comprehensive research to establish a scientific foundation for enhancing and sustaining food production and soil productivity with minimal environmental impact (Rathore et al., 2010). Balanced nutrition extends beyond the application of nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium in specific quantities through fertilizers. It entails ensuring that the soil contains the right proportions of available nutrients to meet the crop’s requirements for optimal yield (Rathore et al., 2010).

Introduction

Precision farming, also known as precision agriculture, prescription farming, and site-specific farming, is grounded on the principle of managing fields based on their heterogeneity (Nowak 2021). In the past, crop management decisions were made for the entire field, treating it as a homogenous unit, despite significant variations in soil characteristics, weed infestations, and plant growth within a field (Nowak 2021). Precision agriculture integrates modern technology with past experience to manage farming on a grid-by-grid basis (Nowak 2021).

10.1 Introduction

Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) is a chemical procedure for determining how fast biological organisms use up oxygen in a body of water. It is usually performed over a 5 day period at 20 C. It is used in water quality management and assessment, ecology and environmental science. BOD is not an accurate quantitative test, although it could be considered as an indication of the quality of a water source.

10.2 Typical BOD values

Most pristine rivers will have a 5-day BOD of less than 1 mg/l. Moderately polluted rivers may have a BOD value in the range of 2 to 8 mg/l. Municipal sewage that is efficiently treated by a three stage process would have a value of about 20 mg/l. Untreated sewage varies, but averages around 600 mg/l in India and as low as 200 mg/l in the U.S., or where there is severe groundwater or surface water infiltration. Slurry from dairy farms is around 8000 mg/l and silage liquor around 60000 mg/l.

11.1 Introduction

Salinity is the saltiness or dissolved salt content of a body of water. The technical term for saltiness in the ocean is halinity, from the fact that halides, chloride specifically are the most abundant anions in the mix of dissolved elements. In oceanography, it has been traditional to express halinity not as percent, but as parts per thousand (ppt ), which is approximately grams of salt per liter of solution. In other disciplines chemical analyses of solutions, and thus salinity is frequently reported in mg/L or ppm (parts per million). Prior to 1978, salinity or halinity was expressed as % usually based on the electrical conductivity ratio of the sample to “Copenhagen water”, an artificial sea water manufactured to serve as a world “standard”(Lewis, E.L 1980). In 1978, oceanographers redefined salinity in Practical Salinity Units (psu): the conductivity ratio of a sea water sample to a standard KCl solution (UNESCO, 1981a) (UNESCO, 1981b). Ratios have no units, so it is not the case that 35 psu exactly equals 35 grams of salt per litre of solution (UNESCO, 1985).

These seemingly esoteric approaches to measuring and reporting salt concentrations may appear to obscure their practical use; but it must be remembered that salinity is the sum weight of many different elements within a given volume of water. It has always been the case that to get a precise salinity as a concentration and convert this to an amount of substance required knowing much more about the sample and the measurement than just the weight of the solids upon evaporation. For example, volume is influenced by water temperature; and the composition of the salts is not a constant. Saline waters from inland seas can have a composition that differs from that of the ocean. For the latter reason, these waters are termed saline as differentiated from ocean waters, where the term haline applies.

Nearly 70% of the world’s population will live in cities by the year 2050, and cities currently pump out 70% of greenhouse gas emissions. Buildings alone contribute nearly 40% of emissions. This is also true for Indian cities, which are responsible for 40% of the energy use, 30% of raw material use, and 20% of land use. The residential and commercial buildings account for 31 % of the electricity consumption and are rising at 10-12 % annually. As per estimates, approximately 75% of the building stock that India will see in the year 2047 is yet to be built. For all these issues, renewable energy is the major solution.

Abstract

Microbiological synthesis of nanoparticles has emerged as rapidly developing research area in nanotechnology across the globe with various biological entities being employed in production of nanoparticles constantly forming an impute alternative for conventional methods. Simple prokaryotes to complex eukaryotic organisms including higher plants are used for the fabrication of nanoparticles. In the present article, the synthesis of important plant nutrients like Mg, Zn, Ag, Au, Ti, P and Fe nanoparticles from different fungal species, their characterization and application potential of nanonutrients in agriculture is elaborately discussed.

What is A Smart Energy Home?

Smart homes use internet - connected devices to enable remote monitoring and management of appliances and systems, such as temperature, lighting, and security cameras. Smart energy homes take a step beyond the gadget-filled smart home to focus on bringing smart functionality to major household energy-using systems like HVAC, water heating, and plug loads (including appliances and electronics).

Introduction

Greenhouse gases (GHGs) are the atmospheric trace gases which absorb and emit infra-red radiation and thereby trapping the heat radiated from the earth surface. The commonly known agriculturally important GHGs are carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O). The major anthropogenic sources of CO₂ emission in atmosphere are biosphere, burning of fossil fuels and land use changes in tropical forests. The atmospheric concentration of CO₂ has increased from 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv) in 1750 to 394 ppmv in 2012 and is currently increasing at the rate of 1.9 ppmv year-1 (NOAA, 2012). Atmospheric CH₄ concentration has increased from about 715 to 1826 parts per billion by volume (ppbv) in 2012 over the same period and is increasing at the rate of 7 ppbv year-1 (IPCC, 2007; EPA, 2013). Similarly, the atmospheric concentration of N₂O has increased from about 270 ppbv in 1750 to 325 ppbv and is increasing at the rate of 0.8 ppbv year-1 (IPCC, 2007; EPA, 2013).

15.1 Introduction

A tsunami is a series of waves created when a body of water, such as an ocean, is rapidly displaced. Earthquakes, mass movements above or below water, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explosions, landslides, large meteorite impacts and testing with nuclear weapons at sea all have the potential to generate a tsunami. The effects of a tsunami can range from unnoticeable to devastating. The term tsunami comes from the Japanese words meaning harbor (“tsu”,) and wave (“nami”,). The term is created by fishermen who returned to port to find the area surrounding their harbor devastated, although they had not been aware of any wave in the open water. Tsunamis are common throughout Japanese history; approximately 195 events in Japan have been recorded.

A tsunami has a much smaller amplitude offshore, and a very long wavelength (often hundreds of kilometers long), which is why they generally pass unnoticed at sea, forming only a passing “hump” in the ocean (Fig. 15.1). Tsunami have been historically referred to as tidal waves because as they approach land, they take on the characteristics of a violent onrushing tide rather than the sort of cresting waves that are formed by wind action upon the ocean (Iwan, W.D., 2006).