eChapters

ABSTRACT

The sources of fluoride in groundwater are minerals like fluorite, apatite, mica, amphiboles,cryolite and fluor.spar. The undue concentration of fluoride greater than 1 mg/l has befallen a major toxicological and geoenvironmental issue in India. Excess of fluoride in groundwater causes skeletal and dental fluorisis. The study area forms part of Salem district with records of endemic fluorisis. To decipher process and chemistry of fluoride, a total of 46 groundwater samples were collected from major litho units of the study area (Peninsular gneiss and Charnockite) and analyzed for fluoride using standard procedures for two seasons viz. pre and post monsoon. In pre-monsoon, maximum and minimum fluoride in Peninsular gneiss and charnockite were ranging from 2.85 to 0.4 mg/l and 4.02 to 0.37 mg/l respectively. The coresspnding figures in post monsoon ranges from 2.84 to 0.32 mg/l and 1.91to 0.37 mg/l respectively. Higher concentration was noted in charnockite folowed by peninsular gneiss in pre monsoon and the effect of dilution was well noted in post monsoon season. Statistical analysis undercovers the relationship of fluoride minerals with other ions. Modeling results represent the leaching of fluoride minerals and their variation along with seasons.

Introduction

Water is among the most precious gifts of nature to mankind. Most of the ancient towns of the world grew on the banks of the river, and some of the ancient civilizations are known by the names of rivers. Rivers have always been important sources of drinking water and the means of sustaining human, animal and plant life. Whenever one is dealing with water resources development and utilization, it has to be kept in mind that not only quantity of water but also quality of water is very important. The well being and development of our society is dependent on the availability of water. An increase in groundwater development and utilization for industries and urban water supply has created improper disposal of liquid waste. Defective well constructions, sewage and waste disposal in man made lakes with in the city, open quarries with water and failure to seal the abandoned wells in city area have provided possible openings for downward movement of polluted water into subsurface formations without undergoing the process of natural filtration.

INTRODUCTION

Remote Sensing is an indigenous tool for the Environmental Impact Assessment study. It plays vital role in preparing various thematic maps for understanding the changes that have taken place in an area before and after the establishment activities. In this study we have utilized the capability of the remote sensing techniques in understanding the mining environment. Our study area is in and around the Dalmiapuram Cement Industry in the central part of Tamil Nadu state and it covers part of Trichy and Perambalur districts. It falls between 11₀ 02’ 42’’and 1₀ 03’ 08’’E and 79₀ 09’ 39’’and 79₀ 10’ 30’’N.Dalmiapuram Cement Industry is located in the Kovandakurichi village of Pullambadi block, Trichy district. The mines for cement manufacturing are Perianagalur (PNR), Periathirukonam (PTK), Kallakudi (KLK), Kovandakurichi (KVK) and A&K Mines.

The litho units are Limestone beds containing various proportions of bioclastic and siliciclastic materials. They show wackstone to rudstone fabric and have clasts of re-deposited bound stones. Deposition in a periodically restricted shallow marine setting was indicated by lithological and faunal information. Lower contact is an unconformity surface associated with marine flooding and the upper contact is non-depositional and erosional with overlying biostormal member.

6.1 Introduction

When rainfall strikes a ground surface, some losses like initial and infiltration will occur. After these losses are fulfilled, runoff will begin. The runoff will ultimately reach a stream. The main routes through which runoff flows are (i) overland flow, (ii) interflow and (iii) groundwater flow. Overland flow which is also called as surface flow flows over the land mass and reaches a stream. Overland flow soon reaches a stream and if it occurs in sufficient quantity, it forms an important element in the formation of flood peaks. In small and moderate storms, there may have predominant initial and infiltration losses resulting minimum amount of surface runoff and this is especially true in case of permeable soils. If the soil is impermeable, then there may have reasonable runoff. However, surface runoff is an important factor in streamflow only for heavy or high intensity rainfall.

Water is a social requirement. Society now become aware about it’s dependence upon water and hence realized the importance of water in sustaining not only the development but also life. Water: too little, too much, too dirty; is general scenario in the world. But with increase in population water become limiting resource and is becoming scarcer and scarcer day by day. As water become scarcer commodity, the users (stakeholders) become more conscious regarding their share in water and ultimately this situation may lead to water conflicts. Earlier water related problems were generally tackled by hydro-engineers, but now in present climate changed scenario these problems go beyond the hydraulics and hydrology. Now a days politicians, ecologists, Non Government Organizations (NGOs), the media and the stakeholders etc are playing a crucial role in decision making in respect to water management issues. Now water projects are designed in reference to social context (Social context means cultural, economic, political, sociological, legal and other such aspects). When social factors are taken into consideration while tackling the water problems, it could not possible to satisfy all involved. Thus it is required to agree upon a compromise solution acceptable to all. Over recent few decades, information and communication technology (ICT) flourishes with great advances. It provides the ways to search for compromise solutions. In this chapter information, hydroinformatics, evolution of hydroinformatics and role of internet in hydroinformatics are discussed.

In this era of computer, mathematical models become integral part of hydrologic studies due to advancement in soft technology. But question always arises as ‘Why should modeling?’ It was well expressed by Rosenblueth and Wiener (1945) as

No substantial part of the universe is so simple that it can be grasped and controlled without abstraction. Abstraction consists in replacing the parts of the universe under consideration by a model of similar but simpler structure. Models, formal or intellectual on the one hand, or material on the other are thus a central necessity of scientific procedure.

Hydrological cycle involves four major steps, Viz., Evaporation, Transpiration, Condensation and Precipitation. Though the cycle has neither a beginning nor an end, the concept of cycle begins with the water of oceans, since it occur nearly ¾ of the Earth’s surface. Radiation from the Sun, evaporates water as water vapour from the oceans into the atmosphere. The water vapour rises and collects to form clouds. Under certain condition, the cloud moisture condenses and falls back to the Earth as rain, snow, hail etc. Precipitation reaching the Earth surface may be intercepted by vegetation or enter into the soil, may flow as run-off or may evaporate.

Evaporation may be from the surface of the ground or from free water surface. Transpiration may be from plants.

Condensation: The physical process by which a vapour becomes a liquid or solid – opposite of evaporation.

Water is the most important natural resource that governs and exercises control on living organisms on earth besides supporting all human activities. The demand for water is almost increasing at exponential rate due to increase in population and industrialization. All sectors of agriculture including crop production, horticulture, animal husbandry, poultry and fi sheries primarily depend upon water. Water scarcity can cause all kinds of miseries. The water exists in all 3 different forms on earth. It exists as snow or ice in glaciers and ice caps, liquid water in rivers, lakes, streams, tanks, ponds and as groundwater storage. The water exists in all three different forms in the atmosphere. The clouds may contain fi ne ice particles, tiny water droplets and as well as water vapour. The air in atmosphere also contains water vapour. It is estimated that 97% of water is salt water and remaining 3% of water is pure and fresh water. Approximately two-thirds of the fresh water is trapped in glaciers and ice caps. Most of the fresh water (30%) exists as groundwater. About 0.7% of fresh water exists as soil water and 0.3% a fresh water accounts for surface water resources and water present in the atmosphere as water vapour, water drops and ice particles. The circulation of water between oceans, earth and atmosphere forms hydrologic cycle.
2.1. Hydrological Cycle
The hydrological cycle explains the continuous recirculation and transport of water between the atmosphere, oceans and earth. It is a very complex system that has many sub cycles associated with it. For example, the water from earth surface, oceans and water bodies get evaporated due to heat energy received from the sun in the form of incident solar radiation (Fig.2.1).

Water is fundamental to life, supporting ecosystems, driving economies, and sustaining human well-being. However, the availability of this essential resource is increasingly threatened by hydrological drought, a complex phenomenon characterized by prolonged deficits in surface and subsurface water supplies. Unlike meteorological drought, which is defined by precipitation shortages, hydrological drought manifests as reduced stream flow, diminished lake and reservoir levels, and depleted groundwater, impacting water availability long after the rains have ceased. This chapter looks into the critical aspects of hydrological drought management, exploring the multifaceted nature of this challenge and outlining strategies to mitigate its devastating consequences. We will navigate the intricate web of factors that contribute to hydrological drought, from climatic drivers to the profound influence of human activities. Understanding these causes is paramount to developing effective management approaches.

A disaster is sudden event that causes significant damage to the people, environment and the economy. Disasters are serious disruptions to the functioning of a community that exceed its capacity to cope up using its own resources. The disasters that result either due to excess water or severe water deficit are floods and droughts.
12.1. Floods
The flood is an overflowing of water onto land that is normally dry. Floods may occur due to
• Heavy rainfall
• Ocean waves
• Snow melting
The economic losses due to floods will be very high and nearly 68 per cent of the economic losses are attributed to floods only. During the year 2018, India suffered a loss of nearly 90,000 crores due to floods alone. There are several causes for occurrence of floods in India. The major causes are
• Severe cyclonic storms in coastal areas which produce continuous heavy rainfall for 3 to 4 days in succession
• Encroachment of flood plains with residential structures
• Inadequate strength of river banks when there is high flows of water in the rivers
• Unplanned growth of urban areas
• Silting of water storage structures due to increased soil erosion thereby decreasing the storage capacity of reservoirs
• Simultaneous flooding of rivers and tributaries due to excessive water flows

All agriculture universities have three main Directorates – Education, Research and Extension. Of the three, I have often observed that Extension Department comes in for maximum criticism. ‘Loose links’and ‘need to do much more in transfer of knowledge and technology’ are frequently emphasized at various levels – especially in meetings with farmers groups.

This is understandable – as it is said that less than 10% - often less than 6%, of lab scale knowledge and development reach the farmers fields in developing countries and even in many ‘developed’ counties. The situation is much more challenging when we consider a large population of small and marginal farmers – who as we saw can play extremely important role in eco-agriculture. A large percent of such farmers – women and men are practicing eco friendlyagriculture without realizing it. Their ‘ignorance’ can be converted in to advantage and new opportunity. The age old extension practice of reaching farmers through meetings, visit , seminars, camps, demonstrations all have limitations and need to be ‘scaled up’. New developments in information and communication Technology offer a great opportunity for a big jump in reaching the unreached. Again to alarge population of ‘Green Revolution’ – there is a new hope and opportunity.

Blood Sample collection

Blood samples (5 ml per goat) will be collected aseptically from the jugular vein in a vacutainer tube (B.D. Bioscience, Germany) containing EDTA as anticoagulant and transferred to the laboratory in an ice box.

Isolation of Genomic DNA

The Genomic DNA will be isolated from the blood samples by ‘Phenol: chloroform isolation’ method as described by Sambrook and Russel (2001). The steps for isolation of genomic DNA are as follows:

Abstract

Geochemical processes occurring within the groundwater and reactions with aquifer minerals have a profound effect on water quality. Hydrogeochemical composition of groundwater can also be indicative of its origin and history of passage through underground materials which water has been in contact. Assessing groundwater quality and developing strategies to protect aquifers from contamination are necessary aspects for proper planning and designing water resources. Anthropogenic activities like explosion of population, industrial growth, inputs of fertilizer, pesticides, and irrigation has been a crucial factor for determining the quality of groundwater. In this scenario, 43 groundwater samples were collected from the Dindigul district of Tamilnadu, a Hard rock terrain. The samples wereanalyzed for major cations and anions along with heavy metals to derive the different quality parameters and to obtain the pollution indices of different samples. This study focuses to find out the spatial relationship between the analyzed fluoride concentration in groundwater and pollution indices derived from the heavy metal concentration in the groundwater of the study area and their variation with respect to season.

Abstract

A study on the Subsurface groundwater discharge (SGD) in the coastal Cuddalore region of south east India has been carried out. Measurement of surface water Radon, Water level, Electrical Conductivity (EC) and pH for a total of twenty four hours, by hourly interval the measurement has been calculated and promote correlated with tidal values calculated by WX Tide 32 software. The SGD measurements were made by using a modified seepage meter. The study reveals a match with water level variation and tide with minor variation due to influx of surface water. Saline discharges, fresh groundwater discharges and surface water mixing processes were identified along the coast. Lower SGD (37.24 – 79.16 cm/day) were observed during fresh groundwater discharge.

The sensors present over remote sensing satellites are designed to collect energy or radiance from the varied surface features having wide range of radiance i.e. from features like water bodies having very low radiance to features like sand or snow having very high radiance. But, most of the time, the study area may not have all these features; therefore, radiance values may remain confined to a narrow range. This reduces the contrast of the image, thereby decreases its visual quality. In this context, image contrast enhancement techniques are used for effective visualization and display of remote sensing image on computer screens or hard copy so that maximum amount of information can be derived through its visual interpretation.

Contrast enhancement of a digital image is a technique to modify the original grey levels of input image to the entire available range of the grey levels. This increases the contrast between various features in the image which improves the visual quality of original image. Contrast enhancement can be done by both linear and non-linear methods. Some of the commonly used contrast enhancement techniques with their implementation in R software are discussed in this chapter.

We need following packages for performing this exercise in R. raster package is required for importing of raster image and for performing contrast enhancement. RStoolbox package is also required for contrast enhancement as well as for visualization of raster data with ggplot2 package. rasterVis package is mainly used in this exercise for plotting histogram of the raster data.

Abstract

Before 1960’s, UAE was a poor developing country and almost there were no real signs of civilization. During the 1970’s two important things happened: H. H. Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the president of UAE, and the other Emirates rulers united together and established the United Arab Emirates and considerable oil findings were discovered. The UAE Leadership has proved to have deep future vision; in three decades the country jumped from a relatively backward scattered emirates to a well developed and civilized country.

Development is very obvious : from tents and sandy tracks to tower buildings and highways, from desert to green belts of palm trees and vegetables in all parts of the country, and most important, education, healthcare and all other services became the best in the region. Urban development was so sharp; someone who left the place 10 years ago can hardly know his location and services in all sectors became the best at the international level. The oil money was properly invested in development.

UAE Air Force Space Reconnaissance, used satellite and aerial images for the past 20 years and successfully utilized images from various sources including aerial photographs, Russian satellites images, SPOT and Landsat

Types of Biomedical Waste

1. Infectious waste: waste contaminated with blood and other bodily fluids (e.g. from discarded diagnostic samples), cultures and stocks of infectious agents from laboratory work (e.g. waste from autopsies and infected animals from laboratories), or waste from patients with infections (e.g. swabs, bandages and disposable medical devices)

2. Pathological waste: human tissues, organs or fluids, body parts and contaminated animal dead bodies