Pertanika Journal of Scholarly Research Reviews (PJSRR - Universiti Putra Malaysia, UPM)
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Hydrological Responses to Climate and Land Use Change at Watershed Scale_ Malaysia
Full text linkThe hydrological effects of climate variation and land use conversion can occur at various spatial scales, but the most important sources of these changes are at the regional or watershed scale. In addition, the managerial and technical measures are primarily implemented at local and watershed scales in order to mitigate adverse impacts of human activities on the renewable resources of the watershed. Therefore, quantitative estimation of the possible hydrological consequences of potential land use and climate changes on hydrological regime at watershed scale is of tremendous importance. This paper focuses on the impacts of climate change as well as land use change on the hydrological processes of river basin based on pertinent published literature which were precisely scrutinized. The various causes, forms, and consequences of such impacts were discussed to synthesize the key findings of literature in reputable sources and to identify gaps in the knowledge where further research is required. Results indicate that the watershed-scale studies were found as a gap in tropical regions. Also, these studies are important to facilitate the application of results to real environment. Watershed scale studies are essential to measure the extent of influences made to the hydrological conditions and understanding of causes and effects of climate variation and land use conversion on hydrological cycle and water resources
A Review of Potentialities and Challenges of Integrating Remote Sensing and GIS with Socioeconomic Data
Full text linkThe aim of this paper is to review the potentialities and major methodological challenges of integrating remote sensing (RS) and geographic information system (GIS) with socioeconomic data from published articles or book chapters. RS and GIS combined with social science (SS)(termed as geoinformation technology) serve many applications for sustainable management and monitoring of the environment. This combined approach gives more accurate results than the single one. It makes information available about the trend and pattern of land use and land cover change (LUCC) with socioeconomic variables like population, demographic or income. This combined study which links RS and GIS with socioeconomic data can also be used successfully for monitoring transmission rate of disease and mapping or preparing vulnerability index. For impact assessment and modelling, this combined technology provides better results than the single one. There are some methodological problems for the researchers to link completely two different disciplines as the object of study and observational unit is completely different. However, this interdisciplinary study is gaining popularity day by day to researchers from different disciplines as well as decision makers
Application of Remote Sensing Instruments in Air Quality Monitoring in Malaysia
Full text linkThe use of remote sensing in detecting aerosol or air pollution is not widely applied in Malaysia. The large area of coverage provided by remote sensing satellite may well be the solution to the lack of spatial coverage by the local ground air quality monitoring stations. This article discusses the application of remote sensing instruments in air quality monitoring of Malaysia. The remote sensing data is validated using ground truths either from local ground air monitoring stations or the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET). The correlation between remote sensing is relatively good with R from 0.5 to 0.9 depending on the satellite used. The correlation is much improved using the mixed effects algorithm applied on MODIS Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) data. Accuracy of predicted air quality data by remote sensing is generally tested using the Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) against the ground truths data. Besides the Geographic Information System (GIS) tools are used in manipulating the data from both remote sensing and ground stations so as to produce meaningful results such as spatio-temporal pattern mapping of air pollution. Overall the results showed that the application of remote sensing instruments in air quality monitoring in Malaysia is very useful and can be improved further
Molecular Detection, Identification and Differentiation of Burkholderia pseudomallei
Full text linkBurkholderia pseudomallei are Gram negative highly pathogenic bacteria of humans and animals causing a multisystemic disease called melioidosis. They have recently gained a lot of interest from the research community and public health organisations because of their great potential to be used as an agent of bioterrorism. This has made the search for simple, rapid, accurate and the most definitive means of their detection, identification and discrimination very critical and necessary. This article aimed to review the molecular techniques used for detection, identification and differentiation of B. pseudomallei. Although, culture and isolation techniques maintained their usefulness in confirming cases of melioidosis, their time limitation (can take up to a week for confirming diagnosis) leads to the search for rapid and simple techniques. Consequently, serology-based tests have been developed which are both faster and less sophisticated. However, the presence of high background titre levels and cross-reaction with other organisms make it less reliable. Thus, efforts have been directed to explore rapid and accurate molecular techniques and resulting in the development and validation of various PCR-based identification techniques targeting either single or multiple genes. Although requiring some level of instrumentation and expertise, PCR-based techniques have been reported to be very useful in diagnosis of melioidosis. We recommend the 16S rRNA PCR (especially augmented with other molecular methods such as gene sequencing and analysis) and MLST techniques for timely detection, identification and differentiation of B. pseudomallei for routine diagnosis and epidemiological studies respectively
Biochemical Biomarkers: Fish Cholinesterase Biosensor for Heavy Metals Detection in Aquatic Pollution Monitoring
Full text linkRecently, the contamination of heavy metals towards the environment especially in aquatic system has drastically increased. Heavy metals are able to transform into persistent metallic compound in which it can be accumulated within the organisms’ body system, disrupting the food chain and eventually threatened the human life. The occurrence of heavy metals spillage in the rivers and lakes are due to the careless disposal of excess heavy metals used for human activities. The accumulation of heavy metals in water system will affect all aquatic organisms especially fish. The toxicity of copper in fish can be determined by several changes in the fish under treatment with heavy metals sub-lethal concentration, LC50 within 96-hours period of acute exposure. Therefore, fish can be considered as a high potential biomarker for monitoring heavy metals pollution in aquatic system. Several selective organs are highly sensitive to the xenobiotic pollution and express changes to the exposure. One of the most potential biomarker is the biochemical biomarker of cholinesterase (ChE) inhibition by heavy metals in fish has been well studied in pollution monitoring recently. Thus, this paper gives an overview of the manipulation of fish as a biomarker of heavy metals through enzymatic reaction which have proven to be very useful in the environmental pollution monitoring