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Impact assessment of surface ozone exposure on crop yields at three tropical stations over India
No full textSurface ozone is a damaging pollutant for crops and ecosystems, and the ozone-induced crop losses over India remain uncertain and a topic of debate due to a lack of sufficient observations and uncertainties involved in the modeled results. In this study, we have used the observational data from MAPAN (Modelling Air Pollution And Networking) for the first time to estimate the relative yield losses, crop production losses, and economic losses for the two major crops (wheat and rice). The detailed estimation has been done focusing on three individual suburban sites over India (Patiala, Tezpur, and Delhi) and compared with other related studies over the Indian region. We have used the concentration-based metric (M7, 7-h average from 09:00 to 15:59 h) along with the cumulative ozone exposure indices (AOT40, accumulated exposure over a threshold of 40 ppb) and applied the exposure–response (E-R) functions for the calculation of the crop losses. Our study shows that the yearly crop losses can reach the level of 12.4–40.8% and 2.0–11.1% for the wheat and rice crops, respectively, at certain places like Patiala in India. The annual economic loss can be as high as 0.7 million for wheat and rice crops, respectively, even at individual locations in India. Our estimated %RYL (relative yield loss) lies in the range of 0.3 + /0.6 times the recent regional model estimates which use only the AOT40 metric. Region-specific E-R functions based on factors suitable for the Indian region needs to be develope
Shared Ecologies, Shared Futures: Using the Ethnoprimatological Approach to Study Human-Primate Interfaces and Advance the Sustainable Coexistence of People and Primates
No full textEthnoprimatology is a research approach used to study the diverse ways that human and other primates’ lives and livelihoods intersect. Our objective in this chapter is to illustrate the use and value of ethnoprimatology in studying human-primate interfaces across both time and space. We begin by clarifying how human-primate interfaces occur across a gradient from rural to urban landscapes and illustrate how the ethnoprimatological approach is implemented. We showcase how ethnoprimatology’s theoretical and methodological landscape has expanded since its emergence in the late 1990s to include the integration of frameworks and tools from the natural and social sciences and the humanities. To illustrate the practice of ethnoprimatology, we highlight research conducted on the human-primate interface across three geographies of human-primate encounters: tourism sites, urban and peri-urban settings, and agroecosystems. We conclude by showing how the human-primate interconnections uncovered by ethnoprimatology have important implications for conservation, management of human-primate interfaces, and the sustainable coexistence of multispecies communities in the contemporary era
Political and affective ecologies of human–elephant relations: A gendered perspective
Get PDFThe behavioural relations between humans and wild Asian elephants at the forest-farmland interfaces are both political and affective, and these stem from the spatio-temporal ordering of land and livelihoods, which, in turn, emanate from power negotiations between different actors, both human and nonhuman. We study how the embodied encounters between humans and wild elephants in northeastern India, manifest through the interpersonal flow of affects, shape the political decisions related to their coexistence and shared lifeworlds, and propose gender as an entry point to understand these connections closely, at least from the human perspective
Tusks of wisdom: The elephant in the Buddhist art of Kanaganahalli
Get PDFThe Asian elephant has always occupied a prominent place in the art of the Indian subcontinent – from Harappan seals and prehistoric petroglyphs to the later plastic art of Buddhist stupas and temples of the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain faiths. In this paper, we discuss the representation of elephants at the Buddhist stupa at Kanaganahalli, in northern Karnataka. Most of the sculptures are in shallow relief, on limestone, and are excellent examples of the quality of early Indian art, offering unique insights into the relationship between humans and the Asian elephant in the early centuries of the Common Era, and the various uses that captive elephants were subject to at the time
Nagadhyakshacaritha: Elephant–mahout relationships in two communities of southern India
Get PDFIn modern India, beginning from their role as war animals, domesticated elephants have come a long way, contributing in various ways to the socioeconomic development and public life of different communities across the Indian subcontinent. In this paper, we briefly trace the unique history of mahoutry in Kerala and discuss the unique nature of this interspecies relationship in two communities, the Malayalis of Kerala and the Malasar of the Anamalai hills in the Western Ghats mountains, reflecting on the widely differing nature of the husbandry practices that have traditionally forged elephant–human relations across southern India
Where the sun comes to worship
No full textof Hoysala rule in the region. There is also a Vaishnava temple here, called the Chennigaraya temple, built roughly around the same time. Both temples have a similar planform, with a sanctum, a closed mantapa and a mukhamantapa or porch. The vimanas, or outer envelopes of the sanctums of both temples, are of the type known as semi-stellate — while the central projections as well as corners are orthogonal, the intervening projections between these correspond to rotated squares, giving them a partially stellate form
Book Review of Science, War and Imperialism: India in the Second World War by Jagdish N. Sinha (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 2023)
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Remote Sensing-Based Estimation of Primary Production in the Arabian Sea
No full textThe key element in regulating the carbon dynamics of the oceans through biological processes is the microscopic free-floating autotrophic phytoplankton and associated rates of primary production. Accurate assessment of large-scale spatiotemporal dynamics of primary production by traditional platforms is frustrating due to limited spatial resolution and undersampling. By the virtue of its broad, synoptic coverage, ocean color imagery provides a two-dimensional window onto the dynamic state of phytoplankton biomass fields indexed as chlorophyll-a concentration. An important application of remotely sensed ocean data is the estimation of oceanic primary production. Compared with high seas, regional seas such as Arabian Sea are characterized by definite geographical boundaries encompassing coastal regions, continental shelves, and current systems. Estimation of primary production in the Arabian Sea from the Indian Ocean color monitor OCM-1 involved the use of a depth-integrated nonspectral model to compute the daily rate of euphotic zone primary production. The model driven by OCM-1derived chlorophyll data was operated with additional information on surface irradiance, light transmission in the water column, day length, and photosynthetic rate parameters, which accounts for the light capture and utilization by the phytoplankton. Euphotic zone primary production maps were generated covering the broad continental shelf, slope, and open ocean waters of the Arabian Sea, and computed values were validated with in situ measured rates of primary production. Statistical analysis indicated that the model explained 70% variance in the in situ dataset with a low negative bias of 3% and an overall uncertainity of 41.8% in the euphotic zone primary production estimates that was within the desired accuracy goal of 45% set by ocean color missions. The optimum performance of the model was due to region-specific chlorophyll algorithm (OC-OCM) for Arabian Sea as input compared to global chlorophyll algorithms such as OC2 and OC4