Forest area estimation and reporting: implications for conservation, management and REDD

Periodic estimation, monitoring and reporting on area under forest and plantation types and afforestation rates are critical to forest and biodiversity conservation, sustainable forest management and for meeting international commitments. This article is aimed at assessing the adequacy of the current monitoring and reporting approach adopted in India in the context of new challenges of conservation and reporting to international conventions and agencies. The analysis shows that the current mode of monitoring and reporting of forest area is inadequate to meet the national and international requirements. India could be potentially over-reporting the area under forests by including many non-forest tree categories such as commercial plantations of coconut, cashew, coffee and rubber, and fruit orchards. India may also be under-reporting deforestation by reporting only gross forest area at the state and national levels. There is a need for monitoring and reporting of forest cover, deforestation and afforestation rates according to categories such as (i) natural/primary forest, (ii) secondary/degraded forests, (iii) forest plantations, (iv) commercial plantations, (v) fruit orchards and (vi) scattered trees.

Performance evaluation of an integrated solar water heater as an option for building energy conservation

Since a majority of residential and industrial building hot water needs are around 50 degrees C, an integrated solar water heater could provide a bulk source that blends collection and storage into one unit. This paper describes the design, construction and performance test results of one such water-heating device. The test unit has an absorber area of 1.3 m(2) and can hold 1701 of water, of which extractable volume per day is 1001. Its performance was evaluated under various typical operating conditions. Every morning at about 7:00 a.m., 1001 of hot water were drawn from the sump and replaced with cold water from the mains. Although, during most of the days, the peak temperatures of water obtained are between 50 and 60 degrees C, the next morning temperatures were lower at 45-50 degrees C. Daytime collection efficiencies of about 60% and overall efficiencies of about 40% were obtained. Tests were conducted with and without stratification. Night radiation losses were reduced by use of a screen insulation.

A Strategy for Conserving the Biodiversity of the Uttara Kannada District in South India

Taking the various values ascribed to biodiversity as its point of departure rather many years ago, the present study aims at deriving a conservation strategy for Uttara Kannada. This hilly district, with the highest proportion of its area under forests in South India, is divided into five ecological zones: coastal, northern evergreen, southern evergreen, moist deciduous, and dry deciduous. The heavily-populated coastal zone includes mangrove forests and estuarine wetlands. The evergreen forests are particularly rich in the diversity of plant species which they support - including wild relatives of a number of cultivated plants. They also serve a vital function in watershed conservation. The moist deciduous forests are rich in bird species; both moist and dry deciduous forests include a number of freshwater ponds and lakes that support a high diversity of aquatic birds.Reviewing the overall distribution of biodiversity, we identify specific localities - including estuaries, evergreen forests, and moist deciduous forests - which should be set aside as Nature reserves. These larger reserves must be complemented by a network of traditionally-protected sacred groves and sacred trees that are distributed throughout the district and that protect today, for instance, the finest surviving stand of dipterocarp trees.We also spell out the necessary policy-changes in overall development strategy that should stem the ongoing decimation of biodiversity. These include (1) revitalizing community-based systems of sustainable management of village forests and protection of sacred groves and trees; (2) reorienting the usage-pattern of reserve forests from production of a limited variety of timber and softwood species for industrial consumers, to production of a larger diversity of non-wood forest produce of commercial value to support the rural economy; (3) utilizing marginal lands under private ownership for generating industrial wood supplies; and (4) provision of incentives for in situ maintenance of land-races of cultivated plants - especially evergreen, fruit-yielding trees - by the local people.It is proposed that this broad framework be now taken to the local communities, and that an action-plan be developed on the basis of inputs provided - and initiatives taken - by them.

Characterization of estuarine marine clays for coastal reclamation in Pusan, Korea

Large scale reclamation works in coastal areas of the Nakdong River plain are at various stages of progress, since early 1990's on in-situ soft marine clay deposits. These deposits are of the order of 30 to 40 m thick. A realistic rapid characterization of soft ground would ensure success of any reclamation work in this area. In order to cope with the work carried out with different agencies, it is desirable to evolve a systematic methodology. In this study, engineering properties of clays at three coastal areas, Gadukdo, Noksan and Shinho, have been generated. The analysis of data has been done within the framework of classical developments in soil mechanics. Analysis has also been made by making use of the recent developments in dealing with soft clays. The dominant factors, namely, stress, time, and environment influencing the response of clay to loading are identified.

The Asian elephants Elephas maximus of Cat Tien National Park, Vietnam: status and conservation of a vanishing population

This study updates the status and conservation of the Endangered Asian elephant Elephas maximus in Cat Tien National Park, Vietnam. Line transect indirect surveys, block surveys for elephant signs, village surveys of elephant-human conflict incidents, guard-post surveys for records of sightings, and surveys of elephant food plants were undertaken during the dry and wet seasons of 2001. A minimum of 11 elephants and a maximum of 15-17 elephants was estimated for c. 500 km2 of the Park and its vicinity. The elephants are largely confined to the southern boundary of the Park and make extensive use of the adjoining La Nga State Forest Enterprises. During the dry season the elephants depend on at least 26 species of wild and cultivated plants, chiefly the fruits of cashew. Most of the villages surveyed reported some elephant-human conflict. Two adult male elephants seem to cover a large area to raid crops, whereas the family groups restrict themselves to a few villages; overall, the conflict is not serious. Since 2001 there have been no reports of any deaths or births of elephants in the Park. We make recommendations for habitat protection and management, increasing the viability of the small population, reducing elephant-human conflicts, and improving the chances of survival of the declining elephants of this Park. The Government has now approved an Action Plan for Urgent Conservation Areas in Vietnam that calls for the establishment of three elephant conservation areas in the country, including Cat Tien National Park.

Integrating biodiversity and conservation with modern agricultural landscapes

To achieve food security and meet the demands of the ever-growing human populations, farming systems have assumed unsustainable practices to produce more from a finite land area. This has been cause for concern mainly due to the often-irreversible damage done to the otherwise productive agricultural landscapes. Agro-ecology is proclaimed to be deteriorating due to eroding integrity of connected ecological mosaics and vulnerability to climate change. This has contributed to declining species diversity, loss of buffer vegetation, fragmentation of habitats, and loss of natural pollinators or predators, which eventually leads to decline in ecosystem services. Currently, a hierarchy of conservation initiatives is being considered to restore ecological integrity of agricultural landscapes. However, the challenge of identifying a suitable conservation strategy is a daunting task in view of socio-ecological factors that may constrain the choice of available strategies. One way to mitigate this situation and integrate biodiversity with agricultural landscapes is to implement offset mechanisms, which are compensatory and balancing approaches to restore the ecological health and function of an ecosystem. This needs to be tailored to the history of location specific agricultural practices, and the social, ecological and environmental conditions. The offset mechanisms can complement other initiatives through which farmers are insured against landscape-level risks such as droughts, fire and floods. For countries in the developing world with significant biodiversity and extensive agriculture, we should promote a comprehensive model of sustainable agricultural landscapes and ecosystem services, replicable at landscape to regional scales. Arguably, the model can be a potential option to sustain the integrity of biodiversity mosaic in agricultural landscapes.

Distribution, Demography, and Conservation of Lion-tailed Macaques (Macaca silenus) in the Anamalai Hills Landscape, Western Ghats, India

The status of the endemic and endangered lion-tailed macaque (Macaca silenus) has not been properly assessed in several regions of the Western Ghats of southern India. We conducted a study in Parambikulam Forest Reserve in the state of Kerala to determine the distribution, demography, and status of lion-tailed macaques. We laid 5km(2) grid cells on the map of the study area (644km(2)) and made four replicated walks in each grid cell using GPS. We gathered data on lion-tailed macaque group locations, demography, and site covariates including trail length, duration of walk, proportion of evergreen forest, height of tallest trees, and human disturbance index. We also performed occupancy modeling using PRESENCE ver. 3.0. We estimated a minimum of 17 groups of macaques in these hills. Low detection and occupancy probabilities indicated a low density of lion-tailed macaques in the study area. Height of the tallest trees correlated positively whereas human disturbance and proportion of evergreen forest correlated negatively with occupancy in grid cells. We also used data from earlier studies carried out in the surrounding Anamalai Tiger Reserve and Nelliyampathy Hills to discuss the conservation status in the large Anamalai Hills Landscape. This landscape harbors an estimated population of 1108 individuals of lion-tailed macaques, which is about one third of the entire estimated wild population of this species. A conservation plan for this landscape could be used as a model for conservation in other regions of the Western Ghats.

Looking beyond parks: the conservation value of unprotected areas for hornbills in Arunachal Pradesh, Eastern Himalaya

The loss of tropical forests and associated biodiversity is a global concern. Conservation efforts in tropical countries such as India have mostly focused on state-administered protected areas despite the existence of vast tracts of forest outside these areas. We studied hornbills (Bucerotidae), an ecologically important vertebrate group and a flagship for tropical forest conservation, to assess the importance of forests outside protected areas in Arunachal Pradesh, north-east India. We conducted a state-wide survey to record encounters with hornbills in seven protected areas, six state-managed reserved forests and six community-managed unclassed forests. We estimated the density of hornbills in one protected area, four reserved forests and two unclassed forests in eastern Arunachal Pradesh. The state-wide survey showed that the mean rate of encounter of rufous-necked hornbills Aceros nipalensis was four times higher in protected areas than in reserved forests and 22 times higher in protected areas than in unclassed forests. The mean rate of encounter of wreathed hornbills Rhyticeros undulatus was twice as high in protected areas as in reserved forests and eight times higher in protected areas than in unclassed forests. The densities of rufous-necked hornbill were higher inside protected areas, whereas the densities of great hornbill Buceros bicornis and wreathed hornbill were similar inside and outside protected areas. Key informant surveys revealed possible extirpation of some hornbill species at sites in two protected areas and three unclassed forests. These results highlight a paradoxical situation where individual populations of hornbills are being lost even in some legally protected habitat, whereas they continue to persist over most of the landscape. Better protection within protected areas and creative community-based conservation efforts elsewhere are necessary to maintain hornbill populations in this biodiversity-rich region.

Finite volume evolution Galerkin method for hyperbolic conservation laws with spatially varying flux functions

We present a generalization of the finite volume evolution Galerkin scheme [M. Lukacova-Medvid'ova,J. Saibertov'a, G. Warnecke, Finite volume evolution Galerkin methods for nonlinear hyperbolic systems, J. Comp. Phys. (2002) 183 533-562; M. Luacova-Medvid'ova, K.W. Morton, G. Warnecke, Finite volume evolution Galerkin (FVEG) methods for hyperbolic problems, SIAM J. Sci. Comput. (2004) 26 1-30] for hyperbolic systems with spatially varying flux functions. Our goal is to develop a genuinely multi-dimensional numerical scheme for wave propagation problems in a heterogeneous media. We illustrate our methodology for acoustic waves in a heterogeneous medium but the results can be generalized to more complex systems. The finite volume evolution Galerkin (FVEG) method is a predictor-corrector method combining the finite volume corrector step with the evolutionary predictor step. In order to evolve fluxes along the cell interfaces we use multi-dimensional approximate evolution operator. The latter is constructed using the theory of bicharacteristics under the assumption of spatially dependent wave speeds. To approximate heterogeneous medium a staggered grid approach is used. Several numerical experiments for wave propagation with continuous as well as discontinuous wave speeds confirm the robustness and reliability of the new FVEG scheme.

Analysis on conservation of disulphide bonds and their structural features in homologous protein domain families

Background: Disulphide bridges are well known to play key roles in stability, folding and functions of proteins. Introduction or deletion of disulphides by site-directed mutagenesis have produced varying effects on stability and folding depending upon the protein and location of disulphide in the 3-D structure. Given the lack of complete understanding it is worthwhile to learn from an analysis of extent of conservation of disulphides in homologous proteins. We have also addressed the question of what structural interactions replaces a disulphide in a homologue in another homologue. Results: Using a dataset involving 34,752 pairwise comparisons of homologous protein domains corresponding to 300 protein domain families of known 3-D structures, we provide a comprehensive analysis of extent of conservation of disulphide bridges and their structural features. We report that only 54% of all the disulphide bonds compared between the homologous pairs are conserved, even if, a small fraction of the non-conserved disulphides do include cytoplasmic proteins. Also, only about one fourth of the distinct disulphides are conserved in all the members in protein families. We note that while conservation of disulphide is common in many families, disulphide bond mutations are quite prevalent. Interestingly, we note that there is no clear relationship between sequence identity between two homologous proteins and disulphide bond conservation. Our analysis on structural features at the sites where cysteines forming disulphide in one homologue are replaced by non-Cys residues show that the elimination of a disulphide in a homologue need not always result in stabilizing interactions between equivalent residues. Conclusion: We observe that in the homologous proteins, disulphide bonds are conserved only to a modest extent. Very interestingly, we note that extent of conservation of disulphide in homologous proteins is unrelated to the overall sequence identity between homologues. The non-conserved disulphides are often associated with variable structural features that were recruited to be associated with differentiation or specialisation of protein function.

Species-area and species-individual relationships for tropical trees: A comparison of three 50-ha plots

1 Species-accumulation curves for woody plants were calculated in three tropical forests, based on fully mapped 50-ha plots in wet, old-growth forest in Peninsular Malaysia, in moist, old-growth forest in central Panama, and in dry, previously logged forest in southern India. A total of 610 000 stems were identified to species and mapped to < Im accuracy. Mean species number and stem number were calculated in quadrats as small as 5 m x 5 m to as large as 1000 m x 500 m, for a variety of stem sizes above 10 mm in diameter. Species-area curves were generated by plotting species number as a function of quadrat size; species-individual curves were generated from the same data, but using stem number as the independent variable rather than area. 2 Species-area curves had different forms for stems of different diameters, but species-individual curves were nearly independent of diameter class. With < 10(4) stems, species-individual curves were concave downward on log-log plots, with curves from different forests diverging, but beyond about 104 stems, the log-log curves became nearly linear, with all three sites having a similar slope. This indicates an asymptotic difference in richness between forests: the Malaysian site had 2.7 times as many species as Panama, which in turn was 3.3 times as rich as India. 3 Other details of the species-accumulation relationship were remarkably similar between the three sites. Rectangular quadrats had 5-27% more species than square quadrats of the same area, with longer and narrower quadrats increasingly diverse. Random samples of stems drawn from the entire 50 ha had 10-30% more species than square quadrats with the same number of stems. At both Pasoh and BCI, but not Mudumalai. species richness was slightly higher among intermediate-sized stems (50-100mm in diameter) than in either smaller or larger sizes, These patterns reflect aggregated distributions of individual species, plus weak density-dependent forces that tend to smooth the species abundance distribution and 'loosen' aggregations as stems grow. 4 The results provide support for the view that within each tree community, many species have their abundance and distribution guided more by random drift than deterministic interactions. The drift model predicts that the species-accumulation curve will have a declining slope on a log-log plot, reaching a slope of O.1 in about 50 ha. No other model of community structure can make such a precise prediction. 5 The results demonstrate that diversity studies based on different stem diameters can be compared by sampling identical numbers of stems. Moreover, they indicate that stem counts < 1000 in tropical forests will underestimate the percentage difference in species richness between two diverse sites. Fortunately, standard diversity indices (Fisher's sc, Shannon-Wiener) captured diversity differences in small stem samples more effectively than raw species richness, but both were sample size dependent. Two nonparametric richness estimators (Chao. jackknife) performed poorly, greatly underestimating true species richness.

Nanoporous Pt with High Surface Area by Reaction-Limited Aggregation of Nanoparticles

Nanoporous structures with high active surface areas are critical for a variety of applications. Here, we present a general templateless strategy to produce such porous structures by controlled aggregation of nanostructured subunits and apply the principles for synthesizing nanoporous Pt for electrocatalytic oxidation of methanol. The nature of the aggregate produced is controlled by tuning the electrostatic interaction between surfactant-free nanoparticles in the solution phase. When the repulsive force between the particles is very large, the particles are stabilized in the solution while instantaneous aggregation leading to fractal-like structures results when the repulsive force is very low. Controlling the repulsive interaction to an optimum, intermediate value results in the formation of compact structures with very large surface areas. In the case of Pt, nanoporous clusters with an extremely high specific surface area (39 m(2)/g) and high activity for methanol oxidation have been produced. Preliminary investigations indicate that the method is general and can be easily extended to produce nanoporous structures of many inorganic materials.

Diversity: Cultural and biological

Early human populations utilized a wide range of biological resources in a tremendous diversity of environments. As a result, they possessed high levels of cultural diversity dependent on and supportive of high levels of biological diversity. This pattern changed drastically with technological innovations enabling certain human groups to break down territorial barriers and to usurp resources of other groups. The dominant groups have gone on to exhaust a whole range of resources, depleting both biological and cultural diversity. Traditions of resource conservation can, however, re-emerge when the dominant cultures spread over the entire area and the innovations diffuse to other human groups. This could change once again as genetically engineered organisms become an economically viable proposition with the accruing advantages concentrated in the hands of a few human groups: a further drastic reduction in biological and cultural diversity may ensue.

Integrating voice and data on SALAN: an experimental local area network

This paper is concerned with the integration of voice and data on an experimental local area network used by the School of Automation, of the Indian Institute of Science. SALAN (School of Automation Local Area Network) consists of a number of microprocessor-based communication nodes linked to a shared coaxial cable transmission medium. The communication nodes handle the various low-level functions associated with computer communication, and interface user data equipment to the network. SALAN at present provides a file transfer facility between an Intel Series III microcomputer development system and a Texas Instruments Model 990/4 microcomputer system. Further, a packet voice communication system has also been implemented on SALAN. The various aspects of the design and implementation of the above two utilities are discussed.

Cooking in the ungra area: Fuel efficiency, energy losses, and opportunities for reducing firewood consumption

Cooking efficiency and related fuel economy issues have been studied in a particular rural area of India. Following a description of the cooking practices and conditions in this locale, cooking efficiency is examined. A cooking efficiency of only 6% was found. The use of aluminium rather than clay pots results in an increased efficiency. In addition, cooking efficiency correlates very well with specific fuel consumption. The latter parameter is much simpler to analyse than cooking efficiency. The energy losses during cooking are examined in the second part of this case study. The major energy losses are heating of excess air, heat carried away by the combustion products, heat transmitted to the stove body and floor, and the chemical energy in charcoal residue. The energy loss due to the evaporation of cooking water is also significant because it represents about one-third of the heat reaching the pots.