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One of the key parameters in hydrological and climate change modeling is a good estimation of the soil hydrauic properties in the region of interest. This study investigates the spatial distribution and variability of soil physical properties, with emphasis on saturated hydraulic conductivity at two pilot sites in the Volta Basin of Ghana. It focuses on the potential of pedotransfer functions (PTFs) and artificial neural network (ANN) approach for estimating saturated hydraulic conductivity. Saturated hydraulic conductivity was observed to be highly spatially variable; however, it can be estimated using selected PTFs and ANN for soils in the Volta Basin based on soil parameters that can readily be obtained from detailed soil maps--From cover.
Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security - Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks reviews conceptual debates and case studies focusing on disasters and security threats, challenges, vulnerabilities and risks in Europe, the Mediterranean and other regions. It discusses social science concepts of vulnerability and risks, global, regional and national security challenges, global warming, floods, desertification and drought as environmental security challenges, water and food security challenges and vulnerabilities, vulnerability mapping of environmental security challenges and risks, contributions of remote sensing to the recognition of security risks, mainstreaming early warning of conflicts and hazards and provides conceptual and policy conclusions.
Duas importantes questões foram levantadas neste estudo: (1) O efeito e destino dos pesticidas em solos de regiões temperadas podem ser diferentes em solos tropicais? (2) Os dados produzidos nas regiões temperadas podem ser usados para a avaliação de risco ambiental nos trópicos?
The study assesses effects of population growth on agricultural land and forest in the Volta River Basin of Ghana. Most districts of the research area are experiencing shortfalls in land suitable for agriculture and deforestation. The number of farm holdings is decreasing and practice of fallow lands (last consequences of the former shifting cultivation) is also vanishing. Although households are wealthier due to new sources of off-farm income, the use of tractor, inorganic fertilizer and improved seed variety for farming is still low due to high costs. On deforestation, increases in fuel wood use and agricultural extensification are the major causes.
"The study presents the analyses of field observations and simulation experiments with an event-based, two-dimensional hydrodynamic model. The model summarized the interactions between temporally dynamic rainfall, infiltration process and surface runoff in a catchment with varied soil physio-hydraulic properties, surface-roughtness, slope-lengths and vegetation structure. Both observation and simulation results indicate that the observation scale affects runoff coefficient and runoff discharge per unit area. The effect of scale is a result of spatial variability in infiltration opportunities, which vary with the slop length and distribution of saturated conductivity, leading to different trasmission losses potential during runoff routing downslope. The magnitude of the difference is influenced by surface and vegetated microtopography, which determine the flow rate"--Back cover.
Tropical rainforests are disappearing at an alarming rate, causing unprecedented losses in biodiversity and ecosystem services. This book contributes to an improved understanding of the processes that have destabilizing effects on ecological and socio-economic systems of tropical rain forest margins, as well as striving to integrate environmental, technological and socio-economic issues in their solution.
The volume Environmental Change and African Societies contributes to current debates on global climate change from the perspectives of the social sciences and the humanities. It charts past and present environmental change in different African settings and also discusses policies and scenarios for the future. The first section, “Ideas”, enquires into local perceptions of the environment, followed by contributions on historical cases of environmental change and state regulation. The section “Present” addresses decision-making and agenda-setting processes related to current representations and/or predicted effects of climate change. The section “Prospects” is concerned with contemporary African megatrends. The authors move across different scales of investigation, from locally-grounded ethnographic analyses to discussions on continental trends and international policy. Contributors are: Daniel Callo-Concha, Joy Clancy, Manfred Denich, Sara de Wit, Ton Dietz, Irit Eguavoen, Ben Fanstone, Ingo Haltermann, Laura Jeffrey, Emmanuel Kreike, Vimbai Kwashirai, James C. McCann, Bertrand F. Nero, Jonas Ø. Nielsen, Erick G. Tambo, Julia Tischler.