Search Results (4)

Water, being the basic resource for life on earth, is of great importance in arid and semi-arid regions, which face the direct impacts of climate change. This study aims to solve water scarcity for Baranti Plain farmers by constructing concrete canals using modern technology. The Baranti Plain is located approximately 25 km north of Erbil in Iraq and spans an area of 445 km². The Great Zap River flows through its northern region, with an average discharge of about 400 m³ per second. In response to the challenges faced in this area, the Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources collaborated with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to gather essential data. This extensive dataset, covering the period from 2000 to 2021, particularly focuses on ground-level monitoring in September. Notably, the region experienced a significant decline in groundwater levels, totaling 23 m on average. Additionally, there was a 7.8% increase of urban expansion, and the number of wells increased from 257 in 2006 to 600 in 2021. To counter the diminishing groundwater levels and facilitate agricultural irrigation, a proposal was introduced to harness the waters of the Great Zap River. This plan involves channeling the river waters to the plain through a network of concrete canals known as the Baranati Project Plain. For precise planning, a digital elevation model (DEM) with a 12.5 m resolution was procured to analyze the area using GIS. This investigation revealed a height difference of 130 m between the Great Zap River and the Baranti Plain. Subsequently, the area was segmented into four zones based on its suitability for the project: highest, medium, low, and unsuitable. Notably, the combined areas of high, medium, and low suitability encompass 68% of the entire study region. The project’s next phase used a flow calculator to determine the channel’s shape, area, slope, and water requirements. The final phase involved analyzing annual rainfall data from three meteorological stations (Bastora, Ankawa, and Khabat), showing an average annual rainfall of 396 mm. The project has the capacity to irrigate more than 30,000 hectares of land, benefiting more than 1200 farmers. It is expected to stop the use of over 600 wells for irrigation and potentially raise groundwater levels by about 2.5 m annually. Our work revealed that addressing groundwater depletion requires implementing canals, rainwater harvesting, farmer education, modern irrigation, drilling restrictions, and supporting water. Full article

This study focuses on contemporary geomorphic changes in the proglacial valley floor of the Scott River catchment (northwest of Wedel Jarlsberg Land, southwestern Spitsbergen). The similarity and variability of landforms along the entire 3.3 km length of the unglaciated valley floor was assessed using precision terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) measurements made in July/August 2010–2013. Digital terrain models (DTMs) were generated from the high-resolution TLS survey data, followed by a geomorphon map, which was then used for a similarity and changes of morphology analysis performed with GeoPAT2 software. The study revealed a large spatial variation of contemporary processes shaping the valley floor and changes in its morphology. Their spatial distribution relates to the geologically determined split of the valley floor into three morphological zones separated by gorges. The upper gorge cuts the terminal moraine rampart, which limits the uppermost section of the valley floor, which is up to 700 m wide and is occupied by the outwash plain. The study showed that this is the area characterised by the greatest dynamics of contemporary geomorphic processes and relief changes. The similarity index value here is characterised by a large spatial variation that in some places reaches values close to 0. In the middle section stretching between the upper gorge (cutting the terminal moraine) and the lower gorge (cutting the elevated marine terraces), a much smaller variability of processes and landforms is observed, and the found changes of the valley floor relief mainly include the area of braided channel activity. Similarity index values in this zone do not fall below 0.65. The lowest section, the mouth of the alluvial fan, on the other hand, is characterised by considerable spatial differentiation. The southern part of the fan is stable, while the northern part is intensively re-shaped and has a similarity index that locally falls below 0.5. The most dynamic changes are found within the active channel system along the entire length of the unglaciated section of the Scott River. The peripheral areas, located in the outer zones of the valley floor, show great stability. Full article

Due to the importance of soil organic carbon (SOC) in supporting ecosystem services, accurate SOC assessment is vital for scientific research and decision making. However, most previous studies focused on single soil depth, leading to a poor understanding of SOC in multiple depths. To better understand the spatial distribution pattern of SOC in Northeast and North China Plain, we compared three machine learning algorithms (i.e., Cubist, Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) and Random Forest (RF)) within the digital soil mapping framework. A total of 386 sampling sites (1584 samples) following specific criteria covering all dryland districts and counties and soil types in four depths (i.e., 0–10, 10–20, 20–30 and 30–40 cm) were collected in 2017. After feature selection from 249 environmental covariates by the Genetic Algorithm, 29 variables were used to fit models. The results showed SOC increased from southern to northern regions in the spatial scale and decreased with soil depths. From the result of independent verification (validation dataset: 80 sampling sites), RF (R²: 0.58, 0.71, 0.73, 0.74 and RMSE: 3.49, 3.49, 2.95, 2.80 g kg⁻¹ in four depths) performed better than Cubist (R²: 0.46, 0.63, 0.67, 0.71 and RMSE: 3.83, 3.60, 3.03, 2.72 g kg⁻¹) and XGBoost (R²: 0.53, 0.67, 0.70, 0.71 and RMSE: 3.60, 3.60, 3.00, 2.83 g kg⁻¹) in terms of prediction accuracy and robustness. Soil, parent material and organism were the most important covariates in SOC prediction. This study provides the up-to-date spatial distribution of dryland SOC in Northeast and North China Plain, which is of great value for evaluating dynamics of soil quality after long-term cultivation. Full article

The US Northern Great Plains is one of the world’s most agriculturally productive areas. Growers in the region are eager to adopt modern technology to improve productivity and income. Use of information derived from remote sensing satellites to better manage farms and rangelands while reducing environmental impacts has gained popularity in recent years. However, prohibitive costs and non-availability of near real time remote sensing imagery has slowed the adoption of this technology for in-field decision making. Digital Northern Great Plains (DNGP), a web based remote sensing data dissemination system, was developed to address these drawbacks. It provides end users easy and free access to a variety of imagery and products in near real time. With delivery of archived and current data, DNGP has helped farmers and ranchers reduce operational costs and increase productivity through a variety of innovative applications. Moreover, negative environmental impacts were lessened. Full article