Monitoring groundwater quality by cost-effective techniques is important as the aquifers are vulnerable to contamination from
the uncontrolled discharge of sewage, agricultural and industrial activities. Faulty planning and mismanagement of irrigation
schemes are the principle reasons of groundwater quality deterioration. This study presents an artificial neural network (ANN)
model predicting concentration of nitrate, the most common pollutant in shallow aquifers, in groundwater of Harran Plain.
The samples from 24 observation wells were monthly analysed for 1 year. Nitrate was found in almost all groundwater samples
to be significantly above the maximum allowable concentration of 50 mg/L, probably due to the excessive use of artificial
fertilizers in intensive agricultural activities. Easily measurable parameters such as temperature, electrical conductivity,
groundwater level and pH were used as input parameters in the ANN-based nitrate prediction. The best back-propagation (BP)
algorithm and neuron numbers were determined for optimization of the model architecture. The Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm
was selected as the best of 12 BP algorithms and optimal neuron number was determined as 25. The model tracked the experimental
data very closely (R = 0.93). Hence, it is possible to manage groundwater resources in a more cost-effective and easier way with the proposed
model application. 相似文献
Based on the survey data of 250 farmers from the Multan district of Southern region of Punjab, Pakistan this study aims to empirically examine the determinants of access to agricultural credit. This study used the probit model to analyze the data. The results revealed that formal education, farm size, level of farm mechanization, farm revenue and landholding size positively and significantly influenced access to agricultural credit while the age of the farmer’s, distance, and off- farm income negatively and insignificantly influenced farmer’s accessibility to agricultural credit. The findings of the current study offer a policy guideline to streamline national policy on agricultural finance. This study also recommends that ZaraiTaraqiati Bank (ZTBL) and other Commercial Banks should improve their agricultural credit schemes to fulfil the diversified needs of small farm holders.
Natural Hazards - Gender and vulnerability are important issues to examine in the context of flooding caused by climate change. Men and women around the world adapt differently to climate change... 相似文献
Natural Hazards - The present work focuses on using remote sensing techniques and geographical information system (GIS) to automatically extract lineaments in the southeast of Morocco, which is one... 相似文献
Few studies in the Middle East region estimated the spatial distribution of air pollutants for exposure studies. This paper presents a geostatistical approach to assess background NO2 spatial distribution and the associated exposed population in a Mediterranean city with a complex topography, Beirut. Such modeling gave an accurate mapping of the 2010 yearly background average value of NO2: it varies between 35 and 67 μg m?3 with a mean of 53 μg m?3. The mean SD of the estimated error was about 3 μg m?3. The results showed that the spatial distribution of NO2 follows a nested structuring, with a major structure related to topoclimatic characteristics (interaction topography/atmospheric flow at large scale) and a minor one linked to micro-environment and micro-climatic characteristics (interactions urban morphology/atmospheric flows at fine scale). The probability for the city’s inhabitants to be exposed to NO2 levels exceeding 40 μg m?3 threshold limit set by the World Health Organization (WHO) showed that Beirut city has a real sanitary risk to the NO2 pollution. 93 % of the population (around 358,459 people) is 100 % sure to be exposed to a yearly average exceeding 40 μg m?3. This knowledge will be certainly useful for developing a tool for decision support in order to implement policies of reducing air pollution in Beirut, which is, given the results, very urgent. 相似文献
The Tohoku megathrust earthquake, which occurred on March 11, 2011 and had an epicenter that was 70 km east of Tohoku, Japan, resulted in an estimated ten's of billions of dollars in damage and a death toll of more than 15 thousand lives, yet few studies have documented key spatio-temporal seismogenic characteristics. Specifically, the temporal decay of aftershock activity, the number of strong aftershocks (with magnitudes greater than or equal to 7.0), the magnitude of the greatest aftershock, and area of possible aftershocks. Forecasted results from this study are based on Gutenberg-Richter's relation, Bath's law, Omori's law, and Well's relation of rupture scale utilizing the magnitude and statistical parameters of earthquakes in USA and China (Landers, Northridge, Hector Mine, San Simeon and Wenchuan earthquakes). The number of strong aftershocks, the parameters of Gutenberg-Richter's relation, and the modified form of Omori's law are confirmed based on the aftershock sequence data from the MW9.0 Tohoku earthquake. Moreover, for a large earthquake, the seismogenic structure could be a fault, a fault system, or an intersection of several faults. The seismogenic structure of the earthquake suggests that the event occurred on a thrust fault near the Japan trench within the overriding plate that subsequently triggered three or more active faults producing large aftershocks. 相似文献
This study addresses the need for women risk communication and highlights the potential role of Women Welfare Associations (WWAs) of Bandung, Indonesia, as risk communicators. A risk communication framework is modeled for women’s risk communication process. A set of indicators in social, institutional, and economic resilience activities (SIERAs), with a scope of 45 activities covering three different disaster periods, were developed to characterize the delivery process of risk information by women in WWAs through their activities at sub-district and ward levels. The data were collected through a questionnaire survey method using the risk communication SIERA approach. Women’s leaders at wards were surveyed concerning their perceptions on these 45 scopes of SIERA, ongoing activities, and their risk information source and dissemination process. Correlation analysis was applied to determine the relationship between the variables such as periods of disaster, types of activities (social, institutional, economic), and attributing factors (location, population, and education institution) in finding variations in risk communication activity that functions for women and communities. Five risk communication processes of WWAs are identified and implemented that work for women in Bandung. When their perceptions and ongoing activities are compared, activities such as dissemination of disaster risk information, conveying early warnings to their peers, and involvement of the local government have been confirmed to match the risk communication plans and implementation of WWAs. These indicate that WWAs’ activities in Bandung implement a certain degree of risk communication that is embedded in their activities. The results confirm that women through their social networks can become active agents of change and thus act beyond their usual domestic roles and responsibilities in order to contribute to the overall enhancement of community resilience.
Due to the rapid expansion of the Sudanese capital city far away from its three Niles, it has become a necessity to estimate
the sustainability of the groundwater resources in this arid area. The purpose of this study – based on the stable-isotopic
composition of groundwater – is to identify the sources of recharge and their relative contribution. The results show that
groundwater infiltrated from the Niles under the present prevailing arid climate, with greater contribution from the White
Nile compared to the Blue Nile, occupies an extension of 12 km from the Niles within the two main aquifers. Paleogroundwater
of meteoric origin, infiltrated in the cooler pluvial earlier Holocene, occupies the outer zones beyond the Niles' effect.
A rational utilization policy is recommended to preserve the finite groundwater resources.
Received: 27 August 1998 · Accepted: 2 March 1999 相似文献
Collimated flows ejected from young stars are believed to play a vital role in the star formation process by extracting angular
momentum from the accretion disk. We discuss the first experiments to simulate rotating radiatively cooled, hypersonic jets
in the laboratory. A modification of the conical wire array $z$-pinch is used to introduce angular momentum into convergent
flows of plasma, a jet-forming standing shock and into the jet itself. The rotation of the jet is evident in laser imaging
through the presence of discrete filaments which trace the rotational history of the jet. The presence of angular momentum
results in a hollow density profile in both the standing conical shock and the jet. 相似文献
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