Soil salinity,household wealth and food insecurity in tropical deltas: evidence from south-west coast of Bangladesh

As a creeping process, salinisation represents a significant long-term environmental risk in coastal and deltaic environments. Excess soil salinity may exacerbate existing risks of food insecurity in densely populated tropical deltas, which is likely to have a negative effect on human and ecological sustainability of these regions and beyond. This study focuses on the coastal regions of the Ganges–Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh, and uses data from the 2010 Household Income and Expenditure Survey and the Soil Resource Development Institute to investigate the effect of soil salinity and wealth on household food security. The outcome variables are two widely used measures of food security: calorie availability and household expenditure on food items. The main explanatory variables tested include indicators of soil salinity and household-level socio-economic characteristics. The results of logistic regression show that in unadjusted models, soil salinisation has a significant negative effect on household food security. However, this impact becomes statistically insignificant when households’ wealth is taken into account. The results further suggest that education and remittance flows, but not gender or working status of the household head, are significant predictors of food insecurity in the study area. The findings indicate the need to focus scholarly and policy attention on reducing wealth inequalities in tropical deltas in the context of the global sustainable deltas initiative and the proposed Sustainable Development Goals.     

Diversity,utilization pattern and representativeness of dye yielding plants in North Western and Western Himalaya,India: an untapped source for Bioprospection

Environment, Development and Sustainability - Natural colorants or dyestuffs are an essential faction of non-timber forest products that are widely used for coloring purposes in various industries....     

Understanding of groundwater salinity using statistical modeling in a small tropical island,East Malaysia

This paper presents an understanding of groundwater salinity by identification of effective factors using chemometric methods (cluster analysis and multiple linear regressions) in Manukan Island, Sabah. Local groundwater and environmental properties were used to explore the effective factors of groundwater salinity. Cluster analysis showed salinity and chloride illustrated the highest similarities. Electrical conductivity and total dissolved solids were also grouped in the same cluster. Seawater is the only chloride source in groundwater of Manukan Island demonstrated an indication of seawater mixing in freshwater. It is an effect of upward movement of the seawater by pumping activities. Precipitation and evapotranspiration (environmental condition) with hydraulic heads were clustered together to show that they also influence salinity concentration in groundwater. Multiple linear regressions showed descending order of the factors from chloride (the largest contribution) to evapotranspiration (the smallest contribution) and illustrated the contribution to groundwater salinity in Manukan Island. The integrated results using chemometric methods have provided a way to identify the effective factors on groundwater salinity. This similar approach and resulting equation can be applied in other small tropical islands with alike hydrogeological condition and limited information available for a better understanding of its groundwater salinity.     

Toxic effect of some heavy metals on hematology and histopathology of major carp (Catla catla)

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The current study was conducted to assess the hematological and histopathological changes in major carp (Catla catla) exposed to different...