Feature Article

Urban water demand will increase by 80% by 2050, while climate change will alter the timing and distribution of water. Here we quantify the magnitude of these twin challenges to urban water security, combining a dataset of urban water sources of 482 of the world’s largest cities with estimates of future water demand, based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s Fifth Assessment scenarios, and predictions of future water availability, using the WaterGAP3 modelling framework. We project an urban surface-water deficit of 1,386–6,764 million m³.

Mobile technologies could help to improve service delivery to smallholder farmers, but whether such services are fulfilling their potential remains poorly understood. To address this gap, this article presents an exploratory literature review regarding the impact of mobile phone-enabled services on farmers in developing countries. The review highlights a dearth of empirical evidence in this area. Findings suggest that farmers benefited through improvements in production planning, management of weather-related risks, and greater ease in receiving money.

Effective habitat restoration requires an understanding of species habitat preferences and the associated mechanisms driving those preferences. We examined the patterns and causes of oviposition preference in the monarch butterfly, a rapidly declining species, in southwestern Ontario at both landscape and milkweed patch spatial scales. Additionally, we measured the abundance of invertebrate predators, parasitoids and parasites across these same spatial scales.

Time series analysis and statistical significance of trends in rainfall data was carried out using standard Mann-Kendall test statistics. The non-parametric Mann-Kendall (M-K) statistical rank test, which is widely used in climate research, was employed in this study to find out fluctuations and presence of trend in time series data of rainfall at a single station, as well as regional averages.

Original Source

The paper investigate probability distribution of daily minimum temperature during winter (November to February) based on meteorological data of Jalgaon weather station for the period of agriculture years 1973-74 to 2015-16.

Original Source

Summer monsoon season 2011 was highlighted with unprecedented rainfall in some districts of Punjab in the second week of August 2011 causing significant damage to public and private properties. An attempt has been made in this paper to identify the observational aspects, main synoptic system, Physical process and thermodynamic features leading to such unusual rainfall in Punjab recorded on 13th August, 2011.

Original Source

The impacts of the industrial structure on the atmospheric environment in Shenzhen are analyzed by utilizing climate, environmental and economic data over the past 35 years of Shenzhen, a rapid developing megacity in China.

Weather plays an important role in agricultural production. It plays a major role before and during the cropping season and if the same is provided well in advance, it results in inspiring the farmers to organize and activate their own resources in the best possible way to increase the crop production.

Ambient air pollution is a major health risk globally. To reduce adverse health effects on days when air pollution is high, government agencies worldwide have implemented air quality alert programmes. Despite their widespread use, little is known about whether these programmes produce any observable public-health benefits. We assessed the effectiveness of such programmes using a quasi-experimental approach.

Original Source

Many policy interventions intended to benefit public health can only be evaluated as so-called natural experiments, because implementation is not controlled by researchers seeking to assess effectiveness. Such assessments can be complicated by non-comparability between people affected and not affected by the intervention. Various quasi-experimental designs have been proposed to address this problem of non-comparability, one being the regression discontinuity design, which has had little use in public health.