Feature Article

The rock avalanche that destroyed the village of Xinmo in Sichuan, China, on June 24th, 2017, brought the issue of landslide risk and disaster chain management in highly seismic regions back into the spotlight. The long-term post-seismic behaviour of mountain slopes is complex and hardly predictable. Nevertheless, the integrated use of field monitoring, remote sensing and real-time predictive modelling can help to set-up effective early warning systems, provide timely alarms, optimize rescue operations and perform secondary hazard assessments.

The South-to-North Water Diversion (SNWD) project is designed to channel fresh water from the Yangtze River north to more industrialized parts of China. An important question is whether future climate change and dispersal via the SNWD may synergistically favor a northward expansion of species involved in hosting and transmitting schistosomiasis in China, specifically the intermediate host, Oncomelania hupensis.

Original Source

Many studies have reported associations between ozone pollution and morbidity and 18 mortality, but few studies focus on the health and economic effects at China's regional level. This 19 study evaluates the ozone pollution-related health impacts on China's national and provincial 20 economy and compares them with the impacts from PM2.5.

Original Source

Heatwaves with large impacts have increased in the recent past and will continue to increase under future warming. However, the implication for population exposure to severe heatwaves remains unexplored. Here, we characterize maximum potential human exposure (without passive/active reduction measures) to severe heatwaves in India. We show that if the global mean temperature is limited to 2.0ºC above pre-industrial conditions, the frequency of severe heatwaves will rise by 30-times the current climate by the end -21st century.

Urban air quality in most megacities has been found to be critical and Kolkata Metropolitan City is no exception to this. An analysis of ambient air quality in Kolkata was done by applying the Exceedance Factor (EF) method, where the presence of listed pollutants’ (RPM, SPM, NO2, and SO2) annual average concentration are classified into four different categories; namely critical, high, moderate, and low pollution.

Climate change can influence ecosystems via both direct effects on individual organisms and indirect effects mediated by species interactions. However, we understand little about how these changes will ripple through ecosystems or whether there are particular ecological characteristics that might make ecosystems more susceptible— or more resistant—to warming. By combining in situ experimental warming with herbivore manipulations in a natural rocky intertidal community for over 16 months, we show that herbivory regulates the capacity of marine communities to resist warming.

Changes in tropical wetland, ruminant or rice emissions are thought to have played a role in recent variations in atmospheric methane (CH4) concentrations. India has the world’s largest ruminant population and produces ~ 20% of the world’s rice. Therefore, changes in these sources could have significant implications for global warming. Here, we infer India’s CH4 emissions for the period 2010–2015 using a combination of satellite, surface and aircraft data.

Original Source

We describe the diversified National Ambient Noise Monitoring Network (NANMN) set up across 7 major cities of India and covering 70 stations for continuous noise monitoring throughout the year. The annual average Lday (06–22 h) and Lnight (22–06 h) values observed in 2015 for these 70 locations are described. Of these, 25 locations are in commercial zones, 12 in industrial, 16 in residential and 17 in silence zones. Each city has 10 noise monitoring stations installed for analysing environmental noise pollution levels round the clock (24  365 h).

Underweight, overweight, and obesity in childhood and adolescence are associated with adverse health consequences throughout the life-course. Our aim was to estimate worldwide trends in mean body-mass index (BMI) and a comprehensive set of BMI categories that cover underweight to obesity in children and adolescents, and to compare trends with those of adults.

Original Source

This study illustrates the development and implementation of a novel rapid response storm impact survey that combined the use of drone based aerial photogrammetry with numerical modeling.  The comprehensive approach employed in this pilot case study was conducted on the Emilia-Romagna coast (Italy), in the immediate aftermath of an extreme storm event that impacted the shoreline on the 5th-6th February 2015 called the “Saint Agatha Storm”.