No abstract

Abstract:Drought is a temporary, random and regional climatic phenomenon, originating due to lack of precipitation leading to water deficit and causing economic loss. Success in drought alleviation depends on how well droughts are defined and their severity quantified. A quantitative definition identifies the beginning, end, spatial extent and the severity of drought. Among the available indices, no single index is capable of fully describing all the physical characteristics of drought. Therefore, in most cases it is useful and necessary to consider several indices, examine their sensitivity and accuracy, and investigate for correlation among them. In this study, the geographical information system-based Spatial and Time Series Information Modeling (SPATSIM) and Daily Water Resources Assessment Modeling (DWRAM) software were used for drought analysis on monthly and daily bases respectively and its spatial distribution in both dry and wet years. SPATSIM utilizes standardized precipitation index (SPI), effective drought index (EDI), deciles index and departure from long-term mean and median; and DWRAM employs only EDI. The analysis of data from the Kalahandi and Nuapada districts of Orissa (India) revealed that (a) droughts in this region occurred with a frequency of once in every 3 to 4 years, (b) droughts occurred in the year when the ratio of annual rainfall to potential evapotranspiration (Pae/PET) was less than 0Ð6, (c) EDI better represented the droughts in the area than any other index; (d) all SPI, EDI and annual deviation from the mean showed a similar trend of drought severity. The comparison of all indices and results of analysis led to several useful and pragmatic inferences in understanding the drought attributes of the study area.

Water is a basic necessity of life, but due to overextraction and heavy input of nutrients from domestic and industrial sources, the contamination level of water bodies increase. In the last few decades, a potential interest has been aroused to treat wastewater by biological methodologies before discharge into the natural water bodies. Phytoremediation using water hyacinth is found to be an effective biological wastewater treatment method. Water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes), a notorious weed, being the most promising plant for removal of contaminants from wastewater is studied extensively in this regard. It has been successfully used to accumulate heavy metals, dyes, radionuclides, and other organic and inorganic contaminants from water at laboratory, pilot, and large scale. The plant materials are also being used as sorbent to separate the contaminant from water. Other than phytoremediation, the plant has been explored for various other purposes like ethanol production and generation of biogases and green manures. Such applications of this have been good support for the technocrats in controlling the growth of the plant. The present paper reviews the phytoremedial application of water hyacinth and its capability to remove contaminants in produced water and wastewater from domestic and isndustrial sources either used as a whole live plant grown in water or use of plant body parts as sorbent has been discussed.

No abstract

No abstract