Novel Perspectives of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences Vol. 8

This chapter aims to determine effect of particle sizes of charcoal on desorbed of adsorbed potassium using silt clay loam texture soil collected from Abo- Graib research station/ Department of researches and studies/ Horticulture office. Potassium is considered to be one of the main important nutrient for most agriculture and economical crops. In this experiment, ten ml of potassium chloride solutions (0, 5, 10, 20, 60, 100 and 200 mg K L^-1) was added to (soil, soil+ charcoal 0.5mm and soil+ charcoal 1mm) treatments. The adsorbed potassium was extracted using 1M- NH4AOc- pH = 7 and the potassium content in leachates was determined.  The findings demonstrated that, when combined with soil treatment at various concentrations, charcoal treatments have a stronger potential to desorbate potassium.  The desorbed potassium was 395 mg K kg ^-1 soil for (soil + charcoal diameter- 1 mm) treatment at a concentration of 5 mg K L ^-1 and 386.5 mg K kg ^-1 soil for (soil + charcoal diameter- 0.5 mm) treatment and the lowest amount of desorbed potassium 383 mg K kg ^-1 was in soil for soil treatment and this trend was matched different concentrations of the added potassium. The curves of potassium desorbed showed that the amount of desorbed potassium increased with the addition of charcoal, particularly when the particle sizes increased.  The percentage of desorbed potassium was 4.30% in the treatment using soil and charcoal with a diameter of 1 mm (5 mg K L-1) and reduced to 2.19% in the treatment using soil and charcoal with a diameter of 0.5 mm and the lowest percentage of desorbed potassium was 1.30% in (soil) treatment. The study's findings showed that the amount of desorbed potassium correlated adversely with the size of the charcoal particle, which may have an impact on the efficiency of soil fertilization with potassium.

The article discusses issues pertaining to the unique formation and temporal changes in the stress-strain state of rock massifs as objects of active human impact from engineering facilities, both surface and subsurface, hydrotechnical and road construction, mining operations, including the development of mineral deposits by open-cut and underground methods. Arrays of rock formations have a wide range of properties that manifest themselves as hazardous natural geological events, and also under any technological influences to them, including the method of blasting destruction. The peculiarities of the behavior of such arrays consist in the combination of the characteristics of solid as elastic and plastic bodies, including brittle, and viscous-flowing bodies, and creep.

In terms of the object's stability and safety as well as the necessity for additional material expenses to maintain the equilibrium in the new conditions, technological impact on the rock mass might have unintended and dangerous implications. The identification of the potential area of permissible deformations and the conditions for the destruction of such an array of rocks, taking into account the time factor, is of practical interest for selecting effective parameters

of mining technology that allow the prevention of dangerous undesirable consequences of destruction. In areas where physical experiments in the traditional view are challenging, such as in underground mining facilities, processes of destruction, and mining of minerals using blasting technologies, numerical methods of modelling mining-geological objects and processes of any complexity with the use of modern technical and software tools offer new opportunities in solving technological problems.

In this study, an attempt has been made to find the effect of a widely used fungicide copper oxychloride on the anecic earthworm, Lampito mauritii at subtoxic level. Copper, including copper oxychloride, is frequently used as a fungicide/bactericide to protect plants from infection. The recommended dose of copper oxychloride for rice fields is 3 g/l which contains 50% copper i.e 1.5 g copper/l or 1500 ppm. Though it helps in prevention of fungal infection on plants but simultaneously it effects the non-target soil fauna including earthworms at sublethal level. The earthworms that play a major role in soil physical, chemical and biological improvement of soil are also exposed to the copper fungicide. So the study aims to find the sublethal effect of the fungicide on non-target soil fauna earthworms. On exposure to the sub-lethal dose, it remains in the system utilizing the resources but does not contribute positively towards the system. So, there should be a study of the effect of sublethal doses of pesticides and alternate biopesticides should be chosen for use in the croplands for reduction of yield loss due to pest. Further research work should include effective biopesticides for the protection of crops against pests that will not be detrimental to the soil fauna.

Hoshiarpur is a small town in the northern state of Punjab in India that remained ecologically rich until recently, when unplanned urbanization, population explosion and humungous tree cutting contributed in large to a disturbed ecology within the city. For being situated at the foothills of Shivalik ranges, the city was known for its ecological beauty almost fifty years back. It was viewed mostly green with  large  seasonal drains overflowing with rainy waters during monsoon season while the air was clean enough to bring the visibility of shivalik ranges at the back of the drains. In the foothills of shivalik range with river like waters overflowing amidst the green cover, it is remembered as one of the most beautiful towns in the state of Punjab (India). The current state of ecology in the city is very gloomy. The city was ranked as one of the dirtiest in a nationwide survey conducted by Urban Development Ministry in 2015. The city hasn’t seen any improvement since then despite its lowest ranking. This work is a small effort to provide a broader overview of massive ecological degradation that has taken place in the city over the past fifty years and suggest the path towards its ecological restoration and remediation.

This chapter aimed to find out farmwomen awareness about climate change, their knowledge about the indicators of climate change and adaptation measure to minimize the negative impact of agriculture productivity. Climate change is the biggest threat to agriculture in countries around the globe as well as in India. The impact of climate change is evident on the Indian monsoon, which has become more erratic and violent over the last few years. Crop  failures and increased infestation of pests and insects have become rampant.Farmers in India are not fully aware of climate change and its  indicators, causes, and impacts. This study was conducted during 2018-19 under All India Co-ordinated Research Project on Home Science in Sulla village of Dharwad district of Karnataka state, India. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 100 farm women in the village. A pre tested interview schedule was used to collect the data. The study revealed that all of the respondents were not aware about the increase in melting of glacier, cold wave and frequent flood. The study reveals that 36 % of the farm women belonged to low category of awareness on indicators on climate change. It was also noticed that all of the women were not aware about changes in farming system in present climate condition. Energy and agriculture have always had a strong relationship. Therefore, increasing agricultural output's energy efficiency is a useful strategy for lowering production costs and emissions. Results indicate that women were unaware of the causes of climate change, including growing urbanisation, the use of pesticides, natural disasters, the burning of fossil fuels and farm waste, the usage of electrical appliances, and global warming. Additionally, all of the ladies implemented intercropping, crop rotation, and a shift in the planting calendar.

Our time is characterized by a dialectical combination of opposite processes in the development of science - differentiation, expressed in the emergence of new analytical, sectoral disciplines, and integration, which consists in the design of synthetic, complex disciplines mainly at the frontiers of science. One of the youngest synthetic geographic disciplines is geosophy, which was established about a hundred years ago at the boundary of geography and philosophy. In fact, elements of geosophy were present in the works created by ancient Greek and Roman scholars and philosophers, but in the new time the first who used the term “geosophy”, was German geographer Ewald Banse. But his geosophy occupied a place between the science and art; the modern, hardly scientific, geosophy was created by American scholar John Kirtland Wright. So, for more than hundred years, this scientific discipline has passed a difficult way of development, due to both internal, expressed in the nature of the discipline itself, and external (ideological, geopolitical, etc.) factors.

The object of geosophy is human space, that is, space perceived and conceived by man.

Nowadays, post-non-classical methodological approaches are becoming more widely used in geosophy - besides geosophical, it is noospheric (created by Pierre Teillard de Chardin and Volodymyr Vernadskyi), synergistic (established by Isabelle Stengers and Ilya Prigogine), eco-evolutionary (known also as the conception of sustainable development initiated by Dennis Meadows) and passionate (discovered by Lev Gumilyov). They are based on a fundamentally new relationship between the subject and the object, qualitatively different from what has traditionally been recognized as classical and non-classical geography. One feature of post-non-classical approaches is subject-object convergence.

In particular, the content of the geosophical approach is to consider geographical features as totals that represent the integrated unity of the all natural and human components. Possibilities of its application exist in almost all sections of geography. One of the main ones in all geography is the category of landscape. The ambiguity of its interpretation attests to the fundamental importance of this concept, its exceptional role in the knowledge of the earth's surface as a multidimensional reality. In particular, the geosophical point of view on landscape consists in the conception of the landscape and ethnicity interaction.

From the diversity of landscape understandings, two basic concepts stand out. The content of one of them, dating back to the 19th century, is to see the landscape as a general picture of the terrain, which was interpreted as totality. From other positions, designed in the early twentieth century, the landscape is understood as a real existing natural material object, characterized by genetic homogeneity, the presence of vertical and horizontal structure and clearly defined boundaries. The coexistence of the aforementioned landscape concepts and the search for possibilities of combining them is one of the important theoretical issues of modern geography, in particular, geosophy.

It is stressed that the categories of “spirit”, “consciousness”, “information field’ shaping a triad, integrate spiritual and material, ideal and real, subjective and objective components of landscape in a whole unity.

Coral reefs are of major importance to the livelihoods of coastal communities and therefore deserve special consideration. While covering less than 1% of the oceanic area, they support almost one third of marine fish species, providing around 10% of the total fish consumed by humans worldwide. Furthermore, coral reefs protect the shoreline and coastal land against ocean waves or surge effects; promote the growth of mangroves and sea grasses by enhancing sediment deposition and stability. Erosion processes of reef structures results in the generation of sand, which is moved and accreted onto the beaches. Reefs provide three dimensional structural frameworks with lots of micro and macro spaces.  As a result, coral reefs act as focal points for primary and secondary production. Coral reefs contribute greatly in the maintenance of biodiversity and genetic library in whole coastal ecosystem. Coral reefs are used as feeding, nursery and/or spawning areas by transient species, thereby providing important biological support or link of many mobile organisms from different coastal habitats.  Coral reefs directly support pelagic food webs through export of organic production to the adjacent ocean. Furthermore, coral reefs are net sinks for Carbon, principally as calcium carbonate (CaCO3) accretion; hence contribute positively to climate change balance. Certain massive reef-building corals (e.g., massive Porites) contain a wealth of historical proxy climate and environmental information (e.g., temperature, pollution, salinity) locked in their calcium carbonate skeletons.. The socio-economic values of coral reefs are realised mainly through coastal fisheries and coastal tourism. Coral reef related ecosystems provide more than 70% of all artisanal fish production. Thus, coral reefs are crucial sources of income, thereby sustaining livelihoods of coastal communities. In Tanzania, coastal fishing communities depend entirely on coral reefs for their livelihood. Artisanal fisheries of Tanzania supply 90% of the animal protein consumed and the primary source of income for the people.

Coral reefs face both natural and anthropogenic pressures, it is estimated 20% have been destroyed and more than 20% at high risk and longterm of collapse and if the present rate of destruction continues, 70% of coral reefs will be destroyed worldwide by 2050. The increased stresses and pressure on reefs mainly from climate change, exacerbated by human activities by overexploitation, have led to significant decline in coral reef resources, including fish catches in coastal communities of Tanzania. These impacts are the results of extinctions and damages incurred to Tanzanian reef ecosystems beyond the power for natural repair processes. Both drivers lead to gradual reduction in fish catches over time, impacting rural communities’ livelihoods, further calling for rigorously studying local livelihood adaptation following reef degradation.In order to safeguard benefits or goods and services from coral reefs it is very important to prevent further degradations and encourage sustainable utilization of coral reefs’ resources by setting up appropriate policies, laws and guidelines. 

Management of coral reefs in Tanzania is tied to the management of fisheries, which is controlled via licensing, policies, laws and regulations. Enforcement of management actions on coral reefs is faced with several policy/legal and institutional challenges: a) Inadequate institutional cooperation, collaboration and exchange of information, b) Law enforcement capacity of Regulatory Authorities, including Local Government Authorities (LGAs), c) Lack of involvement of Financial Institutions in promoting environmental compliance, including sustainable fishing on coral reefs, d) Limited capacity of fishers and businesses to complying with changing laws and standards, and e) Limited government commitments to support coral reef monitoring. This chapter provides an overview of the current coral reef status in Tanzania for the purposed of heighten conservation efforts.

Sustainable Land Management (SLM) practices are important to reduce land degradation, considering that 25% of global land is degraded. A study was conducted in Malikula micro-catchment in Balaka District to analyse the impact of SLM practices on vegetation. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected and analysed using a mixed methods approach. A household survey was conducted to collect information on existing SLM practices in the area and the factors influencing households to implement them. Selected Landsat Remote Sensing Imagery (LRSI) data for 30 years from 1991 to 2021 were downloaded and analysed in QGIS 3.22.10 (Biatoiweza) software using Semi-Automatic Classification Plugin (SCP) to determine LULC changes related to vegetation and Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) over the study period. Additional land productivity and rainfall data obtained from the Balaka Agricultural Office and the Department of Climate Change and Meteorological Services (DCCMS), respectively, were also analysed. The results indicate that ISFM is the most practised SLM intervention and that the need for soil fertility improvement drives households to adopt it. In addition, households with access to extension services and more land have a higher probability of adopting SLM practices.

Further, more female-headed households adopt SLM practices than male-headed households despite the latter being more knowledgeable. LULC analysis (Overall Accuracy and Kappa Coefficient of 89.2% and 0.78, respectively) show an increasing trend in dense and very dense vegetation cover at the expense of wetlands. Despite a decline in annual rainfall amounts during the study period, the study has found a positive correlation between mean NDVI and land area under RWH (R = 0.51), highlighting the impact of RWH on improved vegetation cover. The study recommends further gender analysis to understand SLM information asymmetry, more investment in extension services, promotion of SLM packages that appeal to farmers with limited land and exploration of innovative financing options for SLM practices to incentivise adoption. Lastly, the study recommends additional studies in the area to understand the decline in land area for wetlands.

Poaching is the greatest threat to many of our planet's most charismatic, valuable, and ecologically important species. Wildlife poaching poses significant threats not only to wildlife conservation and our shared natural heritage but also to security, good governance, and economic development objectives around the globe.

This study broadly sought to assess the factors influencing poaching in Majete Wildlife Reserve. The study concluded that poverty, drought and traditional cultures among the local community members had negatively impacted wildlife conservation in Majete Wildlife Reserve.

Therefore, the study recommended that the Park Management Unit design projects that meet the needs of the local community members and must also target poachers to increase the buy-in. Furthermore, irrigation projects proved effective in averting hunger caused by persistent drought. Sensitization was also among the effective measure in addressing the problem. As such, it must be intensified to curtail the malpractice. It was also recommended to recruit more rangers to enforce the policing strategies in areas prone to poaching due to the absence of game rangers.

There is an increased demand for energy due to the continuously growing human population. Due to the increase in energy demand, fossil fuel reserves are being rapidly depleted; dependence on fossil fuels as a source of energy damages the environment in many aspects. This practice can be halted if we switch to renewable energy sources like wind, solar and hydrophone. This study assessed factors that lead to low Adoption of alternative energy sources. The study took place in Limbuli in Mulanje, Malawi. It used stratified sampling to sample 80 households in the peripherals of the Limbuli estate. Fifty-seven households were interviewed to gain an in-depth understanding of factors that affect the Adoption of alternative energy sources. It found that the expensiveness and unreliability of alternative energy sources affect their Adoption. It also shows a direct relationship between adopting alternative energy sources and education and income level.

Further, it indicates that culture and knowledge of alternative energy sources have less significance on their Adoption. It concludes that the Adoption of alternative sources of energy continues to be an area of further consideration. The study recommends that Lessons on alternative energy sources that focus on the mindset change towards alternative energy sources should be included in primary schools, and awareness campaigns should be done in the community.

Health facilities generate extensive consignment of healthcare waste that may be hard to manage due to its ability to spread different infections if improperly handled. There is a need for healthcare workers who handles healthcare waste to have adequate knowledge and stick to proper healthcare waste management. This paper sought to assess knowledge, attitudes, and practices of medical waste Management among healthcare workers in selected health centres in Blantyre urban. A descriptive study design was deployed and analyse a study population comprising ten public health centres. Stratified random sampling was used where (n) = 81 healthcare workers from 10 health centres were interviewed. Data were collected using structured questionnaires, and Statistical Package for the Social Sciences was used in data analysis.

The study revealed that knowledge of medical waste management could have been adequate, with 21% of the participants scoring below par. Some participants disclosed a good attitude towards healthcare waste management, though 31% revealed good practices.

The study concludes that healthcare workers' knowledge, attitudes, and practices needed to be more satisfactory. Most health professionals could have performed better on the knowledge of healthcare waste management, which places healthcare workers, patients and the community around the health centre at risk. The researcher recommends that training, mentorship and supervision in healthcare waste management are needed as far as proper healthcare management is concerned.

The study analysed the flood impact in the Mitondo area regarding the Pressure and Release (PAR) model. The PAR model depicts a disaster as a product of physical exposure and socioeconomic Pressure. The model has three components generating Vulnerability on the social side, namely root causes, dynamic Pressure, and unsafe conditions.

The study aimed to identify the impact that floods have had on people's socioeconomic status, to establish the most vulnerable groups during floods regarding gender and to identify coping mechanisms employed during floods. The study used a descriptive cross-sectional research design. Most prone flood villages were selected, participants were sampled using purposive sampling, and data were analysed using SPSS and Microsoft Excel.

The study results revealed that the prevailing vulnerabilities during the floods were rooted in various factors, ranging from poverty, lack of resources, lack of strong infrastructure, and lack of early warning systems, as depicted by the stages of the PAR model. These factors resulted from the individual, community, and national Government's mistakes. There is still more to be done on the progression to the safety model. The current efforts in Mitondo are only based on and aiming at controlling the situation. For example, people must relocate to safe locations, build hazard-resistant buildings and infrastructure, increase low incomes, and embark on a disaster preparedness plan to achieve safe conditions.

The study recommended that Government and key stakeholders should civic educate people in Mitondo who reside in flood-prone areas in order for them to move permanently to higher grounds. The relocating should go with the provision of all the necessary socio amenities such as schools, hospitals, infrastructure, water, and agriculture support for three years to enable the households to settle. Furthermore, the district council must develop response and recovery plans for flood hazards in line with its disaster risk management plans and integrate them with its contingency plans.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), developing nations have reported three million incidences of agrochemical poisoning. The protracted and extensive deployment of agrochemicals has resulted in detrimental impacts on soil biodiversity, agricultural sustainability, and food safety, thereby entailing far-reaching detrimental consequences for human and animal health, as well as nutritional security in the long run. The adverse impact of agrochemicals on the functions of soil microbial and biochemical processes is a matter of considerable concern. Changes in the diversity and composition of the beneficial micro biota have the potential to impede plant growth and development through either a diminution in nutrient accessibility or an escalation in susceptibility to disease. Presently, there exists a necessity for qualitative, innovative, and demand-oriented research within the realm of soil science, particularly within developing nations. This imperative calls for the facilitation of high-caliber, environmentally sustainable research initiatives through the establishment of an incapacitating and dependable work environment. Such measures would serve to incentivize productivity and academic excellence.

The impact of an infection ground source of Cacao frosty pod rot (Moniliophthora roreri (Cif. & Par.) Evans et al. was determined through the incidence of the disease in a tree of cacao from clone CCN - 51. For this purpose, the source of infection compounded by 27 diseased fruits, of which 24 were in a profuse degree of sporulation, was introduced and deposited into 50 cm. around of the tree in question. Every seven days, were made observations on the evolution of the disease and were collected the healthy and diseased fruits present on the tree. Two months and 10 days after the source of infection was introduced, only 1 fruit with Frosty pod rot was collected, attributable to external sources since it was found seven days after the source of infection was placed. Once again it was proved that diseased fruits deposited on the soil have no importance in the generation of epidemics of Moniliphthora roreri.