Land-use change induced environmental hazards in the Sangonghe Oasis of Xinjiang, arid northwestern China

Xiaoyu Li, Lijuan Liu and Shanzhong Qi*

Oasis is an area where artificial disturbances occur at the regional scale. Environmental hazard resulting from land use change is a focus of research on global environmental changes and plays a significant role in landscape pattern of oasis in arid regions of China. The Sangonghe Oasis is a very typical artificial oasis in arid northwestern China. With the rapid development of human activities in the oasis which had induced land use change, severe problems of environmental hazard such as soil salinization and decline of groundwater table, occur within the whole oasis.

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Disasters Evermore, Threatened Tourism: Rethinking Disaster Management for Indian Tourism Industry under the Uncertainty of Extreme Weather and Climate change

Sagar Kundan

Tourism is often described as a fragile industry as it is dependent on meteorology and climatology, that is to say, both the prevailing weather and long-term climate change. No doubt, weather conditions and their changes are important for tourism. However, in the last decades, extreme weather events have caused substantial damage to the tourism industry in India. India has its novel physical components, regional cultural diversity, soil sorts and climatic conditions, so are the vegetation and untamed life. Its strong exposure and the expansion of tourism infrastructures on the one hand and increasing activities of tourists in hazardous areas, on the other hand, resulted in a higher risk for accidents and damages to property. Furthermore, extreme events can occur more frequently or more intensely due to the larger energy content in a warmer atmosphere in conjunction with climate change. Altogether, the increase of the loss potential and the accumulation of certain extreme events led to an augmented risk for tourism in India.

The present study addresses the urgent need to link tourism industry, DRR and CCA, while critically reflecting on opportunities and limitations. Hence, this paper presents the relationship between climate change and tourism, how they influence each other, how the industry addresses this challenge and why holistic view is required for disaster response and recovery with a dire understanding of different concepts and issues central to the understanding of risk reduction and adaptation in Indian tourism industry contexts. Also, it gives guidance for the future direction by providing practical recommendations and quality criteria for developing effective strategies for adaptation to extreme events.

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Seismic behaviour of high rise RC structures

Rengaraju Sureshkumar, Visuvasam J.* and Jayasingh Simon

Due to the increasing demand for industrial and residential space and scarcity of land in urban areas, there is an increasing demand for high rise RC structures. Shear walls are one of the excellent means of providing lateral resistance to high rise RC structures as they provide strength and stiffness in the direction of lateral loads. In this paper, seismic responses of five different configurations of shear wall models were developed and analyzed by using ETABS.

Equivalent static method, response spectrum method and linear time history analysis were performed for determining the seismic response of the structure. Seven different ground motions were taken for performing linear time history analysis. The numerical investigations of RC shear wall structural systems were studied using the parameters-inter storey drift, storey displacement. Results were used to obtain the effective and optimum position of shear wall in a high-rise structure.

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Identification of Sea Water Intrusion at the Coast of Amal, Binalatung, Tarakan by Means of Geoelectrical Resistivity Data

Sunaryo*, Suwanto Marsudi and Seno Anggoro

The research entitled with identification of seawater intrusion at the coast of Amal, Binalatung, Tarakan by means of geoelectrical resistivity data has been conducted. The study was conducted with the objective to distinguish the presence of seawater intrusion layer or salt-water aquifer distribution along the data acquisition line with a length of 7.1km approximately.

The nearest space from the data acquisition point to the beach is 0.3km while the furthest distance is 2.52km. Path of research data acquisition planned for the gas line facility. Data acquisition was conducted by using the Wenner-Schumberger configuration of geoelectrical resistivity. From this research, we obtained 8 points of vertical electrical sounding (VES) data was obtained with the distance between electrode a = 10m.

The result of the calculation of the data in apparent resistivity value for further curve matching was applied between the observed curve and the model curve to get the true resistivity value of each layer respectively. Based on the data processing obtained depth up to 55m with the smallest resistivity value is 0.85Ωm and the largest is 8914.22Ωm. To make the distribution of resistivity values along the path line of the study, cross sections were made until a depth of 50m using Kriging interpolation. Based on the cross-section, the low resistivity value (less than 1.5 Ωm) that interpreted as a seawater intrusion layer or salt water aquifer distribution is located at top depth about 10m to 30m and bottom depth about 30m to 55m.

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Investigation of Landslide affected area using UAV and GIS in Banaran Village, Ponorogo, Indonesia

Fadly Usman*, Keisuke Murakami and Mohammad Bisri

The landslide disaster that hit the residential area of Banaran village, Ponorogo regency, East Java provided a valuable lesson on the importance of controlling land conversion activities. The losses suffered by citizens are not only from agricultural land, houses, livestock and so forth but also the loss of life. The purpose of this research related to the investigation of landslide affected areas is to know the impact caused by the landslide disaster.

By using an unmanned aircraft or UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle), it can be used to identify the affected areas in detail, then a 3D spatial analysis of the landslides volume piled in Banaran Village is done. By using Geographic Information System (GIS) technology, the condition of the area is affected before landslide can be seen.

Thus, the landslide-affected residents such as the number of houses, farmland area and other assets in the landslide area can be known. The numerical analysis on the landslide is done through a modeling of the physical conditions such as in the landslide location, the speed and altitude of landslides that hit Banaran Village can be known.

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