Description: Publication date: Available online 1 September 2017 Source: The Egyptian Journal of Remote Sensing and Space Science Author(s): H.A. Bharath, M.C. Chandan, S. Vinay, T.V. Ramachandra Metropolitan cities in India are emerging as major economic hubs with an unprecedented land use changes and decline of environmental resources. Globalisation and consequent relaxations of Indian markets to global players has given impetus to rapid urbanisation process. Urbanisation being irreversible and rapid coupled with fast growth of population during the last century, contributed to serious ecological and environmental consequences. This necessitates monitoring and advance visualisation of spatial patterns of landscape dynamics for evolving appropriate management strategies towards sustainable development approaches. This study visualises the growth of Indian mega cities Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai and Coimbatore, through Cellular Automata Markov model considering the influence of agent(s) of urban growth through soft computing techniques. CA Markov model is considered to be one of most effective algorithm to visualise the growth of urban spatial structures. Prediction of growth using agent based modelling considering the spatial patterns of urbanisation during the past four decades has provided insights to the urban dynamics. The industrial, infrastructural, socio-economic factors significantly influence the urban growth compared to the biophysical factors. Visualisation of urban growth suggest agents driven growth in the cities and its surroundings with large land use transformations in urban corridors and upcoming Industrial and ear marked developmental zones. Integrating local agents of urban growth help in identifying specific regions of intense growth, likely challenges and provide opportunities for evolving appropriate management strategies towards sustainable cities during the 21st century.

Description: eddy located along the Antarctic Polar Front in the Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean. Mixed layer (ML) waters were characterized by high nitrate (~20 μM), low dissolved iron (DFe ~0.2 nM) and low silicate concentrations (below 1 μM) restricting diatom growth. Upon initial fertilization, chlorophyll-a doubled during the first two weeks and stabilized thereafter, despite a second fertilization on day 21, due to an increase in grazing pressure. Biomass at the different trophic levels was mostly comprised of small autotrophic flagellates, the large copepod Calanus simillimus and the amphipod Themisto gaudichaudii. The downward flux of particulate material comprised mainly copepod fecal pellets that were remineralized in the upper 150 m of the water column with no significant deeper export. showed a greater variability (ranging from 0.3 to 1.3 nM) without a clear vertical pattern. Particulate iron concentrations (measured after 2 months at pH 1.4) decreased with time and showed a vertical pattern that indicated an important non-biogenic component at the bottom of the mixed layer. In order to assess the contribution of copepod grazing to iron cycling we used two different approaches: first, we measured for the first time in a field experiment copepod fecal pellet concentrations in the water column together with the iron content per pellet, and second, we devised a novel analytical scheme based on a two-step leaching protocol to estimate the contribution of copepod fecal pellets to particulate iron in the water column. Analysis of the iron content of isolated fecal pellets from C. simillimus showed that after the second fertilization, the iron content per fecal pellet was ~5 fold higher if the copepod had been captured in fertilized waters. We defined a new fraction termed leachable iron (pH 2.0) in 48 h (LFe48h) that, for the conditions during LOHAFEX, was shown to be an excellent proxy for the concentration of iron contained in copepod fecal pellets. We observed that, as a result of the second fertilization, iron accumulated in copepod fecal pellets and remained high at one third of the total iron stock in the upper 80 m. We hypothesize that our observations are due to a combination of two biological processes. First, phagotrophy of iron colloids freshly formed after the second fertilization by the predominant flagellate community resulted in higher Fe:C ratios per cell that, via grazing, lead to iron enrichment in copepod fecal pellets in fertilized waters. Second, copepod coprophagy could explain the rapid recycling of particulate iron in the upper 100–150 m, the accumulation of LFe48h in the upper 80 m after the second fertilization and provided the iron required for the maintenance of the LOHAFEX bloom for many weeks. Our results provide the first quantitative evidence of the major ecological relevance of copepods and their fecal products in the cycling of iron in silicate depleted areas of the Southern Ocean.