Geography
Thar Desert Case Study
The Thar Desert, also known as the Great Indian Desert, is located in northwestern India and eastern Pakistan. It covers an area of approximately 200,000 square kilometers and is home to a variety of plant and animal species, as well as several human communities that have adapted to the harsh desert environment. The region faces challenges such as water scarcity, soil erosion, and desertification.
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6 Key excerpts on "Thar Desert Case Study"
- Dhir, R P(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Daya Publishing House(Publisher)
Chapter 2 Desertification Perspectives: A Case Study of Indian Thar Desert R.P. Dhir Formerly Principal Scientist and Director, Central Arid Zone Research Institute, ICAR, Jodhpur, India E-mail: [email protected] Abstract Desertification has remained on the international agenda for the past more than four decades. As a result immense amount of work has been done across the affected countries to understand the forms of desertification, to map the severity and extent of the problem and to elaborate the ways it affects the integrity of cultural and natural ecosystems or impacts the livelihood of the people depending upon these. Though importance of social dimension of desertification has been realized, application of the same in planning and implementation of control programs has left much to be desired. Since several geographic regions experiencing desertification are beset also with under-development, political issues and unfair social disparities, the application and maintenance of remedial have their own shortcomings. Land degradation has several areas of convergence with conventions like those on climate change and biological diversity but there are also areas of conflict. Over all, the problem of desertification, despite its social, economic and environmental impacts, remains under-addressed. Experiences over the past have shown the positive role of interventions that are not directly part of desertification control. Measures such as poverty alleviation and improvements in literacy, public health, and infrastructure and service sector growth allow the affected populations a better ability to live with the problem of land degradation but help in several ways in restoration activity. Thar Desert has seen many such transformations amongst which, irrigation development has reduced dependence on rainfed farming and in the process it has also stabilized the landforms that were once threatening the well being This ebook is exclusively for this university only.
eBook - ePubSand Dunes of the Northern Hemisphere: Distribution, Formation, Migration and Management
Volume 2: Characteristics, Dynamics and Provenance of Sand Dunes in the Northern Hemisphere
- Lu Qi, Mahesh K. Gaur, Victor R. Squires, Lu Qi, Mahesh K. Gaur, Victor R. Squires(Authors)
- 2023(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
Gaur et al., 2018 ). The extent of rainfed cropped area varies from year to year depending on amount, distribution and intensity of rainfall. Therefore, during moderate and severe drought years the production goes down to very low levels in the increased area cropped. Small and marginal holdings of agriculture contribute to 80% of dryland agriculture of the region. Irrigation is done through various sources like canals, wells, tanks and other local ones. During 2018–19, gross irrigated area amounted to 30.4% of the total geographical area of the arid tract. There is an increase of 77.6% in the total cropped area, whereas a sharp decrease of 26.02% has been observed in fallow lands between 1960–61 and 2018–19. Canal irrigated northern and south-western areas experienced the greatest decrease (103.45%) in operational land holding, whereas 85.70% decline occurred due to industrialization in the eastern district. However, rainfed districts have experienced the least decline (41–44%) in operational land holding. As a result, a large sandy tract and other marginal area has been brought under agricultural activities particularly during last 2–3 decades. As a result, farmers have been able to raise double and triple crops by optimizing water productivity through the adoption of sprinkler and drip irrigation.Global warming has profound ramifications for the environmentally fragile tract of the Thar Desert. The loss of the world-famous Indus/Saraswati civilization at the edge of the desert alone has been igniting renewed interest in this regard. The period of last few decades has seen a large range of investigations using state–of-the-art tools and techniques to reconstruct the history for the preceding several thousands of years. The observations show that the Thar, geologically, is not an old desert and that since its existence, it has experienced intense fluctuations in severity of aridity and intensity of dune formation activity. This was irrespective of anthropogenic activities and was a consequence of solar orbital parameters and consequent global weather systems (Dhir et al., 2018 ). Migration, in search of livelihood, is a major factor of human settlements in an arid and semi-arid landscape of Rajasthan, especially due to the high vulnerability of agriculture caused by the erratic nature of the monsoon. Another major factor of migration is the increasing livelihood opportunities provided by the mining and industrial sectors that have flourished and have started proliferating especially due to infrastructural growth and capital investments in western Rajasthan.Sea level rises: implications for the coastal zones
The geologic record is full of examples which document sea-level change. The magnitude and frequency of these documented changes range over hundreds of meters and up to millions of years. Vast sequences of sedimentary rocks containing distinctive erosional breaks or discontinuities attest to the impact of transgressing and regressing shorelines, consequent on sea-level change and other factors. Fortunately, in being able to be more precise about rates, directions magnitudes and frequencies of sea-level variation. Various tools such as radiometric dating, provide the investigator with the opportunity to critically evaluate hypotheses of how shorelines react to given amounts of sea-level rise or fall. It is a matter of fact that the sea level has been recently rising as a vital sequence of global warming and climate changes phenomena. Sea Level Rise (SLR) might be attributed mostly to greenhouse effects and the melting of glaciers and polar ice sheets. SLR constitutes one of the most noteworthy challenges facing the world mainly in coastal zones and low-lying deltaic areas. Globally, the sea level has risen considerably in the 20th century, although not everywhere to the same extent.
eBook - PDF- Siddan Anbazhagan, S.K. Subramanian, XIAOJUN YANG(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
39 3 Geoinformatics in Spatial and Temporal Analyses of Wind Erosion in Thar Desert Amal Kar 3.1 Introduction The.Thar.Desert.(TD).in.the.hot.arid.tropics.lies.in.the.eastern.margin. of. the. world’s. largest. contiguous. arid. land. between. the. Atlantic. coast. of.North.Africa.and.the.Aravalli.Ranges.of.western.India . .The.Aravalli. Ranges. mark. the. eastern. margin. of. the. present-day. aridity. in. India. (i.e., .moisture.availability.index.at.−66 .6%) .and.TD . .The.area.to.the.east.of. this.boundary.has.many.fields.of.gullied.stable.sand.dunes.and.other.low. CONTENTS 3.1 . Introduction. ............................................................................................. 39 3.1.1 . Issues ............................................................................................. 41 3.2 . Objectives. ................................................................................................. 41 3.2.1 . Climate.and.Population. ............................................................. 42 3.3 . Methodology. ........................................................................................... 42 3.3.1 . Data.Sources. ................................................................................ 42 3.3.2 . Measurement.of.Driving.Force.and.Pressure.Variables. ....... 44 3.4 . Results.and.Discussion. .......................................................................... 46 3.4.1 . Sand.Reactivation. ....................................................................... 46 3.5 . Quantification.of.Cultivation.and.Grazing.Pressures. ....................... 50 3.5.1 . Cultivation.Pressure. ................................................................... 50 3.5.2 . Grazing.Pressure. ......................................................................... 50 3.5.3 . Multicriteria.Evaluation.of.Desertification .............................. 53 3.6 . From.Local.to.Regional:.Flagging.the.Key.Variables.
eBook - PDFDesign with the Desert
Conservation and Sustainable Development
- Richard Malloy, John Brock, Anthony Floyd, Margaret Livingston, Robert H. Webb(Authors)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
54 This may reflect the relatively high rainfall levels with the concomitantly relatively dense vegetation cover or it may be one response to the fact that, in terms of * General background information on the Indian Deserts is provided by B. Allchin et al. 48 † Foraminiferal tests are shells of foraminifera, a group of marine organisms. Calcareous aeolianites are wind-blown sediments cemented with calcium carbonate. Quartzose deposits mostly contain particles of quartz. Sayf dunes are longitudinal dunes that are parallel to wind direction. Indian Ocean India Hyderabad Ahmadabad Karachi Jodhpur 30°0'0N 70°0'0E 70°0'0E 30°0'0N Pakistan Thar Desert FIGURE 1.9 Map of the Thar Desert in India. 13 Deserts of the World wind-energy levels, the Thar is one of the least energetic of the world’s deserts. Large sayf dunes that occur in the west of the desert, especially near Umarkot in Pakistan, have some seasonally inundated lakes in their swales ( dhands ) and may be derived as blown-out parabolics. 55 Locally, within the Thar, there are closed basins and salt deposits (Figure 1.10). Some may be the result of the blocking of drainage systems by dunes as at Sambhar or on some of the tributaries of the Luni River, 56 while others, such as the Jaisalmer and Pokaran Ranns, may be related to faulting. 57 Coastal deposits are also important areas of salt, and the Rann of Kutch is a major sabkha area. 58 Possibly, the most contentious issue surrounding the Thar Desert is its age and origin. Fossil evidence for pre-Pleistocene climates is scanty in Gujarat, Sind, and Rajasthan, but the records of Dipterocarpoxylon malavii , Cocos , Mesua tertiara , and Garcinia borocahii from the Tertiary beds of Kutch and Barmer and the Eocene lignite at Palna near Bikaner may be suggestive of conditions rather similar to those currently pertaining in eastern Bengal, upper Burma, and Assam. 59 However, it is far from clear when the desert became estab-lished.
eBook - PDFSouth Asian Borderlands
Mobility, History, Affect
- Farhana Ibrahim, Tanuja Kothiyal(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Through instances of banditry in the Thur-Parkar region of the Thar Desert in the mid-nineteenth century, this chapter attempts to explore the intersections 198 Tanuja Kothiyal between the categories of bandit, rebel and state. Could banditry in the arid Thar merely be understood through a criminal context, or was it located in a political context of power? Were the native rulers incapable of suppressing banditry or were their negotiations with bandits a part of a historical system of exchange? Did banditry, and the rebelliousness that it was inextricably located in, challenge the ideas about Rajputhood and warriorhood as they had emerged in the Rajput courts? Did banditry constitute dissidence, as a number of bandits were outlaws or barwutteas, 2 exiles from their own states? Were the British, while understanding banditry through a criminal context, able to deal with it only as a question of lawlessness? These questions become important in the context of phrases like ‘pacification’ and ‘tranquilization’ of frontiers used in British reports, which suggest a state of constant turmoil. The efforts to induce ‘tranquility, industry and order’ in the frontiers by encouraging the settlement of agriculturalists were rooted in the premise that social hostility was ingrained in the adversarial geography of the region, and hence could be ordered. I The Thar Desert is a vast sandy plain located between the Aravali Mountains in the east, the eastern bank of Indus on the west, the Punjab basin on the north and the Rann of Kutch in the south, dotted with dry scrubland, grasslands, forts and urban and rural settlements. While being agriculturally deficient, the Thar provides excellent fodder and forage to pastoralists, as well as passage to mercantile caravans. In 1947, the Thar Desert was divided by the Radcliffe line, an international boundary between the new nation-states of India and Pakistan.
eBook - PDF- Rani, S Sandhya(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Regency Publications(Publisher)
Chapter 7 Endemic and Threatened Plants of Indian Thar Desert, Rajasthan (India) Amit Kotia * Department of Habitat Ecology, Wildlife Institute of India, Post Box # 18, Chandrabani , Dehradun – 248001, India Introduction: The state of Rajasthan is situated between 23°3’ and 30°12’ N latitude and 69°30 and 78°17’ E longitude. The total land area of the state is about 3, 42,239 km 2 , out of which about 1, 96,150 km2 is arid and rest is semi-arid, Forest covers only about 37,638 km 2 i.e . 11 per cent of the total area. This forest includes roughly 7 per cent of depleted and denuded forests, while the remaining area is fairly well stocked. The physical features are characterized mainly by the Aravalli and to some extent by the Vindhyan formations, and the Deccan trap, which are predominant in the south in Banswara, Jhalawar and Baran. The Aravalli hills running over a length of 680 km, divide the state into two parts, north western and south-eastern occupying 60 per cent and 40 per cent area of the state respectively. The north-western portion, with This ebook is exclusively for this university only. Cannot be resold/distributed. a total area of 2, 08591 km 2 has the major portion measuring about 1, 20,983 km 2 in the form of sand dunes; only 2 per cent of the total area of the region is under forest cover (Rodgers and Panwar 1988; Roy and Kumar 1995). Figure 7.1: Showing Thar Desert and Semiarid Region in Rajasthan. A major portion of western Rajasthan has desert soils and sandy plain. Sand dunes occupy a greater part of the desert. Occurrence of saline-sodic soils in Rajasthan with pH up to 9.0 is a common feature. The soils of the desert plains are loamy sand to loam in texture and lime concretion accumulation generally occur within 150 cm of soil profile (Basen and Lodha, 1971; Dhir and Jain, 1982). The average annual rainfall in the state is 525-675 mm in the eastern region and 275 mm in the western region.
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