Climograph
Climograph for Memphis, TN
Source: M. Ritter
A climograph is a graphical depiction of the monthly precipitation and temperature conditions for a selected place. Precipitation is shown by the bar graph. A line graph depicts temperature.
Histograms
In statistics, a histogram is a graphical display of tabulated frequencies. A histogram is the graphical version of a table that shows what proportion of cases fall into each of several or many specified categories. The histogram differs from a bar chart in that it is the area of the bar that denotes the value, not the height, a crucial distinction when the categories are not of uniform width (Lancaster, 1974). The categories are usually specified as non-overlapping intervals of some variable. The categories (bars) must be adjacent.
The word histogram is derived from Greek: histos ‘anything set upright’ (as the masts of a ship, the bar of a loom, or the vertical bars of a histogram); gramma ‘drawing, record, writing’. The histogram is one of the seven basic tools of quality control, which also include the Pareto chart, check sheet, control chart, cause-and-effect diagram, flowchart, and scatter diagram. A generalization of the histogram is kernel smoothing techniques. This will construct a very smooth Probability density function from the supplied data.
Cactus: an unlikely fodder solution?
Unlike its spiky cousins, the prickly pear cactus Opuntia ficus-indica is spineless and offers several benefits to both man and livestock. Although it originated in the deserts of Central and
Farmers in
In the bleak tracts of this north-African country, the unforgiving red sand dunes are home to populations of once nomadic pastoralists. As a result of conflict in the region and the need to access permanent shelter, education and water, these people have been forced to abandon their traditional migration patterns and adopt a sedentary way of life. The results of this change have been increasing overgrazing and desertification; with nowhere else to go, these livestock keepers are faced with shortages of feed and water for their livestock.
Providing food and water
Resistant to high temperatures and able to survive with little and erratic rainfall, cacti can thrive in the most arid conditions where nothing else will grow: in central and southern Tunisia, cactus plantations provide large amounts of fodder for livestock and play a key role in natural resources conservation. The plants contain a high percentage of water - up to 90 per cent when fresh - and research has shown that, when fed to livestock, water requirements can be reduced by 40 to 100 per cent.
Farmers prefer to cut the cactus into smaller pieces and supplement with hay or straw.
credit: ICARDA
Need for supplementation
However, despite the many advantages of cactus, it does not provide a balanced feed: while the plants are high in carbohydrates and vitamin A, protein content is only about five per cent and phosphorous and sodium levels are also low. To provide a nutritional balance, farmers are encouraged to grow leguminous fodder shrubs such as the salt bush (Atriplexnummularia or A. halimus) which is also capable of withstanding harsh conditions.
The Mashreq-Maghreb project has also introduced alley-cropping techniques to farmers, with cereal or legume pasture crops grown between rows of cactus. Two years after cactus alley-cropping was introduced in a pilot community in
While animals are able to graze directly on cactus plantations, rotation of fenced areas has to be managed to avoid overgrazing and damage to young plants. Many farmers prefer and are encouraged to cut the cactus into smaller pieces and supplement with hay or straw. The ‘cladodes’, the fresh cactus pads or water storing segments of the plant, are rich in easily fermentable carbohydrates which aid digestion in the rumen.
Sharing lessons learned
Cactus fodder has improved livestock productivity throughout the year.
credit: ICARDA
As a result of ICARDA’s collaborative work on cactus, the experience and lessons learned from technologies are generating benefits elsewhere, including in
In
Poverty and environmental degradation are intertwined in the low rainfall areas of West Asia and
In a region that will continue to struggle with two of the world’s biggest environmental challenges, desertification and climate change, this multi-purpose plant provides a viable option for communities seeking to grow crops and sustain livestock on marginal or degraded land with very few inputs.
Further information:
Origin of Agriculture
Agriculture was developed at least 10,000 years ago, and it has undergone significant developments since the time of the earliest cultivation. Evidence points to the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East as the site of the earliest planned sowing and harvesting of plants that had previously been gathered in the wild. Independent development of agriculture occurred in northern and southern China, Africa’s Sahel, New Guinea and several regions of the Americas. Agricultural practices such as irrigation, crop rotation, fertilizers, and pesticides were developed long ago but have made great strides in the past century. The Haber-Bosch method for synthesizing ammonium nitrate represented a major breakthrough and allowed crop yields to overcome previous constraints. In the past century agriculture has been characterized by enhanced productivity, the substitution of labor for synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, selective breeding, mechanization, water pollution, and farm subsidies. In recent years there has been a backlash against the external environmental effects of conventional agriculture, resulting in the organic movement.
Identifying the exact origin of agriculture remains problematic because the transition from hunter-gatherer societies began thousands of years before the invention of writing. Nonetheless, archaeobotanists/paleoethnobotanists have traced the selection and cultivation of specific food plant characteristics, such as a semi-tough rachis and larger seeds, to just after the Younger Dryas (about 9,500 BC) in the early Holocene in the Levant region of the Fertile Crescent. There is earlier evidence for use of wild cereals: anthropological and archaeological evidence from sites across Southwest Asia and North Africa indicate use of wild grain (e.g., from the ca. 20,000 BC site of Ohalo II in Israel, many Natufian sites in the Levant and from sites along the Nile in the 10th millennium BC). There is even evidence of planned cultivation and trait selection: grains of rye with domestic traits have been recovered from Epi-Palaeolithic (10,000+ BC) contexts at Abu Hureyra in Syria, but this appears to be a localised phenomenon resulting from cultivation of stands of wild rye, rather than a definitive step towards domestication. It isn’t until after 9,500 BC that the eight so-called founder crops of agriculture appear: first emmer and einkorn wheat, then hulled barley, peas, lentils, bitter vetch, chick peas and flax. These eight crops occur more or less simultaneously on PPNB sites in the Levant, although the consensus is that wheat was the first to be sown and harvested on a significant scale.
Mehrgarh, one of the most important Neolithic (7000 BC to 3200 BC) sites in archaeology, lies on the “Kachi plain of Baluchistan, Pakistan, and is one of the earliest sites with evidence of farming (wheat and barley) and herding (cattle, sheep and goats) in South Asia.”
By 7000 BC, sowing and harvesting reached Mesopotamia and there, in the super fertile soil just north of the Persian Gulf, Sumerian ingenuity systematized it and scaled it up. By 6000 BC farming was entrenched on the banks of the Nile River. About this time, agriculture was developed independently in the Far East, probably in China, with rice rather than wheat as the primary crop. Maize was first domesticated, probably from teosinte, in the Americas around 3000-2700 BC, though there is some archaeological evidence of a much older development. The potato, the tomato, the pepper, squash, several varieties of bean, and several other plants were also developed in the New World, as was quite extensive terracing of steep hillsides in much of Andean South America. Agriculture was also independently developed on the island of New Guinea.
In China, rice and millet were domesticated by 8000 BC, followed by the beans mung, soy and azuki. In the Sahel region of Africa local rice and sorghum were domestic by 5000 BC. Local crops were domesticated independently in West Africa and possibly in New Guinea and Ethiopia. Evidence of the presence of wheat and some legumes in the 6th millennium BC have been found in the Indus Valley. Oranges were cultivated in the same millennium. The crops grown in the valley around 4000 BC were typically wheat, peas, sesame seed, barley, dates and mangoes. By 3500 BC cotton growing and cotton textiles were quite advanced in the valley. By 3000 BC farming of rice had started. Other monsoon crops of importance of the time was cane sugar. By 2500 BC, rice was an important component of the staple diet in Mohenjodaro near the Arabian Sea. By this time the Indians had large cities with well-stocked granaries. Three regions of the Americas independently domesticated corn, squashes, potato and sunflowers.
Theory
The reasons for the development of farming may have included climate change, but possibly there were also social reasons (e.g., accumulation of food surplus for competitive gift-giving as in the Pacific Northwest potlatch culture). Most likely there was a gradual transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural economies after a lengthy period during which some crops were deliberately planted and other foods were gathered in the wild. Although localised climate change is the favoured explanation for the origins of agriculture in the Levant, the fact that farming was ‘invented’ at least three times elsewhere, and possibly more, suggests that social reasons may have been instrumental.
When major climate change took place after the last ice age c.11,000 BC much of the earth became subject to long dry seasons. These conditions favoured annual plants which die off in the long dry season, leaving a dormant seed or tuber. These plants tended to put more energy into producing seeds than into woody growth. An abundance of readily storable wild grains and pulses enabled hunter-gatherers in some areas to form the first settled villages at this time.[citation needed]
There are several theories as to what drove populations to take up agriculture:
Chinese agriculture
The unique tradition of Chinese agriculture has been traced to the pre-historic Xianrendong Relics and Diaotonghuan Relics (c. 12 0000 BC-7500 BC).[citation needed] Chinese historical and governmental records of the Warring States (481 BC-221 BC), Qin Dynasty (221 BC-207 BC), and Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD) eras allude to the use of complex agricultural practices, such as a nationwide granary system and widespread use of sericulture. However, the oldest extant Chinese book on agriculture is the Chimin Yaoshu of 535 AD, written by Jia Sixia.Although much of the literature of the time was elaborate, flowery, and allusive, Jia’s writing style was very straightforward and lucid, a literary approach to agriculture that later Chinese agronomists after Jia would follow, such as Wang Zhen and his groundbreaking Nong Shu of 1313 AD. Jia’s book was also incredibly long, with over one hundred thousand written Chinese characters, and quoted 160 other Chinese books that were written previously (but no longer survive). The contents of Jia’s 6th century book include sections on land preparation, seeding, cultivation, orchard management, forestry, and animal husbandry. The book also includes peripherally related content covering trade and culinary uses for crops.
For agricultural purposes, the Chinese had innovated the hydraulic-powered trip hammer by the 1st century BC.Although it found other purposes, its main function to pound, decorticate, and polish grain that otherwise would have been done manually. The Chinese also innovated the square-pallet chain pump by the 1st century AD, powered by a waterwheel or an oxen pulling a on a system of mechanical wheels.Although the chain pump found use in public works of providing water for urban and palatial pipe systems, it was used largely to lift water from a lower to higher elevation in filling irrigation canals and channels for farmland.
Indian agriculture Agriculture in India
Evidence of the presence of wheat and some legumes in the 6th millennium BC have been found in the Indus Valley. Oranges were cultivated in the same millennium. The crops grown in the valley around 4000 BC were typically wheat, peas, sesame seed, barley, dates and mangoes. By 3500 BC cotton growing and cotton textiles were quite advanced in the valley. By 3000 BC farming of rice had started. Other monsoon crops of importance of the time was cane sugar. By 2500 BC, rice was an important component of the staple diet in Mohenjodaro near the Arabian Sea.
The Indus Plain had rich alluvial deposits which came down the Indus River in annual floods. This helped sustain farming that formed basis of the Indus Valley Civilization at Harappa. The people built dams and drainage systems for the crops.
By 2000 BC tea, bananas and apples were being cultivated in India. There was coconut trade with East Africa in 200 BC. By 500 AD, eggplants were being cultivated.
Roman agriculture Roman agriculture
Roman agriculture built off techniques pioneered by the Sumerians, with a specific emphasis on the cultivation of crops for trade and export. Romans laid the groundwork for the manorial economic system, involving serfdom, which flourished in the Middle Ages.
[edit] Mesoamerican agriculture
In Mesoamerica, the Aztecs were some of the most innovative farmers of the ancient world and farming provided the entire basis of their economy. The land around Lake Texcoco was fertile but not large enough to produce the amount of food needed for the population of their expanding empire. The Aztecs developed irrigation systems, formed terraced hillsides, and fertilized their soil. However, their greatest agricultural technique was the chinampa or artificial islands also known as “floating gardens”. These were used to make the swampy areas around the lake suitable for farming. To make chinampas, canals were dug through the marshy islands and shores, then mud was heaped on huge mats made of woven reeds. The mats were anchored by tying them to posts driven into the lake bed and then planting trees at their corners that took root and secured the artificial islands permanently. The Aztecs grew corn, squash, vegetables, and flowers on chinampas.
Andean agriculture
The Andean civilizations were predominantly agricultural societies; the Incas took advantage of the ground, conquering the adversities like the Andean area and the inclemencies of the weather. The adaptation of agricultural technologies that already were used previously, allowed the Incas to organize the production a diversity of products of the coast, mountain and jungle, so them could be able to redistribute to villages that did not have access to other regions. The technological achievements reached to agricultural level, had not been possible without the workforce that was at the disposal of the Sapa Inca, as well as the road system that was allowing to store adequately the harvested resources and to distribute them for all the territory.
Muslim Agricultural Revolution
A valve-operated reciprocating suction piston pump water-raising machine with a crankshaft-connecting rod mechanism invented by al-Jazari.
From the 8th century, the medieval Islamic world witnessed a fundamental transformation in agriculture known as the “Muslim Agricultural Revolution“, “Arab Agricuural Revolution”, or “Green Revolution” Due to the global economy established by Muslim traders across the Old World during the “Afro-Asiatic age of discovery” or “Pax Islamica”, this enabled the diffusion of many crops, plants and farming techniques between different parts of the Islamic world, as well as the adaptation of crops, plants and techniques from beyond the Islamic world, distributed throughout Islamic lands which normally would not be able to grow these crops. These techniques included crop rotation, irrigation and pest control. Some have referred to the diffusion of numerous crops during this period as the “Globalisation of Crops” ,which, along with increased mechanization of agriculture, led to major changes in economy, population distribution, vegetation cover, agricultural production and income, population levels, urban growth, the distribution of the labour force, linked industries, cooking and diet, clothing, and numerous other aspects of life in the Islamic world.
Serfdom became widespread in eastern Europe in the Middle Ages. Medieval Europe owed much of its development to advances made in Islamic areas, which flourished culturally and materially while Europe and other Roman and Byzantine administered lands entered an extended period of social and economic stagnation. As early as the ninth century, an essentially modern agricultural system became central to economic life and organization in the Arab caliphates, replacing the largely export driven Roman model. The great cities of the Near East, North Africa and Moorish Spain were supported by elaborate agricultural systems which included extensive irrigation based on knowledge of hydraulic and hydrostatic principles, some of which were continued from Roman times. In later centuries, Persian Muslims began to function as a conduit, transmitting cultural elements, including advanced agricultural techniques, into Turkic lands and western India. The Muslims introduced what was to become an agricultural revolution based on four key areas:
- Development of a sophisticated system of irrigation using machines such as norias, water mills, water raising machines, dams and reservoirs. With such technology they managed to greatly expand the exploitable land area.
- The adoption of a scientific approach[18] to farming enabled them to improve farming techniques derived from the collection and collation of relevant information throughout the whole of the known world.[18] Farming manuals were produced in every corner of the Muslim world detailing where, when and how to plant and grow various crops. Advanced scientific techniques allowed leaders like Ibn al-Baytar to introduce new crops and breeds and strains of livestock into areas where they were previously unknown.
- Incentives based on a new approach to land ownership and labourers’ rights, combining the recognition of private ownership and the rewarding of cultivators with a harvest share commensurate with their efforts. Their counterparts in Europe struggled under a feudal system in which they were almost slaves (serfs) with little hope of improving their lot by hard work.
- The introduction of new crops transforming private farming into a new global industry exported everywhere,[15] including Europe, where farming was mostly restricted to wheat strains obtained much earlier via central Asia. Spain received what she in turn transmitted to the rest of Europe; many agricultural and fruit-growing processes, together with many new plants, fruit and vegetables. These new crops included sugar cane, rice, citrus fruit, apricots, cotton, artichokes, aubergines, and saffron. Others, previously known, were further developed. Muslims also brought to that country lemons, oranges, cotton, almonds, figs and sub-tropical crops such as bananas and sugar cane. Several were later exported from Spanish coastal areas to the Spanish colonies in the New World. Also transmitted via Muslim influence, a silk industry flourished, flax was cultivated and linen exported, and esparto grass, which grew wild in the more arid parts, was collected and turned into various articles.
Agriculture in the Middle Ages
During the Middle Ages, Muslim farmers in North Africa and the Near East developed and disseminated agricultural technologies including irrigation systems based on hydraulic and hydrostatic principles, the use of machines such as norias, and the use of water raising machines, dams, and reservoirs. They also wrote location-specific farming manuals, and were instrumental in the wider adoption of crops including sugar cane, rice, citrus fruit, apricots, cotton, artichokes, aubergines, and saffron. Muslims also brought lemons, oranges, cotton, almonds, figs and sub-tropical crops such as bananas to Spain.
Renaissance agriculture
The invention of a three field system of crop rotation during the Middle Ages, and the importation of the Chinese-invented moldboard plow, vastly improved agricultural efficiency.
After 1492 the world’s agricultural patterns were shuffled in the widespread exchange of plants and animals known as the Columbian Exchange. Crops and animals that were previously only known in the Old World were now transplanted to the New and vice versa. Perhaps most notably, the tomato became a favorite in European cuisine, and maize and potatoes were widely adopted. Other transplanted crops include pineapple, cocoa, and tobacco. In the other direction, several wheat strains quickly took to western hemisphere soils and became a dietary staple even for native North, Central and South Americans.
Agriculture was a key element in the Atlantic slave trade, Triangular trade, and the expansion by European powers into the Americas. In the expanding Plantation economy, large plantations producing crops including sugar, cotton, and indigo, were heavily dependent upon slave labor.
British Agricultural Revolution
British Agricultural Revolution
Between the 16th century and the mid-19th century, Great Britain saw a massive increase in agricultural productivity and net output. New agricultural practices like enclosure, mechanization, four-field crop rotation and selective breeding enabled an unprecedented population growth, freeing up a significant percentage of the workforce, and thereby helped drive the Industrial Revolution.
By the early 1800s, agricultural practices, particularly careful selection of hardy strains and cultivars, had so improved that yield per land unit was many times that seen in the Middle Ages and before.
The 18th and 19th century also saw the development of glasshouses, or greenhouses, initially for the protection and cultivation of exotic plants imported to Europe and North America from the tropics.
Experiments on Plant Hybridization in the late 1800s yielded advances in the understanding of plant genetics, and subsequently, the development of hybrid crops.
Increasing dependence upon monoculture crops lead to famines and food shortages, most notably the Irish Potato Famine (1845–1849).
Storage silos and grain elevators appeared in the 19th centuries.
Recent history
With the rapid rise of mechanization in the late 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in the form of the tractor, farming tasks could be done with a speed and on a scale previously impossible. These advances, joined to science-driven innovations in methods and resources, have led to efficiencies enabling certain modern farms in the United States, Argentina, Israel, Germany and a few other nations to output volumes of high quality produce per land unit at what may be the practical limit.
The development of rail and highway networks and the increasing use of container shipping and refrigeration in developed nations have also been essential to the growth of mechanized agriculture, allowing for the economical long distance shipping of produce.
While chemical fertilizer and pesticide have existed since the 19th century, their use grew significantly in the early twentieth century. In the 1960s, the Green Revolution applied western advances in fertilizer and pesticide use to farms worldwide, with varying success.
Other applications of scientific research since 1950 in agriculture include gene manipulation, and Hydroponics.
New criticisms
Though the intensive farming practices pioneered and extended in recent history generally led to increased outputs, they have also led to the destruction of farmland, most notably in the dust bowl area of the United States following World War I.
As global population increases, agriculture continues to replace natural ecosystems with monoculture crops.
In the past few decades, western consumers have become increasingly aware of, and in some cases critical of, widely used intensive agriculture practices, contributing to a rise in popularity of organic farming, the growth of the Slow Food movement, and an ongoing discussion surrounding the potential for sustainable agriculture.
Agricultural revolutions
Polymetallic Nodules
MANGANESE (OR POLYMETALLIC) NODULES: Increasing global population, demand for metals and dwindling land resources, has come to such a pass that the next alternative source for the metals could be in the world oceans. Oceans are considered as a ‘warehouse’ for minerals, amongst others, polymetallic nodules (Ferromanganese nodules), phosphorites, hydrothermal sulphides, placer deposits and sand. The first discovery of polymetallic nodules was made by scientists onboard the research vessel “H M S Challenger” during 1873. In comparison, India (by the efforts of the National Institute of Oceanography, Goa) recovered nodules in the Arabian Sea during 1981 onboard “R.V.Gaveshani.” In 1982, India was recognised as a Pioneer Investor in deep seabed mining, by the United Nations Convention on the Law of Sea.
Subsequently, a massive effort was put in by India for exploration of polymetallic nodules in the Central Indian Ocean Basin (CIOB) by using a number of research vessels. This national programme (running into crores of rupees) is being funded by Department of Ocean Development, New Delhi.
To-date, India has surveyed an area of nearly 4 million sq km in the CIOB. This resulted in the identification of two mine sites, each 150,000 sq km area with equal commercial grade (Cu+Ni+Co wt%) and abundance (kg/sq m) of nodules. In 1984, India filed her claim with the Preparatory Commission (PRECOM) for the International Sea Bed Authority (ISBA). In 1987, India became the first country in the world to be allocated exclusive rights for further exploration.
One of the mine site (A) of 150, 000 sq km has been allotted to India and as per the condition of the ISBA, 50 % of the area has been relinquished to this body.
What are polymetallic nodules and the criteria for their formation?
Polymetallic nodules are Fe-Mn oxide deposits, potato shape, porous, black
earthy colour with size ranging from 2 to 10 cm in diameter.
Different shapes of polymetallic nodules .
Nodules occur at nearly 4 to 5 km depth in the deep oceans and they take one
million year to grow to one millimeter.
In the Indian Ocean, nodules occur in different basins such as CIOB Wharton Basin,
Crozet Basin, Madgascar Basin, Somali Basin, South Australian Basin and Arabian sea.
The prerequisite conditions to form the nodules are:
Low sedimentation rate
Availability of nucleus around which accretion of oxides takes place
Oxidising environment
Bottom currents of low velocity
Natural Resources: Definition and Classification
Natural resources are naturally occurring substances that are considered valuable in their relatively unmodified (natural) form. A natural resource’s value rests in the amount of the material available and the demand for it. The latter is determined by its usefulness to production. A commodity is generally considered a natural resource when the primary activities associated with it are extraction and purification, as opposed to creation. Thus, mining, petroleum extraction, fishing, hunting, and forestry are generally considered natural-resource industries, while agriculture is not. The term was introduced to a broad audience by E.F. Schumacher in his 1970s book Small is Beautiful.
Classification of natural resources
Natural resources are mostly classified into renewable and non-renewable resources.
Renewable resources
Renewable resources are generally living resources (fish, reindeer, coffee, and forests, for example), which can restock (renew) themselves if they are not over-harvested but used sustainably. Once renewable resources are consumed at a rate that exceeds their natural rate of replacement, the standing stock (see renewable energy) will diminish and eventually run out. The rate of sustainable use of a renewable resource is determined by the replacement rate and amount of standing stock of that particular resource. Non-living renewable natural resources include soil and water.
Flow renewable resources are very much like renewable resources, only they do not need regeneration, unlike renewable resources. Flow renewable resources include renewable energy sources such as the following renewable power sources: solar, geothermal, biomass, landfill gas, tides and wind.
Resources can also be classified on the basis of their origin as biotic and abiotic. Biotic resources are derived from living organisms. Abiotic resources are derived from the non-living world (e.g., land, water, and air). Mineral and power resources are also abiotic resources some of which are derived from nature.
Non-renewable resources
A non-renewable resource is a natural resource that exists in a fixed amount that cannot be re-made, re-grown or regenerated as fast as it is consumed and used up.
Some non-renewable resources can be renewable but take an extremely long time to renew. Fossil fuels, for example, take millions of years to form and so are not practically considered ‘renewable’. Many environmentalists proposed to tax on consumption of non renewable resources.
Natural capital
Main article: Natural capital
Natural resources are natural capital converted to commodity inputs to infrastructural capital processes.[3][4] They include soil, timber, oil, minerals, and other goods taken more or less from the Earth. Both extraction of the basic resource and refining it into a purer, directly usable form, (e.g., metals, refined oils) are generally considered natural-resource activities, even though the latter may not necessarily occur near the former.
A nation’s natural resources often determine its wealth and status in the world economic system, by determining its political influence in. Developed nations are those which are less dependent on natural resources for wealth, due to their greater reliance on infrastructural capital for production. However, some see a resource curse whereby easily obtainable natural resources could actually hurt the prospects of a national economy by fostering political corruption. Political corruption can negatively impact the national economy because time is spent giving bribes or other economically unproductive acts instead of the generation of generative economic activity. There also tends to be concentrations of ownership over specific plots of land that have proven to yield natural resources.
In recent years, the depletion of natural capital and attempts to move to sustainable development have been a major focus of development agencies. This is of particular concern in rainforest regions, which hold most of the Earth’s natural biodiversity - irreplaceable genetic natural capital. Conservation of natural resources is the major focus of natural capitalism, environmentalism, the ecology movement, and Green Parties. Some view this depletion as a major source of social unrest and conflicts in developing nations.
Other information sources
Why Does Earth’s Magnetic Field Flip?
Earth’s magnetic field has flipped many times over the last billion years, according to the geologic record. But only in the past decade have scientists developed and evolved a computer model to demonstrate how these reversals occur.
“We can see reversals in the rocks, but they don’t tell us how it happens,” said Gary Glatzmaier, an earth scientist and magnetic field expert at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Based on a set of physics equations that describe what scientists believe are the forces that create and maintain the magnetic field, Glatzmaier and colleague Paul Roberts at the University of California, Los Angeles, created a computer model to simulate the conditions in the Earth’s interior.
The computer-generated magnetic field even reverses itself, allowing scientists to examine the process.
Computer Model
Scientists believe Earth’s magnetic field is generated deep inside our planet. There, the heat of the Earth’s solid inner core churns a liquid outer core composed of iron and nickel. The churning acts like convection, which generates electric currents and, as a result, a magnetic field.
This magnetic field shields most of the habited parts of our planet from charged particles that emanate from space, mainly from the sun. The field deflects the speeding particles toward Earth’s Poles.
Our planet’s magnetic field reverses about once every 200,000 years on average. However, the time between reversals is highly variable. The last time Earth’s magnetic field flipped was 780,000 years ago, according to the geologic record of Earth’s polarity.
The information is captured when molten lava erupts onto Earth’s crust and hardens, much in the way that iron filings on a piece of cardboard align themselves to the field of a magnet held beneath it.
Most scientists believe our planet’s magnetic field is sustained by what’s known as the geodynamo. The term describes the theoretical phenomenon believed to generate and maintain Earth’s magnetic field. However, there is no way to peer 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) into Earth’s center to observe the process in action.
That inability spurred Glatzmaier and Roberts to develop their computer model in 1995. Since then, they have continued to refine and evolve the model using ever more sophisticated and faster computers.
The model is essentially a set of equations that describe the physics of the geodynamo. The equations are continually solved, each solution advancing the clock forward about a week. At its longest stretch, the model ran the equivalent of 500,000 years, Glatzmaier said.
By studying the model, the scientists discovered that, as the geodynamo generates new magnetic fields, the new fields usually line up in the direction of the existing magnetic field.
“But once in a while a disturbance will twist the magnetic field in a different direction and induce a little bit of a pole reversal,” Glatzmaier said.
These bits of a pole reversal are referred to as instabilities. They constantly occur in the fluid flow of the core, tracking through it like little hurricanes, though at a much slower pace—about one degree of latitude per year.
Typically, instabilities are temporary. But on very rare occasions, conditions are favorable enough that the reversed polarity gets bigger and bigger as the original polarity decays. If this new polarity takes over the entire core, it causes a pole reversal.
“It’s a very complicated, chaotic system, and it has a life of its own,” Glatzmaier said.
Weak Spot
Peter Olson, a geophysicist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, said scientists can now pinpoint the core-mantle boundary where these instabilities in the magnetic field are happening.
One such disturbance Olson has been observing recently formed over the east-central Atlantic Ocean. Like a little hurricane, the anomaly swept toward the Caribbean and is moving up in the direction of North America.
“It’s a new one, a little thing,” Olson said. “Time will tell whether it develops into something significant. But it is here in the North Atlantic, moving towards the Pentagon. We can track it over the next couple of decades.”
Instabilities such as this, Olson added, are causing Earth’s magnetic field to weaken. Today the field is about 10 percent weaker than it was when German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss first began measuring it in 1845. Some scientists speculate the field is headed for a reversal.
Iran to India Natural Gas Pipeline
Since the discovery of natural gas reserves in Iran’s South Pars fields in 1988, the Iranian government began increasing efforts to promote higher gas exports abroad. The prospects for profit are especially high in South Asian countries like India and Pakistan, where natural gas reserves are low and energy demand exceeds energy supply. In 1995, Pakistan and Iran signed a preliminary agreement for construction of a natural gas pipeline linking the Iranian South Pars natural gas field in the Persian Gulf with Karachi, Pakistan’s main industrial port located at the Arabian Sea. Iran later proposed an extension of the pipeline from Pakistan into India. Not only would Pakistan benefit from Iranian natural gas exports, but Pakistani territory would be used as a transit route to export natural gas to India. Initially, the Indian government was reluctant to enter into any agreement with Pakistan due to the historically tense relationship between the two neighbors. As an alternative, India suggested the development of a deep sea pipeline where no threat to security of resources could exist. At present, in 2000, Indian, Iranian, and Pakistani government officials continue to negotiate the possible routes, modes of transport, and geopolitics of the Iran to India natural gas pipeline. These negotiations indicate a significant shift in inter and intra-regional politics between the states. The potential for economic and developmental gain from natural gas will force India, Iran, and Pakistan to reassess their roles and policies in regional conflicts, like Kashmir, Afghanistan, and national security issues. Furthermore, potential economic collaboration and gain will also lead to a possible transformation of social and political discourse between the countries, perhaps even leading to mediation and resolution of regional conflicts.
Description
THE PEACE PIPELINE:
IMPLICATIONS FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION, FOREIGN POLICY, AND REGIONALISM
IMPLICATIONS FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION, FOREIGN POLICY, AND REGIONALISM
The exportation of natural gas from Iran to India through Pakistan is a venture which may change the face of regional politics in South Asia. It is a study in how economic collaboration possesses the power to engender as well as transform social and political discourse between countries. The Indian government speculated whether Pakistan could guarantee security for the flow of natural gas in the pipeline. Furthermore, Pakistan’s collaboration with Iran may foster conflict resolution as well. In the past, Iranian and Pakistani foreign policies have disagreed on the issues of Afghanistan and Shi’a-Sunni conflicts in the region. Thus, trade and the larger experience of economic globalization posesses the ability to exist as mediators in conflicts in the region and between regions.
Natural gas trade between India, Iran, and Pakistan challenges the geopolitical, historical, and strategic realities of the three countries and the general regions of the Mideast and Asia. In this way, the relationship between the pipeline venture and globalization is multidisciplinary. It is not characterized solely by economic factors, even though the current economic realities in Iran, India, and Pakistan do foreshadow the future necessity of economic collaboration. The realities of this case study are representative of the notion that multidisciplinary globalization is changing the face of regional politics and altering the social and political landscape of regions.
NEGOTIATING THE PIPELINE
Holding approximately 9 percent of the world’s total reserves, Iran is OPEC’s second largest producer of oil (Iran Background Information). Along with oil reserves, Iran contains the world’s second largest natural gas reserves “at an estimated 812 trillion cubic feet (Tcf)” (Ibid). While Iranian natural gas consumption is high, the country desperately needs to promote export markets for gas due to its faltering economy and to meet the demands of modernization. To meet these demands, Iran has targeted emerging regional markets like South Asia for natural gas exports.
Iran has proposed the export of natural gas from Iran to India since 1993. Alongside this proposal was the plan to export natural gas to Pakistan as well. The Iranian government proposed the construction of a pipeline from its South Pars fields in the Persian Gulf to Pakistan’s major cities of Karachi and Multan and then further onto Delhi, India.
The following map shows the pipeline’s main route. Starting from the left side of the map, the pipeline originates in Asaluyeh, Iran on the coast of the Persian Gulf near the Iranian South Pars fields. It travels to Pakistan through Khuzdar, with one section of it going on to Karachi on the Arabian Sea coast, and the main section traveling on to Multan, Pakistan. From Multan, the pipeline travels to Delhi, where it ends. At this point, India is free to consider and negotiate further domestic routing of the pipeline.
Putting India on World Petroleum Map
India is well-known for its historical civilization, diverse religions, enormous population, spicy food and tasty tea. But discoveries of significant oil and gas resources in recent years have placed the country in the spotlight of the petroleum industry — music to the ears of a nation with a rapidly growing economy.
India’s tea plantations and the discovery of its earliest oilfield are connected. When British explorers began to map the dense jungles of India’s northeastern Assam region in the 19th century, old reports from farmers of oil seepages in the area drew their attention. In 1865, the Geological Survey of India recommended drilling near some of these seepages. Only two years later, oil was struck in Assam. This was the first mechanically drilled and successful oil well in India, but it did not produce much. The commercial oil industry in India truly began in 1889, when, legend has it, an elephant working for the Assam Railways & Trading Company accidentally stepped into an oil seepage. “Dig! Boy!” cried the excited Englishman. The workers thus drilled the discovery, which is now the well-known Digboi oilfield.
Until the 1960s, India’s oil production was confined to Assam with a daily output of about 5,000 barrels. Then oil was discovered in western India, first in the onshore Cambay Basin in 1958 and later in the offshore Bombay Basin in 1974. These fields increased India’s daily production to 700,000 barrels.
For decades after India got its independence from Britain in 1947, the country maintained semi-socialist protectionist policies. The economy changed drastically, however, after Harvard-trained economist Manmohan Singh (India’s current prime minister) became the country’s finance minister in 1991 and the country entered the open international market, facilitating India’s rapid economic growth. The petroleum industry illustrates this economic evolution. For decades, the Indian government largely controlled the petroleum industry. Petroleum exploration and production (upstream activities) were left to the two nationalized companies Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Ltd., while refining, distribution and marketing (downstream activities) were conducted by the Indian Oil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum companies.
More recently, private and foreign oil companies have become active in India, most notably Reliance Industries (a private Indian company), Cairn Energy (Scottish), Nikko Resources (Canadian) and British Gas. In 1999, the Indian government introduced the New Exploration Licensing Policy under the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons, which allows all companies to bid for exploration blocks both on- and offshore India. So far, seven rounds of blocks have been awarded and an eighth is set to go on the market this spring.
Over the last decade, India’s economic liberalization coupled with the increased domestic and global demand for oil and advances in drilling technology in deepwater basins have changed the face of the petroleum industry in the country. This, in turn, has motivated new geologic appraisal of sedimentary basins in India.
More than 300 million years ago, India was part of the Gondwana supercontinent. India’s eastern margin was connected to East Antarctica and its western margin to Africa. The Tethys Ocean washed the northern shores of Gondwana. As the supercontinent began to break up, rift basins formed on India’s western and eastern margins. Some of these rift basins (called the Gondwana basins in India) contain abundant coal resources. About 130 million years ago, as India began to separate from Gondwana, the eastern and western margins of India became shallow sea and finally deepwater basins of the Indian Ocean. Around 50 million years ago, India began colliding with Asia, a tectonic event that sculpted the Himalayas. The Indus, Ganges and other rivers flowing out of the rising Himalayas filled the plains and basins in front of the rising mountains, and also transported considerable amounts of sediments to the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal. Current understanding of this geologic history has provided a new perspective for petroleum exploration in the country.
The recent discoveries in Assam demonstrate excellent potential for new oil reserves even in such a classic and mature petroleum province. Furthermore, petroleum discoveries offshore east India, which are very expensive ventures, were not made (as one may assume) by major international oil companies after extensive drilling, but by relatively small companies (notably Cairn Energy and Reliance Industries) that drilled a relatively small number of wells. The success rate of petroleum discoveries by Reliance Industries in deepwater basins offshore east India has been an impressive 80 percent. These discoveries include a series of gas fields named Dhirubhai, first made in the deepwater Krishna-Godavari Basin in 2002 through 2004 and extended to the deepwater Cauvery Basin in 2007. Last year, new oil and gas fields were found in the deepwater Krishna-Godavari Basin and ONGC announced the first discovery of gas fields offshore of the Mahanadi Basin. There is thus huge potential for future discoveries in these deepwater basins.
Additionally, the oil and gas discoveries in the onshore Rajasthan and Cambay basins indicate the extent to which many of India’s sedimentary basins have remained underexplored. Recent oil and gas discoveries in India are attracting major international companies to enter India’s petroleum ventures.
India’s petroleum basins are showing great promise for new discoveries. At the same time, the country’s thirst for energy and fuel is rapidly increasing. India is the world’s fifth-largest energy consumer. Coal still dominates (57 percent), while oil accounts for 28 percent and natural gas supplies 8 percent of India’s energy consumption. India is the world’s sixth-largest oil consumer and imports three-quarters of its oil from overseas (mostly from the Middle East). Therefore, India itself will probably remain the sole buyer of the country’s oil and gas. Still, every step the country can take toward greater energy independence can add to its growing economy.
Volcanoes
A volcano is an opening, or rupture, in a planet’s surface or crust, which allows hot, molten rock, ash, and gases to escape from below the surface. Volcanic activity involving the extrusion of rock tends to form mountains or features like mountains over a period of time.
Volcanoes are generally found where tectonic plates are pulled apart or come together. A mid-oceanic ridge, for example the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, has examples of volcanoes caused by “divergent tectonic plates” pulling apart; the Pacific Ring of Fire has examples of volcanoes caused by “convergent tectonic plates” coming together. By contrast, volcanoes are usually not created where two tectonic plates slide past one another. Volcanoes can also form where there is stretching and thinning of the Earth’s crust (called “non-hotspot intraplate volcanism”), such as in the African Rift Valley, the Wells Gray-Clearwater Volcanic Field and the Rio Grande Rift in North America and the European Rhine Graben with its Eifel volcanoes.
Volcanoes can be caused by “mantle plumes“. These so-called “hotspots” , for example at Hawaii, can occur far from plate boundaries. Hotspot volcanoes are also found elsewhere in the solar system, especially on rocky planets and moons
Rashid Faridi
