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  • The utilization strucutre of thermal water wells and its unexploited capacities in Hungary
    36-52
    Views:
    62

    In order to mitigate Hungary’s vulnerability in energy supply and accomplish the renewable energy production targets, it is essential to discover exploitable alternative opportunities for energy production and step up the utilization of the available capacities. The purpose of this publication is to map up the utilization structure of the existing Hungarian thermal water wells, describe its changes over the past 16 years, reveal the associated reasons and define the unutilized well capacities that may contribute to increasing the exploitation of geothermal heat by municipalities. The studies have been conducted in view of the Cadaster of Thermal Water Wells of Hungary compiled in 1994, the well cadasters kept by the regional water management directorates, as well as the data of the digital thermal water cadaster of 2010. The calculations performed for the evaluation of data have been based on the ratios and respective utilization areas of the existing wells. In the past 150 years, nearly 1500 thermal water wells have been drilled for use by a broad range of economic operations. The principal goals of constructing thermal water wells encompass the use of water in balneology, water and heat supply to the agriculture, hydrocarbon research and the satisfaction of municipal water demands. In 1994, 26% of the facilities was operated as baths, 21% was used by agriculture, while 13% and 12% served communal and waterworks supply, respectively. Then in 2010, 31% of thermal water wells was continued to be used for the water supply of bathing establishments, followed by 20% for agricultural use, 19% for utilization by waterworks, 11% for observation purposes and 10% for communal use. During the 16 years between 1994 and 2010, the priorities of utilization often changed, new demands emerged in addition to the former utilization goals of thermal water wells. The economic landscape and changes in consumer habits have transformed the group of consumers, which is the reason why most of the resources have remained untapped. In 2010, 13% of all the thermal water wells were closed in, but could potentially be utilized; these capacities could be deployed for the satisfaction of the heat demands of municipal public institutions.

  • Agricultural sector, rural environment and biodiversity in the Central and Eastern European EU member states
    46-64
    Views:
    26

    During the second half of the 20th century, agriculture and the rural environment diverged in Western
    and Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC). CEE countries itself are heterogeneous in the
    respect of land use intensity and history. In the current review we focus on the comparison of the
    agricultural sector and threats on biodiversities of EU new-member countries from Central and
    Eastern Europe and the old EU(15) member states. The clustering of countries revealed groups
    distinguished according to the level of their economic productivity, discriminating mostly among
    eastern and western European countries. CEE countries sub-divided according to geographic region,
    including also some old members of the EU. Within the western cluster, two large sub-clusters
    became evident according to economy affected by altitudinal and climatic differences. Partly because
    there are still areas where the intensity of land use remained low, the biological diversity in many
    regions of Central and Eastern Europe has remained high. However, loss of extensively used habitats,
    the restoration on intensive agriculture, reforestation with exotic species and urbanization are major
    threats to nature in CEE countries. The estimated variability among CEE countries is caused by
    different historical and cultural backgrounds of those countries. Due to the complexity and
    geographical diversity of driving forces, there remains much uncertainty in the possible impacts of
    particular factors on land use. This complexity and diversity have to be considered when planning
    economic as well as ecological means for developing the agricultural sector and conserving
    biodiversity in the future of CEE countries.

  • Land use changes of the riparian landscape in Hungary between 1990 and 2018
    82-95
    Views:
    108

    The protection and the restoration of rivers is one of the most important challenges of our time, due to the impact of human activities. The aim of the research was to assess the land use changes in the Hungarian riparian landscape. Several landscape corridors of different (50-100-300-500 m) widths near rivers were analyzed since 1990, using the CORINE Land Cover database. Positive changes in the land use of riparian landscape can be seen: continuous increase in the case of forest areas; and slight decrease in the extent of agricultural land since 1990. Unfortunately, the extent of grasslands and other near-natural areas is reduced; and there has been a steady increase in built-up areas. Examining the changes in built-up areas in more detail, a big increase is shown by the extent of urban green areas. As a continuation of the research, an evaluation methodology is being developed to determine the restoration potential of urban rivers on study area level and on national level. The results presented in this paper on land use changes and land use conditions can be useful for the research about restoration potential at national level.

  • Interpolation and 3D visualization of soil moisture
    23-34
    Views:
    354

    Adaptation to climate change demands the optimal and sustainable water management in agriculture, with an inevitable focus on soil moisture conditions. In the current study we developed an ArcGIS 10.4. platform-based application (software) to model spatial and temporal changes in soil moisture in a soy field. Six SENTEK Drill & Drop soil moisture sensors were deployed in an experimental field of 4.3 hectares by the contribution of Elcom Ltd. Soil moisture measurement at each location were taken at six depths (5, 15, 25, 35, 45 and 55 cm) in 60-minute intervals. The model is capable to spatially interpolate monitored soil moisture using the technique. The time sequence change of soil moistures can be tracked by a Time Slider for both the 2D and 3D visualization. Soil moisture temporal changes can be visualized in either daily or hourly time intervals, and can be shown as a motion figure. Horizon average, maximum and minimum values of soil moisture data can be identified with the builtin tool of ArcGIS. Soil moisture spatial distribution can be obtained and plotted at any cross sections, whereas an alarm function has also been developed for tension values of 250, 1,000 and 1,500 kPa.

  • Land use change detection along the Pravara River basin in Maharashtra, using remote sensing and GIS techniques
    71-86
    Views:
    61

    In the past few decades there has been an increasing pressure of population all over the world,
    especially in India, resulting in the utilization of every available patch of available land from
    woodlands to badlands. The study area represents a basin which is economically growing fast by
    converting the fallow lands, badlands and woodlands to agricultural land for the past few decades.
    IRS (Indian Remote sensing Satellites) 1 C – LISS III and IRS 1 C PAN and IRS P6 – LISS III and
    IRS 1 D PAN Images were merged to generate imageries with resolution matching to the landscape
    processes operating in the area. The images of the year 1997, 2000, 2004 and 2007 were analyzed to
    detect the changes in the landuse and landcover in the past ten years. The analysis reveals that there
    has been 20% increase in the agricultural area over the past ten years. Built up area also has increased
    from 1.35% to 6.36% of the area and dense vegetation also has marginally increased. The remarkable
    increase in the agricultural area occurs owing to the reclaim of the natural ravines and fallow lands.
    Presently the area looks promising, but it is necessary to understand the sedimentological and
    geomorphological characteristics of the area before massive invasion on any such landscapes because
    the benefit may be short lived.

  • Time series analysis of major land resources using Landsat images in a part of district Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, India
    41-57
    Views:
    19

    Space born technology, with its repetitive nature, uses electromagnetic energy to capture digital data from the Earth's surface by remote sensing systems. The purpose of this research is to track changes in land resources with six time series (2003-09, 2003-15, 2003-21, 2009-15, 2009-21 and 2015-21) over a period of 18 years. Multi-date Landsat images of 2003, 2009, 2015 and 2021 have been used to monitor the changing pattern. Level – I classification scheme composed by NRSC/ ISRO and supervised Maximum Likelihood Classification (MLC) techniques were used to identify and classify land use/ land cover features located in Jhansi Tehsil. The findings show that there have been significant changes in land resources over the years. The area under agriculture land, built-up and waterbodies were increased by 48.83%, 53.53% and 106.73% while forest/ tree outside forest and wastelands were reduced by 59.74% and 38.68% respectively It is concluded that, the expansion of key land resources indicates the growth in population and socio-economic activities whereas the loss in some land resources might be due to human induced progressive activities.

  • Spatial pattern of soil erosion using RUSLE model and GIS software at the Saf Saf watershed, Algeria
    31-47
    Views:
    100

    Soil erosion is one of the problems threatening the Algerian environment. In agriculture, soil erosion leads to the thinning of the topsoil under the effect of the natural erosive forces of water, or under the effect of agricultural activities. The present study aims to estimate average soil loss rate and to identify vulnerable zones. Through the integration of RUSLE model at the Saf Saf watershed, various parameters are utilized such as the rainfall erosivity factor (R), soil erodibility factor (K), slope length - slope factor (LS), crop management factor (C) and practice management factor (P). All these parameters are prepared and processed through a geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing using various database sources. The results reveal that the river basin has an average annual soil loss of 3.9 t ha−1 yr−1, and annual soil loss of 4.53 million tonnes for the period 1975-2017. Meanwhile, eighty five percent of the study area is experiencing acceptable rate of soil erosion loss, which is ranging between 0 to 5 t ha−1 yr−1. The present study of risk assessment can contribute to understand the spatial pattern of soil erosion in order to use appropriate conservation practices for sustainable soil management.