An accurate description of the abundance and size distribution of lakes is critical to quantifying limnetic contributions to the global carbon cycle. However, estimates of global lake abundance are poorly constrained. We used high-resolution satellite imagery to produce a GLObal WAter BOdies database (GLOWABO), comprising all lakes greater than 0.002 km2. GLOWABO contains geographic and morphometric information for ~117 million lakes with a combined surface area of about 5 × 106 km2, which is 3.7% of the Earth's nonglaciated land area.

There is a need for new satellite remote sensing methods for monitoring tropical forest carbon stocks. Advanced RADAR instruments on board satellites can contribute with novel methods. RADARs can see through clouds, and furthermore, by applying stereo RADAR imaging we can measure forest height and its changes. Such height changes are related to carbon stock changes in the biomass. We here apply data from the current Tandem-X satellite mission, where two RADAR equipped satellites go in close formation providing stereo imaging.

In the last decade, the northern Arabian Sea has witnessed a radical shift in the composition of winter phytoplankton blooms, which previously comprised mainly of diatoms, the unicellular, siliceous photosynthetic organisms favoured by nutrient-enriched waters from convective mixing. These trophically important diatom blooms have been replaced by widespread blooms of a large, green dinoflagellate, Noctiluca scintillans, which combines carbon fixation from its chlorophyll-containing endosymbiont with ingestion of prey. Here, we report that these massive outbreaks of N.

Soils are widely recognized as a non-renewable natural resource and as biophysical carbon sinks. As such, there is a growing requirement for global soil information. Although several global soil information systems already exist, these tend to suffer from inconsistencies and limited spatial detail.

The swampy intertidal zone and part of the backshore of Henry's Island coast of 1969 have now been submerged. Topographic surveys, analysis of textural and palynological character of sediments coupled with time-series analyais of shoreline change show phasewise erosion. This has resulted in ingression of sea. Modern sand, transported from near coastal seabed, are being deposited overe the ancient clayey silt bed depending on retreat of high water line and relief. The shoreline has been retreated by about 450 m to 1 km.

The unprecedented Uttarakhand floods of June 2013 generated a large volume of scientific literature. They offered clear technical explaination to the media reported sequence of events ofen in a historical perspective. Some ambiguities, however, remained in some of the works. For example. Dobhal et al. described that starting from 06:45 on 17 June 2013, the Chorabari lake catastrophically emptied within 5-10 min. (Correspondence)

Ganga River Basin (GRB) is the second most populous river basin in the world, which has been undergoing rapid land-use change during the last few decades. Here, the researchers analyse the landscape dynamics in Indian GRB (IGRB) using three indices, i.e. class area, mean patch size and number of patches for 14 land use and land cover classes using multi-temporal Landsat satellite datasets of 1975 and 2010.

In the Himalayan states of India, with increasing population and activities, large areas of forested land are being converted into other land-use features. There is a definite cause and effect relationship between changing practice for development and changes in land use. So, an estimation of land use dynamics and a futuristic trend pattern is essential. A combination of geospatial and statistical techniques were applied to assess the present and future land use/land cover scenario of Gangtok, the subHimalayan capital of Sikkim.