The legal geopolitics of the Baglihar and Kishenganga hydroelectric power projects, whose legitimacy under the Indus Waters Treaty has been contested by Pakistan, demonstrates the political nature of technology and the governance of technology need not remain out-of-bounds for non-engineers. In attempting an understanding, this article seeks to step outside the conventional nationalist mode of geopolitical analysis.

Geochemical study of a 3.55 m long lake sediment core from the Badanital Lake (Garhwal Himalaya) reveals Late Holocene centennial-scale climatic changes. The ecosystem of the tectonically formed lake seems to be controlled by natural and anthropogenic factors.

Lakes sediments consists of biological and non biological matter accumulated since from formation of the lake. Sediment sequence in lake represents information about the activities within the lake and in its catchment area over a period of time since its inception. Hussain Sagar Lake located in the heart of Twin Cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad receives toxic substances from the industrial effluent discharges in to it through incoming nallas.

There is a recognized need to anticipate tipping points, or critical transitions, in social–ecological systems. Studies of mathematical and experimental systems have shown that systems may ‘wobble’ before a critical transition. Such early warning signals may be due to the phenomenon of critical slowing down, which causes a system to recover slowly from small impacts, or to a flickering phenomenon, which causes a system to switch back and forth between alternative states in response to relatively large impacts.

Climate strongly affects the production of sediment from mountain catchments as well as its transport and deposition within adjacent sedimentary basins. However, identifying climatic influences on basin stratigraphy is complicated by nonlinearities, feedback loops, lag times, buffering and convergence among processes within the sediment routeing system. The Palaeocene/Eocene thermal maximum (PETM) arguably represents the most abrupt and dramatic instance of global warming in the Cenozoic era and has been proposed to be a geologic analogue for anthropogenic climate change.

Keoladeo National Park (KNP) is an important wintering ground for thousands of birds that undertake a perilous journey over the Himalaya to make a seasonal home in a wetland ecosystem. However, this wetland is now getting polluted by various types of contaminants such as pesticides because of the agricultural practices in the catchment area from where the park receives water. Keeping this in mind, the present study has been undertaken to assess the organochlorine pesticide (OCP) residues in the sediments inside and around KNP. Samples were collected from the different blocks of the park.