Sub: Ecology Lecture 17th Date 5th May 2021

TOPIC: Applied Ecology: Resources and their ecological management (range management,
desalination and Weather modification)

Rangeland management:

Rangeland management (also range management, range science, or arid-land management)

is a professional natural science that centers around the study of rangelands and the
"conservation and sustainable management [of Arid-Lands] for the benefit of current societies
and future generations." Range management is defined by Holechek et al. as the "manipulation
of rangeland components to obtain optimum combination of goods and services for society on a
sustained basis."

Range management is a professional field whose aim is to ensure a sustained yield of rangeland
products while protecting and improving the basic range resources of soil, water, and plant and
animal life.

Rangeland and grassland ecosystems provide benefits vital to agriculture and the environment
including: Land for farming. Grazing and forage for livestock and native animals. Watersheds
for rural and urban uses.

Management of range:

1. Herbicides spraying to reduce invasive

2. Replacing barren areas that have been overgrazed
3. Mechanical removal of non-native species
4. Rotational grazing of cattle
5. Fensing off reserved areas where grazing is never allowed

Invasive control Chemical

Herbicides are generally classified by their mode of action, selectivity, and location of
application (foliar or soil).
 Herbicides can be applied on rangeland by fixed- wing aircraft, helicopter, ground-
application systems, backpack sprayers, or rope wick.

Desalination:
Desalination is a process that takes away mineral components from saline water. More
generally, desalination refers to the removal of salts and minerals from a target substance, as
in soil desalination, which is an issue for agriculture. Saltwater (especially sea water) is
desalinated to produce water suitable for human consumption or irrigation. The by-product of the
desalination process is brine.

Desalination is used on many seagoing ships and submarines. Most of the modern interest in
desalination is focused on cost-effective provision of fresh water for human use. Along with
recycled wastewater, it is one of the few rainfall-independent water resources.

Due to its energy consumption, desalinating sea water is generally more costly than fresh water
from surface water or groundwater, water recycling and water conservation. However, these
alternatives are not always available and depletion of reserves is a critical problem worldwide.
Desalination processes are usually driven by either thermal (in the case of distillation) or
electrical (in the case of reverse osmosis) as the primary energy types.

Many human activities, such as drinking, agriculture, sanitation, and electricity generation,
among others, require significant amounts of water. Fortunately, in many cases, centers of
population are located near sources of useable water. However, oceans, which cover more than
70 % of the earth's surface and contain 97 % of the earth's water, have salt water. Since this salty
water is unsuitable for many applications, it must be desalinated (have the salt content reduced or
eliminated) before it can be used. Several years ago, more than 13000 desalination plants
processed 12 billion gallons of water daily. However, desalination tends to be energy intensive,
causing significant economic and ecologic impact from desalination.
Methods of Desalination

At least three principle methods of desalination exist: thermal, electrical, and pressure. The
oldest method, thermal distillation, has been around for thousands of years. In thermal
distillation, the water is boiled and then the steam is collected, leaving the salt behind. However,
the vaporization phase change requires significant amounts of energy. More modern methods of
distillation make use of various techniques such as low-pressure vessels to reduce the boiling
temperature of the water and thus reduce the amount of energy required to desalinate.

A second major type of desalination utilizes electric current to separate the water and salt.
Typically, electric current will be used to drive ions across a selectively permeable membrane,
carrying the dissociated salt ions with it. A key characteristic of this method is that the energy
requirement depends on how much salt is initially present in the water. Consequently, it is
suitable for water with initial salt concentrations but too energy intensive for sea water. [3]

A third principle method of desalination is reverse osmosis, in which pressure is used to drive
water through a selectively permeable membrane, leaving the salt behind. [3] Similarly to
electrically-driven separation, the amount of energy required for desalination depends on the
initial salt content of the water. Again, this renders reverse osmosis unsuitable for sea water
purification.

Energy of Desalination

Despite the innovative refinements of desalination, the energy requirements are still tremendous.
State-of-the-art desalination still requires 7 to 30 kW-h of energy per 1000 gallons of desalinated
water. The energy required can vary significantly based on the type of desalination used as well
as the initial salt content of the water. Thus, to desalinate 12 billion gallons of water daily, the
world uses at least 84 million kW-h of energy; the actual number is likely significantly higher as
many plants use older technology that requires more energy per 1000 gallons of purified water.
Since a gallon of gasoline contains about 33 kW-h, the world uses the equivalent of at least 2.5
million gallons of gasoline daily to desalinate water.
Weather modification
Weather modification (also known as weather control) is the act of intentionally manipulating
or altering the weather. The most common form of weather modification is cloud seeding, which
increases rain or snow, usually for the purpose of increasing the local water supply.

Weather modification can also have the goal of preventing damaging weather, such
as hail or hurricanes, from occurring; or of provoking damaging weather against the enemy, as a
tactic of military or economic warfare like Operation Popeye, where clouds were seeded to
prolong the monsoon in Vietnam. Weather modification in warfare has been banned by
the United Nations under the Environmental Modification Convention.

Weather modification is the intentional effort of man to manipulate or alter the naturally
occurring weather with certain aspects of the environment to produce desirable changes in
weather for the benefit of someone.

The best-known kind of weather modification is cloud seeding, with the goal of producing rain
or snow, suppressing hails (which can ruin crops), or weakening cyclones and hurricanes.
Weather control can have the goal of preventing damaging weather, such as hurricanes or
tornadoes, from occurring; of causing beneficial weather, such as rainfall in an area experiencing
drought; or of provoking damaging weather against an enemy or rival, as a tactic of military or
economic warfare.

FROST
Frost is the solid deposition of water vapor from saturated air in the form of small white
ice crystals on the ground or other surfaces when the temperature of these solid surfaces
falls below freezing point of water or below the dew point of the adjacent air. Frost
crystals' size differ depending on time and water vapour available. Frost is also usually
translucent in appearance.
Two kinds of frosts are frequently problems in winter season in northern states.
1. Advection frost:  results when the temperature at the surface in an air mass is below
the freezing level.
2. Radiation frost: occurs on clear nights due to radiative cooling with a temperature
inversion and usually results in formation of ice crystals on cold objects. The frost
causes a great damage to the plants as well as the grains. Frost-hazard is greatest in north
India in the winter months. The cold waves move towards southward or eastwards from
north- west Himalayan ranges. These waves moves for 3 to 4 days continuously leading
to widespread rain, cloudiness and low temperatures in the region.
. FROST MODIFICATION
Frost can be prevented by any one of the following methods:
a) Preventing the loss of heat due to radiation from the ground and plants: Since cause
of frost is the radiation loss from ground, crops etc. the fall of temperature can be
minimized by intercepting heat radiated and returning it to ground. This can be
achieved by covering the crop to be protected. The crop may be covered by plastic houses
or glass houses and the ground covered by the mulches of different types cutting off the
heat loss. From this we may keep the temperature 1-2oC above that of freely exposed
objects. It has long since been known that serious radiation frost does not occur on
cloudy nights. Therefore, it is possible to prevent the frosts by forming an “artificial
clouds” by burning some form of smoky fuel or by one of the various available chemical
smokes. A really dense cloud can maintain a temperature 2-3oC above that in
neighbouring areas not covered by the clouds. Since water vapour absorbs radiation and
reradiates it, it may be possible to cut down the loss of heat by radiation by adding water
vapour to the air.
HAIL
A hailstorm is a particularly violet thunderstorm. Though short in duration, but
precipitation forms and associated squalls are violent. It is one form of precipitation.
It destroys the agricultural vegetation, the damage being predominantly mechanical.
Hail storm causes a lot of damage to standing crops. Protection against violent
hailstorms is difficult. But farmers who are forewarned, can harvest their crops if they
are already ripe, or take other protective measures. The largest hailstorms are about 5
inches in diameter and 1.5 lbs.
FOG
 Fog is a low-lying cloud that forms at or near the surface of the Earth. It is made up of
tiny water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air and usually gets its moisture from
a nearby body of water or the wet ground. Fog is distinguished from mist or haze only
by its density. In meteorological forecasts, the term “fog” is used when visibility is less
than one kilometres (one nautical mile in case of marine forecasts). If visibility is
greater than that, but is still reduced, it is considered mist or haze.
STORM
A storm is any disturbed state of an environment or astronomical body's atmosphere
especially affecting its surface, and strongly implying severe weather. It may be marked
by significant disruptions to normal conditions such as strong wind, hail, thunder and
lightning (a thunderstorm), heavy precipitation (snowstorm, rainstorm), heavy freezing
rain (ice storm), strong winds (tropical cyclone, windstorm), or wind transporting some
substance through the atmosphere as in a dust storm, blizzard, sandstorm, etc. Storms
have the potential to harm lives and property via storm surge, heavy rain or snow causing
flooding or road impassibility, lightning, wildfires, and vertical wind shear.
Strom modification
Storms such as tropical cyclones and “hurricanes” need the warm water of the tropics, which
feed the storms with energy. In a mature hurricane, the wind picks up warmth and moisture
from the ocean, circling inward ever faster from outer cloud bands to the inner eye wall, where
the winds are the strongest and where it finally rises rapidly and is pushed out the top. In the
beginning, a disturbance forms in the atmosphere, developing into an area of low atmospheric
pressure. Winds begin to move into the center of the storm seedling from surrounding areas of
higher air pressure. Warm water heats the air, and it rises as it nears the center. The ocean
feeds warmth and moisture into the storm, providing energy that causes the warm air in the
center to rise faster. It condenses high in the atmosphere, creating thunderstorms. The tropical
depression develops (if conditions are favorable) into a tropical storm, and then finally into a
hurricane, which is not unlike a giant swirling mass of thunderstorms. As rising air in the
storm's center condenses, it produces heat, forcing it to rise even faster. The air is pushed out
the top, much like smoke out of the chimney of a fire. Then more air has to rush in at the surface
to take its place. This agitates the ocean more, and in this way the storm essentially feeds on
itself.
Modification of Severe storms
Hurricanes can cause widespread destruction and human misery. An average hurricane has
tremendous energy. In one day the energy released is about 1.6 × 1013 kilowatt-hours, or at
least 8,000 times more than the electrical power generated each day in the United States. This
quantity is equivalent to a daily explosion of 500,000 atomic bombs of the 20-kiloton Nagasaki
variety. These numbers should make it clear that it would be impractical to attempt to modify
hurricanes by a brute force approach. It is necessary to find a means whereby a small input of
energy may upset a natural instability and lead to large results. Ice-nuclei seeding is one such
approach that has been investigated in the past. The first hurricane-seeding test was carried out
in 1947 by Irving Langmuir and his colleagues, who distributed about 91 kilograms of crushed
Dry Ice in a storm. They apparently were convinced that the seeding caused a change in the
track followed by the storm. On Aug. 18 and 20, 1969, Hurricane Debbie was seeded as a part
of Project Stormfury, a series of hurricane-modification experiments conducted by the
Environmental Science Services Administration and the U.S. Navy. Heavy doses of silver
iodide were dropped into the hurricane clouds from airplanes. The maximum measured wind
speeds in the hurricane decreased by 31 and 15 percent on the two seeded days. On August 19,
the day between the two flights, the storm reportedly reintensified.
LIGHTNING
1. It is an atmospheric discharge of electricity accompanied by thunder, which typically
occurs during thunderstorms, and sometimes during volcanic eruptions or dust storms.
In the atmospheric electrical discharge, a leader of a bolt of lightning can travel at
speeds of 220,000 km/h (140,000 mph), and can reach temperatures approaching 30,000
°C (54,000 °F), hot enough to fuse silica sand into glass channels known as fulgurites
which are normally hollow and can extend some distance into the ground. There are
some 16 million lightning storms in the world every year. Lightning can also occur
within the ash clouds from volcanic eruptions, or can be caused by violent forest fires
which generate sufficient dust to create a static charge. How lightning initially forms is
still a matter of debate: Scientists have studied root causes ranging from atmospheric
perturbations (wind, humidity, friction, and atmospheric pressure) to the impact of solar
wind and accumulation of charged solar particles. Ice inside a cloud is thought to be a
key element in lightning development, and may cause a forcible separation of positive
and negative charges within the cloud, thus assisting in the formation of lightning.