Land use/land cover changes of Noyyal watershed in Coimbatore district, India, mapped using remote sensing techniques.

The present study undertakes to produce the land use/land cover map and to explore the change detection analysis of Noyyal watershed, Coimbatore, for a time period of 18 years. Based on the remote sensing and geographical information system for monitoring the temporal variations of land use/land cover, multi-temporal Landsat satellite 30-m spatial resolution images of Landsat 4/5 MSS and TM (1999), Landsat 7 ETM + (2008), and Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) were obtained from the USGS website. The satellite images were geocoded into the universal transverse mercator (UTM) coordinate system zone 43 N.

Biosynthesis and characterization of silver nanoparticles using panchakavya, an Indian traditional farming formulating agent.

Synthesis of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) with biological properties is of vast significance in the development of scientifically valuable products. In the present study, we describe simple, unprecedented, nontoxic, eco-friendly, green synthesis of AgNPs using an Indian traditional farming formulating agent, panchakavya. Silver nitrate (1 mM) solution was mixed with panchakavya filtrate for the synthesis of AgNPs.

Nitrate removal efficiency of bacterial consortium (Pseudomonas sp. KW1 and Bacillus sp. YW4) in synthetic nitrate-rich water.

The efficiency of bacterial isolates to reduce nitrate from synthetic nitrate-rich water was tested using a batch scale process. Two efficient nitrate reducing bacterial species were isolated from water samples collected from Kodaikanal and Yercaud lakes. Bacterial analysis of the samples revealed the presence of nitrate reducing bacteria belonging to the genera Pseudomonas, Bacillus, Micrococcus and Alcaligenes.

Two-stage removal of nitrate from groundwater using biological and chemical treatments.

In this study, we attempted to treat groundwater contaminated with nitrate using a two-stage removal system: one is biological treatment using the nitrate-degrading bacteria Pseudomonas sp. RS-7 and the other is chemical treatment using a coagulant. For the biological system, the effect of carbon sources on nitrate removal was first investigated using mineral salt medium (MSM) containing 500 mg l(-1) nitrate to select the most effective carbon source.