At present, urbanization is a very common phenomenon around the world, especially in developing countries, and has a significant impact on the land-use/land-cover of specific areas, producing some unwanted effects. Bangladesh is a tightly inhabited country whose urban population is increasing every day due to the expansion of infrastructure and industry. This study explores the land-use/land-cover change detection and urban dynamics of Gazipur district, Bangladesh, a newly developed industrial hub and city corporation, by using satellite imagery covering every 10-year interval over the period from 1990 to 2020. Supervised classification with a maximum likelihood classifier was used to gather spatial and temporal information from Landsat 5 (TM), 7 (ETM+) and 8 (OLI/TIRS) images. The Geographical Information System (GIS) methodology was also employed to detect changes over time. The kappa coefficient ranged between 0.75 and 0.90. The agricultural land was observed to be shrinking very rapidly, with an area of 716 km² in 2020. Urbanization increased rapidly in this area, and the urban area grew by more than 500% during the study period. The urbanized area expanded along major roads such as the Dhaka–Mymensingh Highway and Dhaka bypass road. The urbanized area was, moreover, concentrated near the boundary line of Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh. Urban expansion was found to be influenced by demographic-, economic-, location- and accessibility-related factors. Therefore, similarly to many countries, concrete urban and development policies should be formulated to preserve the environment and, thereby, achieve sustainable development goal (SDG) 11 (sustainable cities and communities).

The recovery of energy from municipal solid waste (MSW) has gained popularity in many industrialized countries, but its adoption in economically developing countries, especially in Africa, has been slow. While capital investments and technical requirements for waste-to-energy (WtE) systems are among the most important causes for this slow adoption, the unavailability of data on the thermochemical quality of MSW as a potential feedstock for energy recovery is also a limiting factor. In this paper, Harare, a typical African city, was selected as a case study. The evaluation was based on the analysis of the MSW’s composition, moisture as-discarded, thermochemical properties and energy content. The results show that the quality of the MSW is comparable to that in regions outside Africa where WtE has been a success. The combustible fraction exceeded 75 wt% making it ideal for thermal treatment without requiring supplementary fuel. With an MSW throughput of 421,757 tonnes year ⁻¹ (11.1% of which is recycled), and a lower heating value of 10.1 MJ kg ⁻¹ , the energetic potential was estimated at 3.8 × 10 ⁶ GJ. MSW thermal treatment via conventional technologies can reduce the waste throughput to landfills by up to 40%, provide up to 112 GWh year ⁻¹ of electrical energy, and increase the annual share of electrical energy produced from bio-fuels and wastes from 1.3% to at least 2.2%. These benefits make thermal MSW treatment a suitable option for waste disposal in African cities.

Application of Bacillus cyclic lipopeptides (CLPs); fengycin, iturin A and surfactin has shown a great potential in controlling the spread of green mold pathogen invasion (Penicillium digitatum) in wounded mandarin fruit during postharvest period. The limited defensive protein profiles followed specific expression of pivotal genes relating to plant hormone mediating signaling pathways of the CLPs’ action on stimulating host plant resistance have been exhibited. The present study aimed to elucidate the specific effect of individual CLP obtained from Bacillus subtilis ABS-S14 as elicitor role on activation of plant defensive system at transcriptional and proteomic levels with and without P. digitatum co-application in mandarin fruit. Fengycin and iturin A elevated the gene expression of PAL, ACS1, ACO, CHI, and GLU while significantly stimulating plant POD transcription was only detected in the treatments of surfactin both with and without following P. digitatum. An increase of LOX and PR1 gene transcripts was determined in the treatments of individual CLP with fungal pathogen co-application. Fengycin activated production of unique defensive proteins such as protein involved in ubiquinone biosynthetic process in treated flavedo without P. digitatum infection. Proteins involved in the auxin modulating pathway were present in the iturin A and surfactin treatments. CLP-protein binding assay following proteome analysis reveals that iturin A attached to 12-oxophytodienoate reductase 2 involved in the oxylipin biosynthetic process required for jasmonic acid production which is implicated in induced systemic resistance (ISR). This study suggests specific elicitor action of individual CLP, particularly iturin A showed the most powerful in stimulating the ISR system in response to stresses in postharvest mandarins.

Land use and land cover (LULC) change is considered among the most discussed issues associated with development nowadays. It is necessary to provide factual and up-to-date information to policymakers to fulfil the increasing population’s food, work, and habitation needs while ensuring environmental sustainability. Geographical Information System (GIS) and Remote sensing can perform such work adequately. This study aims to assess land use and land cover changes concerning the Barapukuria coal mine and its adjacent areas in Bangladesh by applying remote sensing and GIS (geographical information system) techniques. This research work used time-series satellite images from the Landsat 7 ETM+ satellite between 1999 and 2009 and the Landsat 8 OLI/TIRS satellite for 2019. Supervised classification maximum likelihood classifier matrix was implemented using ERDAS Imagine 2018. The images were categorised into four definite classes: settlement, agricultural land, forest land, and waterbody. Analytical results clearly indicated that settlements and agricultural land had increasing and decreasing trends over the past 20 years, respectively. Settlements increased from 22% to 34% between 1999 and 2019. However, agricultural land reduced from 69% to 59% in the same period. Settlements grew by more than 50% during this period. The research had an overall accuracy of 70%, while the kappa coefficient was more than 0.60. There were land subsidence issues because of mining activities, leading to 1.003 km² area being depressed and 1500 houses cracked. This research depicts the present LULC scenario and the impact of the coalfield area. It is expected to reduce the burden on policymakers to prepare a proper and effective mines development policy in Bangladesh and meet sustainable development goal (SDG) 15 (Life on land).