Water being an essential component for plant growth and development, its scarcity poses serious threat to crops around the world. Climate changes and global warming are increasing the temperature of earth hence becoming an ultimate cause of water scarcity. It is need of the day to use potential soil amendments that could increase the plants’ resistance under such situations. Biochar and gypsum were used in the present study to improve the water use efficiency and growth of Abelmoschus esculentus L. Moench (Lady’s Finger). A six weeks experiment was conducted under greenhouse conditions. Stress treatments were applied after thirty days of sowing. Plant height, leaf area, photosynthesis, transpiration rate, stomatal conductance and water use efficiency were determined weekly under stressed (60% field capacity) and non-stressed (100% field capacity) conditions. Stomatal conductance and transpiration rate decreased and reached near to zero in stressed plants. Stressed plants also showed resistance to water stress upto five weeks and gradually perished at sixth week. On the other hand, water use efficiency improved in stressed plants containing biochar and gypsum as compared to untreated plants. Biochar alone is a better strategy to promote plant growth and WUE specifically of Abelmoschus esculentus, compared to its application in combination with gypsum.

Flooding is among the most catastrophic and common natural events. It not only endangers human lives, their livelihoods, and possessions but also devastates the nation’s economy. Increased flooding is an inevitable consequence of climate change. Hence, Identification of flood suspectable hotspots is vital for flood risk management along with disaster handling. The primary objective of this research is to use a frequency ratio model to classify flood-prone zones in two provinces of Pakistan. The flood inventory map was developed using 230 flood location points in Northern Sindh and Southern Punjab. Aspect, profile curvature, elevation, slope, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), normalized difference soil index (NDSI), distance from the road, distance from the river, land use/land cover (LULC) and rainfall were among the ten (10) determining factors. The data were randomly divided into two distinct datasets, with 70% flood points (161) used for inventory formulation and the other 30% (69 flood points) for result validation. The flood vulnerability map was categorized into five different zones ranging from very low (19.73%) to very high (20.37%) susceptibility range. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) and area under curve (AUC) was used to demonstrate the prediction result that yielded a reasonable score of 77.4%. The study suggested that in comparison to other studied districts, Jacobabad is the most prone region with acute vulnerability and constrained resilience. The presented data can serve as a source for tracking, assessing, and predicting potential flood activity in the area and could be beneficial for planners and decision-makers involved in early disaster response planning within the country.

The Salt Range a hill system located in the Punjab province of Pakistan is affected by heavy salinity and condition is deteriorating overtime with the use of brackish underground water. Common health problems are hypertension, viral hepatitis due to virus A and E, many types of urinary problems and gastrointestinal tract problems like diarrhea and other abdominal ailments. Present study was designed to evaluate the physico-chemical parameters of drinking water of the Salt Range by taking water samples from different locations of Pind Dadan Khan and Khewra. Each parameter was compared with the standard desirable limit prescribed by WHO. Eight percent water samples showed pH level above the permissible limit while EC and TDS values also crossed the permissible guideline values in 48 and 24 percent samples respectively. The results revealed that 16% sulfates 10% iron content and 30% chlorides were higher than the WHO standards. In 54 percent samples chromium values also crossed the WHO guideline limit. The higher values of certain parameters (when compared with acceptable standard limits for drinking purposes) point towards the salt water intrusion and pollution level in drinking water. Suitable suggestions were made to improve the water quality of salt range.