Browsing by Author "Gopal S. Singh"

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Artificial night light alters ecosystem services provided by biotic components
(Akademiai Kiado ZRt., 2021) Rajesh K. Singhal; Jyoti Chauhan; Hanuman S. Jatav; Vishnu D. Rajput; Gopal S. Singh; Bandana Bose
The global catastrophe of natural biodiversity and ecosystem services are expedited with the growing human population. Repercussions of artificial light at night ALAN are much wider, as it varies from unicellular to higher organism. Subsequently, hastened pollution and over exploitation of natural resources accelerate the expeditious transformation of climatic phenomenon and further cause global biodiversity losses. Moreover, it has a crucial role in global biodiversity and ecosystem services losses via influencing the ecosystem biodiversity by modulating abundance, number and aggregation at every levels as from individual to biome levels. Along with these affects, it disturbs the population, genetics and landscape structures by interfering inter- and intra-species interactions and landscape formation processes. Furthermore, alterations in normal light/dark (diurnal) signalling disrupt the stable physiological, biochemical, and molecular processes and modulate the regulating, cultural and provisioning ecosystem services and ultimately disorganize the stable ecosystem structure and functions. Moreover, ALAN reshapes the abiotic component of the ecosystem, and as a key component of global warming via producing greenhouse gases via emitting light. By taking together the above facts, this review highlights the impact of ALAN on the ecosystem and its living and non-living components, emphasizing to the terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem. Further, we summarize the means of minimizing strategies of ALAN in the environment, which are very crucial to reduce the further spread of night light contamination in the environment and can be useful to minimize the drastic impacts on the ecosystem. © 2021, Akadémiai Kiadó Zrt.
Commercialization unsustainable to Himalayan environment
(Nicolaus Copernicus University, 2011) Gopal S. Singh
Indigenous people of north western Himalayan region of India utilize a wide range of biological resources for subsistence. The age-old practices of resource utilization have supported the rural economy with equity and social justice and conservation of resources since generations. However, in recent times, due to market demand, the biological resources are subjected to premature and frequent harvesting of ruthless exploitation by unskilled people particularly from outskirt of people. In addition to this, unfavorable government forest policy and ignoring people's participation in decision-making and changing climatic conditions are some of the prime factors responsible for changing traditional resource management practices. Over increasing population pressure demand lead for market oriented commercial demand has resulted in over-exploitation of some of the plant resources at alarming pace. This calls for the development of resource management techniques built up on traditional knowledge capable of meeting the challenges of conservation on the one hand and socio-economic development of the local people on the other. Changing indigenous resource management practices in north western Himalaya imperils herbal based health care system and livelihood pattern.
Ecosystem services: A bridging concept of ecology and economics
(Nicolaus Copernicus University, 2017) Rinku Singh; Gopal S. Singh
Nature is bountiful to all living organisms on Earth including human beings. Human, throughout the life, obtained various benefits from ecosystem for the sustenance on planet Earth. Ecosystem service is a linking concept between ecology and economics recently paying attention worldwide. Economic and social development critically depends on the natural capital although at the environmental cost but need bridging of nature components. In the current scenario, due to increasing anthropogenic interferences ecosystem is under great threat. It is time to include ecosystem services agenda in the framework of policy to human and sustainable development. © 2017 Nicolaus Copernicus University. All rights reserved.
Editorial: Impacts of invasive plant management on forest biodiversity and ecosystem services
(Frontiers Media SA, 2024) Yashwant S. Rawat; Gopal S. Singh; Anteneh T. Tekleyohannes
[No abstract available]
Effect of elevated CO2 and temperature stress on cereal crops
(wiley, 2015) Ashutosh Tripathi; Devendra Kumar Chauhan; Gopal S. Singh; Niraj Kumar
Various anthropogenic activities along with indiscriminate and rapacious use of natural resources have enormously increased greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, resulting in elevated CO2 and temperature of Earth’s system. This has manifold effects on agro-ecosystems. Effects of elevated CO2 and temperature stress on crop production are posing greater challenges in order to provide sufficient quantity and quality of food. Cereals are the staple foods greatly affected by stress induced by increasing CO2 and temperature and understanding the various dimensions of these effects is necessary. This chapter presents an overview of the impacts associated with elevated CO2 and temperature stress on different plant processes of cereal crops such as effects on physiological and biochemical processes, phenological responses and reproductive changes. It also gives an account of stress responses and tolerance mechanisms to understand plant defences, emphasizing molecular approaches to delineate complex effects and adaptation in crop plants. This may be helpful in understanding the positive as well as negative impacts of current climatic changes on cereal crops and therefore may be valuable for making future research plans in this regard. © 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Ethnobotanical study of medicinal plants used by the Taungya community in Terai Arc Landscape, India
(2009) Kumari Poonam; Gopal S. Singh
Ethnopharmacological relevance: The importance/study of community-based ethnobotanical traditional knowledge is ever-increasing for designing strategies for conservation and sustainable use, appropriate drugs and dose-illness relationship. Aims of the study: Present study aims to document ethnobotanical attributes of diverse medicinal plants used by the Taungya community to cure ailments in Terai Arc Landscape of India. Materials and methods: Ethnobotanical data was recorded by opting peoples' participation approach involving interviews, semi-structured meetings, group discussions and filling of questionnaires. Results: Total 116 medicinal plant species comprising 97 genera and 48 families have been recorded, out of which 16% used externally, 39% used internally and 45% used both externally and internally. Various plant parts were used in form of powder, paste, juice, decoction, infusion, poultice and oral consumption to cure a variety of ailments. Twenty-three species are used as remedies against skin problems, 17 species against rheumatism and 14 species against fever. Conclusion: Taungya community provided vast ethnobotanical knowledge in form of detail description of 116 medicinal plants (including 82 species with new phytomedicinal claims). Further, investigation on these species may lead to the discovery of novel bioactive molecules. © 2009 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.
Perception, anticipation and responses of people to changing climate in the gangetic plain of India
(2013) Ashutosh Tripathi; Gopal S. Singh
This study examines how farmers and local people of eastern Uttar Pradesh (UP) in the Indo-Gangetic region of India perceive climatic change. This has been achieved by comparing the perception and responses of people with available metrological and agricultural data in Allahabad district of UP. The outcomes of the study were also compared in terms of traditional and current weather descriptions which point towards a significant shift in age-old weather patterns and allied agricultural activities. Temperature and rainfall analysis of 108 years (1901-2008) envisaged remarkable similarity between perceptions and different agro-met data. Findings support irregularities/ variability in temperature and rainfall, altering seasonal patterns and unpredictability in anticipatory knowledge of traditional folklores that were some common surfacing attributes in consequence of climate change. Favourable responses for different climatic effects/changes ranged from 30% to 100%. Substantial changes in land use and land cover were found to be of 25-100% for indigenous crops which also reflected quantum loss of agro-biodiversity. Changes in climate perceived by local people significantly favoured the results of the present study.
Soil seed bank dynamics: History and ecological significance in sustainability of different ecosystems
(Springer India, 2014) Upama Mall; Gopal S. Singh
The existence and potential importance of the soil seed bank have been recognized by ecologists and evolutionary biologists since the dawn of modern biology, from Darwin (1859) to Mall and Singh (2011) and Hong et al. (2012). The earlier studies of soil seed banks began in 1859 with Darwin, when he observed the emergence of seedlings using soil samples from the bottom of a lake. However, the first paper published as a scientific research report was written by Putersen in 1882, studying the occurrence of seeds at different soil depths (Roberts 1981). Very early ecologists started to investigate the nature and the density of living seeds in the soil and the soil seed bank (Darwin 1859; Chippindale and Milton 1934; Nordhagen 1937; Bannister 1966; Barclay-Estrup and Gimingham 1975), and in modern times to determine the significance of soil seeds in the regeneration of different plant communities (Thompson and Grime 1979; Roberts 1981; Mallik et al. 1984; Simpson et al. 1989; Thompson et al. 1997; Miller and Cummins 2001; Lemenih and Teketay 2006; Tessema et al. 2011b; Mall and Singh 2001;Hong et al. 2012) and the similarity between the soil seed bank and aboveground vegetation (Tessema et al. 2011b). A soil seed bank, which begins at dispersal and ends with the germination or death of the seed (Walck et al. 2005), is a reserve of mature viable seeds located on the soil surface or buried in the soil (Roberts 1981) that provides a memory of past vegetation and represents the structure of future populations (Fisher et al. 2009). Seeds are a crucial and integral part of an ecosystem that show the past history of standing vegetation and its future deviation. An understanding of the population dynamics of buried viable seeds is of practical importance in conservation of different communities and weed management in agriculture (Fenner 1985; Fenner and Thompson 2005). The balance between trees and grasses, however, is often highly disturbed as a consequence of heavy grazing and poor management (Pugnaire and Lazaro 2000). This study aimed to gain a better understanding of soil seed bank dynamics in different ecosystems of the world. All plants establish themselves by the expansion and subsequent fragmentation of vegetative parts such as tillers, rhizomes, or runners by the successful establishment of a soil seed bank or bulbils (Freedman et al. 1982). During the past decade, there has been a rapid increase of the number of studies assessing seed density and species richness and the composition of soil seed banks in a wide range of plant communities (Thompson et al. 1997). In India, the soil seed bank has been estimated in humid tropical forest (Chandrashekara and Ramakrishnan 1993), grasslands, irrigated and dry land agro-ecosystems (Srivastava 2002), tropical dry forest (Khare 2006), jhum cultivation (Saxena and Ramakrishnan 1984; Sahoo 1996), Himalayan moist temperate forest (Viswanth et al. 2006), and wastelands and roadsides (Yadav and Tripathi 1981). © Springer India 2014. All rights are reserved.
Trichoderma asperellum T42 reprograms tobacco for enhanced nitrogen utilization efficiency and plant growth when fed with N nutrients
(Frontiers Media S.A., 2018) Bansh N. Singh; Padmanabh Dwivedi; Birinchi K. Sarma; Gopal S. Singh; Harikesh B. Singh
Trichoderma spp., are saprophytic fungi that can improve plant growth through increased nutrient acquisition and change in the root architecture. In the present study, we demonstrate that Trichoderma asperellum T42 mediate enhancement in host biomass, total nitrogen content, nitric oxide (NO) production and cytosolic Ca2+ accumulation in tobacco. T42 inoculation enhanced lateral root, root hair length, root hair density and root/shoot dry mass in tobacco under deprived nutrients condition. Interestingly, these growth attributes were further elevated in presence of T42 and supplementation of NO3− and NH4+ nutrients to tobacco at 40 and 70 days, particularly in NO3− supplementation, whereas no significant increment was observed in nia30 mutant. In addition, NO production was more in tobacco roots in T42 inoculated plants fed with NO3− nutrient confirming NO generation was dependent on NR pathway. NO3− dependent NO production contributed to increase in lateral root initiation, Ca2+ accumulation and activities of nitrate transporters (NRTs) in tobacco. Higher activities of several NRT genes in response to T42 and N nutrients and suppression of ammonium transporter (AMT1) suggested that induction of high affinity NRTs help NO3− acquisition through roots of tobacco. Among the NRTs NRT2.1 and NRT2.2 were more up-regulated compared to the other NRTs. Addition of sodium nitroprusside (SNP), relative to those supplied with NO3−/NH4+ nutrition and T42 treated plants singly, and with application of NO inhibitor, cPTIO, confirmed the altered NO fluorescence intensity in tobacco roots. Our findings suggest that T42 promoted plant growth significantly ant N content in the tobacco plants grown under N nutrients, notably higher in NO3−, providing insight of the strategy for not only tobacco but probably for other crops as well to adapt to fluctuating nitrate availability in soil. © 2018 Singh, Dwivedi, Sarma, Singh and Singh.