We propose a new method of estimating the shrinkage of glaciers over a wide area under conditions of changed climate. The method can be also used to quantitatively estimate the presence of glaciers under past climatic conditions, in mountainous areas where they are currently absent. The method is based on the use of statistical parameters of the distribution of glaciers by altitude zones, according to vertical distance from the climatic equilibrium line altitude (CELA). The method was used for the Pskem River basin (tributary of the Chirchik River, Western Tien-Shan) where glaciation has been extensively studied. Data are available for several glacier inventories for the basin for different time periods from 1957 to 2010. The number of glaciers for the part of the basin considered in the studies decreased by 16 percent during that period. Mean summer air temperature and annual precipitation were used as climate indicators characterizing ablation and accumulation on glaciers. Data of several meteorological stations located in the Pskem River basin were used to document these climatic characteristics. We estimated shrinkage of glaciers over the area for increases of summer air temperature of 0.5 - 2°C.

Observational data from the Russian sub-Arctic stations are used to investigate long-term variability of the growing season length (GSL) and the number of frost days (FD) in 1949-2013. Consistent with the global warming pattern we find a trend-like increase (decrease) of GSL (FD) which is evident since early 1970^th of the last century. These trendlike changes are best pronounced at Western stations (i.e. in European Russia and western Siberia) and they are essentially smaller to the East. Although we find some significant links to regional teleconnections (such as Scandinavian, East Atlantic and West Pacific teleconnections), in general our results imply rather weak impact of large scale atmospheric dynamics on interannual variability of GSL and FD. Further analysis of correlations between GSL and FD on the one side and snow cover on the other side revealed generally stronger links to snow cover compared to teleconnections. However, revealed links to regional atmospheric teleconnections and snow cover are significantly impacted by the linear trends. In general, our results imply that compared to large scale atmospheric dynamics impacting interannual variability, snow cover (being a result of wintertime synoptic activity) plays a more important role in decadal-interdecadal variations of GSL and FD in Russian sub-Arctic, which may have some value regarding predictability of the summer climate in the region.

Measurements of summer mass balance B_s, made over the period 1946-2016, on 56 continental glaciers, located in the basins of mountain rivers in 14 countries, were analysed for the purpose of resolving several tasks: (a) constructing physically based interrelations between river flow W_bas and B_s; (b) estimating the representativeness of local measurement of B_s for enhancement of hydrological computations and for control of modelled values W_bas; and (c) use of time series of B_s for the evaluation of norms and extrema of W_bas. Results of the study of the outlined problem serve as the basis for making the transition of local glaciological characteristics to the basin-wide level by using the relationship between runoff and summer balance of glaciers. It includes also analysis and conclusions on the spatial and temporal homogeneity of averaging glaciological mass balance data by the sampling method.

In this paper we focused on the micromorphology of the Late and Middle Pleistocene paleosols exposed in twelve loess-paleosol sequences sections in the central part of the East European Plain. Each studied paleosol complex known as Mesin (MIS 5), Kamenka (MIS 6 (8) - 7 (9)), and Inzhavino (MIS 8 (10) - 9 (11)) pedocomplexes (PCs) consists typically of two members, the earlier - main - phase of the soil development taking place during an interglacial, and the later one - at the subsequent interstadial time. Interglacial paleosols formation is associated with the thermal optimum of climatic macrocycles and corresponds to conditions close to modern in the territory under consideration. Interstadial paleosols formation characterizes the intervals within the glacial period, accompanied by an increase in heat and moisture. However, the heat supply of such intervals did not reach modern level in this region (Velichko and Morozova 2015). As follows from the analysis of the soil micromorphology over the studied area, the soil microstructure experienced notable changes under changing latitudinal zonality. During the interglacial periods clay coatings and Fe-Mn pedofeatures dominated the soil microfabric; in the south loess-paleosol sequences coatings are in negligible quantities, Fe-Mn pedofeatures decrease in amount, and carbonate pedofeatures appear instead. In the microfabric of the interstadial paleosols, Fe-Mn pedofeatures are abundant, but unlike interglacial paleosols, the coatings are rare. Basically, the coatings are humus-clayey in composition, but in the more southern sections coatings are absent.

Located in Southeast Asia, Vietnam is one of the most severely affected countries by climate change and faces to series of challenges related to climate change, in which droughts are one of the most serious natural disasters. Land surface temperature (LST) is important factor in evaluating soil moisture and drought phenomenon. Remote sensing technique with many advantages, compared with traditional methods, can be used effectively for retrieving LST. This article presents study on the application of LANDSAT 8 multi - temporal data for monitoring LST changes in dry season 2015 - 2016 in Loc Ninh district, Binh Phuoc province in Southeast region of Vietnam. LST was derived using Split-Window (SW) algorithm. The results showed that the LST at the end of 2015 - 2016 dry seasons (in February and March) is much higher than at the early of dry season. The area with LST higher than 309 K increases very fast in dry season 2015 - 2016, from less than 1% of the total study area in November and December to 19.59% in February and 30.74% in March. The results obtained in this study can be used to create the LST distribution map and to monitor drought phenomenon.

Renewable energy use is spreading worldwide presenting the future of the power engineering - its renewable resources and low ecological impact characterize one of the best technologies to support permanently growing energy consumption and contribute to sustainable development. But its development is sometimes hampered by lack of suitable technologies and strong positions of the competing conventional energy production. Moreover, critics emphasize such problems of renewable energy use as unstable energy production, complicated connection to power lines, some ecological problems. To prove its efficiency renewable energy development needs support by relevant resource and ecological assessments. This paper presents our research concerning wind farm location issue regarding both production efficiency and minimal ecological impact. Our field research in Crimea was directed at on-site assessment of wind farm location efficiency as well as studies of public opinion concerning local wind farms and wind energy use in general. It was found out that Crimean wind farms have controversial location efficiency related to its power production. But their ecological impact was minimal proved by both on-site measurements and sociological survey results. It was also found that wind turbine noise impact had a very complicated character, but had no significant ecological impact.

This paper analyzed land cover changes in Gazipur Sadar - an important urban fringe of expanding Dhaka City, Bangladesh, by leveraging remotely sensed imageries between 1973 and 2017. Landsat images of1973, 1991, 2006, and 2017 were classified using widely-preferred supervised classification method. Compared against ground-truth data, the reported classification accuracy ranges from 85% to 89%. Our classified land cover maps reveal that built-up areas in Gazipur Sadar increased by 312.9%, mostly replacing vegetation cover. An overall 199.7% decrease of vegetative covers highlights on the degree of urbanization process and increasing population pressure faced by Gazipur Sadar over the past decades. The rapid decrease of vegetative cover only 57 sq. km remains out of 344 sq. km throughout the region, including the Sal (Shorea robusta) forest and other floral species - invaluable resources for biodiversity and ecosystem health, should be taken as 'alarming' situation by the local authority responsible for promoting and managing sustainable development goals. In that light, this study emphasizes on the need for a critical assessment of future development initiatives in the Gazipur Sadar area and suggests for maintaining acceptable tradeoffs between development and environmental protection.

Measuring urban sustainability remains an arena of dispute for long time. The promotion and development of urban sustainability are important to maximize the benefits of urbanization and minimize the negative externalities in urban environment and livelihoods. Each city has its strength and weakness towards sustainable urban development from different perspectives of various indicators. It is understood that assessment of sustainable city is related to identification and selection of sustainable development indicators. Therefore, in this research, we tried to develop a set of indicators, and indices for sustainability assessment in Bahir Dar and Hawassa cities in Ethiopia. The study focuses on the principal indicators, and an indicator framework has developed. The main purposes of sustainability indicators are to understand sustainability, supporting decisions, directing, involving stakeholders and empowerment. Twenty-six indicators with four main dimensions (economic, socio-cultural, environmental and institutional) have been identified. The computation of urban sustainability has to take into account all four dimensions equally. In the calculation of indicators, this study chooses a standard method [0, 1] using the minimum and maximum values for each indicator as an objective indicator. The sustainability indices calculated are 0.53 and 0.52 for Bahir Dar and Hawassa respectively, indicating that both cities have a moderate performance towards the development of a sustainable city. Aggregated data demonstrates that environmental indicators are moving towards sustainability, while economic, socio-cultural and institutional dimensions are performing relatively low in both cities, suggesting that sustainability studies need to work on all of sustainability dimensions that tend to better inform concerned bodies for policy intervention.

The Internet version of the interactive geoinformation system names as «Crimea Sea Coast» based on javascript programming language and the modern open library «leaflet» is described. Development of a product supposed to use of the modern vector graphics technologies, such as D3, Flot and other superstructures over javascript. The main attention is paid to operational representation of full-scale results observations with assessment of Crimea coastal zone dynamics in general. Options of such approach are already realized with use of data on measurement of coast line position of the northwest coast now. In addition, the system reserves the special section described the basis and results of the implementation of the previously developed cadastral assessment of the Crimea beaches, including their recreational areas, economic assessment of recreational resources, as well as the results of comprehensive interdisciplinary monitoring of Sevastopol Bay environmental condition for the period from 1998 to the present, including a cartographic representation of the geographical elements of the region as a whole. The results of monitoring allow to realize visualization of spatial distributions of hydrological, hydrochemical and hydrobiological characteristics of the bay sea environment in the digital format defined by user, to perform the construction of vertical distributions, and also to calculate some ecological indexes. The final version of the system is expected to be posted on the official website of Marine Hydrophysical Institute.