The aim of this article is to explore ways of increasing agricultural productivity in Zimbabwe in the face of the increasingly uncertain climatic conditions. Agriculture has remained crucial to economic growth in Zimbabwe while it is mainly rain-fed. The total seasonal rainfall amounts are not indicating any significant trend (increasing or decreasing) with time. Changes are only noticed in the...

Urban nonpoint source pollution is a significant contributor to water quality degradation. Watershed planners need to be able to estimate nonpoint source loads to lakes and streams if they are to plan effective management strategies. To meet this need for the twin cities metropolitan area, a large database of urban and suburban runoff data was compiled. Stormwater runoff loads and concentration...

A water budget model is proposed to estimate the infiltration, runoff, evapotranspiration and recharge in vadose zone and apply to a case study. The instantaneous redistribution of infiltrated water is assumed to be uniform and a linear relationship between evapotranspiration and effective saturation is imposed. Infiltration is described by Philip’s solution in conjunction with the time compres...

Nonlinear relations between rain input and hillslope outflow are common observations in hillslope hydrology field studies. In this paper we use percolation theory to model the threshold relationship between rainfall amount and outflow and show that this nonlinear relationship may arise from simple linear processes at the smaller scale. When the rainfall amount exceeds a threshold value, the und...

OBJECTIVE This study was carried out in order to ascertain whether or not Hurricane Katrina and related factors (i.e. the amount of rainfall) influenced the male-to-female birth ratio (M/F). MATERIALS AND METHODS Monthly births by gender for the affected states (Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi) for January 2003 to December 2012 were obtained from the Centers for Disease Control an...

Understanding the basic runoff processes in the Ethiopian highlands is vital for effective management and utilization of water resources and soil conservation planning. An important question for judging effectiveness of conservation practices is whether runoff is affected by ecology (mainly type of crop) or topography (landscape). A study was conducted in the 113 ha watershed of Maybar, located...

The entomopathogenic fungus Beauveria bassiana infects a wide range of insects and survives as a soil saprophyte and a plant endophyte. The objective of our study was to determine the role of rainfall in dispersing B. bassiana (Balsamo) Vuillemin to the surface of corn (Zea mays) from soil with different levels of crop residue. Laboratory studies which simulated field tillage systems, had level...