Noise pollution is a significant environmental problem in many rapidly urbanizing areas of Orissa, India. Transportation sector is one of the major contributors to noise in these areas. The present study is an attempt to estimate traffic noise pollution at five places on the way from Vyasa Vihar Campus to Gyan Vigyan Vihar Campus of Fakir Mohan University, Balasore, Orissa. The sources of noise...

Nearly half the world's population lives in urban centers, and these areas are increasingly important components of regional and global land cover. However, their ecological attributes are often overlooked, despite the presence of species, ecosystem services, and risks associated with the spread of pests or threatening processes such as fire. Movement and dispersal of organisms contribute to sp...

Our modern society is filled with stressful stimuli that impact our daily lives, and lead to problems that eventually threaten our mental and psychological wellbeing. Expanding urban life and urbanizing people's interactions have drastically increased and resulted in more stressful circumstances. Unfortunately, the role of nature and nature-based design in our urban societies as an alternative ...

Urban areas are continuously expanding today, extending their influence on an increasingly large proportion of woods and trees located in or nearby urban and urbanizing areas, the so-called urban forests. Although these forests have the potential for significantly improving the quality the urban environment and the well-being of the urban population, data to quantify the extent and characterist...

In recent decades, urbanization has become a significant urban environmental and ecological concern, especially in most developing countries. In China, rapid urban sprawl has had a profound influence on runoff and results in larger and more frequent incidents of flooding in many urban areas. Therefore, evaluating the impacts of urbanization on runoff is of great important for urban planning pol...

The world is rapidly urbanizing, but there is no single urbanization process. Rather, urban areas in different regions of the world are undergoing myriad types of transformation processes. The purpose of this paper is to examine how well data from DMSP/OLS nighttime lights (NTL) can identify different types of urbanization processes. Although data from DMSP/OLS NTL are increasingly used for the...

The developing world is rapidly urbanizing, but an understanding of how child health differs across urban and rural areas is lacking. We examine the association between area of residence and child health in India, focusing on composition and selection effects. Simple height-for-age averages show that rural Indian children have the poorest health and urban children have the best, with slum child...

We report data on the distribution and determinants of road deaths and injuries for all victims in Colombia, with the aim of defining targets and priorities for highway death prevention in that country and other rapidly urbanizing nations. Using information from Colombia's Fund for the Prevention of Road Injury and the national death registry, we studied data on deaths and injuries from 1991 to...