Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) niche modelling as a tool for assessment of climate change impact on the flora of Qatar
Climate change is bringing about change in the overall weather pattern, temperature and precipitation across the globe. These changes will have varied impacts: for example, the change in temperature in the northern parts of Asian and North American continents might provide better living conditions than the currently prevailing extremely cold temperatures.
We currently have the tools available to analyse mass data and model our future climate. Therefore, it is proposed to train some high school students in climate change science to be the scientists of tomorrow and equip them with the appropriate knowledge and tools of global environmental variation and modelling
Research Project #
MME03-1121-210025
Development of Smart Agricultural Technologies to Optimize Resource Allocation to Ensure Food Security – a pathway towards Sustainable Vegetables and Date Palm Production in Qatar
The role of agriculture has been marked significantly in sustaining societies throughout the demands, caused by its rapid population growth and economic development. A detailed study is proposed to explain Scientific Objectives: This project will strive to develop innovative smart agricultural practices to improve and explain sustainability. The proposed project illustrates a multidisciplinary approach with five scientific objectives to promote applying artificial intelligence-based machine vision technologies to identify plant pests (diseases) in real-time for assisted monitoring and mapping of plants and soil health for early warning and field terrain to attain sustainable concentrate on developing novel, innovative, and cost-effective technologies, which are capable of accounting for efficient technologies developed through this research project have great potential to achieve self-sufficiency by a Vision 2030 to promote local agriculture production technologies, conserve, and optimize resources and reduce precision soil conservation, sensor-based sustainable irrigation, bio-circular economy) for vegetable and date palm collaborating institutions, and industry stakeholders to tackle different aspects of the proposed project. The project proposed scientific objectives. With the significant increase in food production activity in Qatar, combined with the Atlantic-Qatar and this proposal, greatly enhances the feasibility of this research. Effective planning, communicate the vision of self-sufficiency and food security adds great value to this proposal.
Research Project #
NPRP- BSRA01-0427-210064
Feasibility assessment in the cultivation of various varieties of grapes in Qatar: a step towards food security and a transformative approach to better manage the socio-ecological food/feed-systems.
The project aims to test the vineyard development not in a traditional manner instead assessing the development of vineyards considering spatio-temporal impacts. The proposed project is designed to assess the cultivation potential of grape varieties in Qatar and screen varieties for their suitability in terms of drought, salinity and heat tolerance in the wake of global climate change. This will be achieved from studying the ecological aspects and relevance of whole value networks with the objective of evaluating and identifying more ecologically sustainable food and feed-value networks. The proposed project will apply methods for the evaluation of value networks using data gathered from real-world scenarios.
Research Project #
SEED2020_11
Spatio-temporal changes in Qatar in the wake of global climate change - with special reference to the floristic diversity of the country
The study was designed to assess the conservation status of Qatar’s endemic flora by determining its floristic distribution and composition using modern GIS (Geographical Information System) and niche modelling techniques. Spatial and temporal mapping and analysis of the vegetation and classification analyses of land use changes were all assessed.
It is concluded that Qatar is undergoing a rapid change in regards to its land-use. Qatar has scarce but important flora which could be exploited for phytochemical extraction and commercialization. Some of these plants have specific niches which could be affected by climate change in the future and can have an impact on the overall biodiversity of Qatar.
Research Project #
SEED2020_11
Spatio-temporal changes in Qatar in the wake of global climate change - with special reference to the floristic diversity of the country
The study was designed to assess the conservation status of Qatar’s endemic flora by determining its floristic distribution and composition using modern GIS (Geographical Information System) and niche modelling techniques. Spatial and temporal mapping and analysis of the vegetation and classification analyses of land use changes were all assessed. It is concluded that Qatar is undergoing a rapid change in regards to its land-use. Qatar has scarce but important flora which could be exploited for phytochemical extraction and commercialization. Some of these plants have specific niches which could be affected by climate change in the future and can have an impact on the overall biodiversity of Qatar.
Research Project #
UREP28-256-1-048
Allelopathic significance of some of the common desert plants of Qatar
Allelopathy is receiving attention as an environmentally friendly solution in controlling weeds or pests due to the phytotoxicity of certain chemical substances (predominantly polymers of phenols or fatty acids) that exist in soil-plant systems.
It is hypothesized that some commonly growing desert plants of Qatar have potential herbicidal properties.
The project has a great compatibility with the QNRF’s objectives, and will investigate and highlight the importance of natural resources in the wake of climate change and as a way forward to a sustainable future for the State of Qatar. The objectives of the project also coincide with the Qatar National Vision 2030, which believes in a society capable of sustainable development
Research Project #
UREP29-154-1-035
Qatar in the wake of global climate change - with special reference to the floristic diversity of the country
Qatar National vision 2030 aims at conservation of Qatar natural ecosystem by protecting its environment from anthropogenic impact. The aim of the project is to assess the conservation status of some important endemic flora by understanding its floristic distribution using modern GIS and machine learning modelling techniques. It is vital for a country to understand its natural biodiversity and its spatial-temporal variation. Data of high to medium-spectral resolution imagery is vital in these analyses. As an undergraduate student-centered project, the following achievable objectives have been set: · Extraction of remotely sensed data from reliable sources and developing land-use maps of Qatar using ArcGIS. · Modelling the present and future distribution of common desert plants using niche predictive modelling software e.g. MaxEnt [5, 6].· Evaluation of antibacterial and antioxidant values of some common endemic plants of Qatar;
Research Project #
tbd
Dendrochemistry “A novel tool for Urban Pollutants Biomonitoring”: Perspective for Urban Green Management in Doha-Qatar
In the last few decades, Qatar’s economy has witnessed a rapid economic growth with amazing infrastructures development coined to its petrochemical industry. However, this development had a cost of environmental degradation; “a major challenge” that poses severe threat to Qatar’s sustaining its rapid prosperity. To explore this potential, we propose to apply state-of-art cutting-edge dendrochronological techniques to develop long chronologies of various shrubs and tree species along the urban-rural gradient to reconstruct the pollution record in Qatar. The methods used in this study can be more widely applied to nearby regions in Qatar and other middle-east countries.