Browsing by Author "Rathnayake, Upaka"

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Impact of Climate Change and Variability on Spatiotemporal Variation of Forest Cover; World Heritage Sinharaja Rainforest, Sri Lanka
(Forest and Society, 2022) Samarasinghe, Jayanga T.; Gunathilake, Miyuru B.; Makubura, Randika K.; Arachchi, Shanika M.A.; Rathnayake, Upaka
Rainforests are continuously threatened by various anthropogenic activities. In addition, the ever-changing climate severely impacts the world’s rainforest cover. The consequences of these are paid back to human at a higher cost. Nevertheless, little or no significant attention was broadly given to this critical environmental issue. The World Heritage Sinharaja Rainforest in Sri Lanka is originating news on its forest cover due to human activities and changing climates. The scientific analysis is yet to be presented on the related issues. Therefore, this paper presents a comprehensive study on the possible impact on the Sinharaja Rainforest due to changing climate. Landsat images with measured rainfall data for 30 years were assessed and the relationships are presented. Results showcased that the built-up areas have drastically been increased over the last decade in the vicinity and the declared forest area. The authorities found the issues are serious and a sensitive task to negotiate in conserving the forest. The rainfall around the forest area has not shown significant trends over the years. Therefore, the health of forest cover was not severely impacted. Nevertheless, six cleared-up areas were found inside the Singaraja Rainforest under no human interactions. This can be due to a possible influence from the changing climate. This was justified by the temporal variation of Land Surface Temperature (LST) assessments over these six cleared-up areas. Therefore, the World Heritage rainforest is threatened due to human activities and under the changing climate change. Hence, the conservation of the Sinharaja Rainforest would be challenging in the future.
Relationships between climatic factors to the paddy yield in the North-Western Province of Sri Lanka
(Department of Industrial Management, Faculty of Science, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2020) Wickramasinghe, Lasini; Jayasinghe, Jeevani; Rathnayake, Upaka
Climate variation is one of the major impacting issues for paddy cultivation. It also highly impacts the harvest. Therefore, many researchers try to understand the relationships between climatic factors and harvest using numerous methods. Sri Lanka is still titled as a country with an agricultural-based economy and thus identifying the impact of climate variability on agriculture is very important. However, previous studies reveal a little information in the context of Sri Lanka on the impact of climate variabilities on agriculture. Therefore, this study showcases an artificial neural network (ANN) framework; that is an ordinary machine learning algorithm based on the model of the human neuron system, to evaluate the relationships among the climatic components and the paddy harvest in the North-Western province of Sri Lanka. This on-going study helps to analyze the relationships between the paddy harvest of the North-Western province and climate, including rainfall minimum atmospheric temperature and maximum atmospheric temperature. Correlation coefficient (R) and mean squared error (MSE) are used to test the performance of the ANN model. The results obtained from the analysis revealed that the predicted and real paddy yields have a significant correlation with rainfall, maximum temperature and minimum temperature.