Geography
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Item Cause and Effect Analysis of Impacts of Land Cover Changes on Belihuloya Mini-Catchment Area(Postgraduate Institute of Science Research Congress, Sri Lanka., 2024) Gunathilake, K.L.W.I.; Jayawardhana, D.T.; Chandrasekara, C.M.K.N.K.The rapid expansion of human activities has significantly transformed landscapes, leading to major impacts on water resources and ecosystem health. This study comprehensively assessed the transformations within the Belihuloya mini catchment, focusing on the effects of land use and land cover changes. The primary objectives included identifying changes, analyzing trends, and evaluating human perceptions of the impacts on the mini catchment. The study utilised remotely sensed data from 1959, 1988, 2000, and 2020 to assess land use and cover changes over time. A questionnaire survey was conducted among 60 randomly selected households across six Grama Niladhari Divisions within the catchment area. Correlation-based pair-wise analysis, paired t-test analysis, vulnerability value calculation, and interpolation mapping were employed to interpret the data. A cause-and-effect analysis was conducted using the Drivers-Pressures-State-Impacts-Responses (DPSIR) framework. The results revealed significant changes in land cover and use over the study period. Forest cover decreased dramatically, from 80% in 1959 to 33% in 1988, primarily due to the expansion of paddy fields and home gardens. Nine major driving forces were identified, highlighting the pressures on the natural environment and wildlife from land and forest clearance for construction. High-altitude areas surrounding the young Belihuloya river faces significant risk due to rapid land use changes, threatening the river's energy flow. The southern region, including Sabaragamuwa University and the Samanalawewa reservoir, is equally vulnerable, potentially compromising the mini-catchment's health. The findings underscore the urgent need for conservation efforts and informed land management practices to mitigate adverse impacts on the mini-catchment ecosystem and ensure sustainable development for future generations.Item Built environment stakeholders and climate change adaptation: the case of Sri Lanka(Emerald group publishing ltd, 2024) Jayathilake, Pasindu; Gunathilake, WathsalaPurpose This study aims to identify key built environment stakeholders in Sri Lanka and to understand their roles and responsibilities in tackling climate change. It also seeks to identify key challenges experienced by stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach Secondary data was systematically reviewed to identify key-built environment stakeholders in Sri Lanka. Thereafter, primary data was collected from a purposively selected sample of 40 built environment experts using a semi-structured interview schedule. The collected data was analyzed using the thematic analysis method. Findings The study identified built environment stakeholders in five sectors, namely, the state sector, the private sector, non-governmental organizations, academia and the general public. It was revealed that the state sector is responsible for policy formation and implementation, while the private sector acts as a financial facilitator. Academia generates and disseminates knowledge on climate change and community-based organizations provide inputs. Key skills and knowledge gaps of stakeholders include a lack of comprehension of the climate change theory and its concepts, lack of awareness on policies and legislation, lack of communication skills, language skills, digital proficiency and lack of integrated working skills. Unified action and equitable representation of all stakeholders is necessary to tackle climate change. Originality/value The original contribution of the paper is its emphasis on the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to the built environment in relation to climate change adaptations alongside its identification of key knowledge gaps among stakeholders.Item Transformational Adaptation in Agriculture under Climate Change: A Case Study in the Dry Zone of Sri Lanka.(Indonesian Journal of Geography, 2022) Dharmasiri, L. M.; Jayarathne, M.Transformational adaptation defines as 'changes the fundamental attributes of a system in response to climate and its effects.' Farmers deal with the natural environment and its components such as rainfall, temperature, humidity, and soil condition, which have a high range of variability and uncertainty for their cultivation. The present study focused on the impacts of climate change on the settler community who engage in agriculture as their mainstay and respond to the scenario. Quantitative and qualitative methods have been applied. Twenty samples from a village in the NCP have been selected. Primary outcomes of this study are (a) total awareness of perceptions on climate change; (b) the ambient temperature has been increasing and resulting in more heat stress; (c) frequent and severe occurrence of extreme rainfall anomalies and increasing trend of natural calamities. The area farmers have been adopting several strategies to overcome the negative impacts of climate change, such as transforming from intensification to more intensification that can be identified as Climate Smart Agriculture; crop diversification and adaptation of drought tolerance crops; transforming from agriculture to animal husbandry, and out-migration of unemployed or evicted youth from agriculture to non-agriculture. Institutional involvement is essential to strengthening the adaptative strategies of the people by providing an appropriate crop calendar and suitable crop combination and aware of the way of improving the use of the efficiency of available water for improving the living standard of the people.Item Exploring the Impact of Planned Relocation on Agricultural Income Generation in Sri Lanka: A Case of Landslide Induced Resettlement in Y District(Journal of Regional and City Planning, 2022) Jayasinghe, Naduni; Fernando, Nishara; Amaratunga, Dilanthi; Haigh, Richard; Gunathilake, Kithugasmulle Lekamalage Wathsala IndeevarieThe recent global acknowledgement of the importance of disaster risk reduction (DRR) in steering the world towards sustainable development can be discerned in the Sendai Framework for DRR 2015-2030 and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Ironically, certain DRR strategies like planned relocation have often undermined agricultural production, which is paramount for achieving certain Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as ‘Zero Poverty’ and ‘Zero Hunger’. This paper explores the impact of planned relocation on the agricultural income generating activities of rural communities relocated under a landslide induced relocation program executed in the Y district of Sri Lanka. Further, it discusses the extent to which the outcomes of said relocation program comply with the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda, thereby informing future policy directions towards planning, designing and executing DRR measures aimed at sustainable development. This study drew on a survey administered among 435 households who have been resettled under said project. The data was analyzed using the descriptive statistical method interactively with the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and the MS Excel software. The findings of this study show that relocation has generated unfavorable outcomes for relocatees who depended on agriculture as primary or subsidiary source of income. This group of relocatees was also characterized by pre-existing vulnerabilities, rendering it difficult for them to adapt to the risks and stresses caused by relocation. Agricultural income generating activities are particularly threatened by relocation initiatives, as such activities are reliant on immovable assets like land. Therefore, special attention should be paid to rebuilding livelihoods of agricultural communities in planning, designing and implementing relocation programs. Given the significance of agriculture in achieving certain SDGs, failure to do so will lend to dissonance between DRR measures and the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, subduing the efficacy of DRR in protecting development gains.Item Modelling the Learner’s Perspectives on Mobile Learning in Higher Education(University of Colombo School of Computing, 2018) Dolawattha, D.D.M.Mobile learning is a novel learning technique prevailing in the modern world. It has been identified that the important and balanced contribution from different stakeholders are required to create an environment for a better mobile learning experience. There are many reasons for learners to select mobile learning as an environment for their academic activities. The main objective of this study is modelling the learner influencing factors on mobile learning adoption for their learning activities in applicable and sustainable manner. The six main adoption factors are identified for the proposed model namely usefulness, interactivity, motivation, attitude, facilitating conditions, and ease of use. In the evaluation process, online pre-usage and post-usage questionnaires were used to introduce above six factors and 150 undergraduate students were obtained as a sample. Initially, the students were asked to fill the pre-usage questionnaire and secondly, they were obtained in the novel mobile learning system by using its features and facilities and finally, asked to fill the post-usage questionnaire. Results of the present study reveals that the most significant influencing factor is “Interactivity” on the learner’s mobile learning adoption. In conclusion, incorporating interactivity, usefulness, motivation, attitude, facilitating conditions and ease of use into the mobile learning adoption can better explain the learner perspectives in applicable and sustainable mobile learning frameworkItem The Influence on Mobile Learning: Mobile Learning Contents, Higher Education Institutes, and Communication Technology(IEEE, 2020) Dolawattha, D.D.M.In the present era, mobile learning has secured a better position in modern technology base learning paradigms. It surpasses other conventional learning methods because of ubiquity, mobility, attractive content, facilitated connectivity, and institutional engagements. The main objective of this study is to identify how mobile learning content, higher education institute, and communication technology factors influence learners and tcachers when using sustainable mobile learning in higher education. Through the literature reviewn we developed three separate impact models i,e. mobile learning content, higher education institute, and communication technology with separate impact factors. We used pre and post usage survey questionnaires of60 tea0hers and 60 learners to evaluate these models. Primarily, they were asked to fill the pre-usage questionnaire with their initial mobile learning experience. Then, they were allowed to use the modified Moodle mobile app and asked to fill the post-usage questionnaire. The results reveal that the most significant influencing factors are, ease of use in mobile learning content, and facilitating conditions for higher education institutes and communication technology models. Finally, we can conclude that users prefer to have easy to use mobile learning content with better service facilities in higher education institutes and communication technologies.Item Study on human ecological process affecting the spatial distribution of Dengue epidemic: a case study on Colombo district(Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, 2014) Rathnasekara, S.R.L.S.Item An Investigation on the Historical Factors led to the Conceptual Origin of Sustainable Development(Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Kelaniya, 2012) Senarathna, S.P. Dinesha RasanjaliThe concept of sustainable development emerged as a result of an effort to direct two longstanding different means of thoughts into one direction. It accounts to the stream of thoughts in respect of humanly centralized physical development and ecologically centralized environmental preservation. There are various historical events which led to bring these streams up to one single direction. These events could be identified in the fields of social, economical, political and environmental aspects. As a general result of the above, the emergence of a sustainable development concept of the orthodox paradigm took place. The objective of this research is to investigate in to the historical factors that led to the emergence of this concept. This research was carried out on the lines of qualitative research methodologies based on secondary data. Secondary data were gathered by way of scrutinizing information from various sources of books, magazines, internet and web sites. In accordance with the above data, the events that led to the emergence of the concept of sustainable development were differentiated clearly and each of them were streamlined periodically. Subsequently, while studying through the inter-‐relationships of these events, an investigation was carried out to ascertain the manner in which the background was created for the concept of sustainable development. The circumstances that led to the emergence of sustainable development could be identified as two major sectors. The main sector is environmental disasters that felt the necessity of a sustainable developmental concept. Secondly, it was identified as environmental seminars, conferences and organizations that pioneered toward the emergence of the concept of sustainable development. Most of these massive environmental catastrophes could be identified as man-‐made disasters. Most out of them could be reckoned as technological hazards too. They are mostly centralized in developed countries. Few examples for such situations are discovery of love canal, atonic explosion of Chernobyl, contamination of mercury into Minamata Bay and leakage of oil in St. Barbara sea etc. The main reason for the emergence of sustainable development concept that led to important events such as seminars, conferences and organizations are due to the environmental calamities that took place worldwide. Accordingly environmental disasters and environmental conferences are inter-‐related.Item Potentials and Problems of Using Religious Places for Urban Recreational Needs: a Case Study Related to Kelaniya Buddhist Temple – Western Province, Sri Lanka(Songkla University, Thailand, 2013) Senarathna, S.P. Dinesha RasanjaliA recreational activity can be defined as an activity undertaken for the pleasure, leisure or satisfaction. In highly urbanized area availability of recreational spaces are important specially because of the high population density, lack of vacant lands and environmental pollution. Under such conditions the urban environment can negatively affect the mental and physical health of their residents. Therefore, the recreational facilities have become a fundamental human need that should be facilitated in urban environment. In fulfilling the above requirements the place which are of religious and cultural values take a major position of importance. Kelaniya temple regarded as a very important Buddhist religious site situated within the western province of Sri Lanka which is density populated and is important by way of historical and religious values. Kelaniya temple bears its religious and historical importance as Load Buddha is said to have visited Kelaniya on His third arrival Sri Lanka. This temple is situated above 6 miles away from the Colombo city which is commercial capital of Sri Lanka and the extended of the entire land is around 10 Acers. The surrounding of the Kelaniya temple consists of the attractive landscape with a beautiful environment because it stand facing a braided flow swirl of Kelani river. Kelaniya temple has become an attraction of foreign and local tourists due to the above notable reasons. The objective of this research is identify the abilities and related problems in adapting the environ of Kelaniya temple to fulfill the urban recreational needs of the people which is situated in a close proximity of a religious locality with religious, environmental and cultural value near a highly populated urban area. The study has been conducted with the help of both primary and secondary data. Primary data was gathered using questionnaires, field observations, interviews and focus group discussions. Altogether 60 visitors arriving at the Kelaniya temple were selected by random sampling methods. The secondary data was collected from different sources. Gathered data was generalized, classified and summarized. Charts, maps, diagrams and percentages were arranged and used as data analysis methods. The ability of developing the recreational needs related to Kelaniya temple site remains at a satisfactory level. This area of Kelaniya river could be made use for water related recreational sports activities such as boat riding, swimming and diving etc. Either side of the riverbanks and the surrounding greenery also could be adapted for outdoor passive recreational activities. This locality could also be put into the use of the purpose of meditational activity which can develop the mental relaxation of participant. Certain problems and challenges will arise in organizing recreational facilities as noted above mainly organizing the recreational center in a suitable manner appropriate to the religious site, disposing of garbage of the religious site and the problem in eliminating the beggars who are used to frequent the religious site regularly. Minimizing these problems had to be carried out without causing any inconvenience to the pilgrims who visit the temple.