In an attempt to shed light on the general situation of rural women and girls, this article makes a part of an investigation carried out in a rural area of Morocco. The survey revolves around studying of the situation of rural women and girls in the province of Taounate. It has been built on fieldwork that was accomplished in three villages of the province. The study looks through the reasons why illiteracy is still at its height amongst females in these areas, despite various literacy campaigns conducted in the province; remarkably after the launching of the National Initiative for Human Development (NIHD) on the 18^th of May 2005. Actually, there is a multitude of reasons leading to girls’ non-schooling in rural zones. It has been demonstrated that poverty, often declared to be behind this issue, should not be seen the main reason but other factors.

Global climate change is the predominant socio-economic, environmental and political issue confronting the mankind in the 21^st century. The humanity in future is likely to depend upon the realistic assessment of the present climate and reasonably accurate prediction of the future climate change. This requires better understanding of the dominant characteristics of past climates. Lakes and tanks located in the semi-arid and arid regions are particularly suitable for palaeoclimatic studies, because of their high sensitivity to shifts in precipitation. The present study has been carried out using multi-proxies (e.g., textural, geochemical, mineral magnetic and charophytes studies) of sediments of two historical tanks namely, Bhatodi (~450 yrs old) and Mastani (~270 yrs old), from the rain-shadow zone of Western Maharashtra to understand the nature of monsoon variability in the catchment area of the tanks. The multi-proxy analyses of 4-5m thick sediment sections have revealed that with the exception of some minor sedimentary units in the middle, the lake sediments are by and large similar. This implies only short-term, subtle to modest changes in the rainfall and runoff conditions in the catchment area during the last 2-3cm. There is no evidence a major shift in monsoon rainfall conditions in the rain-shadow zone.

Ecotourism has gained popularity among travelers in recent years due to the detrimental effects of conventional tourism. Purulia district in West Bengal (India), with its diversified picturesque landscape such as lush green forest, mesmerizing riverscape, lakes, waterfall, hills and uniqueness in the local community’s culture gives ample potentiality of ecotourism development. The aim of this paper to explore potentiality of ecotourism in Purulia district, West Bengal, India using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Geographical Information System (GIS). Initially, ecotourism inventory dataset was developed based on following criteria: Elevation, slope, proximity to river, distance from road, distance from settlements, distance from ecological sites, distance from railway, distance from tourism sites using ARC-GIS 10.6.1 software. Later, the suitability map of ecotourism development has been developed by applying Weighted Linear Combination (WLC) with combination of the criteria with their respective weights and categorized into five suitability classes as highly suitable (S₁), moderately suitable (S₂), suitable (S₃), less suitable (S₄) and unsuitable (S₅). Finally, after the identification of suitable zones, six alternatives ecotourism destinations are identified. This proposed method may be helpful for the local stakeholders and public administration in identifying potential ecotourism destination and planning for sustainable ecotourism development.

The behaviour of river flows during periods of recession can be better identified than in other periods. The Master Recession Curve (MRC) approach is a technical approach that is quite effective and efficient in modelling baseflow. This study aims to compare the shape of the MRC between linear and exponential reservoir models. The research method uses two linear reservoir models, the Depuit-Boussinesq equation and an exponential model based on exponential hydraulic conductivity. The results showed that the combination of recession parameters (initial recession discharge, constant and coefficients) for MRC manually linear and exponential reservoir models, and hybridization of genetic algorithm processes, showed that MRC visualization for linear reservoir models was more optimal compared to exponential reservoir models. These results are closely related to the slope of the MRC, where the linear reservoir model is gentler, and the exponential reservoir model is relatively steeper. The slope of the MRC for both reservoir models relates to the storage capabilities of the baseflow and the hydraulic conductivity properties of the study area. The gentle slope of the MRC has the properties of relatively slow storage and is relatively long stored. In contrast, the steep slope of the MRC determines the somewhat wasteful nature of storage.