GIS: The Destroyer of Crop Waste

By: Salvador Villarreal Jr.

Five sites found for waste management of rice straw residue (Khater et al., 2022).



The Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be used to find the best areas to collect and recycle crop residues to lower transportation costs and increase benefits. The rice straws of Sinbilawin center were the main focus of this study since large quantities of its waste have been burnt causing great economic losses and environmental pollution throughout the center. In this study, GIS was used to create three scenarios to design a model to select the best areas to collect rice straw: modeling of Sinbilawin center, modeling of the center's village, and modeling of the villages' best sites. The first scenario found forty sites where the cost of transfer would be very high, the second scenario found that the total lengths of the roads are not much, meaning the cost of transportation is lower and time and efforts are saved, and the third scenario showed five of the best sites with the shortest lengths and lowest costs. This study shows that GIS can strengthen environmental sustainability as this software has been proven to help reduce waste by finding the best sites to recycle rice straw residue all throughout the center. Not only would waste be reduced but there will also be less environmental pollution in the area with less residue being burnt. However, there is a possible trade-off to using GIS as taking out the crop waste from the center may pollute and somewhat decay the newly-found sites (as well as impacting surrounding environments) waste management commences.

References

Khater, ES.G., S.A. Ali, M.T. Afify, M.A. Bayomy, and R.S. Abbas. 2022. Using of geographic information systems (GIS) to determine the suitable site for collecting agricultural residues. Sci Rep 12, 14567. 








Comments

  1. Luis CastilloSeptember 19, 2022 at 8:18 PM

    I've taken up a GIS class this semester and witnessing this aspect of Biology intertwine with geographic systems, certainly is a step forward for data analysis in our field. The use of this software worked wonders in this study, yet I'm very curious. They solely based their parameters on accessibility, transportation, and ecological trade-off correct? Very interesting Sal.

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