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Abstract. Black carbon (BC) emission from biofuel cooking in South Asia and its radiative forcing is a significant source of uncertainty for health and climate impact studies. Quantification of BC emissions in the published literature is either based on laboratory or remote field observations far away from the source. For the first time under Project Surya, we use field measurements taken simultaneously inside rural households, ambient air and vehicular emissions from highways in a rural area in the Indo-Gangetic-Plains region of India to establish the role of both solid biomass based cooking in traditional stoves and diesel vehicles in contributing to high BC and organic carbon (OC), and solar absorption. The major finding of this study is that BC concentrations during cooking hours, both indoors and outdoors, have anomalously large twice-daily peak concentrations reaching 60 µg m −3 (median 15-min average value) for indoor and 30 µg m −3 (median 15-min average value) for outdoor during the early morning (05:00 to 08:00) and early evening (17:00 to 19:00) hours coinciding with the morning and evening cooking hours. The BC during the non-cooking hours were also large, in the range of 2 to 30 µg m −3 . The peak indoor BC concentrations reached as high as 1000 µg m −3 . The large diurnal peaks seen in this study lead to the conclusion that satellite based aerosol studies that rely on once-daily daytime measurements may severely underestimate the BC loading of the atmosphere. The concentration of OC was a factor of 5 larger than BC and furthermore optical data show that absorbing brown carbon was a major component of the OC. The imprint of the cooking hour peaks were seen in the outdoor BC both in the village as well as in the highway. The results have significant implications for climate and epidemiological studies.

Abstract. Project Surya has documented indoor and outdoor concentrations of black carbon (BC) from traditional biomass burning cook stoves in a rural village located in the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) region of N. India from November 2009-September 2010. In this paper, we systematically document the link between local scale aerosol properties and column averaged regional aerosol optical properties and atmospheric radiative forcing. We document observations from the first phase of Project Surya and estimate the source dependent (biomass and fossil fuels) aerosol optical properties from local to regional scale. Data were collected using surface based observations of BC, organic carbon (OC), aerosol light absorption, scattering coefficient at the Surya village (SVI 1) located in IGP region and integrated with satellite and AERONET observations at the regional scale (IGP). The daily mean BC concentrations at SVI 1 showed a large increase of BC during the dry season (December to February) with values reaching 35 µg m −3 . Space based LIDAR data revealed how the biomass smoke was trapped within the first kilometer during the dry season and extended to above 5 km during the pre-monsoon season. As a result, during the dry season, the variance in the daily mean single scattering albedo (SSA), the ratio of scattering to extinction coefficient, and column aerosol optical properties at the local IGP site correlated (with slopes in the range of 0.85 to 1.06 and R 2 > 0.4) well with the "IGP AERONET" (mean of six AERONET sites). The statistically significant correlation suggested that in-situ observations can be used to derive spatial mean forcing, at least for the dry season. The atmospheric forcing due to BC and OC exceeded 20 Wm −2 during all months from November to May, supporting the deduction that elimination of cook stove smoke emissions through clean cooking technologies will likely have a major positive impact not only on human health but also on regional climate.

Black carbon (BC) emissions from biofuel cooking in South Asia and its radiative forcing is a significant source of uncertainty for health and climate impact studies. Quantification of BC emissions in the published literature is either based on laboratory or remote field observations far away from the source. For the first time under Project Surya, we use field measurements taken simultaneously inside rural households, ambient air and vehicular emissions from highways in a rural area in the Indo-Gangetic-Plains region of India to establish the role of both solid biomass based cooking in traditional stoves and diesel vehicles in contributing to high BC and organic carbon (OC), and solar absorption. The major finding of this study is that BC concentrations, both indoors and outdoors, have anomalously large twice-daily peak concentrations reaching 60 μg m⁻³ (median 15-min average value) during the early morning (05:00 to 08:00) and early evening (17:00 to 19:00) hours coinciding with the morning and evening cooking hours. The BC during the non-cooking hours were also large, in the range of 2 to 30 μg m⁻³. The peak BC concentrations reached as high as 1000 μg m⁻³. The large diurnal peaks seen in this study lead to the conclusion that satellite based aerosol studies that rely on once- daily daytime measurements may severely underestimate the BC loading of the atmosphere. The concentration of OC was a factor of 5 larger than BC and furthermore optical data show that absorbing brown carbon was a major component of the OC. The imprint of the cooking hour peaks were seen in the outdoor BC both in the village as well as in the highway. The results have significant implications for climate and epidemiological studies

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We assessed resources, challenges and prospects of the dairy industries in four districts of Bangladesh (Mymensingh, Satkhira, Chittagong and Sirajganj) with the participation of 8 to 12 dairy farm families in each district. We used ten participatory rural appraisal (PRA) tools, namely social mapping, semistructured interview, activity profiles, seasonal calendar, pie charts, mobility diagram, matrix ranking, preference ranking and scoring, system analysis diagram and focus group discussion in 57 PRA sessions from September through October 2002. Dairying contributed more to family income (63 to 74%) and utilized a smaller portion of land than did crops. Twenty seven to 49% of cattle feed is rice straw. Only Sirajganj and Chittagong had limited, periodic grazing facilities. Fodder (Napier; Pennisetum purpureum) cultivation was practiced in Sirajganj and Satkhira. Fodder availability increased milk production and decreased disease occurrence. Friesian crossbred cows were ranked best as dairy cattle. The present utilization of veterinary and AI services was ranked highly. Farmers outside the milk union desired milk purchasing centres as the most required service in the future. They identified veterinary and AI services as inadequate and desired significant improvements. The PRA tools effectively identified resources, constraints, opportunities and farmers' perspectives related to the dairy industries in Bangladesh.

The experiment was conducted to investigate the systems of management in small scale cattle fattening programs. The data were collected through an interview schedule from 215 respondents of 24 districts in 52 upazilla who were involved in small scale cattle fattening. In this study out of 215 respondents 70.4% were farmers, 11.7% businessman, 9.18% physicians, 2.04% doctors had own land and 8.8% respondents had no own land. About 40.9% respondents selected cattle on the basis of age and 14, 25.6 and 16.7% respondents selected on the basis of breed, age and sex, respectively. Most of the respondents (79.1%) fattened cattle for 3-6 months and rest fattened for a prolonged period. About 90.2% respondents used own capital for cattle fattening and 2.3, 4.2 and 3.3% respondents took bank loan, NGO loan and lending for cattle fattening, respectively. About 31.6% respondents provided existing traditional cattle shed. About 79.5% did not have any training on cattle fattening whereas about 20.5% respondents had taken short training on cattle fattening. About 63.7% respondents used cattle fattening tablets, 27% respondents used urea molasses straw (UMS) and 51% followed conventional feeding. About 72.6% vaccinate the cattle by themselves and about 76.3% took help from veterinary surgeon for treatment of their cattle. About 45% reported shortages of animal feed, 50% reported lack of credit and 95% reported high cost of feed as the major problems of small scale cattle fattening. The results of this study will be useful for farmers and researchers to identify the overall problems and their remedies on feeding, management and marketing related to small scale cattle fattening practices in Bangladesh.

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