Background and Objective: Water Resource is a critical requirement of human existence for all social and economic endeavors. The occurrence of high human activities, especially in agriculture, tourism and industry breaks the balance between water supply and demand that significantly increases the vulnerability of regions into more damaging impacts. The main objective of this study is to determine the increase in water demand by land-use changes and at the same time to assess the land use and land cover change in the region. Materials and Methods: The research was performed by remote sensing Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager/Thermal infrared Scanner (OLI/TIRS) 30 m Satellite Imagery analysis. Results: The findings show that the average rate of increase in water demand was estimated at 0.22% each year for domestic, commercial and industrial sector usage and 43.08% per year for the agricultural sector. Conclusion: This study shows how different water extraction by the society through land-use change has affected the water availability throughout the region.

Background and Objective: Soil development over limestone formations in the tropical humid region is unique and swayed by the environment. Its genesis gives an insight into the mode of origin and how the solum is formed from parent materials. Soils overlying Shale, Limestone and Sandstone (SLS) and Sandstone and Limestone (SL) geological formations in a tropical humid region were genetically investigated. Materials and methods: With the aid of google imageries, reconnaissance visits were carried out to areas underlain by SLS and SL formations. Slope maps were generated from the DEM (digital elevation model) obtained from USGS (United States Geological Survey) Explorer SRTM 1 (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission). Soil profile pits were sunk in each slope range, described and sampled. Results: The soils were characterized by Ap, transition B and Ckt horizons as well as low CCE (calcium carbonate equivalence). Ultisols, Alfisols and Inceptisols in the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) System were correlated with Acrisols, Cambisols and Luvisols in the WRB (World Reference Base) for Soil Resources System. Iron and aluminum dominated the entire soils and were higher in SLS by ICP-OES (inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry) procedure than XRF (X-ray florescence). Furthermore, Ca and K, as well as their oxides were low in the soils. Conclusion: The impact of the tropical humid climate on the soils cation reserve was obvious; particularly the dominance of lateralization and decalcification over calcification. Relative to SL, indices of weathering presented more intense weathering in SLS.

Background and Objective: Turfgrass resistance to heavy traffic and wear damage is one important quality in turfgrass. Since it differs within species, some wear resistance tests have been developed to further differentiate turfgrasses but they are more laborious and require longer time. Therefore, the aim of the study was to build an efficient tread loading system and evaluate its load condition on 3 commercial turfgrass cultivars: Zoysia matrella Emerald, Zoysia japonica Meyer, Cynodon dactylonCynodon transvaalensis Tifway and a new Zoysia matrella cultivar Wakaba. Materials and Methods: A multiple tread loading system was constructed to accommodate 32 grass trays. Treading test was conducted on 4 turfgrass cultivars and the number of erect stems, stolon dry weight and green turf coverage were analyzed. Results: The newly registered cultivar Wakaba had the highest number of erect stems and green coverage in both treading and non-treading (control) tests as compared to zoysiagrasses Emerald and Meyer, while bermudagrass Tifway least performed in all tests. Conclusion: It is concluded that tread loading system is efficient to analyze treading damage for multiple turfgrasses in a short period of time. In addition, the new cultivar Zoysia matrella Wakaba has high resistance to treading and utilization of this cultivar is recommended.

Background and Objective: The understanding of bacterial adhesion and its effect on the properties of material surfaces in seawater is the key to mitigate biofilm formation and biofouling.Therefore, the objective of this work was to evaluate the impact of several marine bacterial strains on the physico-chemical properties of stainless steel materials.Materials and Methods: We firstly investigated the adhesion ability of 6 bacterial strains isolated from seawater in the port of Nador Aït Nsar (Morocco), on 304 and 316 sea-immersed stainless steels.Secondly, we evaluated the adhesion effect of combination of all isolated strains on physico-chemical characteristics of stainless steel surfaces.Results: The molecular identification of isolated strains indicated that these strains were Pseudomonas stutzeri (KP307770.1),Bacillus amyloliquefaciens (KJ767387.1),Bacillus velezensis (CP024897.1),Bacillus subtilis (KX827606.1),Serratia odorifera (NR̲037110.1) and Exiguobacterium sibirricum (CP001022.1).The contact angle measurements of bacterial cells showed that all the strains had a hydrophilic character with )G iwi ranging from 17.02 to 32.80 mJ mG 2 , strong electron donating (γG) and weak electron accepting (γ + ) potentials.For substrates surfaces, we found that both sea-immersed stainless steels were hydrophilic and presented strong electron-donor and weak electron-acceptor characters.The analysis of images obtained by environmental scanning electron microscopy showed that bacterial cells were able to adhere on both sea-immersed stainless steels.The experimental results also revealed that the properties of stainless steels surfaces were significantly changed following the adhesion of cells.Conclusion: The adhesion of bacterial strains on the stainless steel surfaces resulted in changing of the physico-chemical properties of these materials.

The entrepreneurial competencies of the training participants at the labor training center (LTC) still seem low. The use of traditional job sheets and textbooks is still widely used in entrepreneurship learning. Utilizing a competency based module in entrepreneurship training may be able to overcome the low competency of entrepreneurship in trainees. This Research and Development study aimed at developing competency-based entrepreneurship modules instruction to improve participants’ entrepreneurial competencies at the LTCs. Materials and Methods: As many as 150 trainees were divided into 2 groups in which the experimental one was facilitated by competency-based modules and the control group was facilitated by using textbooks or job sheets. Results: The study proved that the use of competency-based modules facilitation improved the trainees’ entrepreneurial competencies. Conclusion: It is concluded that competency-based modules instruction improves the entrepreneurial competencies of the trainees at the LTCs.