Impacts of Lightening on Agriculture and Its Remediation

Abstract

Lightening is one of the naturally occurring devastating disaster causing dreadful effects in all sectors. Considering the frequency of occurrence and impact, Kerala declared lightening as a state disaster. Lightening causes death fatalities as well losses in agriculture sector. Lightening causes pull up of palm trees and premature fruit drop or deflation in other crops. The main challenge posed by lighting injury is to diagnosis the problem correctly. At the same time lightening benefits soil by adding atmospheric nitrogen. Earth Networks contributes to national, state and municipal efforts to minimize lightning injuries and damage by deploying and operating total lightning detection networks. Other than this, farmers need to take precautionary actions based on bulletins published by concerned authority.