Inland Saline Wetlandscapes

Wetland ecosystems are one of the highly productive ecosystems in the world. These ecosystems have been deteriorating at a faster rate. Ramsar Convention is putting enormous effort to protect, maintain, and restore these ecosystems. Currently, the fourth phase of Strategic Plans of Ramsar Convention is going on, in which saline wetlandscapes can play vital role to attain 19 targets of this plan. In India there are 27 Ramsar sites in all the biogeographic zones; however, research work has been carried out in the past five years in only eight Ramsar sites. Currently, four years are available for the strategic plans to encourage more wetland researches. The chapter presents a case study of Sambhar Salt Lake, a Ramsar site of India that is on the verge of extinction. Normalized Difference Water Index has been calculated for three decades in 1992, 2009, and 2019, revealing the declining phases of the lake.

Status and Opportunities for Forest Resources Management Using Geospatial Technologies in Northeast India

The forest resource of North East Region (NER) of India is a store house of several unique, endangered, endemic, medicinal plant, bamboo, etc. species in diverse forest type and high forest density. Several authors and organizations have contributed to the study of the richness and diversity distributed in different forest types and forest density. This chapter attempts to highlight the uniqueness of the forest of NER and the role of geospatial technology and presents various interesting studies pertaining to the region as an input to forest resource assessment. Remote sensing and GIS have an important role in NER forest resource assessment, management, and conservation. Various studies carried out with the help of remote sensing and GIS technology have highlighted the ongoing forest degradation and deforestation taking place in this region due to developmental activity and economic benefits. There is continuous improvement in the forest estimates from coarse resolution satellite data to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in the recent times.

Crisp and Fuzzy AHP in GIS-MCDA for Wildlife Habitat Suitability Analysis

Geographic information system-based multi-criteria decision analysis (GIS-MCDA) is a process of decision making where geographical data and value judgments are integrated. Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is a useful technique in MCDA for determining weights. This study focuses on the evaluation of GIS-MCDA using different uncertainty levels in AHP. Best suitable sites for tiger habitats are located and analyzed in Sariska Wildlife Reserve, India using crisp and fuzzy AHP in GIS-MCDA, and thereafter, an optimal habitat suitability model is proposed. The percentage deviation over the uncertainty levels ranges slightly over 5%. The relative difference between CAHP and FAHP is nearly 2.7%. Chi-square test reveals relationship between the degree of uncertainty and the difference between the maps. For real-world situations with increased variability, fuzzification is preferred and shows the best results. The worldwide declining status of the tigers is a serious threat to the overall biodiversity, and the methods adopted in this study thus target their conservation and management.

Inferring Relationship of Landslides, Tectonics, and Climate

Landslides, despite being the surficial impression of climate-tectonic-erosion linkage, are rarely explored in this context in Himalaya. The need for such study becomes more crucial in the evaluation of the regional hillslope denudation budget. We are of the understanding that the distributional pattern of landslides can reveal the relative significance of tectonic and climate. To test this hypothesis, ~ 55 landslides of the Tons River valley, Himalaya along with the tectonic and climate proxies are used in the present study. Steepness index and valley floor width to valley height ratio are used to infer the tectonic regime whereas; Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission based daily rainfall data and swath profile of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index are used to deduce spatial variability in climate. The study revealed the possible existence of a positive feedback system in the Higher Himalaya Crystalline and the simultaneous role of tectonic-climate in the Lesser Himalaya Crystalline. The LHS is found to possess a zone of landslide cluster, possibly due to local fault.

Synergy of Satellite-Derived Drought Indices for Agricultural Drought Quantification and Yield Prediction

The present study was conducted over Jharkhand state (India) for assessing the drought condition and corresponding yield of paddy (district-level) during Kharif 2018. Vegetation drought indices, namely Vegetation Condition Index (VCI), Temperature Condition Index (TCI), Vegetation Health Index (VHI), and vegetation indices (VI) anomaly, were derived from different VI (i.e., NDVI, EVI) to assess the paddy health condition during drought year (2018) and non-drought year (2017). Later, the correlation between the DES-based yield data and derived drought indices (for the year 2017) were made to develop the district-level paddy yield model for the drought year 2018. The key results of the study shown that VCI derived from EVI data was found to be more reasonable to depict the drought condition, wherein ~21% area was under severe drought condition, 43% area under moderate drought condition, and 36% area under no drought condition. In addition, the yield prediction model derived from VCI (EVI-based) was found to be promising for predicting the paddy yield for Kharif 2018 with fair R2 of 0.53.

GIS-based Multi-Criteria Analysis for Delineation of Groundwater Potential Zones

In the present study, delineation of ground water potential in Jodhpur district, Rajasthan is framed by using geospatial technique (i.e., remote sensing and GIS) and with multi-criteria leadership (MCDM) procedure. The analytical network process (ANP) is one of the suitable strategies that makes the research workable for delineation methodically, and corporate the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) as an uncommon case. For proper value to recognize the ground water potential zone in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, the AHP and ANP methods are utilized to decide the values of different parameters and their classes. The AHP values are then connected in a direct mix into raster calculator to get five distinctive groundwater potential zones in the investigation region, to be specific as ‘very poor' (2052.0 km2), ‘poor' (4225.9 km2), ‘moderate' (6355.1 km2), ‘good' (6451.2 km2), and ‘very good' (3301.7 km2). It has been presumed that about 9752.9 km2 area of Jodhpur district has very good to good groundwater potential, which is about 43.56% of the complete study area.

Comparative Flood Inundation Mapping Utilizing Multi-Temporal Optical and SAR Satellite Data Over North Bihar Region

Floods are investigated to be the utmost frequent and destructive phenomena among all other types of natural calamities worldwide. Thus, flood events need to be mapped to understand their impact on the affected region. The present case study is intended to examine and analyze the flood events occurred in July-August 2019 over the Northern Bihar region situated in Kosi and Gandak river basins. Furthermore, a comparative study was carried out to map the satellite based near real time flood inundation using multi-temporal Sentinel–1A (SAR) and MODIS NRT Flood data (optical and 3-day composite). Optical (MODIS) and Sentinel-1 SAR data were acquired to compare their flood inundation extent and the result shows overestimation in MODIS flood data due to varying spatial resolutions.

Efficacy of Advanced Remote Sensing (Hyperspectral and LIDAR) in Enhancing Forest Resources Management

Sustainable management of natural forest resources is a vital requirement in the changing climatic conditions on Earth. Two advances techniques, hyperspectral remote sensing (HRS) and LIDAR (light detection and ranging) remote sensing (LRS), provide more enhanced and accurate measurements than that of conventional optical remote sensing (ORS). Hyperspectral sensor like AVIRIS, which has hundreds of narrow bands, have advantages over a broadband multispectral sensor. In addition, the fusion of HRS and LRS can play an essential role in assessing biophysical and biochemical variables of forest species. In this chapter, the authors reviewed the extant literature and tried to understand the position of HRS, LRS, and their integration with the machine and deep learning algorithms for the effective monitoring and management of natural forest resources. Further, scopes and challenges are also discussed to enhance the effectiveness of these techniques in natural forest resources management.

Investigation of Urban Environment Using Tasseled Cap Transformation

Urban settlements have more complex environments, in unremitting fruition, where most of the world population lives. Most of the cities in developing countries have been developed without a rationale, and the life conditions are repeatedly insufferable. For this research work, NDVI is particularly used to assess the status of vegetation cover. Tasseled cap is another index that creates three band images for this study. Brightness, greenness, wetness are the three bands that represent the area under consideration. The present study aims particularly at comparing high NDVI area and greenness values given by tasseled cap and low NDVI values and high brightness values and status of urban environment. Based on the overlapping of tasseled cap image, an NDVI image is observed in which most of the area of healthy vegetation is located in the north west and south east part of Kharagpur city, which extended from south west to north east and north to south respectively.

Geomorphic Changes Related to Anthropogenic Interference Along the Ganga River From Rishikesh to Haridwar, Uttarakhand, India

The authors, in this study, have quantified the changes in the geomorphic activity of the Ganga River between Rishikesh and Haridwar by using Survey of India (SOI) 1:5000 scale topographic sheets, satellite data, digital elevation model (DEM), and hydrological data from published resources. They have also correlated the change in settlement area in Haridwar and Rishikesh and connected it to the changing geomorphic features in the downstream reach of the Tehri dam site. The study finds that the change in geomorphology of the river in the studied reach of the Ganga River is attributable to reduced water and sediment supply. The study area being in the active tectonic zone, bound between MCT in the north and HFT in the south, may have experienced offsetting of the reduction in sediment supply by dam in the post dam era (after 2006) due to massive earthquakes delivering sediment directly delivered to streams through enhanced landslide and other mass wasting processes.