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GIS Education in India-Reasons to Reflect
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Brigadier M. M. Datta
Fellow Emeritus & Past President IS,
Fellow and Founder Past President INCA
Introduction
Land is thought of as a source of food, living space and materials that support human life, which in turn emphasise the alternate view that land supports the global eco-systems on which humans are dependant for future survial based on production commensurate with conservation. It is in this context that the role of remote sensing and Geographical Information System (GIS) for the study of the earth's resources assumes importance. This in turn leads to the importance and urgency of GIS education in India.
Global population has increased rapidly in the Twentieth Century and is predicted to plateau at around 10 billion people by 2050 AD. The present global population of 6 billion people is not evenly distributed, and is concentrated in Nort-West and Central Europe, East Asia and the Indian Sub-continent. The projected increase in population, which will occur predominantly in developing countries, results from an increasing life-expectancy and larger base of population. A near doubling of population puts increased demand on natural resources; more people require more food, fuel, clothing, housing, water, energy and other necessities of life.
Globally, land resources are being used more intensively and the land use is changing. The most dramatic change in global land use over the last three centuries has been the expansion of agriculture and the reduction of forest and range-land as a result of frontier expansion. The process of fronter expansion continues in many tropical and mountain regions, such as the Amazon, Brazil, West Africa, South and East Asia, South America and the Himalayas follwing a pattern of economic development through agriculturate expansion. The area of land on earth is 13,000 million ha; while the oceans are more extensive at 31,500 ha. The estimates of global land cover show that slightly less than 1/3rd of the land is forest, 1/3rd pg yjr ;smf od gptrdy. 1/3rd farm land and the rest occupies economical zones unfavourable fore agriculture.
Why GIS Education
The main development problems in less development countries (LDCs) is to increase agricultural production in order to generate food, employment and income. Eliminating under nutrition is strongly connected to more rapid agricultural development because the majority of the poor in LDCs will depend on agriculture for food and income. Example: 63% in African countries and 72% in Indian sub-continent countries to 90% in some South-Asian countries.
To feed the growing population, more land will be required for food and fuel wood production and the available land has to be used more intensively. Work by Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) shows that the area under tropical forest cover is reducing by 0.8% 15.4 million ha per year. A global assessment of soil degradation, conducted by the United Nations' Environment programme, concluded that since 1945 over 1.2 billion ha or 10.5% of soil has its original biotic function moderately to severely damaged. In addition nearly 2 billion ha grass land has been substantially degraded by live-stock grazing. World biosphere reserves, which enjoy special international status, occupy 171 million ha, while world heritage sites occupy 101 million ha.
Information about land cover and land use of both agriculture and nature conservation is derived using GIS and Remote Sensing (RS), supported by field sampling, The International Institure for Aero-space Survey (ITC), Enschede, The Netherlands, which began as a Photogrammetry Institute, specialized in the science of taking measurements from aerial photographs, ITC gained prominence by concentrating on these technologies, specially in the developing countries. There have been two major technological innovations since. During the 1970-1980s, satellite remote sensing became the major tool while 5 year later Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing techniques became fully functional. Molenaar suggested that these technologies be called spatial data handling.
GIS has emerged as the latest computer based tools used to handle digital spatial data and has the following elements:
- A large body of geographical data which have spatial or locational properties.
- Numerical or logical expressions or relations between these data.
- A unified life or data structure.
- The ability of the system to perform the functions of data collection, storage, retrieval, analysis and automated mapping.