Applications
GIS in Forestry - A Bottom to Top Approach
M. K. Yadava, IFS
Plan Officer
Upper Assam Circle 500
Jorhat-785004
Assam, India.
The forest personnel in the field have to discharge police, magisterial and quasi judicial functions. An error in the GIS database may prove very costly at times in a field situation.
Some of the areas demarcated as Reserved Forests on the map have incorrect boundaries.
For more than a century in the Indian sub continent, Forestry management has evolved around principles of rudimentary GIS, and map base data has become an integral part of working and management of the forests, The advent of sophisticated computer hardware and software has, however, immensely widened the usage of the front-line technology of GIS-GPS-RS (Geographical Information System - Global Positioning System - Remote Sensing).
Though the technology is being employed extensively in various types of studies by researchers, it is yet to be effectively used for decision making in the field level. The field applications have remained largely confined to preparation of Working Plans and preparation of some thematic maps. However, its other uses are fast emerging. Satellite imageries are being used as evidence in the court of law against encroachers. In addition monitoring of afforestation and plantation schemes, corridor mapping, habitat mapping, land capability mapping are also being taken up at the field level.
The use could be further widened to selection of sites for plantation, monitoring of encroachment at Division level, regulation of burning and jhum, expansion of infrastructure and communication network, forest village management, personnel management, corridor planning for animal migration, survey and demarcation to suggest a few.
Another potential area for application of this technology is forest -protection. Forests are shrinking at a fast rate. The demand on the forest land is tremendous. Forest protection is a major challenge today. The GIS technology can play a great role here, provided accurate information can be obtained remotely. To make GIS descend to the field level, one has to ensure high level of accuracy in the data and also to be able to organize geo-spatial data in a meaningful way for different levels of decision making. The forest personnel in the field have to discharge police, magisterial and quasi judicial functions. While discharging such sensitive functions, accuracy in data becomes a prominent factor in use of the technology. An error in the GIS database may prove very costly at times in a field situation.
Sources of Error
The author is of the opinion that errors creep into the geo-spatial databases right at the time of base map preparation for satellite data interpretation. Survey of India topographic sheets on 1:50,000 and 1:250,000 scales have been widely used as base maps in most of the remote sensing applications in the country. The Survey of India publishes these sheets after a long interval of time. For example, in the North-East India,, the latest sheets available are those surveyed during 1964-66 and published in 1971. The sheets pose three major problems in forestry application in a typical field situation in the North-East India. Some of the areas demarcated as Reserved Forests on the map have incorrect boundaries. The forest areas brought under reservation subsequently, do not appear on the map (naturally !). Though in principle, ground position can be transferred on map, yet in reality it is a time consuming process requiring a series of trangulations. In effect, this acts as an impediment and only increases the "Idle Time" by days and even months. The third greatest impediment in making correct base maps, especially in the areas having international border such as Assam, is non-availability of Survey of India topographic sheets for the bordering areas.