Developing a Web Enabled Biodiversity Information System For
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ISPRS IGU CIG Table of contents Authors index Search Exit SIPT UCI ACSG Table des matières Index des auteurs Recherches Sortir DEVELOPMENT OF BIODIVERSITY INFORMATION SYSTEM FOR NORTH EAST INDIA USING INTERNET GIS P. S. Roy, Sameer Saran, Suddhasheel Ghosh, Nupoor Prasad, Harish Karnatak and Gautam Talukdar Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, 4, Kalidas Road, Dehradun (Uttranchal), INDIA [email protected] Commission IV, WG IV/4 KEYWORDS: Biodiversity Information System, Internet GIS, Landscape Ecology, Conservation planning ABSTRACT Conservation of Biological Diversity will be major challenge for the ecologist in the forthcoming century. In-situ conservation, biotechnology tools for conservation and prospecting, understanding genetic variability, species habitat relationship and allowing evolutionary process of speciation are some of the challenges. India is one of the mega biodiversity centers and is also known for its traditional knowledge of conservation. The varied regions of the country, with unique floristic and faunal richness, their vastness, endemism, heterogeneity and also inaccessibility of large areas have necessitated creation of authentic baseline data on biodiversity. This information system is essential to monitor, analyze and plan action oriented programs for conserving and preserving our biological wealth. North Eastern India is one of the three mega diversity hotspots in the country. The region is referred as a cradle of flowering plants as it lies in the region of conjunction of biogeographical zones of India viz. Indo-China, Indo-Malayan and Gondwana land masses. The spatial characterization of landscape structures and its linkage with attribute information on the floristic composition, economic valuation, endemism has been developed in the form of Biodiversity Information System (BIS) on sharable environment. The BIS is integration of large databases using a concept of Internet based Geographical Information System commonly known as Internet GIS. The development of BIS involves the basic framework of concept, selection, and aggregation of fundamental and processed data. The information generated as a part of project entitled “Biodiversity Characterization at Landscape Level using Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System” of the Department of Biotechnology and the Department of Space, Government of India has information on vegetation type/ land use, disturbance regimes, biological richness, ancillary information from different sources and non spatial attribute database on plant species (field sample and flora). The database has been organized under the sharable framework with metadata, quality evaluation procedures and their standardization. The different database structure created on different formats/platforms comes as an input to the information system for standardization that is they are converted into the same format. The non-spatial species database is converted into a relational database structure and the geospatial data is converted to a uniform spatial projection. The conversion of data from the various available formats also constituted reverse engineering of the databases using Visual Basic, Oracle and the database format software and Open Data Base Connectivity (ODBC). The web enabling part comes through uploading the entire spatial and the non-spatial data at a common platform using the concept of Internet GIS. We use ArcSDE, ArcInfo, Oracle at the backend, ArcIMS as the Internet Map Server and Microsoft Internet Information Server 4.0 as the web server. (Coulson et al. 1990 and Chuvieco, 1999). Biophysical 1. INTRODUCTION spectral modeling techniques allow to stratify vegetation Since the late nineties the world has been experiencing a types based on the canopy closure (Roy et al. 1996). Such an great boom in information dissemination and communication approach allows mapping and monitoring the forest technologies. This recent boom in the technological condition and degradation processes. capabilities has enabled humankind to bring education and information right at its doorstep. In a scenario where 2. WHY A BIODIVERSITY INFORMATION SYSTEM? ecological imbalance is at its heights and forest covers are Biological diversity is a part of our daily life and livelihood depleting at an exponential rate day by day, important studies for it constitutes resources upon which humanity depends. to conserve such resources should not remain restricted only From time immemorial man and animal have been using this to paper maps and higher authorities. In order to implement diversity in harmony for their sustenance, but this harmony is suggested strategies under a study it is very important to use getting disturbed owing to natural as well as human action of the current information and communication technologies to late. This leads to loss or extinction of plants and animals. its best. It is therefore felt that the results of such studies This again may be either due to the inability of the species to should be projected onto the Internet wherein monitoring of evolve and adapt to the newer conditions or falling prey to such resources and respective conservation issues be the human greed. Sustainable management of natural handled. resources has become a key issue for survival of planet earth. This is an urgent need to conserve gene pool in situ before it Acquisition of images of earth from space has is lost forever because a large percentage of biological opened new frontiers in mapping. The multispectral satellite wealth and its importance is still unknown to us. images provide definitions of vegetation patches, which are related to phonological types, gregarious formations and The north east India – a bowl of plant diversity is a communities occurring in unique environmental setup. The part of the biodiversity hot spot in Eastern Himalayas. The temporal images help in monitoring all back processes a latter is the meeting point of temperate east Himalayan flora, landscape has experienced (Delcourt and Delcourt, 1988). palaeo – arctic of Tibetan high land and wet evergreen flora The images also provide digital mosaic of spatial landcover of south-east Asia and Yunan. The region is well known for and vegetation types amenable to computer processing Symposium on Geospatial Theory, Processing and Applications, Symposium sur la théorie, les traitements et les applications des données Géospatiales, Ottawa 2002 its unique flora and fauna, high endemism and rare plants. At project are to identify the biorich areas, to evaluate the forest the same time, the region is experiencing alarming rate of types for their value, to provide locational information of the deforestation and degradation, causing threat to the world’s economically important species for bioprospecting. The well known hot spot. Conservation of bioresources has outcome of this project will assist the forest managers, become essential in view of the loss of species, both flora decision makers and the national lead institutes involved in and fauna. There has been loss biodiversity due to shrinkage the genetic diversity and bioprospecting. and/or loss of habitats and fragmentation of forests. This multi institutional project is being participated The goals and scales of inventorying and by various lead organizations like Botanical Survey of India, monitoring programmes may change with time. Hence the Forest Survey of India, Wildlife Institute of India, G. B. Pant baseline data at landscape level should be sufficiently robust Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development, to accommodate changes. It should be based on robust French Institute, Pondicherry and various specialized remote samples enabling calibration for future Rapid Biodiversity sensing centers in Department of Space. Assessment. Landscapes contain all levels of the biological hierarchy, from ecosystem to species and genes that are In this paper we present an approach to organize targeted from diversity inventories and conservation. The spatial and non spatial data into a Biodiversity Information project titled ‘Biodiversity Characterization at Landscape System (BIS) for the north east India in webenabled Level using satellite remote sensing and GIS’ first of its kind environment. The spatial information on biodiversity at national level. Though attempts have been to identify the character of landscape have been developed using gaps in biodiversity management, this is the first attempt to multicriteria analysis in GIS and facilitates the following: quantify species richness, biodiversity valuation and phytosociological analysis and use these themes to • Rapid Assessment of monitoring biodiversity loss characterize biodiversity in conjunction with other ecological and/or gain; parameters. In this project methodology has been developed • Assess nature of habitat and disturbance regimes; to analyze and prioritize the different ecosystems for • Evolve species—habitat relationship; conservation by using the existing knowledge and assessing • Mapping biological richness and gap analysis; and the disturbance impacts/regimes by way of investigating and • inventorying biological richness of the areas. Once Prioritizing conservation and bioprospecting sites biologically rich sites/areas are identifies then detailed study can be taken up for possible potential areas for bioprospecting. The present effort to characterize vegetation 3. ARCHITECTURE OF THE WEB ENABLED cover, fragmentation, disturbance and biological richness BIODIVERSITY INFORMATION SYSTEM across the landscape is organized