The highlight of the past month or so is that I met with my host supervisor, Niren in Mangalore. We had a great conversation about the project. During the conversation, he noted that the approach to calculating forest loss due to the widening of roads or laying new roads was not right. Currently, I am using a buffer approach where I am adding an appropriate buffer to the road alignment to calculate surface area lost. However, he pointed out that the roads were laid or widened in mountainous terrain and a buffer approach might not give us accurate results. A mountain road is constructed using a cut and fill approach, it is cut on one side and filled on the other side which increases the effective surface area lost when compared to the buffer approach.
Continue reading mountain roads, analysis and catch up..All posts by deepikaguruprasad
fieldwork and mapping
As mentioned in my introductory blog post, I am mapping land use and linear intrusions of the Nethravathi river basin in India. There are no reliable land use maps of the region and hence the map I create will serve as a baseline my geospatial analysis of quantifying forest loss with each intrusion, and fragmentation analysis. The major challenge I had was to distinguish forests from agricultural plantations of rubber, areca, and coffee. This distinction is important so that I don’t overestimate or underestimate the forest loss due to intrusions.
Continue reading fieldwork and mapping
Mapping Land use and linear intrusions
For my summer placement project, I will be working with Wildlife First, a wildlife advocacy non profit based in Bengaluru, India to create maps of the Nethravathi river basin. Nethravathi river basin lies in the south western part of peninsular India. Tributaries of Nethravathi river originate in the forested mountains which are part of the Western Ghats, a mountain range which runs North to south along the West coast of India. These forests are home to many threatened and endemic species such as the Asian Elephant, Tiger, Leopard, Gaur and act as a critical link between Kudremukh National Park in the North and Talacauvery Wildlife Sanctuary in the South.
Continue reading Mapping Land use and linear intrusions
The Nelson Institute: Environmental Conservation Leadership Projects 