Action Plan to Enhance Forestry Science

Action Plan to Enhance Forestry Science addresses the issues regarding upgrading the scientific capabilities of India’s forestry establishment include the establishment of the following:

• Forestry Fellowship Programme which will recognise outstanding contributions to forestry sciences, a forestry fellowship programme is being introduced.
• National Forestry Knowledge Forum: A platform where expert knowledge in various issues in forestry will be shared is being developed. This forum will facilitate virtual interactions of experts in forestry. It will be physically located in Delhi and will be open for national and international experts in the field of forestry science.
• National Forestry Information Network: A network is being established with a robust foundation using remote sensing, GIS and MIS. All land based forestry interventions will be geo-mapped and monitored on a time scale, and will be put in the public domain. The process is being guided by a core group of forestry professionals.
• IT for fire monitoring: A programme to use satellite data for early transmission of fire signals to the mobile phones/ PDA’s of field officers is being undertaken. The University of Maryland has agreed to share all active fire data obtained from TERRA and AQUA satellites of NASA every six hours for this. This will not only help in quick fire detection and reducing the response time, but has also helped in identifying fire sensitive areas. This was originally conceived by the MP forest department, which a national e-Governance Award for the initiative.
• National Bureau for Forest Germplasm: A Forest Genetics Resource network is being established along the lines of the Plant Genetics Resource Bureau. The objective would be to identify, characterise, preserve the valuable germplasm of a wide number of forestry species in the country. This will protect our valuable genetic resource against extinction and exploitation.

Indian Council for Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE) for modernisation of forestry research was give a special grant of Rs. 100 crore in Budget 2009- 10.

via Press Information Bureau

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Expert Committee to Enhance the Scientific Capacity of MoEF

Scientific personnel have historically made up a large portion of the human resources of the Ministry of Environment & Forests, as it was conceived Ministry of Science in Early eightees under PM Indira Gandhi. . Over the years, a number of issues and constraints have arisen related to the scientific resources and expertise of the Ministry. These need to be urgently addressed. With this in mind, and to ensure that the scientific manpower and infrastructure in the Ministry of Environment and Forests Government of India has set up an Expert Committee to take a fresh look at scientific manpower and infrastructure in the Ministry of Environment and Forests.

The proposed committee members are as follows:

1. Dr. Kasturirangan, Member Planning Commission, Chairman
2. Dr. Chandra Venkataraman, Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, IIT Mumbai, Member
3. Dr. Kalpana Balakrishnan, Professor, Environmental Health Engineering, Sri Ramachandra University Chennai, Member
4. Shri Vishwanathan Anand, Retired Secretary, MoEF, Member
5. Dr. Deepak Pental, Vice Chancellor, Delhi University, Member
6. Ms. Swati A Piramal, Director of Piramal Healthcare Limited, Member
7. Shri M.F. Farooqui, Additional Secretary, MoEF, Convenor

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Mahatma Gandhi NREGA Sammelan–2010

1200 participants from across the country, gather at Vigyan Bhawan New Delhi. The Prime Minister terms Mahatma Gandhi NREGA as a path breaking phenomena with its pro-poor vision and promise of the right to work, inclusive growth and social security and says that act has helped the rural poor to tide over the hardships and acted as an important social safety net during the economic downturn.


Management of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme:- Issues and Challenges
Vice President releases report prepared by Lal Bahadur Shastri Institute of Management on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005. Some points from the Vice president's message:

NREGA has been a game-changer in the governance of the country.
It has for the first time, both nationally and internationally, articulated a rights-based approach to guaranteeing wage employment at such a vast scale.
In 2008-09, around 45 million households have been provided with wage employment and 2160 million person days of employment have been generated;
Average wage paid in 2008-09 has increased to Rs. 84, an increase of around a third as compared to 2006-07;
In 2008-09, participation of SCs and STs has been 55 per cent and women workforce participation has surpassed the statutory minimum requirement of one third and has increased to 48 per cent.


However Aruna Roy and Jean Dreze, who are widely regarded as architects of the National Rural Employment Guarantees Programme (NREGP) boycotted its fourth anniversary celebrations at Vigyan Bhavan as a protest against the manner in which the programme had been implemented.Both of them are members of a Central Employment Guarantee Council that is supposed to monitor implementation of the programme. However they say that the executive council had not been activated and this was hampering the efficient rollout of the scheme.

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GlobGlacier Project:

Since glaciers are among the most reliable indicators of climate change and because they can have a major influence on water availability, knowledge of the recent changes and future behaviour is of great interest for climate scientists and governing bodies. Recently there was an intense public debate on how rapidly the Himalayan glaciers are retreating. This was for the first time a climate report "Mistake" was followed by the thousands of articles attacking the IPCC for incorrectly publishing information on the glaciers melting in the Himalayas by 2035.

Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) has called for the systematic monitoring of glaciers by satellites in support of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

What is GlobGlacier?In 2007, ESA started the GlobGlacier project as a major effort to develop and apply existing methodologies to monitor glaciers and contribute to a global glacier inventory using satellite observations. GlobGlacier, part of ESA's 'Data User Element', is adding about 20,000 of the estimated 160,000 glaciers worldwide to this inventory to allow their histories to be adequately tracked.

The GlobGlacier projects attempts to establish a service for glacier monitoring from space, which aims at establishing a global picture of glaciers and ice caps, and their role as Essential Climate Variables.

The GlobGlacier project will attempt to establish a service for glacier monitoring from space that is based on user requirements and builds upon, complements and strengthens the existing network for global glacier monitoring (GTN-G). The project will help to establish a global picture of glaciers and ice caps, and their role as Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) as defined in the GCOS implementation plan for the UNFCCC (GIP, 2004). With this respect, the most requested issue is to complete the world glacier inventory (WGI) from the 1970s by producing glacier outlines in regions where actually is nothing and to complement the point information already stored in the WGI by 2D information to allow change assessment. Moreover, GlobGlacier will integrate satellite data from various sensors to create value added products for a wide range of user communities. A close cooperation with major user groups (e.g. WGMS) and related projects (e.g. GLIMS) will ensure a maximum benefit of the generated products from a global perspective.

European Space Research Institute, Department of Geography University of Zurich, GAMMA Remote Sensing Research and Consulting AG, Environmental Monitoring and Earth Observation are some of the partners in the GlobGlacier Consortium.

Kashmir is one of the selected regions where little information is available on overall glacier extent or changes. GlobGlacier is creating inventory data for more than 1000 glaciers in this region.What is this Inventory?
The inventory combines information on glacier outlines based on archived satellite data from the Landsat Thematic Mapper (tm) and the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) instruments with topographic information from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission and the Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM) from ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer).

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