IMPACT FEATURE Biodiversity Information System

Characterisation and quantification of biodiversity is one of the major challenges in its conservation and prioritisation. Until recently spatial ecological database in India was almost non-existent. National Biodiversity Characterisation at Landscape Level, a project jointly sponsored by Department of Biotechnology and Department of Space, has been implemented to identify and map the potential biodiversity rich regions in India. This project has generated spatial information at three levels viz. Satellite based primary information (Vegetation type map, spatial locations of road and village, fire occurrence); geospatially derived or modelled information (Disturbance Index, Fragmentation, Biological Richness) and geospatially designed stratified field samples (~16500). This is one of the unique data repository generated as baseline data for characterising spatial distribution of landscape level biodiversity in the country. The entire database has been organised into a web-based repository named “Biodiversity Information System” for geo-visualisation, analysis, online spatial modelling and data dissemination to various user groups.

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