Managing Natural Resources and biodiversity in today's ever-changing world specifically in-midst of Climate change, is becoming an increasingly complex and demanding challenge for managers and conservators, etc. Human activities like urbanization, infrastructure development, encroachments, mining, wells etc., have resulted in massive depletion of natural resources specifically forest fragmentation, degradation and large scale conversion of contiguous natural habitats are resulting in the climate crisis. The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced that the climate crisis is accelerating. Hence, this climate crisis and rapid degradation rates have made conservation and protection of the existing natural resources imperative.
Natural Resources Management is a difficult proposition not because they are living and dynamic entity of an ecosystem but, to its remoteness, vast extent, geographically disadvantageous locations, along with fulfilling the aesthetic and survival needs of the large amount of human population dependent on them. Further, climate change measurements and forecasts are essential information for identifying trends and impacts, resource allocation, and policy making.
The increased focus on sustainable conservation and management of the existing natural resources like forests, minerals, water etc. has led to the use of state of the art Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) like Geographical Information System (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS), Management Information System (MIS), Web and Internet technology, etc., to integrate heterogeneous data sets from disparate sources and to establish decentralized systems for planning, management and efficient decision support.
Today the role of geography and GIS is increasingly becoming indispensable in addressing the challenges our world is facing. The evidence of this is demonstrated in multitude of mission-critical GIS applications and systems that are deployed around the world.
GIS for Natural Resources Management seminar at Esri India User Conference will provide an opportunity to learn from technical experts and provide an in-depth understanding how Esri GIS technology platform can be leveraged for efficient management and sustainable use of Natural Resources.