A mobile app has been developed by Space Applications Centre (SAC) of the ISRO upon the request of the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) in line with a MoU between them. This app will collect complete data sets on smaller wetlands across the coastal region of India.
In order to protect coastal wetlands in the wake of climate crisis, a mobile app has been developed to collect the complete datasets on smaller wetlands across the coastal region of the country. The app was developed by the Space Applications Centre (SAC) of the ISRO upon the request of the Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI) in line with a memorandum of understanding between them.
The purpose of the mobile application is to generate a centralized digital database of smaller wetlands of 2.2 hectare across India. Such small wetlands cover an area of more than 5 lakh hectares across the country wherein Kerala alone has as many as 2592 smaller wetlands. The mobile app will be used to gather field level data of the wetlands including geospatial profile, size, water & soil quality, pollution status, farmed species, illegal construction & other biodiversity specialties.
A Gopalakrishnan, CMFRI Director during the launch of the mobile app said, “The concept is to combine field-level regional wetland data to geospatial datasets in order to enable comprehensive monitoring system in the wake of climate change & wetland vulnerabilities”.
He also added that , the app can be a game changer towards national wetland resilience by bridging the gap between satellite & ground data adding that continuous monitoring would definitely help provide village-level real time advisories for aqua-farmers & alerts on climatic phenomenon in the future”.
Gopalkrishnan explained that the climate related events like floods and runoffs have changed the physio-chemical profile of many wetlands. Many fishermen and fish farmers have suffered economic loss because of washing away of cages, coastal ecosystem changes, salinity changes in aqua farms etc.
The initiative of monitoring the wetlands is carried out by the National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) project wing of the CMFRI. The data collection will be done by registered researchers, farmers and stakeholders using the mobile app while the experts associated with the task will validate the data and will be stored them in the central database.
