In the eco-friendly economic development
perspective, the ecological equilibrium is taken as
norm and the focus is mainly on building up a
pattern and a rate of resource use which the
environment can sustain indefinitely (Wilkinson,
1973). Lastly, the social perspective lays more
emphasis on continued welfare of the society. The
role of economic - demographic interrelationship is
either explicitly or implicitly referred to.
4 SUSTAINABILITY INDICATORS
Sustainability is a concept and can not be
measured directly. Appropriate indicators must,
therefore, be selected, tested, and validated to
determine levels and duration of sustainable land
management. Sustainability indicators are needed
to monitor progress and to assess the effectiveness
and impact of policies on natural resources
development. An ideal indicator should be
unbiased, sensitive to changes, predictive,
referenced to threshold values, data transformable,
integrative and easy to collect and communicate
(Liverman et al. 1988). One such indicator is land
quality indicator which includes nutrient balance,
yield trend and yield gaps, land use (agrodiversity)
and land cover (Dumanski, 1997).
The sustainability coefficient (Cs) which is dynamic
and is problem or mission-oriented is another
indicator of sustainability. There are three basic
systems, natural system, man-made system and
interface system. One such proposed coefficient
for a man-made system may be as follows (Lal,
1991):
Cs = f (0i,0d, Om)t
Where Oi =Output per that unit input that
maximizes the per capita productivity or profit
Od = Output per unit decline in the most limiting or
non-renewable resource
Om = Minimum assured output
t = time
The exact nature of the function may be site-
specific and will need input from local empirical
research data. For a natural system the
sustainability coefficient (Cs), mentioned above,
could be modified to account for the role of human
being and could be written as (Rao and
Chandrasekhar, 1996)
Cs =f (0i,0d,Om,HDI)t
Where HDI=Human development index.
Further, in case of a interface system also the HDI
becomes very important modulating factor for
deriving sustainability indices. Conceptually, it can
be formulated as (Rao and Chandrasekhar, 1996)
Cs 7 f (Oi, Od,Om)t. HDI
For man-made system dominated by agricultural
farming, the model conceptualizes a positive feed
back mechanism between Q1 and Q2 which could
be expressed in a simple form as (Rao et al. 1995).
Q1-Q2 > 0 Unsustainable development
Q1-Q2 = 0 Sustainable development
Q1-Q2 < 0 Virgin eco-systems (Protected bio-
reserves)
Where Q1 = Production in energy units and -
includes the emission of CO2, transport of moisture
through evapo-transpiration and transport of
nutrients
Q2 = Consumption in terms of energy units CO2,
H20 and nutrients from the atmosphere or external
sources.
A fragile balance between production processes
(Q1 energy units) and consumption practices (Q2
energy units) ensures compatibility between
supportive and assimilative capacity of a region.
5. ROLE OF REMOTE SENSING AND GIS
The information on nature, extent, spatial
distribution, and potential and limitations of natural
resources is a pre-requisite for planning the
strategy for sustainable development. In addition,
socio-economic and meteorological, and other
related ancillary information is also required while
recommending locale-specific prescriptions for
taking up curative or preventive measures. By
virtue of synoptic view of a fairly large area at
regular interval, spaceborne multispectral data have
been used at operational level for generating base
line information on mineral resources, soils, ground
water and surface water, land use/land cover,
forests, etc. at scales ranging for regional to micro
level i.e. 1:250,000 to 1:12,500 scale and
monitoring the changes, if any, over a period of
time. Beginning with the Landsat-MSS data with a
60X80m spatial resolution and four spectral bands
spanning from green to near infrared in early
seventies, the natural resources scientists had
access to Landsat-TM data with a 30m spatial
resolution and seven spectral bands spread over
between blue and thermal infrared ‘region of the
electromagnetic spectrum in early eighties which
helped further refinement and generation of
thematic information at further larger scale.
Further, high spatial resolution HRV-MLA and PLA
data with 20m and 10m spatial resolution,
158 International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXII, Part 7, Budapest, 1998
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