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Title
Special UNISPACE III volume
Author
Marsteller, Deborah

International Archives of Photogrammetiy and Remote Sensing. Voi. XXXII Part 7C2, UNISPACE III. Vienna. 1999
28
ISPRS
UNISPACE III - ISPRS Workshop on
“Resource Mapping from Space”
9:00 am -12:00 pm, 22 July 1999, VIC Room B
Vienna, Austria
ISPRS
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND REMOTE SENSING
D.P.Rao
Director
National Remote Sensing Agency
(Dept, of Space, Govt, of India)
HYDERABAD 500 037. INDIA
E-mail: dprao@hdl .vsnl.net.in
director@nrsa. gov. in
KEYWORDS: Sustainable development, sustainability, integrated assessment, impact assessment, risk analysis.
ABSTRACT
The degradation of limited arable land by various processes, namely, soil erosion by water and wind, salinization and / alkalinization,
waterlogging, sliifting cultivatioa mining, etc. due to over-exploitation has resulted in the significant decrease in the per capita arable
land. As against per capita arable land of 0.3 ha in 1990, if the soil degradation continues, this will drop to 0.15 ha by the year 2050.
The situation is further compounded by ever increasing population particularly in the developing world. The world’s population which
was 1 billion in the year 1800, is likely to touch 6.1 billion by the turn of 20th Century. In order to meet the growing demand for food,
fuel and fodder of ever increasing population, available natural resources need to be utilized optimally based on their potentials and
limitations wliile maintaining the ecological balance. Information on the nature, extent, spatial distribution of various natural resources
and the temporal behavior of degraded lands, is a pre-requisite to achieve the goals of sustainable development. With the advantage of
providing synoptic coverage of a fairly large area at regular intervals and coupled with the advancements made in the computer-aided
digital analysis, space-borne multi-spectral measurements made by earth observation satellites offer an immense potential for
generating reliable, timely and cost-effective information on various natural resources, viz., minerals, soils, groimdwater, surface water,
forest cover, degraded lands, marine resources, etc. With the currently available satellite data, regional, macro and micro-level
information on natural resources and environment have become operational. Integration of such information with other ancillary
information like slope, aspect, rainfall, socio-economic data, peoples’ needs in a Geograplüc Information System (GIS) domain enable
prescribing the most appropriate action plan for sustainable development of land and water resources. Advancements in weather
forecasting and telecommunication further help in effective implementation of action plans. After implementation of action plans, the
progress made in the direction of sustainable development could be monitored using multi-temporal space-borne multi-spectral data.
The article provides an overv iew of the magnitude of land degradation, concept of sustainable development and sustainability, identifies
sustainability indices, and issues related to sustainable development of land and water resources. A few case studies liighlighting the
success stories as well as problems encountered are cited. In addition, an attempt has also been made to project the future scenario of
the role of space technology in sustainable development vis-à-vis likely developments in the sensor technology, data processing and
interpretation/analysis approaches.
1. INTRODUCTION
Due to ever increasing pressure of population on land, the per capita
arable land has been dwindling. In the year 1986, the world-wide
cropped area was 1.5 billion ha which was supporting the total
world population of about 5 billion. The per capita arable land in
1986, thus works out to be 0.3 ha. With the increasing population
pressure it has been progressively declining. By the year 2000, the
per capita arable land area will decline to 0.23 ha. and to 0.15 ha by
2050 (Lai and Pierce, 1991). The change in per capita grain
production declined from +13 per cent per decade in the 1950s to -2
per cent per decade in the 1980s and for the 1990s it is projected to
be -7 per cent (Brown et al. 1990).
The problem of low land-to-people ratio is further compounded by
land degradation by way of accelerated soil erosion by water and
wind, salinization and / alkalinization, waterlogging, compaction ;
mining and depletion of organic matter. Exploitation,
mismanagement and neglect can ruin the fragile natural resources
and become threat to human survival. Archaeological evidence, in
fact, lias revealed that land degradation was responsible for
extinction of the Harappan civilization in Western India.
Mesopotamia in Western Asia mid the Mayan culture in Central
America (Olson, 1981). In India, the deterioration of erstwhile forest
ecosystem of Cherapunji, Meghalaya state of North-eastern India is
an example of the devastating effects of overexploitation of natural
resources. Meeting food and fiber demands in the next century will
require higher productivity levels for land now in production, the