Special UNISPACE III volume

Marsteller, Deborah

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Persistent identifier:: 856485039

Author:: Marsteller, Deborah

Title:: Special UNISPACE III volume

Sub title:: including: ISPRS Workshop on "Resource Mapping from Space", ISPRS-EARSeL Workshop on "Remote Sensing for the Detection, Monitoring and Mitigation of Natural Disasters", ISPRS-NASA Seminar on "Environment and Remote Sensing for Sustainable Development", July 1999, Vienna, Austria

Scope:: IV, 170 Seiten

Year of publication:: 1999

Place of publication:: Coventry

Publisher of the original:: RICS Books

Identifier (digital):: 856485039

Illustration:: Illustrationen, Diagramme, Karten

Language:: English

Usage licence:: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Publisher of the digital copy:: Technische Informationsbibliothek Hannover

Place of publication of the digital copy:: Hannover

Year of publication of the original:: 2016

Document type:: Monograph

Collection:: Earth sciences

Chapter

Title:: ISPRS Workshop on "Resource Mapping from Space"

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Chapter

Title:: SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND REMOTE SENSING. D. P. Rao

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

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

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