National Wetland Inventory and Assessment
The project was carried out in collaboration with Department of Space, GOI, sponsored by Ministry of Environment and Forests.
Wetlands are the cradles of biodiversity and harbour a wide variety of flora and fauna and one of the most productive ecosystems providing an array of benefits to the mankind. They are not only important for the survival of fishes, birds, turtles etc, but also serve as habitat for many insects during their reproductive phase. Another important aspect of wetlands is the emission of green house gases. They play a very significant role in methane emission as well as carbon sequestration. Despite their importance, their conservation has been neglected. Wetlands have been lost, degraded, polluted and their ecological functions impaired.
Realising the importance of wetlands, Ministry of Environment and Forests and Department of Space initiated a national project for wetland and assessment using remote sensing techniques on 1:50,000 scale.
The main objective of the project is to carry out inventory of the wetlands on 1:50,000 scale, organise the digital data base in GIS and develop an information system for retrieval of the data for easy access by users, planners and researchers.
This project was started during the year 2008 and the modelling for wetland identification and extraction was finished in 2010.
Area estimates of various wetland categories for Nagaland have been carried out using GIS layers of wetland boundary, water-spread, aquatic vegetation and turbidity.