Indian Institute of Remote Sensing

About: Indian Institute of Remote Sensing is a government organization based out in Dehra Dūn, India. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Land cover & Normalized Difference Vegetation Index. The organization has 756 authors who have published 1355 publications receiving 16915 citations. The organization is also known as: Indian Photo-interpretation Institute.

Snow physical parameters estimation using space-based Synthetic Aperture Radar

Abstract: This study has been done using Polarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data to estimate the snow physical properties (snow wetness and snow density), inManali sub-basin of Himachal Pradesh, India. The SAR data used are of Radarsat-2 (RS2) and Environmental Satellite, Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR). SAR-based inversion models were implemented in Mathematica and MATLAB, and have been used for finding out wet and dry snow dielectric constant, snow wetness and snow density. The SAR-based inversion models were implemented separately for fully polarimetric RS2 and dual polarimetric ASAR Alternate Polarization System datasets. Masks for forest, built area, layover and shadow were considered in estimating snow parameters. The overall accuracy in terms of R 2 value comes out to be 0.86 for snow wetness and 0.84–0.72 for snow density based on the ground truth data for subset area of Manali sub-basin of Beas river up to Manali.

Assessment of the effectiveness of DRASTIC in predicting the vulnerability of groundwater to contamination: a case study from Fatehgarh Sahib district in Punjab, India

Abstract: The quality of groundwater has been declining in the Fatehgarh Sahib district of Punjab, India, over the last decade due to the enormous increase in the number of tube wells for the agricultural activities. The vulnerability of groundwater to contamination in the district was assessed using the DRASTIC model. Validation of vulnerable zones was undertaken using the chemical analysis of groundwater samples from the district. Based on this investigation, the inherent problems associated with the DRASTIC model are discussed as potential measures to improve the assessment of groundwater vulnerability.

The Indian-French Trishna Mission: Earth Observation in the Thermal Infrared with High Spatio-Temporal Resolution

Abstract: The monitoring of the water cycle at the Earth surface which tightly interacts with the climate change processes as well as a number of practical applications (agriculture, soil and water quality assessment, irrigation and water resource management, etc…) requires surface temperature measurements at local scale. Such is the goal of the Indian-French high spatio-temporal TRISHNA mission (Thermal infraRed Imaging Satellite for High-resolution Natural resource Assessment). The scientific objectives of the mission and research work conducted to consolidate the mission specifications are presented. Progress in modelling of surface fluxes is then discussed. The main specifications of the mission such as the revisit, the spatial resolution, the overpass time, the spectral bands and the orbit are analyzed and justified. The resulting baseline of the mission is given.

Assessment of historical forest cover loss and fragmentation in Asian elephant ranges in India

Abstract: India is home of the largest remaining population of the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus L.) in the South and Southeast Asia. The forest loss and fragmentation is the main threat to the long-term survival of Asian elephants. In the present study, we assessed forest loss and fragmentation in the major elephant ranging provinces in India, viz., north-eastern, north-western, central, and southern since the 1930s. We quantified forest cover changes by generating and analyzing forest cover maps of 1930, 1975, and 2013, whereas fragmentation of contiguous forest areas was quantified by applying landscape metrics on the temporal forest cover maps. A total of 21.49% of the original forest cover was lost from 1930 to 1975, while another 3.19% forest cover was lost from 1975 to 2013 in the elephant ranges in India. The maximum forest loss occurred in the southern range (13,084 km2) followed by north-eastern (10,188 km2), central (5614 km2), and north-western (4030 km2) elephant ranges in the past eight decades. The forests in the central range were the most fragmented followed by southern, north-eastern, and north-western elephant ranges. The forest fragmentation in the southern range occurred at the fastest rate than central, north-eastern, and north-western ranges. The core forest areas shrunk by 39.6% from 1930 to 2013. The causative factors of forest change and situation of elephant-human conflict have been discussed. Study outcomes would be helpful in planning effective conservation strategies for Asian elephants in India.