Design and Development of an Environmental Information System Using Geomatics : a Case Study from Prakasam District / P. Srilatha Reddy and M. Anji Reddy

The pressures on the natural resources have enormously increased over years by man's greed for commercialization and livelihood of local people. Devoid of regeneration, population pressure and wide scale tree felling depleted the natural resources to a level, which posed a problem for the very sustenance of man. Geospatial technologies play a key role in generating timely and reliable information for planning and decision making at all the levels from macro to micro. For planning at micro level, a village is considered to be a viable micro-administrative unit. India has enormous unexploited potential of natural resources and knowledgeable human resources in rural and remote areas. Therefore it is imperative to understand the consequences of manmade initiatives and to devise proper strategies to counteract these detrimental effects to keep a balance of the environment, ecology, green cover and human livelihood. Geoinformatics has proven as a powerful tool for studying the environmental information and help in locational features, extent of coverage, monitoring the resources and in generating modeling for probable scenarios, which assists in optimizing resource utilisation. The Geoinformatics application is demonstrated through a Case Study from a part of Prakasam District of Andhra Pradesh. Various layers like Landusel Landcover, Physiography, Drainage etc. have been generated along by integrating both satellite imagery and ground data, which was analyzed to generate an action plan for land development. Geoinformatics use in the environmental information management has proved to be an indispensable management and decision making tool which can ensure optimum use of the resources and help in devising systems for judicious resource use and management practices and generate land based action plans, which can easily taken up by local communities, PRIs, CBOs, NGOs and Watershed Associations. Further monitoring of various activities and impact assessments can be reliably administered for ensuring visible benefits to the community involved. Geoinformatics would be used extensively by all at all levels in the foreseeable future in a cost effective and time saving manner.