Study of habitat quality assessment using geospatial techniques in Keoladeo National Park, India
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Study of habitat quality assessment using geospatial techniques in Keoladeo National Park, India Akshita Choudhary 1 & Kundan Deval 1 & Pawan Kumar Joshi 1,2 Received: 6 August 2020 / Accepted: 12 November 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Wetlands are one of the most productive ecosystems on the Earth. They are generally considered a transitional state between terrestrial-aquatic habitats and provide numerous vital ecosystem services to mankind. Wetlands are under a tremendous pressure due to growing human interference, urbanization, conventional agriculture, industrial expansions, and overexploitation of ecological services. The Keoladeo National Park (KNP) is a manmade wetland, world heritage site and a designated Ramsar site in India, widely known for its avian biodiversity. Due to insufficient amount of water supply and widespread invasion of Prosopis juliflora, notable spatio-temporal changes are observed in the land cover affecting habitat quality of the park. The present study is designed to highlight the importance of very high-resolution satellite data for characterization of the wetland ecosystem. It assesses the spatio-temporal dynamics of land use/land cover (LULC) and habitat quality, a model built in the InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs) tool, is utilized to analyze the effect of land cover changes and increase in P. juliflora on habitat quality in the park. The study concludes that drastic changes in LULC and rampant spread of P. juliflora have deteriorated the quality of habitat for bird species. Furthermore, it highlights importance of geospatial tools in mapping, monitoring, and managing wetland ecosystems. Keywords Wetlands . LULC . Habitat quality . Geospatial tools . InVEST
Introduction Wetlands are highly productive, comparable to rainforest and coral reef ecosystems in the world. The Ramsar Convention (1971, 2016) defined wetlands as “areas of marsh, fen, peatland or water, whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary, with water that is static or flowing, fresh, brackish, or salt; including areas of marine water the depth of which at low tide does not exceed six metres.” Wetlands are differentiated on the basis of their hydrological, ecological, and geological characteristics into marine, estuarine, lacustarine, riverine, and palustarine wetlands (Cowardin et al. 1979; Ramsar
Responsible Editor: Alexandros Stefanakis * Pawan Kumar Joshi [email protected] 1
School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi 110067, India
2
Special Centre for Disaster Research, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi 110067, India
convention 2016). In India, wetlands account for 4.7% with an area of 1.53 million km2 of the total geographical area of the country where inland wetlands account for 69%, coastal 27%, and other 4% (Bassi et al. 2014). They provide various ecological services such as water storage, water purification, ground water recharge, retention of sediments, nutri
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