Aaranyak trains 1,500 forest personnel on GPS and GIS in Guwahati city

GUWAHATI: The use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) has become globally very pertinent in the sustained biodiversity conservation efforts. It is the need of the hour to have a huge pool of trained personnel in the use of Global Positioning System (GPS) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in forest forces across frontiers.

The country’s premier biodiversity conservation organization, Aaranyak has, therefore, initiated a sustained effort towards this end. In the last twenty years, about 1500 frontline forest staff, including forest guards, foresters, and even forest rangers, have received hands-on training on the use of GPS in Assam, Nagaland, Meghalaya, and Arunachal Pradesh. The prime motivation behind the effort is to complement the conservation of northeast India’s rich natural heritage.

“Keeping in mind the importance of the use of GPS and GIS tools in conservation and development planning, Aaranyak launched its Geo-Spatial Technology and Application Division (GTAD) in 2005. GPS has proven to be an important tool in today’s world, assisting in mapping land use changes, navigating aeroplanes, ships, vehicles, etc., and proving helpful for older humans to track their locations in many countries. GIS tools have played a key role in providing valuable data, information, and insights through GIS-based maps to enable apt decision making,” said Dr. Bibhab Kumar Talukdar, CEO of Aaranyak.

Training on GPS helps forest personnel navigate through forest canopies, locate habitat as well as animals, collect data and information from the field, track and trace animal movements, determine boundaries and area measurements, plot the information on a map etc.

Moreover, the organization has offered 23 regular training programmes to students, researchers, and other institutions. All of these programmes are related to the conservation of forests, and around 350 people have benefited from such trainings.

“The knowledge of remote sensing and GIS, and especially the use of GPS, helps forest personnel in many ways, like creating inventories of spatially based information about habitat, animals’ movements, or sighting locations, which helps in better monitoring and surveillance and facilitates more informed, effective, and timely based decision management. We in Aaranyak are always ready to disseminate this knowledge in this field to be utilised for the greater benefits of biodiversity conservation,” Arup Kumar Das, who leads the GIS resource team in Aaranyak, said.

“It is a privilege to be able to support the custodians of our precious forest and its resources. In this technology-dominated age, RS-GIS technology is helping them monitor and study the natural resources in a more cost- and time-effective manner,” said Madhumita Borthakur, a senior member of the GIS resource team in Aaranyak.

Members of Aaranyak’s Geospatial Technology and Applications team also served as guest faculty at various institutions to impart knowledge. Assam Forest School, Tata Institute of Social Science, and Central Academy of State Forest Service, Byrnihat are among the schools, stated a press release.