Tsunami is a series of traveling waves of extremely long wavelength generated primarily by earthquake occurring below and near the ocean floor. Underwater volcanic eruptions and landslides can also generate tsunami. Though the return period of tsunami is infrequent, the destruction done by tsunami is widespread, in terms of life and property. The most devastating tsunami occurred in December, 2004 affected the coastal countries of the entire Indian Ocean. It became necessary to set up a system in India to monitor seismic activity and sea level to evaluate potentially tsunamigenic waves and disseminate tsunami alert or warning.

Sunderban, one of the largest mangrove forests in the world, is located in the deltaic region of Ganga and Bramhaputra rivers in India and Bangladesh. The impact of biotic and abiotic factors on Sunderban is enormous (Rao, 1959), due to which the area has got reduced to nearly half during the past few centuries (Blasco, 1975; Naskar and Guha Bakshi, 1982; Naskar, 1985).
The mangrove-forested area of Sunderban (including portions in Bangladesh) was recorded to be 20,000 km2 by Clark (Annon., 1895), and 17,500 km2 by Prain in 1903. Grif?th (1982) reported that mangrove forests in the Sunderban covered over 4264 km2 and 4109 km2 respectively in India and Bangladesh during early eighties. The present area of Sunderban is 2081 km2 (Anon., 2001).

The debate is intense.
So are interests, and the clash of interests.
Conflicts are visible.
Equally visible is the cynicism displayed by some.
We could see all these forces at play in the Munich
Satellite Navigation Summit last month.
Still, there is a hope.
There is also a strong sense of conviction, commitment and confidence.
Galileo will happen.
It has to.
It is just a …

Sustainability is the key issue in forest management, be it India, or any other part of the globe. Unfortunately, so far, no scientifi cally sound and operational defi nition of Sustainability has been evolved for universal application in forest management. Nevertheless, it may be said on an empirical basis that sustainable forest management lies in attaining three basic goals: fi rst, maintaining the stability of the physical environment, secondly, maintaining, and if necessary increasing, the biological productivity of the resource, and thirdly, establishing equity in distribution of qualitative and quantitative benefi ts generated by the resource in the society dependent on it. The goals are to be attained not at any chosen point of time, but in perpetuity. Sustainable forest management is a multidimensional process. The major dimensions of the process are: ecological, silvicultural, technical (including the disciplines of genetics and biotechnology), socio-economic, and institutional. All the dimensions are equally important and neglect of any can mar the Sustainability of the process.

There is news.
That too a good one.
Reportedly, all 4,800 maps of the Survey of India will be available in public domain.
As many as 2,900 are of open series.
It would happen by March end.
The commitment(!) comes from the Minister himself. The Minister of Science and Technology, Government of India.
It looks like actualization …

OnFinally, Google agreed.
Agreed to blur the pictures of sensitive Indian establishments.
Recently, Google Earth shocked many.
Many took the development as the deathblow to the issues like
“non-accessibility/non-availability of spatial information”.
However, many got worried, more than ever before,
about the security implications.
The issue was more important as many contended that “such
exposures” were selective in nature and not for all …

As part of the 17th United Nations Regional Cartographic Conference for Asia and the Pacific (UNRCC-AP) held in Thailand in September 2006, Working Group 3 of the Permanent Committee for GIS Infrastructure for Asia and the Pacifi c (PCGIAP) organised a one-day international workshop (21st September 2006) on the‘Integration of Built and Natural Environmental Datasets within National SDI Initiatives’. The workshop was conducted with the support of the Centre for Spatial Data Infrastructures and Land Administration, the University of Melbourne.

On Jan 10, India leaped high in space with the successful launch of its tenth Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C7) that put …

There is a need to make available high resolution digital maps produced in India.
There is a need to place them on a website
There is a need to create a virtual Earth for India for easy access to its citizens.
There is a need to do this in a time bound manner with …

According to the reports published recently, ISRO plans to put an Indian in space by 2014 …