Forest cover in Philippines on the rise
The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) revealed recently that satellite imagery and remote sensors indicate that the forest cover in Central Luzon has increased to 7.2 million hectares from 6.5 million hectares in 1988. www.manilastandardtoday.com

Transformation of GPS derived ellipsoidal height to orthometric height is one of the most important applications of gravimetric geoid. Its applicability remains questionable if the above transformation cannot be done to a reasonable order of accuracy. Use of GPS observations at levelling benchmarks and subsequently determined geoidal seperation using the geometrical relationship between geoid and ellipsoid (see fig. 1 )…

Modern technologies should appropriately be blended with government developmental programmes.India is an agrarian country with about 72 per cent (about 80 Crores) of its population in about 5,75,936 villages, the villages are inhibited by the rural poor with agriculture as their predominant occupation.They are largely small and marginal farmers, agricultural labourers, artisansand scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. A large number of rural people (about 30 crore) are still living below the poverty line and often face thebasic problem of survival, viz., jobs, poverty, hunger, shelter, ill-health and disease.

Leica bags big GPS Surveying Systems order
Leica Geosystems has supplied 84 GX1230 dual-frequency GPS survey receivers for RTK data and GeoOffi ce post-processing software for 11 locations. Technical support and service will be provided under a fi veyear service agreement. The GX1230 receivers are designed with Leica Geosystems’ new SmartTrack GPS measurement engine, and incorporate fast self-checking RTK algorithms and a comprehensive self-explanatory graphical user interface. The rugged GPS instruments, with magnesium alloy construction, are built to the toughest MIL specifi cations to withstand extreme fi eld conditions. The SmartTrack technology ensures reliable centimeteraccuracy solutions at distances of 30 km or more.
www.leica-geosystems.com

Forest cover change in Andaman and Nicobar islands
The damage from last December’s tsunami has been counted in the Andaman and Nicobar islands and it is huge. The islands’ forest cover has taken a big hit, marine life has been badly affected and some famous beaches have vanished. India’s Ministry of Environment and Forests report says the tsunami has badly devastated the islands’ ecosystem. Conducted post-tsunami by ISRO through satellite mapping and released recently, the study found forest depletion of up to 27 per cent in islands like Nancowry and Trinkat. In the Nicobar group of islands, 12,224 hectares of forest cover was lost. Comorta, Nancowry and Katchal saw major coral reef erosion. The report says in some places the entire coral reef area suffered. Satellite images showed that the mangrove trees facing the waves were the worst hit. Extensive areas have turned barren or have been totally eroded in the tsunami’s wake. Some major beaches — big tourist attractions — have almost disappeared. The Noncowry and Trinkat beaches in the Nicobar group of islands have vanished. What remains are just barren rocks. Offi cials say it will take years for new beaches to be carved out from the sea. Marine life, too, has been hit hard. The nesting beaches in the Nicobar group of islands have almost vanished as the islands have gone under the sea by one to three metres.
www.hindustantimes.com

Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath
Hurricane Katrina severely pounded the Gulf Coast of U.S. with great force at daybreak on the 29th of August. Arriving with 145 mile an hour wind speed, the storm left more than a million people in three U.S. states without power and submerged highways. Hurricane Katrina, formed in the Bahamas in mid-August and struck South Florida on 25 August, killing nine people and leaving a million more without electricity. European Space Agency’s multisensor Envisat satellite has gathered a unique view of Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico. Envisat simultaneously acquired these images at 1550 UTC (1150 US Eastern Daylight Saving Time) on 28 August, with its Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) and Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR). While an optical image shows characteristic spiralling cloud patterns, a simultaneous radar observation pierces through the clouds to show how Katrina’s 250- kilometre-an-hour winds scour the sea surface. www.sciencedaily.com

Bangkok to introduce GPS to its fleet of taxis
Bangkok has opened the first of 150 new electronic taxi stands that will allow pedestrians to summon a taxi by pressing a green button, signaling a dispatcher to send a taxi. The devices will display the estimated arrival time and license plate number of the approaching taxi. Taxis will be equipped with GPS as part of the service. The first arch-roofed electronic taxi stand was unveiled last week outside a superstore on the city’s Phahonyotin Road, while the remaining stands are expected to be installed across the city by November. Besides helping Bangkok pedestrians easily hail taxis, the stands are meant to keep cab drivers from wasting fuel by driving around the city in search of fares. www.chinapost.com.tw

Maharashtra was the first state in the country to have a disaster management plan. It all started with the Latur Earthquake of 1993. As a part of response programme, the Maharashtra Emergency Earthquake Rehabilitation Project (MEERP) was launched the same year. This later led to the exercise of preparing a State Disaster Management Plan. The World Bank, United Nations Development Program (UNDP) as well as several bilateral donor agencies supported the initiative.

The environment of a Municipal Information system has undergone a sea change over last few years. Couple of years back the requirements of information system was designed and projected primarily from the planners community. They were satisfi ed if the physical information was supplied on a scale of 1:5000/ 1:10,000.

Tsunami shifts Bangkok southwest…
Bangkok has moved about nine centimetres (3.5 inches) horizontally southwestwards because of the December 26 earthquake that measured 9.0 on the Richter scale and sent devastating tsunamis across the Indian Ocean. The tourist island of Phuket also moved 32 centimetres (12.6 inches) southwestwards since the quake, said the Chulalongkorn University researchers, who used GPS satellites to measures the shifts during a January 20-24 survey. Researcher Itthi’s survey engineering department at Chulalongkorn is collecting data from six other locations in Thailand to get a better picture of how the nation’s geography has changed, the Nation newspaper reported.
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