Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute Collaborates with ISRO to Collect Wetland Data

To preserve coastal wetlands in the wake of climate crisis, a mobile application has been introduced that will collect complete datasets on smaller wetlands across the coastal region of India. The mobile app has been developed by the Space Applications Centre (SAC) of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on the request of CMFRI (Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute) in line with a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between them.

The mobile application intends to generate a centralized digital database of smaller wetlands of 2.2 hectare across India. Such small wetlands cover an area of more than 5 lakh hectares across the country wherein Kerala alone has as many as 2592 smaller wetlands. The mobile app will be used to gather field level data of the wetlands including geospatial profile, size, water & soil quality, pollution status, farmed species, illegal construction & other biodiversity specialties.

A Gopalakrishnan, CMFRI Director during the launch of the mobile app said, “The concept is to combine field-level regional wetland data to geospatial datasets in order to enable comprehensive monitoring system in the wake of climate change & wetland vulnerabilities”.

He said, the app can be a game changer towards national wetland resilience by bridging the gap between satellite & ground data adding that “Continuous monitoring would definitely help provide village-level real time advisories for aqua-farmers & alerts on climatic phenomenon in the future”.

He also told that the climate related events like floods and runoffs have changed the physio-chemical profile of many wetlands. He said, “Many fishermen and fish farmers have suffered economic loss because of washing away of cages, coastal ecosystem changes, salinity changes in aqua farms etc.