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From 1998 to 2013, about one fifth of the Earth’s land surface covered by vegetation showed persistent and declining trends in productivity.
In some cases, advanced stages of land degradation there are leading to desertification in dryland areas, particularly in the grasslands and rangelands.
Land and soil degradation undermine the security and development of all countries. Reversing the effects of land degradation and desertification through sustainable land management is key to improving the lives and livelihoods of more than 1 billion people currently under threat.Source - SDG Goal 15
In India there are many organizations working on restoring eco-systems in drylands. Challenge for such organizations is availability of technology and data to showcase the impact of their work.
KAIINOS, is using open satellite data and helping such organizations measure the impact their work quantitatively.
Impact on climate change
Surface temperature can be measured using thermal sensors of satellites. This can be monitored over a period of time and trends can be derived to understand the effect of restoration efforts in a given area.
Quantifying land cover changes
Land cover can be measured using classification based on vegetation indices. These measurements can be correlated to ground truth to actually quantify the changes that happen from time to time.
700000+
acres geographical area
180
villages
6
land use practices
Satellite datasets have been used to understand temporal changes in land cover. Elevation datasets are used to derive the water stream networks. Based on these two datasets current land use is generated and compared to historical data.
This approach helps us to quantify the changes that have happened over a period of time and also enable us to plan the eco-restoration.