Application of Geospatial Technology and Modelling on Natural Resources Management : Current State, Challenges and Sustainability

This contributed volume provides coverage of geospatial technology and modelling techniques that are useful for natural resource assessment at various scales, from regional to global. This makes it a valuable resource for researchers, practitioners, scientists, faculties and students interested in understanding how geospatial tools can be used to assess natural resources. The book provides numerous examples of how geospatial technology and modeling can be applied to different natural resource management scenarios, including forest management, wildlife conservation, water resources management, and climate change adaptation. The book takes an interdisciplinary approach to natural resource management, bringing together perspectives from ecology, environment, geography, geology, and other fields.

Dr. Sandipan Das is an Assistant Professor at Symbiosis Institute of Geoinformatics, Symbiosis International (Deemed University), Pune, India. Dr. Das pursued his Master’s degree in Geoinformatics from Pune University and Ph.D. in Geoinformatics from Symbiosis International (Deemed University). He has 9 years of teaching and 12 years of research experience. His areas of research interest include forest biomass and carbon assessment, water resources management, soil erosion, flood vulnerability, groundwater mapping, drought monitoring, and Geospatial Modelling of Environments. He has worked as a Principal Investigator, Co-Principal Investigator, and team member on several research projects funded by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Department of Science and Technology (DST), and Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF). He has published 23 research papers, 4 edited books, 10 book chapters, and 5 conference proceedings. He has organized five capacity building geospatial training programs sponsored by DST and ISRO. Dr. Sandipan Das has completed the Special Issue (S.I) of Geophysical, Climatological and Anthropogenic Hazards and Disaster: Vulnerability, Risk Assessment, and Sustainability, Frontiers in Environmental Science Journal as a Lead Editor. He is a reviewer for the several scientific journals of international reputes. He is an Editorial board member of Springer Discover Geoscience Journal.

Dr. Prem Chandra Pandey received his PhD from University of Leicester, United Kingdom. He served as Research Scientist at Tel Aviv University, Israel. Currently, he is working as Assistant Professor at Department of Life Sciences, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence (deemed to be University) Greater Noida, India and also worked with the Center for Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Shiv Nadar University. Previously, he had been associated with Banaras Hindu University India. He received his M.Sc and M.Tech in Remote Sensing. He worked on remote sensing applications as Professional Research funded by NRSC Government of India. He has been a recipient of several awards including The Commonwealth award UK, INSPIRE fellowship, MHRD and UGC fellowships, and SERB-NPDF from GoI India. He has published more than 45 peer reviewed journal papers, has edited eight books, several book chapters, and presented his work in national and international conferences. Additionally, he is a life member of the Indian Society of Geomatics, and the Indian Society of Remote Sensing, as well as a IUCN CEM Member (2017–2021; 2022–2025), and the Society of Wetland Scientists (2021–2022). He is serving as Editorial member for the Journal-Geocarto International (Taylor & Francis), Sustainable Development (Wiley) and associated with Remote Sensing (MDPI) as topic Editor. Dr. Pandey is working in three projects related to Monitoring of wetlands/chilika lake mainly focusing on Ramsar sites along with other natural resources based research work funded by NGP and SERB Government of India. Dr. Pandey is also working with science-collaborators for real time Disaster monitoring at Himalayan region. He has expertise in remote sensing of environment and natural resources for their monitoring, mapping and modeling including forestry, agriculture, and land use land cover.

Onisimo Mutanga, is a Professor of Remote Sensing and South African Research Chair on Landuse Planning and Management. He received his PhD on Hyperspectral Remote Sensing of Tropical Grass quality and quantity from the ITC, Wageningen University, Netherlands in 2004. His expertise lies on resource modeling, pattern and condition analysis in the face of global and land use change. This includes the development of innovative remote sensing approaches for improved monitoring and management of various ecosystem traits.  Focus areas include vegetation mapping, Ecosystem services quantification, forest fragmentation, disaster risk assessment, rangeland quality and quantity monitoring as well as invasive species modeling, among others. He has published more than 350 articles and has a Scopus H-Index of 54 with over 11000 citations. He is an Associate Editor, ISPRS Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing and has been a guest Editor of a number of special issues, including being Editor of the Journal of Spatial Science. He is a recipient of the  National Science and Technology Forum (NSTF-South 32 Awards) Engineering Research Capacity Development award, among others.

Dr. Suvarna Tikle was a postdoctoral scientist at MaxPlank institute for Meteorology, Hamburg. She worked on source attribution modeling of one of the cities in India, Jakarta and Indonesia. Her area of research work is Air quality, Emission inventory, GIS and modeling. Dr. Tikle has contributed to a range of projects with organizations such as MoES, MoEF & CC, UKRI, WHO, NERC, and DST, demonstrating extensive multinational collaboration. She is the recipient of two best awards for poster presentation and lead award for coordination of emission inventory. She has published 15 peer-reviewed research papers and authored a book chapter. Her research has been presented at numerous national and international conferences and symposia. She visited three countries for research. Additionally, she was also a member of various organizing committees of national and international workshops, symposia,and conferences. Dr. Suvarna is also a member of Women in AI, Hamburg Chapter (WAI), IWSA (Indian women science congress), ISC (Indian Science congress) and ISAS (Indian Society of Analytical scientist, Pune chapter).

Dr. Mengjiao Jiang is an Associate Professor at the School of Atmospheric Sciences at Chengdu University of Information Technology, China. Dr. Mengjiao Jiang worked as a postdoctoral scientist at the Max-Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg from 2021 to 2023. She received her Doctoral of Science Degree in Global Environmental Change from Beijing Normal University in 2018 and previously worked as a research assistant at ESSIC, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA, from 2013 to 2015. Her research interests include atmospheric physics and environment, weather forecasting and disaster prevention and mitigation, and aerosol-cloud-precipitation interactions. Dr. Jiang has been involved in several research projects, including serving as the project leader of the Youth program of National Natural Science Foundation of China, participating in the National Key Research and Development program in China, and contributing to the NOAA project “Evaluating the Impact of Cloud-Aerosol-Precipitation Interaction (CAPI) Schemes on Rainfall Forecast in the NGGPS”.

Dr. Uday Chatterjee is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Geography, Bhatter College, Dantan, Paschim Medinipur, West Bengal, India and an Applied Geographer with a Doctoral Degree in Applied Geography at Ravenshaw University, Cuttack, Odisha, India. His areas of research interest cover Urban Planning, Social and Human geography, Applied Geomorphology, Hazards & Disasters, Environmental Issues, disaster governance, community-based disaster risk management, climate change adaptation, urban risk management, and disaster. He has delivered 10 invited lectures in University Grants Commissions (UGC) sponsored national seminars and various academic departments of different colleges in India. In addition, he presented 20 papers in national and international seminars/conferences held in India as well as chaired and co-chaired more than 5 technical sessions. He has successfully guided project dissertations to undergraduate students. He has also conducted (Convener) one Faculty Development Programme on ‘Modern methods of teaching and advanced research methods’ sponsored by Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), Govt. of India. Currently, Dr. Uday Chatterjee has completed the Special Issue (S.I) of Urbanism, Smart Cities and Modelling, Geojournal, Springer as a Lead Editor, book series editor Development in Environmental Science, Elsevier. His research work has been funded by the West Bengal Pollution Control Board (WBPCB) Govt. of West Bengal, India. He has served as a reviewer for many International journals. Currently, Dr. Chatterjee doing the international project, in collaboration with Indonesia, Malaysia, and Japan funded by APN (Asia Pacific- Global Change Research) and he is the guest editor of the special issue Social Ecology, Human-Well-being and Sustainability, Global Social Welfare journal, Springer. He has published 30 research papers, 10 edited books, and 2 author books, 15 book chapters, and 2 conference proceedings.

Akash Anand is a NASA FINESST Fellow and a 4th-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. His research focuses on the development and application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) models to enhance our understanding of species distribution and habitat selection. With a strong background in remote sensing, forest ecology, and computer vision, Akash leverages these skills to address global conservation challenges. Prior to his Ph.D., he was a Junior Research Fellow at Banaras Hindu University and earned his M.Tech in Geoinformatics from the Central University of Jharkhand, India. Akash has authored over 15 peer-reviewed journal articles, contributed to several book chapters, and has presented his work at numerous national and international conferences. He is an active member of the American Ornithological Society, IEEE, and the European Geosciences Union.