Book review :Desertification and land degradation: Atlas of India, space applications centre, Indian space research organisation: Ahmedabad, India, 2007. VI + 74 pp. No ISBN or price released, contact ISRO, Ahmedabad for further info

✍ Scribed by Avijit Gupta

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 28 KB
• Volume: 23
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1085-3278
• DOI: 10.1002/ldr.1039

✦ Synopsis

This is a collection of maps showing desertification and land degradation for every state of India prepared with multidate data from the Advanced Wide Field Sensor (AWiFS) carried by IRS P6 (Resourcesat) satellite and checked by groundtruthing. The data were acquired over the period 2003-2005. Eighteen institutions collaborated in preparing the final maps, and the project was co-ordinated by Dr Ajai of the Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad.

Three different types of information are mapped, listed as Level 1 (landuse/landcover), Level 2 (processes of desertification/ degradation) and Level 3 (severity of degradation). There are two areas where the theoretical basis of the maps can be questioned. First, the grouping of desertification with land degradation as used in this atlas probably has not been optimal, especially when extended over the whole of India, including even the very wet northeastern corner and the west coast. For example, the map of Kerala seems to have the same colour (light yellow) all through, indicating no apparent degradation. The only exceptions are very small patches of green, indicating where the forests are. At the scale used, all the forests are marked degraded! Thus there seems to be a conflict between the twin purposes of this atlas: educating the readers about areas of severe land degradation and covering the entire continent of India.

When UNEP defined desertification, the idea of land degradation was confined to arid, semi-arid and dry sub-humid areas. A large