ORSAC to study coastal zone in Orissa

Bhubaneswar, Mar 10 (UNI) The Orissa Remote Sensing Application Centre (ORSAC) in collaboration with the Space Application Centre of Indian Space Research Organisation has undertaken a project to study the coastal zones.

ORSAC Chief Executive Sandip Thripathy said the study would mainly involve mapping and development of a date base on land use and land cover in Coastal Regulation Zone.

The study, he said would mainly focus on the details of forest cover, agricultural land, mangrooves, mudflats, estuaries, beach and sand dunes.

Mr Tripathy said the study would also undertake the mapping and monitoring of the marine protected areas like the Gahirmatha, Chilika and Balukhand-Konark wildlife sanctuary besides the assessment of health of mangrove eco system of Bhitarkanika reserve forest.

He said ORSAC has also undertaken another project on forest type mapping in Orissa using the remote sensing technique and GIS with the Forest Survey of India(FSI).

The study would cover all the 30 districts of the state for which a MoU had already been signed between the ORSAC and the FSI.

Mr Tripathy said ORSAC has been preparing a block level resource atlas of the KBK districts using the recent remote sensing satellite image and computer aided GIS methodology. The atlas, he said would include information on natural resources, human resources, infrastructure amenities to help the decision makers, administrators, scientists and technologists.

The atlas, Mr Tripathy said would give an accurate up to date and systematic data sets to facilitate execution by different hierarchical administration upto block level in decision making particularly in the area of spatial planning, resource distribution, network planning and implementation of various panchayat raj scheme UNI DP SP DB2016