GIS and CDM.

Everyone has an idea about the new technologies which are coming in the field of environmental sciences. Thus today I am going to explain about the two technologies and their use in combination with each other, that is Geographic Information System/ Remote sensing and Clean Development mechanism. As everybody knows that Geographical information systems (GIS) and remote sensing technologies are routinely applied in resources survey and management, in environmental management, and in urban and regional planning. Although these different application fields share many of the core principles, each has its own particular approach and methods of using GIS and remote sensing. Today we will discuss on how to use this technique to develop a methodology for getting carbon credits from CDM technology with example of Afforestation / reforestation activities. Before knowing this activity we should have a brief idea about both the technologies in a very short and simple way. First technology is GIS/ RS this is a very useful technology which involves satellite images, topo-maps, aerial photographs which is a part of remote sensing mainly includes data which is remotely captured with the help of various platforms like satellite, airplanes without touching the object on the earth. GIS part involves digitally capturing that data in the forms of point, line and polygon and use these things for analyzing different situations virtually with a spatial aspect of it. Now CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) is a term which was one of the out come of Kyoto protocol. It is nothing but accounting of Carbon between developed countries (Annex-I countries) and the underdeveloped countries (Annex-II countries). The base of CDM is international agreements on climate change are the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), adopted in 1992, and the Kyoto Protocol, elaborated in 1997. UNFCCC is an International Authority to assign carbon credits for the CDM projects. It is simply a trade off of Carbon in terms of foreign currency by the

developed countries to the under developed countries for reducing their emission of carbon (green house gases) in the atmosphere.

As trees are the second major fixers of the carbon in nature. Forest cover thus contribute as a major CO2 fixers so this is one of the source by increasing it we can get carbon credits and ultimately foreign currency. So carbon stocks can be increased through plantations or agro-forestry i.e. afforestation / reforestation activities are considered for the CDM projects. The clause for this activity state that the only eligible forestry projects are afforestation and reforestation projects, which may include agro-forestry. These projects must implement a forest on land that has not been forested since December 31, 1989 for reforestation or for 50 years for afforestation. Due to the CDMs complex rules, only one forestry project has been accepted so far (till 2008). So there is a need to develop a methodology to prove our points regarding afforestation / reforestation activity. Here GIS/ RS play an important role in developing the methodology.

With the help of GIS and RS we can take remotely sensed images of a particular forested or planted area of two dates one should be of or before 1989 and other may be recent one. Here we can divide both the images in equal classes like vegetation/ forest, settlement, agriculture, scrub land, etc., with the help of digital classification or onscreen digitization procedures. Then we can perform the change detection analysis on both the classified data and identify the sites where there is no forest cover before December 1989 but in recent period due to afforestation /reforestation activities forest cover has been increased ultimately carbon stalk is increased. In other case we can take similar two satellite images one before December 1989 and other recent one. Here we can try to identify the patches where we can carry out afforestation / reforestation activities. In the 1989 image we have to find out the places where deforestation or degraded land is there and same we have to identify on the recent image by the process of digital classification or by the process of on screen digitization. Then by comparing we have to identify the sites where there is no change in the scenario and that sites can be recommended for afforestation / reforestation activities. And the most useful part by using combination of GIS/RS techniques and some statistical processes, we can approximately estimate the biomass above the ground with the help of satellite imagery and ground information about the area. Here we can use it for estimating the carbon sequestration. To summarise this article I can say this