As part of a larger initiative to go fully digital in order to boost forest conservation and monitor ongoing forestry activities, Forest Department launched GIS Web Portal on Friday. Sudhir Mungantiwar, Forest Minister, who also holds Finance and Planning porfolios, launched the portal during the 16th senior forest officers’ conference held in Nasik.

 

 

 Sudhir Mungantiwar launching GIS Web Portral on Friday. Vikas Kharage and Dr N Rambabu look on.

 

This initiative focuses on disseminating the Geographical Information System (GIS) and remote sensing data on web portal and enables all forest officials to view, edit and analyse and further to take corrective measures.

Moreover, the system will help monitor plantations, illicit felling of precious trees, encroachments, illegal mining and asset monitoring.

 

The GIS portal disseminates information about various forestry activities of the department and enables provision of layers of data consisting plantation sites, forest nurseries, man-animal conflict, fires and forest check-posts etc.

Forest Department’s newly-established GIS and Remote Sensing Centre will help create centralised GIS based system to integrate MIS data with GIS. This centre would also help in monitoring forest cover change over a period of time using regular satellite imageries and analysing those using remote sensing technology. All this will strengthen the decision support system of the department.

 

Praveen Srivastava, Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (Information Technology & Policy), highlighted imperative on part of the department to establish GIS Cell to honour commitment of the Supreme Court as laid down in Lafarge Judgement.

 

Srivastava said, this will enable the department to perform different tasks themselves instead of outsourcing.

On the occasion, the guests released Maharashtra Forest Cover Change Report for the period 2011-12 to

2015-16.

 

Vikas Kharage, Principal Secretary, Forest, Umesh Kumar Agrawal, Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (Head of Forest Force), Dr N Rambabu, Managing Director, Forest Development Corporation of Maharashtra, Nitin Kakodkar, Principal Chief Conservator of Forest (Wildlife), and other officers also were present.