Union environment ministry is all set to launch the Long-Term Ecological Observatories (LTEO) to bridge the gap of insufficient data on impact of climate change on different regions in the country.
“The ecosystems in the country is diverse and there is not enough data available on what impact climate change is having on different regions,” a source in the ministry said, adding, “The aim of programme is to develop and support long-term ecological research and monitoring in India, particularly in the context of impacts on varying areas.”
The Indian LTEO programme will pick up signals of climate change impacts and all data generated by the programme will be archived in a national repository. The ministry, sources added, have picked up differing climatic regions — western Himalayas, eastern Himalayas, north-western arid zone, central Indian forests, western ghats, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Jammu & Kashmir and Sundarbans to carry out the exercise. “In these climatic regions, the researchers can focus on themes like bird populations, biophysical climatic variables, land-use and land cover change, hydrology, forest structure and dynamics, grassland community dynamics, soil processes in forests and grasslands and so on,” the sources added.
A ministry official, on condition of anonymity, explained: “With climate change becoming more and more critical, the need for information on how key environmental parameters are changing across the country and how ecological systems are responding to these major changes is the need-of-the-hour.”
“Understanding the response of species and habitats to large-scale environmental changes is important for conservation of those species and habitats themselves. The results of such an exercise will also affect human communities that depend on natural resources.”
