| Quantitative Assessment of Plants in Western Ghats | |
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This work is focused on the entire Western Ghats, which is divided into five regions as shown in the map for the operational convenience. And totally 6 teams work in these region. The team of scientists involved in the project has a wide range of expertise ranging from taxonomy (Dr. Yadav, Dr. Subhash Chandran and Dr. Ganesan), forest biology (Dr. Vasudeva) and, biodiversity documentation and conservation (Dr. Ganeshaiah).
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Dr Yadav has done extensive taxonomic work along the Northern part of Western Ghats and has a Monograph (Flora) published on this area (Flora of Kolhapur District) and has more than 60 papers to his credit in this area. He also a member of the Species Survival Committee, of IUCN, Fellow of AIAAT. Accordingly in this project he would shoulder the field enumeration along the northern Western Ghats.
Dr. Kushalappa is currently working as Associate Professor of Forest Biology in the College of Forestry, Ponnampet in Coorg district. He obtained his Doctoral degree for his work on Floristic documentation of Tumkur district. He served in the Botanical Survey of India for three years during 1985-1988 as research fellow before joining the present position. He is involved in the conservation of sacred landscapes of the Kodagu district through ecological approaches. He has over 20 publications on various issues related to fragmentation, regeneration, conservation and management of sacred groves of Kodagu. He is one the principal investigator of the coordinated project on “Mapping, quantitative assessment of geographic distribution and population status of the plant resources of the Western Ghats”. He is serving as honorary secretary to the Kodagu model forest trust.
Dr Ganesan is trained as a taxonomist and especially of the flora of the southern most tip of the Western Ghats. For the past six years he has been working on the permanent plots he has setup along the Kalkkad – Mundanthorai Tiger Reserve in Tamilnadu part of Western Ghats. He has been now compiling the images of the Indian type specimen from KEW Gardens as a part of project towards constructing a virtual herbarium. With this background the he has agreed to take up the project work along the southern part of the Western Ghats.
Dr Vasudeva has been working on the ecological amplitude of medicinal plant resources of the Central Western Ghats and has built a strong lab working on the forest biology. He has about 50 publications in this field. With his earlier experience in studying the forest dynamics using the famous 50 ha plots established by CES, he is now focusing on the species recovery programs of critically endangered species along the central Western Ghats. His team was recently awarded the British Petroleum Medal for their work in this area. In the context of the project, he has been working on enumerating the plant resources of the sacred groves along the central Western Ghats and thus would be able take up the field enumeration of this part of the Western Ghats in this project.
The project coordinator, Dr. K.N.Ganeshaiah being an ecologist, has worked in the area of biodiversity and conservation for the past 15 years. He has already developed digital databases on Plant Resources of Karnataka and also of the Western Ghats (please see BOX on Sasya Sahyadri). He has initiated national level programs in the area of Eco-informatics and currently under his leadership a digital database of Plant resources of India is being developed. His laboratory also has been developing new techniques and tools of using the GIS ands Remote-sensing for biodiversity evaluation and forest classification. He has over 175 publications with an emphasis on the Biodiversity and conservation. He has initiated a program on Endemic, Rare, Endangered and Threatened plant species of the Western Ghats with a team of taxonomists
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