In 20 y, mega construction has gobbled up parts of the Bellandur wetland, with a particularly egregious example (encircled)—a high-profile tech park, presumably—coming up right across the wetland’s main drainage channels.

And yet, we make this about ‘rajakaluve’ encroachments. The fact is, it is more the big-ticket, formal urban development—all presumably ‘legal’—that has invaded the Bellandur and other wetlands of Bangalore, and less the small-time, informal urban settlements, whom we so love to blame for the current calamity. (Images: Google Earth)

LONG THREAD: Since 1987, India has assessed its forest cover every two years in its India State of Forest Reports (ISFR), produced by the Forest Survey of India (FSI). The 17th ISFR was released three days ago.

Here I take a closer look at the entire stack of ISFR reports… The ISFR reports present lots of stats, but in this thread, I focus on the headline statistic: trends in India’s total forest cover over time.

So, let’s go… here, in one graph, is a 35y summary of the official line on our forest cover: from 1999, it has been nonstop good news.

Where are India’s biologically-significant Open Natural Ecosystems (ONEs)?

Thread 👇🏽 on a new, open, and analysis-ready dataset on the distribution of India’s beautiful and beleaguered semi-arid Open Natural Ecosystems. (Representative image for each of the ecosystem types). A large fraction of India’s landmass is semi-arid (annual rainfall < 1000 mm). The native vegetation in this zone is made up of grass, herbs and shrubs. They are often naturally without trees, and if at all trees do occur, cover is sparse. Yet, ONEs are staggeringly diverse.

A thread about the new 10m global landcover dataset released by ESRI and Microsoft, a quick look at how it fares for India, and some thoughts on making it better.

livingatlas.arcgis.com/landcover/ 2/ Yesterday, @ESRI and @Microsoft, together with @ImpactObserv, released a globally-consistent landcover dataset at 10m resolution, obtained from classifying Sentinel2 imagery.

Foremost, what is fantastic and exemplary is that they released their data under a CC-BY 4.0 license.

Why would a shoddily-written, poorly-titled hit-piece—targeting a critically endangered bird and its mistreated grassland habitat, both struggling on the fringe of India's conservation consciousness—make it so big across so many news channels? 2/ To begin with, Bloomberg Green fearlessly ran down the Great Indian Bustard, saying that efforts to save this ‘slow’, ‘easily-frightened’ bird with ‘bad eyesight’ held risks for ‘green energy’ projects, God's very own gifts to the ‘wastelands’ of an energy-hungry nation.

Last week, one of the finest, gentlest humans I've ever known—Suresh Puttaswamy—lost his fight to Covid-19. His loss is devastating, not only to his family, but literally to tens of thousands of people with whom—and for whom—he toiled tirelessly, but quietly, his entire life …1 Although Suresh never received the recognition he truly deserved, he was a leader who cared deeply, both for nature and about people. His contributions to the conservation of Bandipur Tiger Reserve, and to the well-being of its adjoining villages, are, in my view, unrivalled …2

Two hours in the queue. The time slots given by the stupid CoWIN website don’t mean a thing in the difficult reality of your vaccination centre. Good old jostling is the only way. And oh, if know a shameless bureaucrat, they can always help you jump the queue. Besides the elderly, the people whose life this registration website/app makes unspeakably worse are the immunisation workers. They have been forced to handle the unrealistic unmet expectations set by this site, and the public anger it precipitates.

Geospatial folks in India: given the recent talk of liberalising access to geospatial data, can we, in this thread, list civilian-use geospatial datasets available with governments, that, in your view, must be made freely available to for public use?

I’ll go first… PLEASE ADD A single authoritative, official and regularly updated GIS-ready dataset of all political and administrative boundaries, from international boundaries down to revenue village/ ULB ward boundary.

The unlikely, inspiring and heartwarming story of an online Kannada-English dictionary, Alar/ಅಲರ್, alar.ink: Every so often, an unfamiliar or difficult Kannada word catches me without a dictionary at hand. Earlier, I visited a website called KannadaKasthuri, with a decent Kannada-English (& KN-KN) dictionary. Its now gone & I’ve disliked the alternatives. Then, I stumbled upon Alar…

'@Ram_Guha’s piece in @ttindia on music transcending prejudice and bigotry, emphasising the syncretic nature of art, took me to a time earlier this year when I sought solace in just such a tradition, and went rooting around YouTube for examples. (THREAD)

telegraphindia.com/opinion/indian… As Delhi burned, I found succour, even escape, in seeking examples and reminding myself of an (endangered) artistic tradition that routinely went beyond mere tolerance, well into reverence and celebration even, of identities and symbols other than its own.

Today, apparently, is World Migratory Bird Day.

As good a day as any to marvel this little bird. It is called the Blyth's Reed Warbler. Not much of a looker, but it is one hell of a traveller. Here's this migrant's story…

📷 UdayKiran28/ Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 4.0 As seasons roll, plants in every corner of our planet pulse to the changing regimes of light, temperature and moisture. When these conditions are ideal, plants put out an exuberant flush of green. To a satellite, here is how the seasonal waxing and waning of vegetation appears.

THREAD: We hear that India is not testing enough for COVID19.

During April, our testing rates (line thickness in chart) grew c.11 fold: from 36 to 401 tests per million. Case detection rates (y-value), however, increased more slowly from 34 to 43 positives per thousand tests . But that does not tell us enough about testing and case detection patterns across the country. Our states are very different, and so are their responses to the outbreak.

So, here are the patterns for our top 15 states (by cases), w.r.t. the national aggregate shown above.

A symposium in the memory of Ravi Sankaran? What a bad idea, I thought. Not just because I could almost hear Ravi’s booming voice in my head saying: ”I don’t see the bloody point of having a stupid meeting to honour a dead person.” But also because… (1/n)
sccs-bng.org/ravi-sankaran-… I couldn’t fathom how, if ever, one could honour the memory of a complete maverick like him. Sure, you could remember what he did, how he went about it, and recall its impact. Recollect how he learnt about a sobering conservation situation and jumped right in. (2/n)

As India waits anxiously for the #monsoon to break over a parched subcontinent, here’s a look at the advance and retreat of the 2018 monsoon. #EarthEngine ⁦@googleearth⁩ ⁦@EarthOutreach⁩ As the #monsoon clouds drape and dance over the subcontinent (see tweet above), beneath those clouds, an entire parched landmass bursts into life as the rains fall. See for yourself why the monsoon is truly the beating heart of India. #EarthEngine @googleearth @EarthOutreach