Under the Neeranchal National Watershed Management Project (NNWMP), a consultative workshop on decision support system and geoinformatics planning, monitoring and evaluation of watershed management began at the Forest Research Institute (FRI) on Monday. The objective of the two-day workshop is to deliberate and share the leads on various techno-scientific inputs like remote sensing, GIS, hydrology to support the watershed development component and positively influence the outcomes and development and maintenance of such desired facility at the State and District levels.

Institute director Savita said that under NNWMP, FRI has been entrusted with the responsibility of carrying out a comprehensive assessment of the systematic and specific capacity building-related challenges encountered within the watershed development component with special reference to the project States and recommend realistic solutions to address these within the given framework of the programme.

Capacity building expert PK Mathur said that technological interventions in the watershed development activities will improve incremental conservation outcomes and agricultural yields for communities in selected sites and further emphasised on adoption of new processes and technologies into the broader programme in the participating States.

National Institute of Hydrology, Roorkee, senior scientist DS Rathore explained the Decision Support System-Hydrology (DSS-H) which is a planning and monitoring tool for science-based watershed development. He said that DSS-H will assist in planning of appropriate soil, land, crop and water-related interventions at the watershed scale in all the 18 identified districts of nine states.

According to the FRI officials, a total of 40 participants including the remote sensing and  GIS experts from Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan and Telangana are participating in the workshop.