Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Life Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Selected Works

Shaily Menon

Selected Works

GIS

Publication Year
File Type

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Identifying Conservation-Priority Areas In The Tropics: A Land-Use Change Modeling Approach, Shaily Menon, R. Gil Pontius Jr., Joseph Rose, M. Khan, Kamaljit Bawa Sep 2009

Identifying Conservation-Priority Areas In The Tropics: A Land-Use Change Modeling Approach, Shaily Menon, R. Gil Pontius Jr., Joseph Rose, M. Khan, Kamaljit Bawa

Shaily Menon

Most quantitative methods for identifying conservation-priority areas require more detailed knowledge about the extent and distribution of biodiversity than is currently available. Accelerated and irreversible losses of biodiversity call for the development of alternative methods to identify priority sites for biodiversity inventory and protection. We focused on the state of Arunachal Pradesh, a biodiversity-rich region in northeast India. We used a geographic information system and spatially explicit modeling to examine the correlation of land-cover and land-use patterns with biogeophysical characteristics and to project future patterns of land-use change. In 1988, 70% of Arunachal Pradesh was covered by forest. We project …


Fundamentals For Using Geographic Information Science To Measure The Effectiveness Of Land Conservation Projects, Robert G. Pontius Jr., Shaily Menon, Joseph Duncan, Shalini Gupta Dec 2008

Fundamentals For Using Geographic Information Science To Measure The Effectiveness Of Land Conservation Projects, Robert G. Pontius Jr., Shaily Menon, Joseph Duncan, Shalini Gupta

Shaily Menon

Some humans spend a tremendous amount of effort to change landscapes from a “natural” state to a “developed” state for a variety of desirable economic uses, such as urban, agriculture, transportation, and mining. Others spend a tremendous amount of effort to prevent such development in order to conserve the landscapes for a variety of important environmental uses, such as biodiversity maintenance, carbon storage, water filtration, and landslide prevention. It would be efficient in theory if a society were to focus its development efforts at locations that give the largest economic utility per area developed, and to focus its conservation efforts …


A Vegetation Based Approach To Biodiversity Gap Analysis In The Agastyamalai Region, Western Ghats, India, B. R. Ramesh, Shaily Menon, Kamaljit S. Bawa Nov 1997

A Vegetation Based Approach To Biodiversity Gap Analysis In The Agastyamalai Region, Western Ghats, India, B. R. Ramesh, Shaily Menon, Kamaljit S. Bawa

Shaily Menon

Protected areas in India have historically been established on an ad hoc basis with little attention to the conservation value of an area. This study focuses on a set of protected areas in the Agastyamalai region of the Western Ghats (WG), India. We examine forest loss and land-use changes in the study area from the early 1900s to 1960 and from 1960 to 1990. We use GIS to perform a biodiversity gap analysis of the protected areas in the study site. We produce a detailed map of existing floristic types and use it to generate layers corresponding to floristic species …


Applications Of Geographic Information Systems, Remote-Sensing, And A Landscape Ecology Approach To Biodiversity Conservation In The Western Ghats, Shaily Menon, Kamaljit S. Bawa Jun 1997

Applications Of Geographic Information Systems, Remote-Sensing, And A Landscape Ecology Approach To Biodiversity Conservation In The Western Ghats, Shaily Menon, Kamaljit S. Bawa

Shaily Menon

The mountains along the west coast of peninsular India, the Western Ghats, constitute one of the unique biological regions of the world. Rapidly occurring land-cover and land-use change in the Western Ghats has serious implications for the biodiversity of the region. Both landscape changes as well as the distribution of biodiversity are phenomena with strong spatial correlates. Recent developments in remote-sensing technology and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) allow the use of a landscape ecology and spatial analysis approach to the problem of deforestation and biodiversity conservation in the Western Ghats. Applications of this approach include analyses of land-cover and land-use …