Background

Over the past two decades, growing demands on resource information and fast changes in information technology have opened a new vistas for computerization of soil information and its storage, management and dissemination. Keeping in tune to this new era, the NBSS&LUP has emerged as a pioneer user of Geographic Information System (GIS) to manage the soil resource data as early as in 1989. As first step of activities, the scientists of NBSS&LUP were trained in U.K. and U.S.A. A modest PC based GIS was installed with SPANS ver.3 software as a research aid from ODNRI, UK. During this period, the Soil Resource Mapping project was in continuation and data on soil resources were generated at various regional centers. Data were collected at 10 km. Grid points. These spatial and non-spatial data were provided to the GIS lab for storage, analysis and retrieval. This was the beginning of database creation for soil resource management. In course of time GIS laboratory kept upgrading the hardware and software depending on the changing needs of the institute and developments in the GIS world.

Mandate

• Applied research in application of GIS in soils
• Generation of spatial soil resource database at different scales
• Integration of different thematic databases to generate land use plans
• Post- graduate teaching and research
• Conducting trainings in GIS
• Consultancy services

List of Scientists

Infrastructure

Hardware Facilities

The major GIS software’s are available in the laboratory are

• High end A0 size high resolution scanner,
• DesignJet plotter A0 size
• Colour laser printer,
• Color dot matrix printer.

Software Facilities

• SPANS ver 7.0,
• AGROMA ver 7.0,
• PAMAP ver 5.0,
• IDRISI ver 2.0,
• ARC GIS ver 9.0
• Geomatica ver 10.0.1
• ecognition ver 4.0
• TNT mips

Major Research Achievements

• Generation of Spatial Soil Resource Database at different scales– The Prime Activity.
• NASRIC–Storehouse of Soil Resource Data. National Soil Resource Information Centre has been established
• Regional Level Agro-Ecological Zoning maps have been digitized.
• Evaluation of Land resources and land use systems at selected AER’s.
• Soil Degradation maps in digital format generated.
• District level Information System -an ongoing activity for district level planning.
• Watershed Development Studies on Temporal Changes using Geostatistics
• Spatial and attribute database of all states (1:250,000 scale) and India (1:1 m scale) has been created.