State scientist presents paper at international conference
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, July 26 2019: Dr Rajkumari Sunita Devi's paper entitled "Delineation Of Community Constructed Wetlands in Valley Districts Of Manipur, India" was selected for oral presentation in the recently held 5th International Conference on Water Resources and Environment (WRE), in Macao from July 15 to 19.The paper was co-authored by N Kulkarani Devi, CEO SLNA & Joint Director, Planning Department, Government of Manipur.

Dr RK Sunita Devi is working as a Scientist/GIS expert in the State Level Nodal Agency for watershed, Manipur Planning Department.

The paper focuses on delineation of 'ponds' commonly known as pukhris in Manipur.

For the first time, 16441 ponds in five valley districts of Manipur were recorded using high resolution satellite image of Quickbird in 60 cm resolution.

The research is very much in sync with the present agenda of the Government which focuses on water harvesting, according to the paper 'Jal Sakti Abhiyan', launched recently by the Prime Minister focuses on conservation of water in situ by harvesting rainwater.

These constructed wetlands or ponds are the only activities which can act as harvesting structures.

Thus the need of the hour is identifying all the available ponds/pukhris and rejuvenating degraded ones, Dr Sunita asserted.

The International Conference on Water Resources and Environment is an annual conference organized by a committee consisting of many renowned Professors and scientists from UK, USA, France, China, Abhu Dhabi, Portugal, Mexico, Turkey etc.

Dr Sunita's paper was selected by the technical committee and her oral presentation session was chaired by Dr Evan Paleologos.

Dr Evan Paleologos is currently Chair and Professor of Civil Engineering at Abu Dhabi University, United Arab Emirates.

Prior to this, he had worked for the US DOE Yucca Mountain Project for the burial of the US nuclear waste, was a tenured Professor at the University of South Carolina, USA, and at the Technical University of Crete, Greece.

He is the author of four books Elsevier, McGraw-Hill, and the Geological Society of America, and of over 100 scientific articles.

Dr Sunita Devi's finding was a benchmark in mapping such a challenging unit like 'ponds' which size ranges from 2.5 acre to less than point one acre.

The work is opened for further research by scholars and also for policy makers for implementation of schemes like "Jal Sakthi Abhiyan" for water harvesting.

She is also Hubert Humphrey Fellow (Fulbright Scholar) in the field of Wetlands and Remote Sensing GIS.

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