Spatial Analysis of Human-Elephant Conflicts in India
Project Description
This research exchange brings together scientists from the Nature Conservation Foundation and the National Centre for Biological Sciences in India with researchers from the GeoDa Center to focus on spatial data analysis modeling in ecology and conservation. The project addresses the gap in research and training on advanced techniques for spatial vector data (areas, points, lines) in ecology and conservation science in India. Advanced techniques for the analysis of raster data are more widely applied and taught in various fields of science in India. However, despite substantial theoretical and technical developments in spatial ecology and econometrics in recent times (e.g., Franklin 2009, Mapping Species Distributions: Spatial Inference and Prediction), including the availability of free and open source software for data analysis, few of these have been widely disseminated in India. This presents a research gap since mapping, measuring, and spatially exploring and analysing vector data is an essential component of research in the fields of landscape ecology, biodiversity conservation, forest ecology, and wildlife biology including the study of animal movement and human-wildlife conflicts in modern landscapes. In the Indian context, the ability to gather, use, and analyse spatial vector data is a critical capacity to be developed among students and scientists in the field of ecology and conservation.
India, with one‐fifth of the world’s population, is one of the world’s 17 mega‐diverse nations and the primary range country of several globally endangered large wildlife species including tiger, Asian elephant, and snow leopard. India holds the largest elephant population with an estimated number of over 30,000 elephants in an area of 110,000 km2, of which the southern peninsula has the largest elephant population of over 15,000 spread over 13,000 km2 in the wild (Sukumar, 2003). Wide‐ranging species such as elephants come into contact and conflict with people as their habitats come under increasing modification and fragmentation. Serious conflicts resulting in crop and property damage, injury and loss of human lives, and retaliatory killing and wounding of wildlife, is affecting the lives and livelihoods of millions of people across the country while further endangering the survival prospects of wild species and conservation of natural areas. The Bandipur Tiger Reserve in the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve and the Anamalai Tiger Reserve in southern India constitute important and critical conservation areas for Asian elephants, with the latter comprising nearly 6% of total elephant population in India (Desai, 2001).
The Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF), the GeoDa Center, NCF, and NCBS funded a field visit of GeoDa Center members to India to discuss spatial modeling of human-elephant conflicts in person and conduct a two-day workshop on spatial data analysis in ecology and conservation in Bangalore. This work is extended through joint research on spatial modeling of human-elephant conflicts in the Valparai area where NCF works. The long-term goals of the analysis are 1) to improve the prediction and prevention of conflicts between elephants and people in the Valparai and Bandipur landscapes of India, 2) to enable better spatial targeting of public investment in conflict mitigation measures, and 3) to change negative public attitudes towards wild elephants in this area.
ASU Project Staff
Dr. Julia Koschinsky, Daniel Arribas-Bel and Nicholas Malizia are the GeoDa Center members who collaborate with the Indian team on this project.