Abstract
Abstract. With an overarching goal to improve environmental management and resilience to climate change, SERVIR-Himalaya is established as a collaborative initiative of USAID, NASA and ICIMOD. The SERVIR-Himalaya has been the key instrument to provide integrated and innovative geospatial solutions for generation and dissemination of information and knowledge resources on mountain environments. The SERVIR applications, products and services are viewed as essential cross-cutting elements to achieve the greater impacts on addressing Himalayan livelihood challenges. The broad thematic areas which are also subset of the societal benefit areas of Global Earth Observation (GEO), namely – agriculture and food security, ecosystems and sustainable landscapes, and disaster risk management are addressed. On the cross-cutting theme, SERVIR Himalaya is also focusing on developing regional level applications providing key information systems and services on multiple themes of regional significance. The regional level science applications include use of MODIS satellite information products and services for environmental and natural resources monitoring in the Himalayan region. Regional and national training and workshops, on-the-job training, internships and exchange programs and technical backstopping are key capacity building components to enhance the capacity of partners from national institutions in the regional member countries. These efforts are also seen as receiving feedback on the science applications, identify additional needs, and increase synergy by exploring opportunities for collaboration.
Highlights
1.1 Mountain perspective and need for Geospatial FrameworkThe Hindu Kush–Himalaya (HKH) region is the largest mountain system in the world extending from Myanmar in the East to Afghanistan in the West covering whole or part of Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal, and Pakistan (ICIMOD, 2012)
SERVIR evolved through a ‘nontraditional’ partnership between USAID (United States Agency for International Development) and National Aeronautics Space Agency (NASA) (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) to make earth observation data, decision-support tools for interpreting the data, and online mapping capability, more generally available
The overarching purpose of the SERVIR-Himalaya initiative is to improve environmental decision-making in the Hindu KushHimalayan region through dissemination and analysis of earth observation information
Summary
The Hindu Kush–Himalaya (HKH) region is the largest mountain system in the world extending from Myanmar in the East to Afghanistan in the West covering whole or part of Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal, and Pakistan (ICIMOD, 2012). The impacts of climate change have brought new challenges to the region which was already facing the issues of poverty, environmental degradation, natural resources depletion, shrinking water resources, and desertification. Attributed to climate change, the region has been facing increasing frequency of extreme events and natural disasters which have resulted into losses of lives and properties. Most of these issues, such as melting glaciers, greenhouse gases, air pollution, biodiversity conservation, and disasters due to extreme events are transboundary in nature which demand collective actions and cooperation between nations. A common geographic framework provides a basis for integrating multiple disciplines and investigating key components of the social, economic, and environmental conditions to enhance our understanding of the complex mountain ecosystem. There is a growing recognition of the need for quality data, and ways of sharing them among stakeholders, to help improve scientific understanding
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