Ecology, Conservation, and Restoration of Chilika Lagoon, India

This book chronicles the decades-long work of studying, analyzing, and reversing the environmental pressures that threatened India’s Chilika Lagoon, the largest brackish-water lagoon in the region, and the second largest in the world. Designated as one of India’s first Ramsar Sites in 1981, Chilika Lagoon continued to degrade for a decade longer. Then, the Chilika Development Authority (CDA) was established to gather information and devise a restoration plan that benefits the ecosystems of the lagoon, with sensitivity to the needs and livelihoods of local communities.

Expert contributors detail the work of analysis, planning and implementation, including extensive coverage of such topics as:

•          Devising a plan for implementing Ramsar wise use guidelines
•          Sedimentologic, chemical, and isotopic impacts
•          Hydrodynamics and salinity
•          Runoff and sediment in watersheds of the Lagoon's Western Catchment
•          Long-term analysis of water quality and continued water quality monitoring
•          Bio-optical models for cyclone impact assessment
•          Studies of geomorphology, land use, and sedimentary environments
•          Spatiotemporal assessment of phytoplankton communities
•          Creation of a post-restoration scenario for fish and fisheries
•          Assessing status of waterbirds, species diversity and migration patterns

The result was a major hydrological intervention to re-establish hydrological and salinity regimes, biodiversity, and fish catches, and help protect the livelihood of lagoon-dependent communities. The story of the rehabilitation and management of Chilika Lagoon demonstrates that it is possible to halt and reverse the encroachment and degradation of wetlands, to restore biodiversity and to provide benefits for large numbers of people.

Ecology, Conservation, and Restoration of Chilika Lagoon goes beyond scientific research articles to explore institutional and governance issues, political ecology, and the Ramsar Convention’s guidelines for ecosystem restoration. The book will benefit researchers, wetland managers, government policy makers and more general readers concerned with restoration and conservation of wetlands around the planet.

C. Max Finlayson is an internationally renowned wetland ecologist with extensive experience internationally in water pollution, agricultural impacts, invasive species, climate change, and human well-being and wetlands. He has participated in global assessments such as those conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate  Change, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and the Global Environment Outlook 4 & 5 (UNEP). Since the early 1990s, he has been a technical adviser to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands and has written extensively on wetland ecology and management. He has also been actively involved in environmental NGOs and from 2002 to 2007 was president of the governing council of global NGO Wetlands International. He has contributed to over 450 journal articles, reports, guidelines, proceedings, and book chapters on wetland ecology and  management and to the development of concepts and methods for wetland inventory, assessment, and  monitoring and undertaken many site-based assessments in many countries. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Marine and Freshwater Research published by CSIRO Publishing and of the book series Wetland, Ecology, Conservation and Management published by Springer. 

Gurdeep Rastogi is working as a Senior Scientist at the Wetland Research and Training Centre (WRTC) of the Chilika Development Authority (CDA). He has received his PhD in the area of Environmental Microbiology from the National Centre for Cell Sciences, Pune, in the year 2006. He has completed his postdoctoral research at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology and the University of California, Davis, USA. He is currently heading the molecular ecological research at WRTC, a nodal lab of CDA which has been entrusted with the responsibility of managing the Chilika Lake by the Odisha State Government. His research area is focussed on understanding the microbial biogeography andfunctions in coastal systems with special emphasis on bacteria, archaea, and phytoplankton. Over the past 15 years, he has published more than 40 papers in peer-reviewed international journals which have been well cited by the scientific communities, worldwide. He is an active reviewer for many international journal published by Springer and Elsevier.

Deepak R. Mishra is a Professor of Geography at the University of Georgia, Athens. His research interests are mainly in the area of remote sensing and satellite image processing as applied to inland and coastal environments. His specific interests are water quality, wetlands biophysical characteristics including gross primary productivity, carbon sequestration potential, application of big data in environmental informatics, and cyber-physical systems research. He completed his PhD in Natural Resources from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. He has published numerous papers in various high-impact international journals and book chapters, presented his research in many national and international meetings, edited special issues and books, and received external grants from various federal agencies. He currently serves on the editorial board of GIScience & Remote Sensing. He is an associate editor of the ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing and a senior associate editor of Remote Sensing and coeditor of Southeastern Geographer.

 Ajit K. Pattnaik as the former chief executive of Chilika Development Authority, headed the most successful project of restoration and sustainable management of Chilika Lake for 16 years. He completed his PhD in the “Characterization of Phytodiversity of Chilika Lake” from Utkal University, Bhubaneswar. Chilika was removed from the Montreux Record in 2002, due to the successful ecological restoration. He has 37 years of varied professional experience in the management and restoration of coastal ecosystems, climate change, and disaster management. He has extensive experience in project formulation, planning, management, wetland restoration, ecotourism, and water and community development projects. Presently, he is a consultant to the World Bank and UNDP and holds the position of the vice president of Wetlands International South Asia. He is a member of several international and national scientific and technical committees and has published over 100 scientific articles. He is also member of the expert advisory panel of journal Lakes & Reservoirs: Science, Policy and Management for Sustainable Use published by Wiley.