GROW Portal

About GROW Portal

• The “Greening and Restoration of Wasteland with Agroforestry (GROW)-Suitability Mapping” portal allows universal access to state and district-level data.
• It is hosted on Bhuvan website.
• The GROW initiative aligns with national commitments, aiming to restore 26 million hectares of degraded land by 2030 and create an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
• The initiative, led by NITI Aayog, involved a collaborative effort from multiple institutions and employed advanced technologies such as remote sensing and GIS to assess agroforestry suitability across all districts in India.
• Utilizing thematic datasets, the project resulted in the creation of an Agroforestry Suitability Index (ASI). This index enables national-level prioritization for greening and restoration projects.
• This project on prioritization of wasteland areas suitable for greening is based on the analysis of five remote sensing derived thematic layers viz. land use, wasteland, slope, water proximity and soil organic content.
• These parameters were selected as a result of expert consultations and considered to be the most critical layers in identifying area that are amenable for interventions with agroforestry. Highest weightages was given to wastelands.
• The developed system provides information on area suitable for agroforestry across India.
• The areas available in the system are classified as highly suitable, moderately suitable, less suitable for agroforestry.
• The key features of the system:
  • Generates district level information of wasteland area suitable for agroforestry
  • Generates area prioritization regime i.e highly suitable area, moderate and less suitable for agroforestry
  • Generates live maps
  • Generates area analysis-statistic report
  • Offer an interactive mode/tool that provides flexibility in handling the weightages as per local conditions/need

Q1) What is agroforestry ?

It can be defined as a dynamic, ecologically based, natural resource management system that, through the integration of trees on farms and in the agricultural landscape, diversifies and sustains production for increased social, economic and environmental benefits for land users at all levels.

Source: NITI Aayog Launches Greening India’s Wastelands with Agroforestry (GROW) Report and Portal

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