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International audience; This edited volume of proceedings brings together a diversity of papers that presents a multitude of approaches and proxies used in understanding global climatic and environmental changes during the Quaternary period of the earth’s history, focusing on the most recent or “Late Quaternary”. Regionally, the focus is on the south Asian region with contributions from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Thailand in addition to the majority from India. The volume is subdivided into 6 sections grouped thematically and comprises papers dealing with diverse themes such as Radiometric dating methods, Geological and Biological proxies, Model specific datasets and data specific models and applications of new technologies such as remote sensing to the study of palaeoenvironments.

International audience; Water resources and their uses and management are - worldwide and on the regional scale of South Asia - one of the main concerns of the environmental and social equilibrium of the new century. These proceedings therefore contribute to the efforts of Indo-French and Sri Lankan-French cooperation to develop scientific collaboration on water management. The contributions by Indian, Sri Lankan and French specialists in the social sciences – historians, economists, sociologists, anthropologists, geographers – as well as specialists in agronomy, soil sciences or forestry, offer critical approaches and data from various disciplines regarding the understanding of water availability and water uses and management in South India and Sri Lanka, along with themes that emerge from these considerations.

International audience; This edited volume of proceedings brings together a diversity of papers that presents a multitude of approaches and proxies used in understanding global climatic and environmental changes during the Quaternary period of the earth’s history, focusing on the most recent or “Late Quaternary”. Regionally, the focus is on the south Asian region with contributions from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Thailand in addition to the majority from India. The volume is subdivided into 6 sections grouped thematically and comprises papers dealing with diverse themes such as Radiometric dating methods, Geological and Biological proxies, Model specific datasets and data specific models and applications of new technologies such as remote sensing to the study of palaeoenvironments.

An overview of the possibilities offered when applying Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) to environmental monitoring is given, based on examples taken from an ongoing project entitled 'Assessment of mangrove degradation and resilience in the Indian subcontinent: the cases of Godavari estuary and southwest Sri Lanka'. The capabilities of GIS i) to integrate and manage huge amounts of multi-source data, ii) to perform spatial analysis and, iii) to produce synthetic results that can prove useful in decision-making, are highlighted. RS, as a special type of spatial information used in GIS, iv) allows land cover mapping and the inventory of natural resources, v) provides quantitative estimations of biophysical properties of land surface features and, vi) is useful in tracking how landscape changes over time. The examples show that synthetic information and results, such as land cover maps at different dates, aerial estimates of mangrove extension or regression, and surfaces of aquaculture converted from mangroves, paddies or bare lands, can be obtained by analyzing data from different sources in the GIS. Decision-making can make use of such results, but should further benefit from the development of spatial modelling in GIS for the simulation of scenarios. Monitoring capabilities are also improving due to the increase in spatial and spectral resolution of the recently launched remote sensors.

International audience

International audience; This book consists of contributions to the on-going debate on the use and misuse of natural resources and their management for a sustainable local development, an issue of considerable importance for India. To tackle it, new approaches and tools are discussed in the context of the degradation of forests, agroforestry systems and uncultivated lands studied as socio-ecological systems. They notably focus on traditional ecological knowledge and its combination with formal knowledge through various adaptive and integrative methodologies for a better management of natural resources, including the conservation of the biodiversity. Contributions finally show the importance to be given to the perceptions, needs, constraints and strategies of stakeholders as they result in compromises to reach sustainability, at the interface between socio-economic uses of natural resources and their ecological integrity.

The identification of species in South Asia, as many parts of the world, is a major handicap for implementing the necessary measures recommended by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The drastic reduction in the number of taxonomists throughout the world and the permanent loss of their knowledge have made the task of ecologists all the more difficult. In India, the IFP contribution in various networks and processes to establish a national strategy for the conservation of biological diversity (NBSAP) allowed us to confirm a strong demand in this domain for: training, tools for training, diffusion of information, as well as new tools for capacity-building in taxonomy and environment, in conformity with the recommendations of the "Global Taxonomy Initiative" of the CBD secretariat. The objective of this computer-aided identification is to provide scientists working on subjects related to biological diversity with a software to help them to identify mangrove species In spite of missing information and, within certain limits, errors, and which can provide information as required by user. This is done entirely graphically by constituting an "Identikit picture". After identification, the user can access a descriptive file of the species where botanical terms are defined in a hypertext. The software, in this version, is able to identify about 60 species of mangroves (proper and associates) of South India and Sri Lanka. Besides botanical, ecological and geographical data, it will also include information on the multiple uses of these species by the local population. Devoted to non-specialists, it is expected to serve capacity-building for training and selftraining.