Evaluation of Climate and Habitat Interactions Affecting the Conservation
and Management of Asian Elephants in Southeast Sri Lanka
Funded by
CEI-IRI Seed Funding Program
March, 2002
Project Team:
Benno Blumenthal, Data
Library Manager, IRI
Prithiviraj Fernando
– Associate Research Scientist, CERC & Wildlife Trust (Co-PI)
Fred Koontz – Deputy
Exec. Director for Conservation, Wildlife Trust & CERC
Marc Levy – Associate
Director for Science Applications, CIESIN
Herath Manthrithillake,
Dir. Environmental & Forestry Div., Mahaweli Authority of Sri Lanka
John Mickelson – GIS\Remote
Sensing Specialist, CIESIN (Co-PI)
Neil Ward – Head of Forecast
Development, IRI
Raman Sukumar – Assoc.
Prof. Indian Inst. Of Science, & Adj. Faculty CERC & Wildlife Trust
Lareef Zubair- Associate
Research Scientist, IRI (Co-PI)
Summary
:
Global populations of the endangered Asian elephant (
Elephas maximus) face an uncertain future due, in part, to their populations
having been relegated to small and relatively isolated pockets throughout
their historic range in southern and southeastern Asia. In Sri Lanka, their
numbers are thought to have dwindled from 8,000 to some 3,000-4,000 individuals,
with over 170 conflict-related deaths accrued over just the past four months.
If these populations are to survive, in the face of mounting habitat loss
and human resource competition,
it will be necessary to develop a set of research strategies and management
methodologies aimed at effectively and actively managing both their habitat
as well as genetic and demographic dynamics.
Resource competition, especially over two of the most important climatically
influenced variables, habitat\vegetation and water, is driving much of the
conflict currently engulfing humans and elephants. Understanding how interactions
between climate and habitat can affect elephant ecology will be important
for the long-term conservation and management of the species. When extreme
conditions occur, such as the current drought, wildlife can become increasingly
vulnerable to normally marginal effects such as climate variability and resource
condition change. The need for more sophisticated techniques informing elephant
management in human/wildlife landscape mosaics is clearly evident today in
Sri Lanka.
In our study, statistical downscaling of climatic and hydrological variables
will be coupled with an integrated geospatial vegetation\habitat and expert
systems knowledge base for elephant ecology. Our objective is to generate
and make available integrated climate, biophysical, ecological pattern and
process study results that can have decision support applications for natural
resource managers and policy decision makers within the region.
This proposal brings together three Columbia University Centers with several
Sri Lankan collaborators. IRI, CIESIN, CERC and Wildlife Trust all share a
common history of research projects in Sri Lanka. At IRI, the research has
been on the physical aspects of climate, hydrological and water resources
management, system modeling and prediction. At CERC and Wildlife Trust, the
effort has been on understanding the ecology and biology of the Asian elephant.
This has included studies in Sri Lanka, of elephant habitat, resource and
home range usage and efforts to develop programs involving villagers to promote
peaceful human-elephant coexistence. CIESIN has been involved in multiple
remote sensing and GIS studies focusing on land cover\land use assessments
across Southeast Asia.