Cauvery Monitoring Committee to meet on October 11

The Karnataka government and farmers of the Cauvery basin districts, apart from the people of Bangalore city who are dependant on the river for drinking water, are anxiously awaiting the decision of the Supreme Court, which is expected to hear the review petition on Monday, on the all-important issue of keeping in abeyance the orders of the Cauvery River Authority, which has directed the release of 9,000 cusecs of water a day to the lower riparian State of Tamil Nadu, till October 15.

Further releases to be based on inflows into Kabini and Krishnarajasagar

The goodwill gesture extended by Karnataka to release 10,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu till September 20 has come to an end and further releases are expected to be purely based on the inflows into the Kabini and the Krishnarajasagar reservoirs, given the differences that have cropped up after a meeting of the Cauvery River Authority.

It will put forth distress situation at CRA meeting

Karnataka is making arrangements to adhere to the water release formula as made out before the Supreme Court on Monday even as preparations are afoot at a feverish pace to put forth the State’s distress before a meeting of the Cauvery River Authority to be chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi on September 19.

Karnataka is expected to convey to the Supreme Court that it is keen on adhering to the water release formula prescribed by the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal (CWDT) and that the vagaries of monsoon has prevented it from sticking to the formula so far this year.

Tamil Nadu had approached the apex court seeking a direction for the release of nearly 25 tmcft of water, claiming it as the shortfall based on the distress water-sharing formula. The petition of the lower riparian State is coming up for hearing on Monday.

The area under forest cover in Karnataka has increased by four square kilometres, according to a latest report of the Forest Survey of India. It says the change has been noticed in the assessment year of 2009, compared to the survey carried out in 2008. The report was put in the public domain recently.

Sources in the State government told The Hindu that the change for the better was being seen for the first time in about a decade. What was noteworthy was that at a time when forests were being “plundered in terms of their flora and fauna and conservationists facing a tough challenge,” the increase, though negligible, marks a refreshing change.”

Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa has directed the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board (KIADB) to stop acquisition of land for Phase 2 of the Mangalore Special Economic Zone (MSEZ). Sources in the office of the Chief Minister told The Hindu that directions had been issued to the KIADB to immediately withdraw the preliminary notification to acquire 2,035 acres of land.

Sunday's session of World Heritage Committee may discuss subject
Tag will only be a hurdle to constructive conservation, says Minister
BANGALORE: The Karnataka government has decided to convey to the Centre, in particular Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh, that it is not interested in the UNESCO tag for the Western Ghats.

Laboratory reflectance spectra of 18 rock samples from the Precambrian basement of north east of Hajjah were measured and analyzed using the instrument of FieldSpec3 with spectral range 0.250-2.500um. The aim of this study is to use the spectral reflectance of rocks for mapping the mineral resources in the north east of Hajjah.

Uncertainties in Geovisualaization / GIScience spatial data can minimize but not completely provided by the different image processing classification methods. The methods of image processing techniques are purely dependent on spectral signature values.