Niti B. Mishra

In a time when ongoing climatic variability and increasing anthropogenic activity is resulting in an unprecedented loss of wildlife habitat and biodiversity, Niti’s dissertation research seeks to understand complex linkages between ecological pattern and processes leading to these changes. Focusing on the remote and extensive Savanna system in the central Kalahari of Botswana, his research combines bio-physical parameters derived in a field with multi-scale satellite images and employs statistical models to accurately characterize and monitor these systems at landscape to regional scales. His research aims to improve upon the existing limitations of satellite remote sensing in characterizing savanna pattern and processes. This research would not only contribute methodically in environmental remote sensing and theoretically to savanna ecology, but it would also lead to ecologically informed decision making by the land managers in the central Kalahari, ensuring long term ecological sustainability.

Niti’s research aims to provide an understanding of ecological processes in the understudied central Kalahari of Botswana. The results of his dissertation would provide currently non-existent products to wildlife ecologists who want to understand predator and prey ecology to reduce human-animal conflict in central Kalahari. The method of monitoring based on satellite remote sensing examined in his research is important especially for the developing countries in Africa that lack extensive ground resources for monitoring biodiversity and land cover conditions.