Indo-US IndoFlux Workshop

This planning workshop, held July 12-16, 2006 in Chennai, India was jointly organized by Anna University, Chennai, India and the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, in the USA, and convened under the aegis of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India and the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum. The bilateral workshop brought together a team of 17 multidisciplinary US scientists with their Indian counterparts to design guidelines for the IndoFlux.
 

Participants in this joint project include the Department of Science and Technology of the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Government of India, the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, and the Institute for Ocean Management at Anna University, Chennai, India. Dr. D. Viswanathan, Vice-Chancellor at Anna University, presented the inaugural address at the workshop. Other speakers included Dr. Sundareshwar of SDSM&T; Shambhu Singh, Director of the DST in India; Dennis Baldocchi, University of California, Berkeley; R. Ramesh, director of the Institute for Ocean Management, Anna University; and Smriti Trikha of Indo-US Science and Technology Forum, New Delhi.

The outcome of the workshop included a decision on placement of monitoring stations and an agreement on the instrumentation at these stations. Importantly, we are creating an oversight committee, a scientific plan for the proposed network, a statement of strategic vision, as well as identification of near-term bilateral actions for sustained interactions.

For India, there is an urgent need to implement an integrated long-term monitoring program that will link terrestrial, coastal and oceanic processes. The proposed network will most certainly provide a map of various sources and sinks for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from diverse Indian landscapes; will enable better representation of regional biospheric processes in global and regional climate models leading to improvements in our ability to predict climate change scenarios; provide information and strategies for mitigating domestic and global emission of these gases; enhance scientific inquiry and education; as well as provide the kind of robust scientific data that is central to developing long-lasting and defensible public policy.