- GROW Portal: The “Greening and Restoration of Wasteland with Agroforestry (GROW)-Suitability Mapping” portal allows universal access to state and district-level data.
It is hosted on the Bhuvan website. The GROW initiative aligns with national commitments, aiming to restore 26 million hectares of degraded land by 2030 and create an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. The initiative is led by NITI Aayog. Utilising thematic datasets, the project resulted in the creation of an Agroforestry Suitability Index (ASI). This project on prioritisation of wasteland areas suitable for greening is based on the analysis of five remote sensing derived thematic layers land use, wasteland, slope, water proximity and soil organic content. Highest weightage was given to wastelands.
The key features of the system:
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- Generates district-level information on wasteland areas suitable for agroforestry
- Generates area prioritisation regime i.e. highly suitable area, moderate and less suitable for agroforestry
- Generates live maps
- Generates area analysis-statistic report
- Offer an interactive mode/tool that provides flexibility in handling the weights as per local conditions/need
- Biodiversity Heritage Site: Recently, the Odisha government declared the Gupteswar forest in Koraput district as its fourth Biodiversity Heritage Site (BHS).
These are areas that are unique, ecologically fragile ecosystems having rich biodiversity comprising of any one or more of the components such as; species richness, high endemism, presence of rare, endemic and threatened species, keystone species, species of evolutionary significance, wild ancestors of domestic/cultivated species or landraces or their varieties, past pre-eminence of biological components represented by fossil beds and having cultural or aesthetic value. Under the Biological Diversity Act, the State Governments are empowered to notify in the official gazette, in consultation with ‘local bodies’, areas of biodiversity importance as Biodiversity Heritage Sites. Also, the State Government in consultation with the Central Government may frame rules for the management and conservation of BHS.
The State Governments are empowered to frame schemes for compensating or rehabilitating any person or section of people economically affected by such notification.
- Types of Online Gaming:
e-Sports: These are video games that were played privately or on consoles in video game stores in the 1990s, but are currently played online in a structured manner between professional players, either individually or in teams.
Fantasy sports: These are games in which the player selects a team of real sports players from several teams and earns points based on how well the players perform in real life. For example,Dream11.
Online casual games:These could be skill-based, where the outcome is heavily impacted by mental or physical skill or chance-based, where the outcome is heavily influenced by some randomised activity, such as rolling a die.
A game of chance may be considered as gambling if players bet money or anything of monetary value.
