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.