The information technology (IT) revolution of the past decade has coincided with a revolution in spatial IT on all three fronts: imaging, positioning, and processing. Advances in imaging or remote sensing (RS) have made available high-resolution satellite imagery at fairly accessible prices, almost rendering traditional aerial photographs obsolete. Hand-held global positioning
systems (GPSs) are not only affordable but now are able to indicate position within 10m accuracy or better with the removal of “selective availability” (a euphemism for manually-induced noise) in May 2000. And powerful geographic information system (GIS) software are now available on PCs that are themselves becoming simultaneously faster and cheaper. No wonder then that “RS/GIS technology”, as this combination of spatial IT is better known, is the ‘in thing’ today not just with geographers, but also ecologists, environmental scientists, even some social scientists, and certainly with planners and managers in departments of forestry, watershed development and agriculture. And the fact that India has been at the cutting edge of commercial satellite imagery in recent times has perhaps lent added visibility to this technology in the South Asian region.