Ecology Restoration and Monitoring

Wetland restoration is critical for improving ecosystem services. Aquatic plants play an important role in aquatic systems worldwide because they provide food and habitat to fish, wildlife and aquatic organisms. Plants stabilize sediments, improve water clarity and add diversity to the shallow areas of lakes. Unfortunately, aquatic ecosystems are degraded by a variety of pressures as a result of the growing human population. Global‐scale impacts include homogenization of biological communities, removal of top predators and ecosystem engineers, chemical pollution by excess nutrients and contaminants as well as deteriorating structural diversity, connectivity and process dynamics. There is a pressing societal need to reverse the decline in biodiversity and replace lost ecosystem functioning and services in aquatic ecosystems by enabling natural recovery or by active restoration.

Ongoing projects:

1. Aquatic Vegetation of Kerala: Ecology, Reproductive Biology and Systematics