Bio mapping reveals nature’s secrets at IIT-B

Mumbai: Nestled amidst the beautiful Vihar Lake in Powai, the IIT-B campus is a hub for flourishing biodiversity in the city.  The students, in a bid to spread awareness about the diverse species of trees within the campus, have decided to name and identify them. This biodiversity mapping initiative by the Green Campus Department under the NSS team has marked over 200 trees of 40 species.

Yash Sanghvi, the coordinator of the NSS team, elaborated, “The campus is so lush with greenery and is one of the few green patches left in the city. We decided to give the faculty and the students a flavour of this diversity. We have been mapping the flora and fauna on the campus for many years now but never showcased it. This time we were able to map over 200 trees and came across some very interesting facts as well”.

A team of over 100 volunteers initiated the process and have marked trees on the main road of the campus. “ The main road covers only 10 per cent of the campus and slowly we plan to cover the entire campus, which is over 550 acres,” he added.

Raman Garase from the institute’s nursery helped students verify the trees’ identification. “We have been receiving some awesome reactions from the student community and the faculty members. The most common one being we did not know that all these years we were living amidst such rare gems!”

“We want to understand how the bio-diversity within the campus is changing over the years... We have been mapping a variety of species of butterflies and we’re also maintaining a log of the same. We don’t have plans to map insects and creatures, but perhaps we can initiate it in near future,” Mr Sanghvi said.