A GEO-SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF ELEPHANT INTRUSION IN HUMAN SETTLEMENTS: A STUDY ABOUT THE SEASONAL TRENDS AND THE RELATIONSHIP WITH THE RAINFALL -IN SRI LANKA

摘要

Elephant intrusion in human settlement is a top issue which has the devastating impact for humans and the elephants in Sri Lanka continue for several years, but the issue of elephant intrusion has never addressed in a national scale to see the patterns and the trends on it. And also there is no good data base available in the country about the conflict though the issue has raised as the top. The incidents of elephant caused attacks are still recording in the form of handwritten and not available in digital format. The study is focused on making a digital data base though the process of geo-coding of the place name information of the elephant caused attacks to the people and the properties which have been taken place from the year of 2004 to 2009 and made them available online as a Wiki database and in the form of Google map. The study has carried out for the entire country and analyzed the distribution, trend and the patterns based on different climatic seasons, relation with the rainfall, elevation, vegetation and the protected areas.. This paper only concludes the seasonal changes of the elephant intrusion and the relationship with the monthly rainfall. The seasonal distribution of elephant intrusion is a new approach which has analyzed the seasonal changes of the elephant intrusion. And also the intrusion of the elephant is also highly depends on the availability of the rainfall. These all criteria were considered in the national basis and distribution and the trend of the elephant intrusion has also been analyzed and mapped for whole Sri Lanka. Along with the trend analysis the Multi Linear Regression model was implemented to predict the phenomena with selected criteria of rainfall, land use and the elevation to identify the potentially risk areas of the elephant intrusion. According to the results of the Multi Linear Regression model the potential areas of the elephant intrusion has the higher relation, with where there are paddy land with low rainfall and lower elevation The prediction of the phenomenon has only been implemented for a selected area where latest land use data available. The issue has analyzed with G1S methods and techniques which has given the wider range of application and analyzing capabilities. The relationship of the factors with elephant intrusion has analyzed with the vector and the raster data analysis methods in GIS.