Soil and Water as Indicators of Resource Condition in a Protected Area : Soil and water as indicators of resource condition in a protected area: A case study, Rajaji National Park, India

Indicators are means of measuring progress of desired actions. They can be defined as statistics, measures or parameters that can be used to track changes of the environmental and socio-economic conditions. Indicators are developed in synthesizing and transforming scientific and technical data into fruitful information. It can provide a sound base for decision-makers to take a policy decision on present as well as potential future issues of local, national, regional and global concerns. It can be used to assess, monitor and forecast parameters of concerns towards achieving environmentally sound development. In order to track the progress on implementation of the Agenda 21, and Millennium Goals, there is an expressed need to develop framework for simple indicators on environmental resources, i.e. air, water, land or biodiversity. In the pursuit of this, an attempt has been made in this work by taking two important indicators of the environment viz. soil and water to assess the present habitat condition and to track the changes occurred in the Rajaji National Park, India, because of Gujjar rehabilitation.