FUTURISTIC RESEARCH (FTR)
MANDATE
The Futuristic Research Division (FTR) would pursue innovative research and assess technological, policy and societal responses to inform adaptation and mitigation strategies to achieve sustainability and improve the resilience of coastal community.
The objectives of the FTR Division are:
i) energy security for coastal community
ii) climate change adaptation and mitigation for improved resilience.
This division would assess risks, impacts, and vulnerabilities through regional and decadal scale analysis and models by improving the usefulness of forecasts of future environmental conditions and their consequences for people. Through innovative research, this division would examine the potential of energy security from renewable sources and those that have neutral impacts on other aspects of coastal sustainability. This would include harnessing the potential of offshore wind energy for climate change adaptation and energy security in coastal regions of India. In another dimension, the FTR would undertake advanced research toward minimizing carbon emissions and maximizing carbon sequestration and storage by seagrasses, tidal marshes, and mangroves. The studies would make an important contribution by ensuring that climate change concerns are better integrated with ongoing or planned activities that support ecosystem integrity including the management and use of biodiversity resources. The FTR would conduct targeted research and monitoring to quantify the greenhouse gas emissions from coastal ecosystems including those due to ecosystem degradation, land-based pollution, and land use change.
The FTR’s core strength would be on cutting-edge work in paleoclimate reconstruction, geochronology, modeling, and synthesis. Paleoclimate reconstructions would be used as windows into physical mechanisms of climate change, and its implications on socio-ecological, coastal, and marine systems. The aim of FTR will also be to quantify and predict the impact of ocean acidification on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning and the potential industrial-scale production of biodiesel from halophyte cultivations. Some of the key innovative research FTR would conduct include:
- Offshore renewable and non-conventional energy source potential (macro-picture)
- Algal/ Halophyte cultivation for Bio-diesel (Industrial scale production)
- Blue carbon studies
- Coral bleaching
- Ocean acidification
- Invasive Alien Species
- Greenhouse gas fluxes from coastal ecosystems
- Urbanization of coastal zones
FTR’s concerns include the vulnerability of coastal populations to natural disasters, and those related to climatic change.