Landmark Trees of India

Landmark Trees of India is multi-disciplinary project, incorporating  botany, history, geography, travel narrative, photography, conservation, and more. During this multi-year project, almost a thousand of India’s famous, sacred, notable, and interesting trees were documented, identified, photographed, and mapped. To the best of our knowledge, this is the most rigorous documentation and mapping effort conducted of the arboreal heritage of India.

Visit the web portal at www.outreachecology.com/landmark

Thousands of people were met, several lakh (x100,000) photos were snapped, and tens of thousands of kilometres traversed.

Partnerships were established, field visits were arranged, and friendships formed with many collaborators, including:

• World Wildlife Fund/ World Wide Fund for Nature (Delhi)
• The Energy and Resources Institute (Delhi)
• Center for Science and Environment- Down To Earth Magazine
• Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany (Lucknow)
• The French Institute (Pondicherry)
• Indian Institute of Science (Bangalore)
• The National Centre for Biological Sciences (Bangalore)
• Ashoka Trust on Research on Ecology and Environment (Bangalore)
• Agumbe Rainforest Research Station (Karnataka)
• Sadhana Forest  (Tamil Nadu)
• Meghalaya Adventurer’s Society
• Society to Save Rocks (Hyderabad)
• Outlook Traveller Magazine
• GEO Magazine
• Indian National Trust on Arts and Cultural Heritage

A flagship project for Outreach Ecology, conducted while a US-India Fulbright Scholar,Landmark Trees is dedicated to providing positive future outcomes.  We are continuing to work on the data and stories to deliver more and more outreach resources. Please visit the project portal at TreeOctopus: India, and stay tuned for more.

You can find all of the deliverables under the Landmark Trees of India tag.

A selection of outputs::

• Mail Today (April 2010): American’s Unusual Discovery of India

  Outreach efforts and media exposure for Landmark Trees of India, an environmental education geography project Mail Today (April 2010): American’s Unusual Discovery of India by Archana Link: ArticleScanMAILTODAYDelhi18apr10.pdf

• Climbing Tree Tops: A Cultural Endeavour by Varrtika Mudaliar

  Outreach efforts and media exposure for Landmark Trees of India, an environmental education geography project Indian Fulbrighter Newsletter (February 2009): Climbing Tree Tops: A Cultural Endeavour by Varrtika Mudaliar Link: IndianFulbrighterArticle26FEB09.pdf

• The Mountain of the Crescent Moon

  A travel article on mountaineering in the Indian Himalaya, published in Sidetracked Magazine. Bar-Ness, Y. (2011). The Mountain of the Crescent Moon. Sidetracked, 2011. Link: Sidetracked_3_TheMountainOfTheCrescentMoon

• Geo-India: Trees of the Ramayana

  Sidebar detailing some of the living trees linked to the Indian epic Ramayana Bar-Ness, Y. (2011). Trees of the Ramayana. (Sidebar) GEO-India, October 2011. Link: GEOIndia_TreesOfTheRamayana_October2011.pdf

• Asia Literacy Ambassador – Asialink

  Profile page for Asia Literacy Ambassadors programme, via Asialink at University of Melbourne Asia Literacy Ambassador – Asialink (University of Melbourne) Link: AsialinkAmbassadorProfiles.pdf