Celebrating 25 Years of Action for Biodiversity

The vegetation that exists in the desert is especially important as it protects the soil from erosion and is an important food source for livestock species and wild animals [ ] 136 Environmental Monitoring Information System of Kuwait (eMISK) The Environment Public Authority (EPA) regularly monitors water ben- thic meiofauna that comprise about 304 species, 45 of which exist on Kuwait’s shores. The General Author- ity is working on various forms of environmental pollution monitoring on an ongoing basis. Further research is needed to monitor wildlife devel- opment and distribution and develop measures for habitat preservation. Attention must also paid to the appli- cation of laws banning hunting and the unsustainable use of biodiversity. The EPA of Kuwait initiated the Environmental Monitoring Infor- mation System (eMISK) which is an ambitious system to establish, build and maintain a comprehensive geo-environmental database of the country along with an enterprise level GIS system for access, update and analysis of environmental data. This geo-environmental database will be made available through eMISK to decision makers and stakeholders from within EPA, as well as to outside agencies and the public at large. Among the main goals of eMISK are to raise awareness at all levels of Kuwaiti Society of the values of the environment, and to place author- itative scientific information at the centre of decision-making. eMISK is housed within the state-of-the-art infrastructure at the Kuwait Environmental Monitoring Centre (KEMC) premises within EPA and is composed of seven high-end servers, 16 GIS workstations and about 50 EPA-wide users connected through intranet-based applications built on an ArcGIS Server. eMISK is accessible to researchers, students and specialists from other organ- izations over the internet. eMISK will cater to the environmental data needs of public of all categories and ages from within and outside Kuwait through the planned environmental data portal being developed under the same project. eMISK will gather all relevant geo-environmental information from the EPA, other organizations, and recent first-hand sources of infor- mation including high-resolution satellites. K uwait is characterized by its four desert ecosystems of sand dunes, swamps and salt depressions, flat desert, and desert plateau, as well as its flat topography and many valleys that descend mainly north-eastwardly. The country’s coastline is about 660 km long with its most important feature being Kuwait Bay which is a suitable nursery ground for fish and shrimp larvae. Despite its small size, the country is characterized by nine geomorphological features, for instance, mud flats, gravel plains, north plains, and limestone banks. The vegetation consists of shrubs, herbs and perennials which vary seasonally depending on winter rainfall. The marine environment in Kuwait and the Persian Gulf is characterized by an abundance and diversity of species and environments, including fish, turtles, wetland areas and coral reefs. Young falcon Carlos Bustamante Restrepo on flickr Kuwait