Ecosystems are distinct biological entities characterized by a range of functions. The integrity of the ecosystem is vital for sustaining ecosystem goods and services to support people's livelihood. Maintaining ecosystem integrity requires ecosystem approaches in managing natural resources considering dynamics due to natural variabilities and anthropogenic activities. Sustainable developmental planning focuses on the efficient and innovative use of regional resources, with an improved understanding of social and environmental interactions. The comprehensive knowledge of a region's ecological sensitivity/fragility is quintessential for evolving conservation strategies.Ecosystems' ecological sensitivity refers to ecosystem stability, persistence, resistance, resilience, and recovery properties to overcome environmental disasters, which are likely to adversely affect natural landscapes' character. The ecologically sensitive regions are natural resources-rich zones (NRRZ) endowed with distinct biological elements with geological, physical, and chemical characteristics. Spatial integration of geo-climatic, ecological, environmental, and social variables helps delineate NRRZ for prudent management of natural resources through ecological and conservation planning as per the Biodiversity Act, 2002, Government of India. NRRZs delineation has been done at disaggregated levels (9 km x 9 km grids) considering ecological, bio-geo-climatic, social, and environmental aspects compiled from field and published literature, and prioritization of NRRZ (as NRRZ 1 to 4) has been done through aggregated weightage metric score (of chosen variables per grid). NRRZ-K (Natural Resources Rich Regions (NRRZ) in Karnataka) SDSS helps to visualise NRRZ at taluk levels which are prioritised throughintegrated metric accounting various factors (biological, ecological, geo-climatic, energy, social, etc.) as NRRZ (1 to 4). NRRZ-K aids in the decision making for prudent management of natural resources considering ecological, social and environmental conditions of the region. 32% of the state’s geographical area was depicted as a high-resource region under NRRZ 1 and 2, which needs to be conserved with stringent regulations. Prioritizing regions as NRRZ by integrating spatial data (land cover) with location-based attribute information would strengthen regional decision-making.

Keywords: Biodiversity; Ecosystem; Ecologically Sensitive; Forest Fragmentation; Karnataka State