Lihini Prematilaka

University of Colombo

Rapid urbanization in the dry zone of Sri Lanka has resulted in considerable losses in its original forest cover. Urban expansion, which typically includes expansion of human settlements and commercial establishments, and the construction of linear infrastructural facilities (roads, railways, and transmission lines) have led to many adverse impacts...

In protected areas (PAs) designated for the conservation of biodiversity, temporal landscape changes do occur, driven by natural and anthropogenic factors. Such changes may impact on the conservation value of the PA. In a wildlife PA, changes in habitat extents could adversely affect some of the faunal species. Our objective was to assess temp...

Across the global south, coasts represent areas with a mixture of different environmental, socioeconomic and political issues. Among these, impacts of natural disasters and climate change are at the forefront of the challenges that coastal areas confront in the 21st century. Policy makers and practitioners often seek practical solutions to handle t...

Impacts of natural disasters and climate change are at the forefront of the challenges that coastal areas confront in the 21st century. The Nature based Solutions (NbS) are the actions that could be taken to conserve, manage and restore natural ecosystems to support healthy functioning of the environment and to achieve social well-being effectively...

Protected Areas in the dry zone of Si Lanka have undergone a considerable reduction in vegetation cover owing to linear infrastructure. Thus, their habitat quality and the potential to support wildlife is heavily deteriorated. This study analyses the vegetation cover loss along a road that traverses across Giritale Nature Reserve and Angammedilla N...

In developing countries, gathering real time and rigorous data for conservation and management decisions is time consuming. Therefore, we used a swift method involving three simple measures, namely, provision of ecosystem services, vegetation coverage using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and species richness in terms of native plants...

Sri Lanka is a proud owner of a flamboyant irrigation based history with a wide array of tanks. A cascade of water tanks (Small Tank Cascade System -STCS) which recycles water to help paddy cultivation, acted as the backbone of the dry zone irrigation. The STCS is gaining attention not only as a water source but also as a resource to reduce drought...

Disaster communication is an essential element in managing and mitigating disasters and reducing their risks. As any disaster event creates chaos and unexpected turmoil especially among the victims, communication should be simple, timely and relevant. As electronic communication is fast, convenient and free, it has increasingly become popular in di...