Projects & programs

Where evidence meets the ground.

From satellite archives to street-level sensors, our research portfolio turns open environmental data into peer-reviewable science and practical policy guidance — starting with one of India's fastest-warming cities.

Explore the flagship All programs

Flagship portfolio

The State of Nagpur's Environment.

Two complementary studies — one reading the city's heat from orbit, one reading its air from the street — built entirely on free satellite archives and low-cost sensors, designed to publish and to inform municipal policy.

STUDY 01Field phase

Urban Heat Island & Climate Vulnerability Mapping

Mapping how heat concentrates across Nagpur's wards using two decades of Landsat and Sentinel-2 thermal archives, then overlaying social vulnerability to identify where extreme heat hits hardest — block by block.

Landsat 8/9 TIRSSentinel-2Google Earth EngineQGISCensus overlays

Design

Data acquisition

Field validation

Analysis

Publication

20 yrs

Thermal archive

Ward-level

Vulnerability atlas

Peer-reviewed paper

STUDY 02Calibration phase

Air Quality, Source Profiling & Health-Risk Mapping

A street-level air quality campaign pairing portable monitoring with Sentinel-5P satellite data to profile pollution sources and estimate health burden — with sensors co-located against reference stations so the data stands up to peer review.

Sentinel-5P TROPOMILow-cost sensorsReference co-locationR · openairWHO AirQ+

Design

Calibration

Campaign

Health model

Publication

R² · RMSE

Reported QA/QC

Multi-site

Seasonal campaign

Peer-reviewed paper

Why twin studies? Heat and air pollution compound each other — and share causes. By running both studies on a shared monitoring network, each strengthens the other: one survey effort, two publishable datasets, and a single coherent evidence base for the Nagpur Municipal Corporation and the National Clean Air Programme.

Research highlight · Water quality

Reading a city's rivers, contaminant by contaminant.

CSF conducted a screening-level water-quality study of the contamination in the Nag and Pili rivers — sampling surface water across multiple points along the urban river course and benchmarking each pollutant against ecological and human-health thresholds.

Pollution map · sampling locations

Screening-level · click a site

Sampling Location 1High load

SulphideCritical

Oil & GreaseElevated

TSSElevated

TDSAbove limit

Dissolved O₂Below ideal

BOD / CODWithin limit

Indicative status only · measured values withheld pending publication

River course

Sampling site

Contaminant zone

The signal: a river under acute chemical stress.

Across every sampled location, the same pattern held — oxygen-depleting and toxic pollutants well above ecological screening thresholds. We ranked each contaminant by Risk Quotient (observed concentration ÷ safe benchmark).

Sulphide Hydrogen sulphide toxicity

Acute

Oil & Grease Hydrocarbon film

High

Suspended solids (TSS) Habitat smothering

Mod–High

Dissolved solids (TDS) Osmotic stress

Moderate

BOD / COD / Chloride Within screening limits

No risk

Hydrogen sulphide emerged as the dominant ecological stressor — at a level associated with fish kills and benthic collapse — while dissolved oxygen sat below the threshold needed to sustain aquatic life. Exact concentrations are withheld until the study is published.

Bottom line: the combined pollutant load places these reaches below the lowest usable water-quality class — consistent with a sewage-dominated, ecologically compromised urban river in need of decentralized treatment, ecological zoning, and citizen oversight.

Sulphide

Dominant stressor

Sampling locations

Below ideal

Dissolved oxygen

Parameters screened

Why Nagpur

India's centre point, and its bellwether.

Nagpur sits at the geographic heart of India — and at the sharp end of its environmental future.

Extreme and rising heat

Summer peaks above 45 °C and a measurable urban heat island make Nagpur a frontline case for heat-resilience planning.

Lakes under pressure

Futala, Ambazari, Gandhisagar and Gorewada face recurring water-quality stress — a living laboratory for urban water monitoring.

A national policy stage

Nagpur is a National Clean Air Programme city; findings plug directly into municipal and national policy processes.

Scientific neighbourhood

Home to NEERI — the national environmental engineering institute — enabling reference-grade calibration and collaboration.

Nagpur · shared monitoring network

Schematic

Monitoring site Reference station Heat zone Lake

All programs

Research, tools, and citizen science.

Beyond the flagship, our programs share one design rule: low cost, high rigor, open by default.

Citizen science · Community

Nagpur Bird Census & Habitat Network

Fifty locally-built nest boxes, native fruit-bearing saplings, and school bird-watching kits seed an annual citizen bird census — turning neighbourhoods into long-term biodiversity monitoring sites.

Status Launch programOutput Annual census report

Citizen science · Water

Nagpur Lakes Watch

Portable TDS and pH kits placed with schools around Futala, Ambazari, and Gorewada lakes generate monthly water-quality readings, aggregated into an open public dashboard.

Status Launch programOutput Open dashboard

Open tools · Climate

GHG Emissions Calculator

A spreadsheet-based greenhouse-gas calculator for individuals and small organizations — emission factors, scope summaries, and reduction scenarios in a transparent, auditable format.

Status v2.1 releasedFormat Excel toolkit

Analysis · Global

Open Data Briefs

Short, source-linked analyses of global environmental indicators — the Keeling curve, mangrove loss, ENSO cycles, water risk — published through our live Resources hub.

Status OngoingHome Resources hub

How we build evidence

A low-cost, high-rigor toolkit.

Every study is designed so that any researcher, anywhere, could reproduce it — free data, open software, documented methods.

Satellites

Free EO archives

Landsat, Sentinel-2, Sentinel-5P TROPOMI, and MODIS — decades of open observation.

Cloud analysis

Google Earth Engine

Planetary-scale processing of thermal and atmospheric archives without local compute.

GIS & stats

QGIS · Python · R

Open-source mapping and statistics, including the openair package for AQ analysis.

Health modelling

WHO AirQ+

The WHO's standard tool for quantifying health burden attributable to air pollution.

Ground truth

Low-cost sensors

Portable monitors co-located against CPCB/NEERI reference stations before deployment.

QA / QC

Reported calibration

R², RMSE, and bias reported for every sensor — calibration is a hard requirement, not an option.

Public data

CPCB open archives

India's public air-quality records anchor trends and provide regulatory context.

Openness

Open methods & data

Datasets, code, and protocols released openly so findings can be checked and reused.

02studies

Flagship research studies in active field & calibration phases

25+sites

Planned monitoring locations across one shared city network

20yrs

Of free satellite archive feeding the heat-mapping study

100% open

Methods, code, and data published for reuse and scrutiny

Work with us

Bring this model to your city.

The Nagpur portfolio is designed to be replicated. If you're a municipality, university, school network, or funder, we'd like to talk.

Partner with CSF

Donation Section

Support our mission

The planet doesn't need promises. It needs proof.

We're funded by individuals, philanthropies, and institutions who believe in evidence-led environmental action. Every contribution funds research, fellowships, and frontline restoration.

Donate now → Partner with us

$25

Plants 10 native mangrove saplings on a restored coast

$100

Funds a community climate-literacy workshop

$500

Supports a Fellow’s week of field research

$1,000+

Endows an open-access research publication