VEGETATION CHANGE STATISTICS FOR RAYALASEEMA FOREST AREA (INDIA) USING MULTI TEMPORAL OPTICAL SATELLITE DATA

Prior to 1996 there was no mechanism to monitor the Forest cover changes in Rayalaseema. However, these reports, which were brought out since 1987, did not provide the statistical information on the forest cover inside the notified forest which is under the control of forest Department and outside separately. The paper discusses land use and land cover change detection analysis with reference to forest encroachment Rayalaseema area of Andhra Pradesh state. Attentive selection of satellite imageries based on various attributes including radiometric resolution, spatial resolution, cloud free coverage and time lapse among others, is warranted for change detection analysis. This study mainly deals with the on-screen visual interpretation of multi-temporal remotely sensed images of Resourcesat-2 LISS III (23.5m) for the years 2009 to 2012 for studying forest cover change. The total notified forest area of notified forest area the State is 63,814 Km2 , which is 23.2 % of the geographical area Reserved. The state had 19601.14 Km of Dense forest & 2 2 22645.41 km open forest. This study successfully detected forest cover has increased by an area of 347.37ha i.e. 3.4737 KM2. It is found that waterbody area increased in 2012 by 1.16 ha compared to 2009 so due to waterbody construction lost 1.16 ha of forest in 2012.