ASSESSMENT OF SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL CHANGES IN FOREST USING GIS AND REMOTE SENSING TECHNIQUES: A CASE STUDY OF SANGMESHWAR TALUKA, MAHARASHTRA, INDIA

Abstract

The present study has been conducted to assess the spatial and temporal changes in forest cover of Sangmeshwar taluka in Maharashtra. The temporal satellite images 1989, 1999 and 2009 have been obtained from the USGS and Bhuvan. The supervised image classification method has been followed for the identification of the existing forest cover and temporal changes their in. The result of analysis shows that, spatial covers of forest in the study have been increased slightly but the areas of dense forest have been decreased while scrubs and sparse forest have been increased. The result of temporal changes depicts that, the transformation of dense forest to scrubs and sparse forest is high during the decade 1999 to 2009 than 1989 to 1999.
KEY WORDS: Forest Cover Change, Remote Sensing, Temporal Analysis, Image Classification