Abstract
The studies on forest cover change can reveal the status of forests and facilitate for its conservation planning. Idukki is the largest district in the state of Kerala having a total geographical area of 5019 km2. The objectives of the present study are to map forest cover in Idukki district using multi-temporal remote sensing data (1975, 1990, 2001 and 2012) and topographical maps (1925), to analyze the trends in deforestation and land use changes. Overall statistics for the period of 1925 indicate that about 4675.7 km2 (93.2 %) of the landscape was under forest. The forest cover in 2012 was estimated as 2613.4 km2 (52.1 %). Recently, due to the implementation of policies and protection efforts, the rate of deforestation was greatly reduced. The commencement of hydroelectric projects during 1925–1990 responsible for an increase of area under water bodies by inundating other land uses. The long term analysis shows agricultural area been decreasing and commercial plantations been increasing in the district. There has been a significant increase in the area of plantations from 1236.2 km2 (1975) to 1317.3 km2 (2012).
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Acknowledgments
The authors are thankful to Dr. V.K. Dadhwal, Director, NRSC and Dr. C.S. Jha, Group Director, Forestry & Ecology Group, NRSC for facilities and encouragement. The present work has been carried out as part of ISRO’s National Carbon Project. The authors are grateful to ISRO-DOS Geosphere Biosphere Programme for financial support.
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Ramachandran, R.M., Reddy, C.S. Monitoring of deforestation and land use changes (1925–2012) in Idukki district, Kerala, India using remote sensing and GIS. J Indian Soc Remote Sens 45, 163–170 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12524-015-0521-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12524-015-0521-x