Remote Sensing Satellite Image Analysis for Deforestation in Yavatmal District, Maharashtra, India

Forests are the most important and essential natural resources used by mankind for various usage. Loss of these forests has emerged as a major environmental concern in recent years. But for the purpose of development, many forests are being cut resulting in deforestation. Due to this cutting of forests, deforestation rate is increasing day by day and the world is facing severe disasters. Therefore, this continuous clearing of forests has a major degraded impact on the soil quality, climate change, hydrological cycle and ecosystem etc. This paper suggests suitable remote sensing techniques which can be used for the analyses of planet scope 3m resolution satellite data of Yavatmal district of Maharashtra state. Remote sensing techniques along with the GIS i.e. geographic information system are used to detect the changes in forest cover of Yavatmal district. For recognition of forest cover, layer stacking of bands 3 and 4 by using Erdas Imagine software is done. For forest classification, the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) is experimented. The NDVI values reveal the change of forest cover and various other categories resulting in increase and decrease of categories. It is concluded that out of total forest area (76740.32 hectare), decreased category shows 29.44% due to forest cutting, forest fires and leaf shedding etc.