MAPPING FOREST COVER AND DEFORESTATION USING LANDSAT-8 EARTH OBSERVATION TIME SERIES SATELLITE DATA – A CASE STUDY OF CENTRAL INDIA

Nowadays, remotely sensed data are continuously used for different purposes in various applications. Due to rapid deforestation, change in land use/land cover (LULC), intensive agriculture and urbanization have major impacts on desertification in many districts of few states such Haryana, Rajasthan, and Punjab etc. of India. This problem is not limited to only in India but world is also facing similar problem from last four decades. The objective was to understand the dynamics of forest cover through remotely sensed imagery and change detection analysis method. We have selected Landsat sensor ETM+ & OLI data. The GIS platform was used to analyze output of remote sensing data. The isodata classification approach is used to monitor forest cover and deforestation. We separately classified each year satellite images and then combined to see the changes occurred in study area. We detect the deforestation is happened in foot slopes of hills due to human intervention and natural calamities (erosion process).