Assessment of Land Use and Land Cover Changes: Impact of Common Land Development

Imageries of Remote Sensing (RS) satellites provide data on the temporal and spatial status  of  natural  resources.  Repetitive  coverage  helps  in  understanding  various changing  physical  processes  in  a  particular  area  as  also  in  monitoring  closely,  the changes taking place across different areas.  The availability of data at different spatial resolutions (as coarse as 1 km or as fine as 1 m) provides the means of observing the land simultaneously at  micro as well as macro levels.

FES used satellite imageries to assess the quantitative changes that have taken place in its project areas due to the interventions of the communities in the protection and conservation  of  their  natural  resources.    A  similar  exercise  was  undertaken  in  2003 using  the  satellite imageries  of  the  project  locations  of  both  -  before  (1996/98)  and after (2002) the project intervention period. The same analysis has been extended in this  study  using  imageries  of  the  year  2006.  The  results,  though  not  100%  accurate,are fairly reliable.