Development of protected forest management information system and generation of spectral signatures for forest species using geospatial technologies

Abstract

Forest as a important renewable natural resource, playing a major role in country’s ecological stability and economic development. Current national forest policy 1988 in India aims at maintaining a minimum of 33% of country’s geographical area under forest and tree cover. In order to reach this goal, it is essential to establish a good pattern of forest resource management system so it can elaborate economic, ecological and social benefits of forest resource well. Geospatial technologies, Remote Sensing (RS), Geographic Information System (GIS), and Global Positioning System (GPS), generally called Three ‘S’ Systems and hyper spectral sensors with field inventory methods playing a major role in developing effective information system of forest management to realize the scientific management of forest resource. Keeping this in view, in present research work, developed a Protected Forest Management Information System using GIS, GPS, RS and hyper spectral technologies for Giddaluru forest division of Guntur circle. Protected forest is the term denoting forests accorded a certain degree of protection. The protected forest especially dedicated to the protection and maintenance of biological diversity and of natural and associated cultural resources, to protect wildlife, special ecosystems, soil and water resources etc., which will be used to support the planning, implementation and monitoring of multi-objective forest management activities and also has the ability to maintain current forest inventories and generate maps of spatially-oriented data to store and process forestry information and to provide managers and stakeholders with up-to-date information about their forest resources based upon forest surveys.