Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

DEGRADATION OF RESERVED/PROTECTED FORESTS IN DISTRICT PATIALA (PUNJAB) A VEGETATION CHANGE DETECTION STUDY USING REMOTE SENSIING TECHNOLOGY

S.S. Dhaliwal, P.K. Litoria, Charanjit Singh and P.K. Sharma

Abstract

The vegetation survey and mapping of degraded forests in Patiala district was carried out using Survey of India topographical maps of 1968 and visual interpretation of multidate Remote Sensing data of I 991 and 1993 on 1: 50,000 scale to generate forest cover maps. The transformation of close forest to degraded forest is quite conspicuous in Nabha and Patiala tehsils where area of degraded forests had increased from 0.33 to 25.24 per cent and 10.22 to 30.09 per cent respectively. The degraded forest area increased from approximately 479.54 ha (1968) to 1569.75 ha (1993) in the district.