Abstract

Forest is an important one among other natural resources but due to extreme poverty, the forests here are under the threat of deforestation. For sustainable utilisation of the forested ecosystems, it is essential to know the natural characteristics, extent and location, its quality, productivity, suitability and limitations of various land-uses. Land-use is the purpose for which human exploit the land cover. Forest resources are the important material foundation of national sustainable development and it needs to monitor the status and change of forest resources timely for reasonable exploitation of forests and its renewal. Application of remotely sensed data made possible to study the changes in land cover in less time, at low cost and with better accuracy in association with Geographical Information System (GIS) that provide suitable platform for data analysis, update and retrieval. Remote sensing techniques are particularly suited for providing reliable, up-to-date and comprehensive data on land-use/land-cover. The main focus of the paper is to assess the land use/ land cover (LULC) change in Jim Corbett National Park using remote sensing and Geographical information System (GIS). The impact was assessed using an information extraction method applied to IRS LISS III imagery in GIS domain. In this project ARC GIS 9.3 and Arc view 3.2a were used for GIS analysis and ERDAS Imagine 9.3 was used for image processing. This study highlights the state of forest cover of Jim Corbett National Park. In this study, using satellite imagery IRS LISS III data, Land Use Land Cover, Forest cover change (area wise) from 2000 to 2007 was done. Information on LULC changes give the overall perspective of the landscape characteristics and can be used for monitoring the changes in the forested areas & natural resources.