Vegetation and Land Cover Mapping of Nagarjunasagar-Srisailam Tiger Reserve, Andhra Pradesh, India using Remote Sensing and GIS

Mapping of vegetation and land cover is important for managing natural resources. Remote sensing plays a vital role in mapping of existing land resources information at a particular period. The study area Nagarjunasagar-Srisailam Tiger Reserve (NSTR) is the largest tiger reserve of India, situated in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Multi-season IRS P6 AWiFS data of 2010 was used to map the vegetation types and other land cover. Of the digital classification techniques, supervised classification and maximum likelihood algorithm were used in the study. Results indicate the forest cover as 2653.9 km² and which is proportionately 61% of the total geographic area of NSTR. The interpretation of images and GIS analysis indicates that the open dry deciduous forest is the most dominant vegetation type comprising 52.5% (1394.3 km²) of the total forest stock in 2010. The present study is helpful in assessing and quantifying the land cover of NSTR and this information can be used for monitoring status of forests.