Land use and land cover changes detection using multi temporal satellite data Devikulam Taluk, Idukki district, Kerala

All exploit natural forest in unscientific way in search of profits and means of subsistence. Forest deterioration is a complex socio-economic, cultural and political event. An assessment of the forest deterioration is not an easy task. Much of the human induced deforestation and forest degradation is in varying degrees, economically wasteland and environmentally negative as well as socially undesirable. The area selected for the present study is Devikulam taluk of Idukki district in the State of Kerala. It is situated in Western Ghats, which is considered as one of the sixteen threatened ecolo§;ical locations in the world. The study area stretched between the latitudes of 9° 56′56" to 10 21′24" N and longitudes of 77° 48′ 31" to 77° 16′ 14" E covers an area of 1140.29 km² and is inhabited by 1, 85,103 persons (2001).This paper mainly focus on migration, plantation agriculture, tourism, construction of roads, and other physical infrastructure are the major causes of forest deterioration in the study area. These hills were not mentioned in the earlier records. The kings were considered the high land area was worthless (Ward 1817). More than a hundred and fifty years ago the scenery of the study area was entirely different from present. Toposheets, remote sensing, field sampling, and census data are used for analysis of the present study.