Abstract
The forests are the source for many essential requirements such as fuel wood, timber, raw materials for paper and above all, it helps us to maintain the CO2 /O2 balance in nature. Sustainable forest management requires reliable information. The aerial photographs and GIS data information can generate various scenarios for forest management plans at local, national and global scales. IKONOS is the world first one-meter resolution commercial imaging satellite. The interpretation of aerial photograph and satellite data are of great benefit for neighboring and regional land use, forest mapping, to find change detection and are effective for large are inventories, forest planning etc. In the present study, an attempt has been made to classify the FRI forest in to 11-forest cover and land use classes. The major chunk of forest consists of Pine forest, which occupy 94.04 ha and 143.20 ha of the total forest area during 1973 and 2001, respectively. It is followed by mixed forest with 53.31 ha (1973) and 5.50 ha (2001), and Teak with 17.68 ha (1973) and 8.49 ha (2001). The Sal forest showed an increase in forest cover from 4.83 ha (1973) to 5.39 ha (2001). Similarly Eucalyptus forest showed a forest cover of 1.84 ha in 2001, which was not seen in the year 1973. The constructions also showed an increase from 3.14 ha in 1973 to 24.68 ha in 2001 and in case of nursery and miscellaneous (scrub), there has been increasing in total forest cover. The IKONOS image of 2001 surprisingly showed no change in Champa forest cover. Decrease in forest cover of Teak, Sal and Mixed forest must have been due to felling of trees for logging purposes and their forest cover might have been replaced by scrub vegetation (miscellaneous) , construction, Eucalyptus plantation and nursery. The results of the present project showed changes in terms of area coverage by the forest types, which helps us to assess future prospects of the forestland use pattern.
