IIIT Hyderabad Publications |
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Assessing forest canopy closure in a geospatial medium to address management concerns for Tropical IslandsSouth East AsiaAuthors: Rama Chandra Prasad, K S Rajan Conference: Environmental Monitoring and Assessment DOI 10.1007/s10661-008-0717-4 Date: 2009-04-24 Report no: IIIT/TR/2009/80 AbstractThe present study outlines an approach to classify forest density and to estimate canopy closure of the forest of the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago. The vector layers generated for the study area using satellite data was validated with the field knowledge of the surveyed ground control points. The methodology adopted in this present analysis is three-tiered. First, the density stratification into five zones using visual interpretation for the complete archipelago. In the second step, we identified two island groups from the Andaman to investigate and compare the forest strata density. The third and final step involved more of a localized phyto-sociological module that focused on the North Andaman Islands. The results based on the analysis of the high resolution satellite data, shows that more than 75% of the mangroves are under high to very high-density canopy class. The framework developed would serve as a significant measure to forest health and evaluate management concerns, while addressing issues such as gap identification, conservation prioritization and disaster management - principally to the post-Tsunami assessment and analysis. Full paper: pdf Centre for Spatial Informatics |
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