Monitoring Forest Health Using Geographical Information System Based Weighted Overlay Method in Sonaikushi Reserved Forest, Morigaon District, Assam, India
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55863/ijees.2024.3134Keywords:
NDVI, GNDVI, Soil adjusted vegetation index, NDMI, Spectral bandsAbstract
Degradation of forest is now a most prevalent global issue. Assessment and monitoring of forest health is considered to be an important aspect for protection and management of forest ecosystem. This study is aimed at evaluating forest health of Sonaikushi reserved forest, Morigaon District, Assam, India. In order to assess forest health of the reserved forest some remote sensing spectral indices namely Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), The Green Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (GNDVI), Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI) and Normalized Difference Moisture Index (NDMI) have been applied. For this purpose, two multi temporal satellite images have been taken. These maps are prepared using two different spectral bands in raster calculator function of ArcGIS software. The NDVI value ranges from 0.526 to -0.142 in 1992, 0.373-0.049 in 2022 while that of GNDVI value ranges from 0.489 to -0.155 in 1992 and 0.319-0.034 in 2022. SAVI value range in 1992 is 0.786 to -0.212 and 0.559-0.074 in 2022. NDMI value range in 1992 is 0.352 to -0.414 and 0.184 to -0.197 in 2022. Weighted overlay method was used for preparing forest health map where all the indices were overlayed in a single map on the basis of assigned weightage. The results show that unhealthy forest has decreased to -1.89 km2 (-3.71%) and moderately healthy forest has increased to 3.53 km2 (6.92%) during the period 1992-2022. Besides, highly healthy forest has increased to 1.18 km2 (2.32%). But, forest under very highly healthy category has been decreased to -2.82 km2 (-5.53%) from 1992-2022.
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