STM Journals Peer-reviewed research from Consortium e-Learning Network

Journal of Image Processing & Pattern Recognition Progress

NDVI An Indicator of Forest Cover Change Detection: A Geospatial Study on Chunati Forest Beat Areas, Chittagong, Bangladesh

  1. Biswajit Nath

Abstract

Chunati Forest Beat Areas (CFBA) consisting of seven reserved forest (RF) blocks/beats of hill forests is located in the countries south-eastern region is facing deforestation problem due to extensive logging and encroachment. Geospatial technology in combination with Remote Sensing and Geographical Information System (GIS) can be used to assess the change of vegetation cover of Chunati Forest Areas. For this study, false color composite of band 4, 3, and 2 was applied for the Multispectral Landsat imageries (TM) of the year 1989, 2001, and 2010. NDVI was performed in the total forest beat areas (11567.79 hectare) to detect percentage areas of vegetation cover change. Three different time periods NDVI maps were generated and quantitative data were classified using ERDAS Imagine and ArcGIS 10v software respectively. Afterwards NDVI derived maps of 1989 and 2010 were crossed to generate the overall change detection map. This study reveals that vegetation cover of the CFBA has changed significantly during 1989–2010. The main change observed for the time period of 2001–2010 was that the hills with highly dense forest is in decrease state (48.62%) and moderate forest is some decrease (42.85%). The Forest Beat areas need special protection because forest cover is decreasing and some decreasing at the rate of 2.31% and 2.04% per year respectively. Cite this ArticleNath B. NDVI. An Indicator of Forest Cover Change Detection: A Geospatial Study on Chunati Forest Beat Areas, Chittagong, Bangladesh. Journal of Image Processing & Pattern Recognition Progress. 2015; 2(1): 5–18p.

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