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Before starting interpretation of band five and false colour
prints of the imagery on 1:250.000 scale, the structure and
composition of the forests were studied on the ground and on
1:40.000 (in case of Mahaderpur forests) and on 1:10.000 (in
case of Gudem forests) scale panchromatic, black and white
aerial photographs. The forests of the areas of study fall under
"southern tropical dry deciduous forests" (5A). Two types of
forests occur.
(i) Southern tropical dry deciduous forests:
Crop height of this type varies from 15-20 metres and the
top storey consists of Tectona grandis (Teak) and about
15 other miscellaneous species as its associates. The under-
storey also consists of nearly 20 miscellaneous species.
(ii) Thorn and Scuch forests:
The forests show the effect of adverse soil and climatic
conditions. The forests are of quite inferior quality and
height growth in generally upto 5 metres and with low
density (10%).
Landuse and forest type classification was done on the aerial
photographs. The landuse classes were cultivation, water bodies
and forests. The forests were classified as productive and non
productive. Productive forests were further classified into
(1) natural forests and (ii) artificial forests (plantations).
The natural forests were stratified with respect to three,
five metres height classes (5-10, 10-15 and over 15 metres),
five 20% density classes (5-20%, 20-40%, 40-60%, 60-80% and
over 80%) and three species classes (i) Teak type one having
more than 20% and less than 50% teak (ii) Teak type two having
teak more than 50%, (iii) miscellaneous type.
All information pertaining to the growing stock was collected
on the ground and the field checking of photo-interpretation
was also made side by side. The final landuse and forest type
maps were prepared on 1:25.000 scale.
Visual interpretation of the imagery on 1:250.000 scale was
carried out taking into consideration the general texture and
four different shades of grey observed on the imagery. Habitations
and cultivations, teak type two, teak type one and miscellaneous
forests were interpreted having been registered in whitish grey,
light grey, grey and dark grey tones respectively. The shades
observed on false colour imagery for the above vegetation types
were yellowish brown, light brown, brown and dark brown. The
land use and vegetation type maps according to the above types
deliniated were drawn. The photomaps on 1:25.000 were also
reduced to 1:250.000 for the sake of comparison.
The total project area and the areas under different cover types
and cultivation were estimated by dot grid (25 dots/cm2) on the
maps. With the object of detecting the spots of disagreement among
the different strata on the photo-interpretation maps and landsat
imagery interpretation maps, the imagery maps were super imposed
over the photo maps and the areas of differences were traced in
the dotted lines.