Nigam, Rajeev 
  
the region has been facing the shortage of fuel, fodder and timber with the coming of 
World Bank aided social forestry project in the state of Haryana, a large number of 
villages woodcuts and large scale plantations in farm forestry sector has taken place. The 
main objectives of this program is to meet the fuel and small timber requirements of the 
population, to develop forestry as a support to rural economy, to increase the production 
from forestry section and thus to optimize the use of land. Forests in Haryana are in very 
small patches or along the canals, roads, railway lines network. The estimates made in 
present study are close to the estimates available with Department of Forest, Govt. of 
Haryana, who has classified forests only as per administrative classification. The Satellite 
picture also included tree plantation on private lands and village community lands also . 
Awareness of rural masses for the trees and economic gains from the tree have 
encouraged the farmers to take up agro-forestry practices. In agro-forestry, crops are 
grown along with the trees. The trees have been planted either all along the farm 
boundaries or with in the fields. The most common tree species planted for this purpose 
are Eucalyptus and Populus. The cutting of Prosopis sp. is considered as anti-religious by 
the farmers. It is reared by farmers and is extensively grown in the farm lands pastures or 
other arable crops. Prosopis sp. has no effect on the crop yield and in arid region it 
enhances the yield of the crop growing near it by conserving moisture and nutrient. 
It is not easy to interpret and put the compartment boundary within the Saraswati 
plantations reserve forest areas by using IRS-1B LISS-II satellite data but the visual 
interpretation of the satellite data of the complete reserve forest areas has been done and 
their areas have been calculated respectively. But now, with the availibility of IRS 1C 
/1D data information on forest mapping and its application on vegetation index mapping, 
biomass estimation, preparation of forest stock maps, compartment boundaries etc. could 
be carried out by using merged product of LISS-III and PAN of the above IRS 1C/1D 
satellite data. Although, mapping on 1:50,000 scale are quite encouraging, but it is felt 
that full potential for mapping forest plantation in Haryana State can only be realised on 
1:25,000 scale using operational Satellite data of IRS-1C/1D. 
REFERENCES 
Champion, H.G. and Seth S.K. (1968) A revised survey of forest types of India. Govt. of 
India. Publication, New Delhi. 
Economic and Statistical Organisation (1997) Statistical Abstract of Haryana . 
Publication No. 568 Planning Department (Government of Haryana) 
Chandigarh. pp 811 
Forest Survey of India (FSI) (1995) Extent, Composition, Density growing stock and 
Annual Increment of India’s Forests. Ministry of Environment & Forests (Govt. 
of India) Dehradun (U.P) 
Forest Survey of India (FSI) (1996) The State of Forest report 1995. Ministry of 
Environment & Forests (Govt. of India), Dehradun (U.P) 
  
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International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXIII, Part B7. Amsterdam 2000.