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4.2 Protected Areas 
For more than two decades, attempts to protect 
wildlife and wildlife habitats in India have been pursued 
by setting up national parks and sanctuaries. In these 
protected areas, however, human activities such as 
animal grazing and forest produce collection are banned 
or severely restricted, even though people may have 
lived in and conserved the areas for generations. Ensuing 
conflicts, particularly when combined with industrial 
pressures on the areas, have spurred many conservation 
ists, social activists and forest officials to reconsider on 
national and local levels the artificial divide between 
conservation and human rights. A proper management 
plan prepared for the village locals to satisfy their socio 
economic needs is possible by using remote sensing 
data. 
The protected areas become totally isolated from 
the surroundings resulting in ‘islands’. Remote sensing 
images are utilized to study all the characteristics of 
‘island’ and the balance between linkage from outside 
the island and configuration within it. Hence the 
identification and study of the protected areas in general 
provide us with ‘design principles’ that can be used in 
the planning of‘nature reserves’. The habitat maps can 
be used in GIS to analyse for suitability of particular 
wild life (Roy et al., 1995). 
4.2.1 Forest Fires 
forests. Prioritisation of fire risk zones is a practical 
concept and an aid to fire management and planning 
(Fig. 5). Such an approach provides information on fire 
prone areas and helps in predicting forest tire. Forest 
managers can make use of this information to create to 
construct watch towers or fire lines. Satellite remote 
sensing can provide valuable information to identify and 
detect of forest fire. Optical remote sensing is unable to 
map forest fire damage below the smoke of the fire. The 
temporal resolution in presently available satellites does 
not provide capability to provide information to combat 
forest fire. However, thermal data of NOAA-AVF1RR 
are being used to map hot pixels on daily basis. 
European Commission is compiling this 
information as a part of global biomass burning 
monitoring mission. New initiative with higher spatial 
resolution and eight bit thermal imaging is planned by 
German Aerospace Agency (DLR). A simplistic model 
has been used to identify the fire risk zones in 
Ranthambore National Park. The weightage criteria of 
the diverse factors affecting the beginning and spreading 
of a forest fire dictated the use of a geospatial approach. 
Satellite Remote Sensing images provide a quick 
evaluation of vegetation status and use of GIS made it 
possible to combine six variables, (fire encouraging/five 
suppressive) in order to prioritise the fire prone areas in 
Ranthambore National Park (Fig. 6). 
Forest fires are recurrent problems in Indian 
Fig. 5. Approach for Fire Risk Modelling using Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System.