Monitoring land use, species composition and diversity of moist tropical environ in Achanakmaar Amarkantak Biosphere reserve, India using satellite data

The purpose of this study was to monitoring the land use, species composition and diversity in the Achanakmaar Amarkantak Biosphere Reserve of India with the conjunctive use of Resourcesat 2A satellite data via maximum likelihood algorithm. Later, the variations in structure and diversity in different forest types were quantified by adopting quadratic sampling procedures. Eight land cover types viz. Dense mixed forest, Sal mixed forest, Open mixed forest, Teak plantation, Bamboo Brakes, Agriculture, Habitation and Water bodies were delineated. The classification accuracy for different land use classes ranged from 76.69-99.07 per cent. The highest accuracy was observed in water bodies and grassland followed by Habitation & Agriculture, Teak plantation, Open mixed forest, Bamboo brake and Dense mixed forest. The accuracy was poor in Sal mixed forest. Results revealed that density of different forest types varied from 424 to 952 trees ha -1 , basal area from 8.33 to 29.93m 2 ha -1 and number of species from 11 to 29. Similarly, the diversity ranged from 0.67 to 2.34, concentration of dominance from 0.09 to 0.75, species richness from 5.31 to 12.54 and beta diversity from 1.20 to 1.72. Sal mixed forest type recorded highest basal area and diversity was highest in Dense mixed forest, while Teak plantation recorded maximum density. It was poor in Open mixed forests. The study also showed that NDVI was strongly correlated to Shannon Index and species richness thus it indicates that the diversity of forest type play a vital role in carbon accumulation. The study also developed reliable regression model for dry tropical forests by using NDVI and different vegetation indices, which can be derived from Resourcesat 2A satellite data.