Remote sensing & Geo-informatics technology in evaluation of forest tree diversity

Plant diversity encompasses several community attributes. Preservation of plant diversity and understanding its status is therefore imperative. Evaluations of Indices such as Shannon-Weiner, Margalef and others are local measures. Scaling them at larger scale is subtle. However, as tools for sustainable management the inclusion of Remote sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies has provided a means to characterize such estimations on wider scale. An attempt not only to evaluate different indices but also to interpolate one of such index on larger area using RS-GIS tool has been made in this paper. Village wise spatial display of diversity indices generated can serve as a good input for forest planners. In addition, the species diversity map generated using kriging method proved useful in understanding the diversity status on a wider scale. Accuracy testing showed the outputs generated to be 65-75% accurate at 85% confidence level.

Author(s): G. Sandhya Kiran and Ashwini Mudaliar

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