Sustainable Forest Management for Hiriyur Taluk of Karnataka State, India through Geospatial Mapping

Abstract: Forest is one among the major resources that takes crucial role in sustaining ecological equilibrium and environmental system that earned great importance in national and international level policies implementations. Forests are the large area dominated by medicinal plants, timber, agricultural implements, carts & accessories, aromatic, oil yielding, fodder, dye, resin, flavoring agents, vegetables, pulses, fruits, and others products. Hiriyur forest lands are classified into dense & open deciduous, forest plantations and scrub forests zones that are mapped and digitized by Survey of India topomaps (1975 & 2009); IRS LISS-III (2001 & 2005) and Sentineal-2A satellite images (2019) in ArcGIS software. Satellite images portray meaningful and valuable data in identifying the changes and real factors of forest degradation. Supervised classification techniques using maximum likelihood algorithm are considered to achieve best results as final output maps. Geospatial approach is a powerful tool in adding immense value for governance policies, empower sustainable development goals, serve in better business-action plans by timely observation of forest resources and its sustainability.

Keywords: Forest management; Change Detection Analysis; Hiriyur; Geospatial mapping.