A Geo-spatial approach for quantifying rooftop photovoltaic energy potential in Karnal smart city, Haryana - A case study

Solar energy is one of the best sustainable forms of renewable energy. India has a cumulative installed capacity of 9.23 GW of grid-connected solar power and set an ambitious target of attaining 100 GW of solar capacity by 2022, including 40 GW of grid-connected rooftop solar installations well. The present study demonstrates the Geospatial technology to estimate the potential of solar photovoltaic on the rooftops of Karnal city. The satellite data of Sentinel -2 and World View-II data was interpreted so as to extract the building footprints.  Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data derived from ALOS (Advanced Land Observing Satellite) PALSAR (2019) data was used to calculate the Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI). It was calculated that the average annual GHI varied between 0.79-5.9 kWh/m2/day. The study revealed maximum GHI (462 kWh/m2) was recorded during the monsoon season. It was estimated that the seasonal energy generation capacity in urban area was minimum (268.4MWh) in the winter season, while the maximum (2632.4MWh) energy generation capacity was observed during the monsoon season. In the case of the industrial area, the minimum seasonal energy generation capacity was found to be 23.9 MWh in winter while the maximum of 234.8 MWh during the monsoon season. If solar panels installed on the proposed rooftops, an estimated energy potential of 5.9 GWh would be generated in the study area

MONITORING THE SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF DEGRADED LANDS IN SIRSA DISTRICT

In this paper, study on monitoring of kind, extent and degree of severity of degraded lands was conducted in Sirsa district (29.53° N 75.02° E) of north western Haryana with the help of geo-spatial techniques. Efforts have been made to identify and map the degraded lands of the district on 1 : 50.000 scale using LANDSAT TM (1995) and IRS LISS-III (1A/B FCC; 2005–06 and 2015–16) satellite imagery. The area under various degraded land categories was computed for different seasons which reveal that wind erosion was major cause of soil degradation problem in the district since 1995. The area under degradation due to wind erosion was followed by water logging, anthropogenic activities and salinisation. Although the area occupied by anthropogenic activities was found to be low but their impact on environment is long term than naturally degraded soils. A significant decline is observed in all the degradation classes (except brick kilns) in successive years but however, water logging (permanent) shows increasing trend in 2005–06 and then decline in 2015–16. The reasons have been sorted out to explain the changing dynamics of degradation. The district was found to be degraded by various categories of land degradation subjected to slight to moderate degradation. The degraded lands have shown sharp decline from 28.4% in 1995 to 6.22% in 2015–16 of total geographical area of the district

MAPPING OF STRIP FOREST IN ADAMPUR RANGE (HARYANA) A GEO-INFORMATICS APPROACH

Haryana state is an intensively cultivated state, and deficient in natural forests. One of the mandate of Haryana Forest Department (HFD) is to afforest for maintenance of environmental stability and restoration of ecological balance affected by serious depletion of forests, woodlands and water, and to increase tree cover in the state. National Forest Policy (1988) has set a goal to bring one third of Country’s area under forest and tree cover. Stock and dynamics of Trees Outside Forests (TOF) along with natural forests need to be understood holistically to appreciate the ecosystem services e.g., timber and non-wood products as tangible benefits along with services like carbon, water and weather moderation. The present study has attempted to demonstrate the utility of High Resolution Worldview-II (WV) satellite data (ortho rectified) that offeres immense scope to analyze the strip forests in Hisar district (Haryana, India). The study area Adampur Range (Hisar District) lies between the north latitudes 29°0′52.229″ to 29°25′6.746″ and east longitudes 75°14′0.266″ to 75°45′11.093″ with a total geographical area of about 1092.04 sq. km. The adopted methodology involves onscreen digitization of the strip forest areas in the Adampur range (Hisar Distirct). The ToF formation identification and delineation includes the forest land besides roads, river, streams, canals, distributaries and railway lines etc. The shape files were converted into .kml files and overlaid on the Google Earth data for validation. An attempt has been made to compare the area difference between the Haryana Forest Department (HFD) notification details with that of the digitized strip forest lands. It was observed that the surveyed forest area is found to be 1717.37 ha. against the notified forest area of 1714.45 ha. showing a difference of 2.92 ha. approximately in the studied beat boundaries

FOREST CANOPY DENSITY ASSESSMENT USING HIGH RESOLUTION LISS-4 DATA IN YAMUNANAGAR DISTRICT, HARYANA

Forest plays an important role not only in providing ecological services but also economic goods to human beings. However, with increase in population there is a wide gap between demand and supply of these goods and services. This has lead to reduction in forest cover which needs to be taken care on regular time interval. To manage the existing forest area and also to increase the forest cover Forest Canopy Density (FCD) methodology is the main factor which was given by International Tropical timber Organization (ITTO). High resolution remote sensing LISS-4 data gives us chance to assess the quality of forest in terms of FCD as Rikimaru et al (1999) stated that FCD is one important parameter to assess forest cover quality. High resolution LISS-4 data analysis for FCD was never attempted before. Authors here attempted to assess the FCD utilizing methodology adopted by Rikimaru (1999), Huang (2001), Azizia (2008). The adopted methodology is one of the most efficient and cost effective way to derive the FCD. For this study Resourcesat-2 LISS-4 post monsoon data of year 2017 for Yamunanagar district was used to assess FCD within notified forest boundary. Notified forest boundaries at cadastral level prepared previously by Haryana Space Applications Centre (HARSAC) was used. The degree of forest canopy density is expressed in percentages: i.e. < 10% FCD (scrub land), 10–20% (Open Forest-I), 20–40% (Open Forest-II), 40–60% (Moderate Dense), 60–80% (Medium Dense) and > 80% (Highly Dense). Forest Canopy Density was based on three indices i.e. Advanced Vegetation Index (AVI), Bare Soil Index (BSI) and Canopy Shadow Index (CSI). Accuracy assessment was done based on ground data and comparison with Coterminous Google Earth imagery and it was found that the devised methodology has achieved overall accuracy of 93% with kappa coefficient of 0.9153. The result shows that maximum forest area in Yamunanagar district is in medium dense FCD category which is approximately 23948.08 acres. This study tells us that 24.2% of the total forest area is under scrub land and open forest which should be focussed for activities in working plan to increase the forest cover. This paper highlights the utility of high resolution satellite data for monitoring and management of forest and improvement in its quality. This attempt provided large scale (1 : 10,000) maps to the forest managers to better equip them in planning for afforestation, reforestation and rehabilitation of water logged areas, environment management and their future aspect