Monitoring land cover change is the most important step in decision making
for local or government agencies. Specially for a forest recovery program,
understanding of the past scenario of land cover is very essential. It is also
very important to understand the past scenario of the land cover for
identification of areas for afforestation programs in the country. In this study
we have tried to understand the land cover trend before the start of 21st
century. IRS LISS-I image of 1989 is the oldest high resolution imagery
available, therefore land cover change from 1989. IRS LISS-II imageries for
1993 and 1997 were used by taking into account four year time interval. The
imageries were digitally classified and compared to obtain the land cover
change statistics. The exact areas were also identified by overlaying the
classified imageries. It is observed that an area of about 23790 Ha out of
78721 Ha dense forest in the year 1989 was converted to other land cover
category by 1997, which means about 27% of dense forest area was reduced
to 19% by 1997. An increase in the built up class was also observed from
1000 Ha in 1989 to about 2074 Ha in 1997. This study has established that a
major portion of the forested land were already degraded even before
stringent forest Act came into existence. The land cover change pattern also
helps in predicting the future land cover trends
