Accelerating its efforts to save forest lands from encroachments, the State Government has decided to utilise satellite imagery for continuously monitoring the forest cover.
The State has accordingly roped in the National Remote Sensing Agency for providing high resolution satellite images to enable it to keep a tab on encroachments, if any, in the forest areas. The NRSA with its set of satellites will regularly monitor the forest cover and report to the State Government any negative change (decline in the cover on account of encroachments and other reasons).
“Images with resolution of 1:5,000 will enable use to capture the situation at actionable intervals. This will in turn help the State Government to book cases at the earliest and ensure that there is no loss in the forest cover,” a senior Forest Department official told The Hindu.
The State has been depending on the biennial reports of the Forest Survey of India that provide details of change in the vegetation cover State-wise till recently, but two years is too long a period in view of the utmost priority accorded for preservation of forest cover by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao. Accordingly, the project has been taken up on experimental basis in Bhadradri-Kothagudem and Bhupalpally districts, known for vast extent of forest lands.
“The first report relating to the changes, if any, will come out after continuous observation for two to three months so that necessary action can be initiated in case of violations,” the official said. Based on the results of the pilot project, the Government will extend the project to all districts with forest cover subsequently. Though the department initially explored options for deploying high resolution satellite imagery with 1m resolution available, it was decided against these technologies owing to “lot of costs” involved in it.
The government had decided to rope in the NRSA as it had satellites that too had capabilities of giving out high resolution images.