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Desertification and Land Degradation Status Mapping in Maharashtra

                                                     and Goa State
               Introduction

                       Land degradation, in general, implies temporary or permanent recession from a
               higher to a lower status of productivity through deterioration of physical, chemical and
               biological  aspects.  The  information  on  land  degradation  is  needed  for  a  variety  of
               purposes  like  planning  reclamation  programs,  rational  land  use  planning,  bringing
               additional areas into cultivation and to improve productivity levels in degraded lands. It
               has  both  environmental  and  economic  consequences.  The  land  degradation  problem
               has  reached  alarming  propositions  due  to  various  factors  like  over  exploitation  and
               mismanagement  of  natural  resources  and  basic  socio-  economic  factors  like  land
               shortage, inappropriate land use, severe economic pressures on farmers, poverty and
               population growth. The land degradation is an age-old problem, which is continuing in
               the present generation and continues in future also.
                       Though conventional soil surveys provide information on land degradation; they
               are  slow,  time  consuming  and  expensive.  Among  the  new  technologies  emerged  for
               studying  natural  resources,  space  borne  remote  sensing  technology  proved  to  be
               powerful,  because  of  synoptic  view  of  the  terrain  features,  repetitive  coverage  of  the
               same area at regular time intervals, collection of data in visible through near infra-red,
               thermal to microwave regions and amenability of data to computers for quick analysis.
               Remotely sensed data from satellites are being operationally used to derive information
               on degraded lands and monitor them periodically in time and space domain using multi
               temporal data.



               Objectives
                     •  To  map  the  desertification  status  of  Maharashtra  &  Goa  state  using  AWiFS
                        data of timeframe 2012-13 on 1:500,000 scale
                     •  To map the desertification status of selected vulnerable districts using LISS-III
                        data of 2012-13 and 2018-19 timeframe on 1:50,000 scale.
                     •  Desertification vulnerable modeling to prepare desertification vulnerability map
                        for one district each in M.S. and Goa.

                     •  Development of methodology for preparation of desertification combating plans
                        at larger scale for selected watersheds.
               Data Used

                     •  AWiFS data of 2012-13 timeframe
                     •  LISS-III data of 2012-13 and 2018-19 timeframe
                     •  High resolution data for selected watershed
                     •  Natural resources, climatic and socio-economic data for vulnerability modeling.



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