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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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