IRS-1C Applications in Land Use/Land Cover Studies: Indian Experience

The Indian experience, in use of remotely sensed data for land use/land cover analysis, gained over past many years through the implementation of various projects. The satellite IRS-1C which was launched on December 28th, 1995 provided a new dimension to the mapping capability of land use/land cover analysis on various scales. Based on different studies, it is concluded that WiFS data can be used for level-I classification for national and regional level applications, whereas LISS-III alone can be use up to level-III for subregional scale and a combination of LISS-III and PAN data can be used for village-level information. IRS-lC data have been extremely useful in the generation of district-wise land used and cover maps, depicting the information up to level-II on 1:250,000 scale for land use planning and National Wasteland Inventory Project. A systematic study was carried out to identify and map 13 different types of wastelands on 1:50,000 scale up to village and micro-watershed level for some districts using IRS 1C data. A digital data with standard codification system in four different spatial layers were generated for the entire country, and about 63.85 million ha have been estimated as wastelands through this study. Various watershed programs are being implemented in the country consulting this database. A successor to this project “Monitoring of Wastelands,” which aim at reporting the changes in wastelands statistics in India, considering various developmental programs launched by Govt. of India since early 1990 has been implemented using IRS 1C data.