Terrestrial Sciences

Fire regime over India was analysed using the MODIS fire record from 2003 to 2017.The analysis used AQUA MODIS daytime fires for the 2003 - 2017 time period. Only detections with a detection confidence of over 10% and flagged as forest by using the NRSC forest fraction layer were used in the analysis.

The status of global forest cover has large uncertainty for several continents on earth owing to the paucity of comprehensive studies related to long term forest cover change. The aim of the present work is to prepare a nation-wide multi-date forest cover database which describes and quantifies historical changes in forests of India.

Vegetation classification is a prerequisite for understanding carbon stocks, biodiversity, sustainable use of natural resources and global change. This study has classified forest types of India based on multi-season Resourcesat-2 Advanced Wide Field Sensor (AWiFS) data of 2013.