Abstract
Assessment of area under agroforestry in Tehri district of North Western Himalaya, Uttarakhand, India has been done using GIS and remote sensing technology. The study district characterized by hilly terrain with varying elevations from 288 m to more than 2800 m and generally gentle slopes, valleys, flat land covers and agricultural terraces. High-resolution satellite imageries (spatial resolution 5.8 m) were used in this study for land uses and land covers classification. According to unsupervised classification, highest area was found under forest class (65.22%) followed by cropland (20.41%). Considerable area was also found under snow cover (9.45%) in the district. Area under agroforestry was estimated to be 5572.26 ha (1.53%) by this method, whereas it was estimated to be 7029.06 ha (1.93%) by supervised classification. Estimated cropland area comes out to be about 20.0%. An accuracy of 86.5% was found in this classification for agroforestry class. Highest area under agroforestry of 3707.36 ha was obtained in 1200–2000 m elevations followed by 2231.26 ha in 288–1200 m elevations. Negligible area was found on high elevation zones of more than 2800 m. The major agroforestry systems of dominated by Grewia oppositifolia (Bhimal), Celtis australis (Kharik) and Quercus leucotrichophora (Banj) were identified and mapped and remaining systems were grouped as others class. Estimated area under G. oppositifolia, C. australis and Q. leucotrichophora based systems come out to be 2330.82, 1456.80 and 1129.10 ha, respectively. These systems are multiple usufructs are food, fuelwood, fodder, fiber and small timber. It has been observed from the accuracy assessment that the estimates of area under agroforestry obtained under this study are reliable.
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Acknowledgements
First author thanks to University Grant Commission, New Delhi for providing Rajiv Gandhi National Fellowship (Grant No. RGNF-2012-13-SC-BIH-30641). We are also thanks to Director ICAR-Central Agroforestry Research Institute, Jhansi who provided GIS laboratory facilities for interpretations and analysis of data. Authors are also thankful to Prof. N.P.Todaria, Head Department of Forestry and NR, HNB Garhwal University, Srinagar Garhwal, Uttarakhand for their encouragement and guidance during the course of present work. The authors are very thankful to the reviewers of this paper for their valuable comments which has enhanced the quality of the paper (Grant No. RGNF - 2012-13-SC - BIH - 30641).
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Vikrant, K.K., Chauhan, D.S., Rizvi, R.H. et al. Mapping the Extent of Agroforestry Area in Different Altitudes of Tehri District, North Western Himalaya, India Through GIS and Remote Sensing Data. J Indian Soc Remote Sens 46, 1471–1480 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12524-018-0792-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12524-018-0792-0