Spatial Assessment of Land Use in Barak Valley, Assam Using Satellite Remote Sensing Data

Mapping the distribution of land use provides critical information for sustainable management of vegetation resources. In the present study an attempt has been made to identify the land use/land cover categories with special reference to tea plantations in Barak Valley, Assam. Mapping has been carried out using IRS P6 AWiFS data. Unsupervised digital classification technique was used for identification of major land use/land cover. The total area of tea plantations was found to be 28,594.3 ha which represents 4.2 % of the total geographical area. The overall classification accuracy was found to be 92.27 %. The study reveals that the AWiFS data has proved to be successful in extracting information of various land use/land cover categories. The spatial data generated in the study provides a key input for strategic management of land use including tea plantations.