Coastal Vegetation Change Detection Using Remote Sensing Approach

The coastal zone represents varied and highly productive ecosystems such as mangroves, coral reefs, sea grasses and sand dunes. However, as a result of globalization, anthropological activities have increased on the coastal areas putting these ecosystems under high pressure. This, in turn, has lead to the loss of valuable vegetation along the coastal areas of the world. This study was taken up to detect the change occurring in coastal vegetation of Daman district of India. Daman is one of the Union territories of India which have shown a good development in recent years. As a result, area under the mangrove vegetation has changed at and near the coast of the district. Remote sensing approach was utilized in this study to detect the changes occurred in the vegetation between the years 2016 to 2021. Landsat ETM+ data was used to derive NDVI images of the study period using ERDAS imagine 2014. Field work covering the entire study area was carried out for classifying and accuracy assessment of the vegetation categories, i.e. no vegetation, low vegetation, moderate vegetation and dense vegetation. Vegetation maps for both the years were prepared using ArcGIS software. Results indicated that area under the no vegetation decreased during the study period whereas rest all categories, i.e. low vegetation, moderate vegetation and dense vegetation showed increase. The increase in the vegetation can be attributed to efforts taken up by the Daman official authorities for conserving the coastal areas. This will lead to enhanced ecosystem services provided by these ecosystems.