Saving Forest through Satellite Images

A success case study from Lumshnong, Meghalaya, India

by Hexagon Geospatial

About Lumshnong, Meghalaya, India

Known for its lush green forests

Rich in minerals such as limestone,

coal, shale, bauxite, and laterite

A natural hotbed for the cement

industry.

About the ProjectMeasuring Impacts of Industrial Growth on Forest Land through Remote Sensing in Lumshnong

Objectives of the Project

Map growth of cement industries

Quantify change in forest degradation

Monitor changes in land use for better decision

making

How Did Technology Aid?Implementation of Hexagon Geospatial technology for monitoring the growth of cement industries and the impact on forest land cover

Identified Key Geospatial RequirementsSatellite Data used IRS LISS III temporal satellite images

of the years 2005, 2009 and 2011

Products Used ERDAS IMAGINE®, tools with the

IMAGINE Expansion pack- DeltaCue and AutoSync

Functionality provided Geo-referencing, co- registration and

change detection

Technology Benefits – ERDAS IMAGINE

About the Software ERDAS IMAGINE - The World's

Leading Geospatial Data Authoring System

Provides tools for all Remote Sensing, Photogrammetry and GIS processing needs

Offers consolidated workflow, smarter processing and dynamic modeling

Benefits for the Project Used for image processing of

satellite data Supervised image classification

of study area Creating accurate forest and

land cover analysis

Technology Benefits – IMAGINE AutoSync

About the Extension IMAGINE AutoSync is part of

the IMAGINE Expansion pack available for ERDAS IMAGINE®

Provides Automatic Image registration for ERDAS IMAGINE® allowing users of all skill levels to generate data free of misalignment issues

Benefits for the Project Change detection process

requires tightly aligned images so that artifacts from poor image registration do not arise as a byproduct of processing

All images were geo-referenced through IMAGINE AutoSync module that is capable of pixel level co-registration of time- 1 and time-2 images.

Technology Benefits - IMAGINE DeltaCue

About the Extension IMAGINE DeltaCue is the

Change Detection Software available as an extension pack for ERDAS IMAGINE®

Simplifies the complexity of change detection process and helps both advanced and novice users

Benefits for the Project Automated image-to-image

normalisation process was implemented to ensure the mean and standard deviation of time-2 images match with the time-1 images

Primary colour difference in DeltaCue was used for change detection and redness difference algorithm was chosen for identifying land-use changes from forest land to deforested land.

Total Expansion of Cement Industrial Units between the years 2005 to 2011Benchmarking the cement manufacturing units as epicenters, buffer areas of 5 to 10 kilometers were considered as study

IRS LISS III temporal satellite images of the years 2005, 2009 and 2011 were usedSupervised classification on the study area was done to categorise forest and non-forest land, with the forest land sub-categorised by density levels – high density, medium density, and low density.

Hexagon Geospatial solutions helped classify forest land accurately, and observe changes in forest cover over the years due to expansion in the cement industrial units in Lumshnong

Customer FeedbackWhat North-Eastern Space Applications Centre (NESAC) has to say

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Looking for more information on monitoring forest cover through remote sensing?

Contact Hexagon GeospatialHexagon Geospatial, 2nd Floor, A 06 Infocity, Sector 34, Gurgaon 122002, Haryana, IndiaTel: +91 124 4633000Email: in-sales@hexagongeospatial.com

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