Coconut area mapping and change detection analysis of coconut growing areas of Coimbatore and Tirupur istricts of Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract

Coconut, an important perennial tree largely grown in Tamil Nadu to the extent of 4.61 lakh hectares. Inthis study, attempt has been made to create a spatial data base on spatial changes of coconut acreage inCoimbatore and Tiruppur districts of Tamil Nadu. The methodology involves digital classification of satelliteimage and identifying coconut plantations and creation of spatial database of coconut area in Coimbatoreand Tiruppur districts for the period 2019 and compare the same with 2013 data. Total area of coconutunder Coimbatore and Tiruppur was found to be 80,065 and 58,357 ha respectively. A comparison betweenarea obtained from this study and the area statistics released by Coconut Development Board data wasdone using paired t-test and the p-value was 0.005, which showed that there was no significant differencebetween the two data and the RMSE value was also found to be low, which indicated that this methodologycan be adopted for mapping the coconut area. Change detection analysis showed that the area decreased in Coimbatore to the tune of 5.4 per cent, whereas there was not much change in Tiruppur district and reduction in area was only 0.2 per cent. The accuracy was worked out by comparing the assessment based on the Remote sensing data and the government estimates which showed a difference of 9.54 per cent indicating the accuracy of 90.46 per cent.