MAPPING AND CHANGE DETECTION OF MANGROVES AROUND MUMBAI USING REMOTE SENSING AND GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS (GIS)

Abstract

The study focuses on the mangroves in two districts namely, Mumbai and Mumbai Suburban. Mumbai, a coastal megacity, is a financial capital of the country with high population density. Mumbai is facing depletion of coastal resources due to land scarcity and large developmental projects. Thus, it is important to monitor these resources accurately and protect the stakeholders’ interest. Cloud-free satellite images of IRS P6 LISS III of 2004 and 2013 were procured from National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), Hyderabad. Two bands of visible and one band of NIR were utilized for landcover classification. Supervised Classification with Maximum Likelihood Estimator was used for the classification. The images were classified into various landcovers classes namely, Dense Mangroves, Sparse Mangroves and Others. Two software’s namely, ERDAS Imagine and GRAM++ were used for landcover classification and change detection analysis. It was observed that the total mangrove area in Mumbai in 2004 and 2013 was 50.52 square kilometers and 48.7 square kilometers respectively. In the year 2004 and 2013, contribution of sparse mangroves in the study area was 72.31 % and 87.06% respectively.