GIS Based Wildlife Habitat Assessment : A Landscape Analysis Approach

The work presented in this book is an attempt to quantify the spatial pattern of landscape using various spatial pattern metrics & to develop an approach for monitoring the impact of LULC dynamics on wildlife habitat quality in the Betla National park. Satellite data of the year 1990 and 2000 were used to prepare LULC maps though hybrid classification. Different landscape metrics such as diversity, contagion, fractal dimension, fragmentation and connectivity, calculated using ArcInfo software & computer program written in C,were used to characterize the change in landscape pattern. Two indices namely habitat quality index (HQI) & overall suitability index were developed for quantitative assessment of the habitat quality. The values of HQI were found to be 0.4051 and 0.3762 respectively for the year 1990 and 2000. It indicates a deterioration of about 7.14% in habitat quality due to the landscape dynamics during study period. Despite of intense landscape dynamics, only a marginal deterioration was observed in forest habitat quality due to proper management practices and restoration measurements taken by the forest officials to nullify the negative effects of increased LULC dynamics.