Rapidly developing geospatial technologies like Remote Sensing (RS), Geographic Information System (GIS) and Global Positional System (GPS) offers an efficient and timely approach for mapping, because of its wide area coverage, gives information about inaccessible area, timely repetitive coverage of the same area. In this study, On- screen visual interpretation was made to classify the land use/land cover particularly for the hilly region like Paderu mandal lies in between the latitudes of 18o18' to 17o 56' and the longitudes of 82o32' to 82o53' . Where, the digital classification techniques were found to be not so effective, due to the very undulating topographical condition and complex spectral signature of vegetation. The identified land use / cover features are built-up area, dense forest, open forest, scrub forest, scrub land, plantation, agriculture and water bodies. Maximum area (35% of the total geographical area of the mandal) is covered by open forest followed by scrub forest (21.5%), agricultural land (20.2 %), dense forest (16.2%), and plantations (2.5%), while built up land covers only 2.1 % of Total Geographical Area (TGA). Further, the study has asses the temporal changes of land use of Paderu mandal in comparison to Visakhapatnam district during the periods 1991-2011, using statistical data from Directorate of Economics & Statistic (Hyderabad) and District Statistic Abstracts of Visakhapatnam....
Authors: D.Ramprasad Naik, N. Appala Raju, P. Jagadeeswara Rao, T.Chandrasekhar Rao.