Vandenhawii Chawlkha, Lalji Singh*, A.O. Varghese, Ravi Kant Chaturvedi, Shalini Toppo and Tarun Kumar Thakur
The present investigation was conducted at tropical dry deciduous forest ecosystem in Pench Tiger Reserve, located in the part of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra through RS and GIS techniques. Data were analyzed to work out the land cover, structure, and diversity, relationship between structural parameters and vegetation indices. Land cover was spatially analyzed by digitally classifying Land sat OLI data using supervised classification through MLA (maximum likelihood algorithm). Further, the distinction in structure composition and species diversity in various forest types of a dry deciduous forests were quantified by employed the quadratic random procedures, Tree and Shrubs layer in sampling unitsin each forest types were enumerated for their DBH. Six land cover types viz. water bodies, scrubland, open forest, dense forest, very dense forest and agriculture land were delineated. The overall accuracy of classification varied from 91 - 93 percent for classes. More than 60 percent area of the park is covered by different forests. Structure and diversity analysis observed that density of dry deciduous forest ranged between 391 - 936 tree ha-1 , number of species ranges between 26 – 31 and basal area ranged from 36.69 - 64.32 m-2 ha-1 . Likewise, the Shannon index values varies from 1.98 to 2.80, Simpson index values from 0.063 to 0.130, species richness from 4.25 to 4.96 and beta diversity from 1.98 to 2.80. Very dense tropical dry deciduous forest recorded highest basal area and diversity. On the other hand, it was lowest in open tropical dry deciduous forests. The study also showed that NDVI was strongly correlated to Shannon Index and species richness thus it indicates that the diversity of forest type play a vital role in carbon accumulation. The study revealed that tropical dry deciduous forests of Pench National Park are moderately young and in immature state and have highly possible intended for carbon sequestration. The conclusion and suggestion emerged from the studyare essential for the sustainable management of tropical dry deciduous forests of Pench National Park
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