Assessment of Forest Canopy Density in the Siwaliks of Panchkula District, India

Abstract

This work analyzes the current status of forest canopy density (FCD) in the Siwalik region of the Panchkula district, North-Western part of India. The study area includes the lower and upper part of the Siwalik region of India and is around 34.93% of the total geographical region of the district. This study uses the recent satellite data from Operational Land Imager (OLI) and Thermal IR sensors (TIRS-2) of Landsat 9 acquired on 15 December 2022 and algorithm from Rikimaru's FCD model to estimate the canopy density. The result shows that 89% of the Siwalik forest of the district is covered with canopy of different density categories. The FCD classification further indicate: i) 3.07% of the forest is covered with moderately dense canopy of density 10-40%, ii) 82.28% area is dense forest with canopy density 40-70% and iii) 3.7% area is very dense forest covered with canopy of density more than 70%. The ground truthing shows that the study area is rich in Pine, Tendu, Shisham and other important tree species of commercial and medicinal importance. The result indicates that the emphasis is to be given in increasing forest biodiversity and in afforestation activities.