IRS-1C applications for land use/land cover mapping, change detection and planning

Remote sensing applications using IRS-1A and IRS-1B data has successfully demonstrated the capabilities in generation of district-wise land use/land cover maps, depicting the information up to level-II on 1:250,000 scale which are being used as a basic input in land use planning of the 15 agro-climatic zones in the country. The launch of IRS-1C on 28 December, 1995 provided a new dimension in the application capabilities, in particular for land use/land cover mapping on various scales and levels for use by a diverse user community. An analysis has been made in the present paper on the capabilities of Wide-field Imaging Sensor (WiFS), Linear Imaging Self Scanning Sensor-III (LISS-III), Panchromatic sensor data for land use applications. It was observed from the above studies that WiFS data is useful in extracting land use/land cover information at Level-I for use at National/Regional level applications, LISS-III data useful in extraction of information at Level-II/III for use at District/Tehsil level applications and Panchromatic data has the capability to provide information at Level-III/IV for use in Cadastral and Urban applications.