Publications

Perera, K, Tsuchlya, K (2009). Experiment for mapping land cover and it's change in southeastern Sri Lanka utilizing 250 m resolution MODIS imageries. ADVANCES IN SPACE RESEARCH, 43(9), 1349-1355.

Abstract
Utilizing freely available MODIS NDVI and Natural color imageries of 250 in spatial resolution produced by NASA, an experiment wits made to map land-cover and its change with an emphasis oil vegetation cover in Southeastern Sri Lanka. which plays a vital role for control of green house gas. For the change detection purpose, 1987 land cover map made by present authors from Landsat MSS image and extensive ground truth survey data was used as the base map. The result of the experiment shows that MODIS data are useful to make a land cover map of 250 m spatial resolution for tropical areas with high cloud coverage like Sri Lanka. It was found that the forest cover decrease amounted as large as 21% in 19 years time span in southeastern Sri Lanka, the prominent forest region of the country. Oil the other hand homestead/vegetation and mixed vegetation/scrub dominant categories increased by 13.7% and 7.1% respectively. These changes are considered due to it large clearance of forest areas for agriculture and building houses to accommodate increasing inhabitants. (C) 2009 COSPAR. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

DOI:
10.1016/j.asr.2008.12.016

ISSN:
0273-1177