MAPPING OF EUCALYPTUS PLANTATIONS THROUGH TEMPORAL SATELLITE DATA IN CHINA

Eucalyptus plantations play a major role in the China's ecological, social, economic and other aspects and presently China is the second largest producer of Eucalyptus in the world next to Brazil. It was introduced as an ornamental tree during 1890 but later it became a commercial crop. During 1960s large number of Eucalyptus timber were used for railway sleepers and it was also used as shelter belt for rubber trees. It becomes one of the important national resources of commercial timber once the production reached to 5 million $m^{3}/yr$. Through Eucalyptus oil, it brought about 20% of foreign exchange. In the present study, it was aimed to estimate the Eucalyptus growing area in the southern Guangdong in China in terms of aerial extent and changes between 1991 and 2001 using Landsat TM and ETM+ data. Object based classification technique and subsequent temporal change detection analysis were followed to identify the changes between the periods. In the present study, the total area was divided into three classes viz., plantation area with trees, plantation area without trees and others. Object oriented classification was found to be more accurate in the present study. Overall increase of about 23.62 $km^{2}$ was noted between 1991 and 2001 in the plantation area. With reference to the present study area, the growth of Eucalyptus growing area was 7.4% in the 10 year periods. From this study it is clear that the area under Eucalyptus cultivation is growing considerably year by year in China. However, elaborate study must be conducted considering larger areas to accurately predict the growth of Eucalyptus growing areas.