Conclusions

Overall the land cover change conclusions for the region correspond to what would be expected based on the literature of semi-arid environments in India during the 1970’s. Dams left a major scar on the land and were responsible for the direct submergence of a large amount of vegetated areas in the region. Irrigation allowed new areas to be cultivated and huge increases in vegetation cover to occur in some localized areas. However, these benefits were not widely felt, as vegetation cover disproportionately increased over geographic areas. Desertification seems to be a very real phenomena in the area over these eight years. These changes should be looked at in the context precipitation data as well as specific small-scale land use when possible. Overall these conclusion for vegetation change in the region would not differ drastically if one only used NDVI. However, it would be difficult to directly evaluate the extent of desertification with NDVI alone, and forest change results do differ greatly between methodologies.

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