Remote Sensing-based Assessment of Vegetation Cover Changes in Gulf of Mannar Marine National Park, Tamil Nadu, India

Monitoring the changes in island vegetation is crucial to understand the global ecological processes as well as to design effective conservation strategies. Globally, remote sensing has emerged as a powerful technology to assess vegetation change across the landscapes. The present study has mapped and analysed changes in the vegetation of islands of Gulf of Mannar Biosphere Reserve (GMBR), Tamil Nadu. The study utilizes Sentinel-2 data to create accurate and up-to-date vegetation and land cover maps for the islands of GMBR in 2022. Landsat data obtained in 2001, 2005, and 2021 were used to create the spatial database on vegetation changes for the islands through a normalised difference vegetation index. The work presents the salient findings specific to the GMBR, showcasing how the islands within this Biosphere Reserve have experienced changes in their vegetation cover over the studied periods. The vegetation cover experienced a decline between 2001 and 2005. However, the vegetation cover has largely been recovered during the period from 2005 to 2021.