Abstract

The inventory and monitoring of forest resources have become increasingly important in recent years, and the process has been accelerated with the introduction of photointerpretation techniques in the forestry sector. Because of the different bioclimatic and geographical conditions prevailing in the Western Ghats of India, the vegetation exhibits a highly heterogeneous nature and it is very difficult to distinguish the forest types. Very little work has been done in the field of cover type classification of the Western Ghat region of Kerala using remote sensing techniques. A broad classification of the forest types in the region (evergreen, moist deciduous, dry deciduous, etc.) was adopted in earlier works on the region. In this paper an interpretation key is developed and presented for the identification of forest/land cover types from 1: 15 000 black and white aerial photographs taken in January-March 1988-90. Photographs were analysed for the southern moist mixed deciduous