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Abstract
The Rann of Kutch, Gujarat is the only habitat for one of the endangered sub-species of the Asiatic wild ass (Equus hemionus khur) and most of the population survives in the Wild Ass Sanctuary in Little Rann of Kutch. The area is a saline desert with extremely sparse cover of vegetation. In the past, the habitat supported a thriving population of wild asses. However, due to extensive changes in the land-use around the Rann of Kutch, there has been an increase in the conflict of interests between man and the wild ass. The present paper seeks to analyse the situation with respect to changes in land-use, vegetation cover and salt cultivation to plan proper habitat management inside the sanctuary to mitigate the problem of crop predation by the wild ass through the use of high resolution satellite data.
The Survey of India (SOI) topographic maps of 1960 vintage were used to estimate the past habitat, land-use, vegetal cover and salt fields. The SOI topographic maps and false colour composites provided a limited number of land-use classes for a meaningful comparison of land-use changes. This data has been compared with digitally classified SPOT MLA on SIPS (Satellite Image Processing System, Hyderabad). Various techniques such as principal component analysis, normalized difference vegetation index, unsupervised and supervised classifications were carried to classify various features. Of these techniques, supervised classification provided very useful results for an effective interpretation. It was observed that there has been an increase in irrigated crop fields. This has resulted in enhanced crop predation by wild asses thereby triggering human-wild ass conflicts. The digital interpretation provided crucial information on a number of classes of land-use relevant to the habitat of wild ass. An operational basis of deriving such information for formulating effective conservation strategies is presented.
