Assessment of Elephant (Elephas Maximus) Mortality along Palakkad-Coimbatore Railway Stretch of Kerala and Tamil Nadu Using Geospatial Technology

Assessment of Elephant (Elephas Maximus) Mortality along Palakkad-Coimbatore Railway Stretch of Kerala and Tamil Nadu Using Geospatial Technology

Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) are facing serious threats due to the train-hits and a major concern for the environmentalists and common man. Habitat fragmentation, degradation of habitat quality, forest cover loss and lacking in management of physical barriers could be attributed for these accidents. The present study is carried out in Palakkad- Coimbatore railway sector of Tamil Nadu and Kerala states of India to find out the problem sites of incidents using landscape matrices, detection of changes in land use/ cover using temporal remote sensing data and its relation with human elephant conflict and to predict the future scenario based on the present findings. The study reveals that there are noticeable conversion of forests from dense to open (7.12% and 2.75%) during 1989 to 1999 and 1999 to 2012. During 1989 to 1999 and 1999 to 2012 about 5 and 2 percent of the dense forests were changed to other non-forest type,
respectively.