1 Mapping Wetlands of Warangal District, Andhra Pradesh, India using IRS P6 LISS III data C. Sudhakar Reddy 1 , K. Navatha, T. Shivakala, B. Rachel and P. Manikya Reddy Department of Environmental Sciences, Osmania University, Hyderabad 1 Forestry & Ecology Division, National Remote Sensing Agency, Balanagar, Hyderabad Email: drsudhakarreddy@gmail.com, navatha.kalsani@gmail.com, Introduction Sustainable use and development of natural resources has become a key issue for our own survival. Water is one of the most important natural resources. There has been a serious threat to the wetland ecosystem by human interference and unscientific exploitation. Therefore, there is an urgent need to conserve the wetland in situ before it lost forever. Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographical Information System (GIS) have been highly useful in natural resources mapping. This gives the present scenario of the resources and changes that have occurred over a period of time. Ramsar Convention (1971) has defined wetlands as areas of marsh, fern, peat land or water, whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary, with water that is static or flowing, fresh, brackish or salt, including areas of marine water the depth of which at low tide does not exceed six meters". A wide variety of wetlands like marshes, swamps, open water bodies, mangroves and tidal flats and salt marshes etc. exist in our country. Realizing the importance of wetlands in India, Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India, has published a directory of wetlands (1990) based on the survey carried out during 1972. However, the survey is not comprehensive and many inland wetlands and most of the coastal wetlands have not been included in the compilation. The multi-spectral data obtained from remote sensing satellites like Landsat, IRS, SPOT, IKONOS have been used to study land cover features either by visual interpretation or by processing digital data using digital computers. Space Application Centre (1997) has mapped the wetlands of Andhra Pradesh at 1:250,000 scale using coarse resolution satellite data. In this only wetlands of 56.25 ha and