Presented at a workshop on SAR and optical applications for natural resources and environment management, ISNET , November 2-5, 2009, GORS headquarters, Damascus, Syria REMOTE SENSING FOR SUSTAINABLE FOREST MANAGEMENT – ‘A CASE STUDY OF MONITORING PAI FOREST IRRIGATED PLANTATION BY USING LCCS AND OBJECT BASED CLASSIFICATION TECHNIQUE’ Urooj Saeed 1 , Naeem Shahzad 1 , Rab Nawaz 1 and Hammad Gilani 2 1: World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Pakistan Ferozepur Road Lahore, Pakistan 2: International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Nepal Abstract: Current study aims to analyze the temporal variations in the Pai Forest irrigated plantation by using Object based Image Classification Technique through generating Segments on the Pan sharpened (0.6m) Quick Bird data. A standardized legend was developed by using Land Cover Classification System (LCCS) designed by Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The study reveals a significant decrease of 40.57% in the ‘mixed forest class’ i.e. Acacia spp., Prosopis cinerea, Salvadora spp. and Prosspis juliflora. from the years 2003 to 2008. This decline could be attributed to the extraction of forest for fuel wood. On the other hand an increase of 55 hectares in Eucalyptus spp. class has been observed which seems to be due to the plantation activities in the area. The spread of exotic vegetation i.e. Prosopis juliflora is 128% and it is critical to eradicate some of the Forest compartments. Prosopis spp., an exotic species of vegetation has increased by 128%. It is recommended to study and halt any impact of Prosopis spp. on indigenous flora and fauna. It will help the foresters to develop forest products in a sustainable manner that can diversify and support livelihoods of local communities. The study can be effectively used as a baseline to strengthen the National level vegetation mapping projects. The developed thematic maps can be effectively merged with other land cover maps at regional and global scale. Key Words: LCCS, Object based Image Classification, Segmentation, Quick Bird. Introduction Pai Forest is situated in Nawabshah District of the Sindh Province. Geographically it ranges from 68.2134ºE, 26.1012ºN to 68.2842ºE, 26.1263ºN with an area of 2,348 hectares (5,802 acre). Map of study area is shown in Figure 1. The area has been divided into different forest compartments for the purpose of plantation. Each forest compartment comprises of 16 hectares (40 acre) which is being irrigated by fourteen tube wells [1]. During early twentieth century, the forest lost its connection with the riverine track due to the construction of protection embankments along the Indus River. It is now dependent on the sanctioned irrigation water supply which is inadequate and infrequent to sustain the entire area. This situation is leading to a continuous degradation of forest and wildlife habitat [1]. Figure 1: Location map of the study area