Global
India

Forest Boundary Survey and Supply and Installation of Monoliths

ABOUT THE PROJECT

Physical demarcation of forest boundaries as per the existing forest map and government records is one of the necessary activities for all forest departments. Jharkhand Forest department had decided to utilize DGPS/ETS technology-based approach for preparing a digital database of forest lands under their jurisdiction to identify encroachment areas and to mitigate boundary violation related issues along with physical demarcation of forest pillars with more positional accuracy. The project was initially planned for some selected mouzas under some forest divisions of Jharkhand.

Objectives of the Project

The objective of the project was to identify and demarcate the boundary of the Jharkhand forest through extensive DGPS surveys. Additionally, this project was conducted in an attempt to:

  • Create a digital database of the forest land
  • Demarcate the forest area by erecting pillars at the locations where they are missing
  • Identify the forest areas on the map that have become encroached upon owing to the missing boundaries pillars

CyberSWIFT took up the project and completed it successfully.

Forest Boundary Survey

Work Procedure

Our team carried out positional survey along the forest boundaries based on the individual forest maps provided to us. The survey was conducted using dual-frequency DGPS instrument. The field survey primarily involved the following activities:

  • Fixation of DGPS base station taking reference from Survey of India control point
  • Collection of Ground Control Points (GCPs) to Geo-reference forest maps. We have mostly collected tri-junction and bi-junction points of individual mouza/s as GCP to achieve higher level accuracy taking ground level help from forest officials
  • Geo-referencing of scanned forest map sheets followed by digitization of forest patches and forest pillars (FP) using GIS platform
  • Identification of FP locations on ground and taking reading of 20-minute static observations in post-processing mode
  • Temporary pillar marking using colored wooden pillars and painting of Unique ID of each FP on it
  • Taking geo-tag digital photographs of each location and forest pillars
  • In-house post-processing of raw data from DGPS and superimposition of FP coordinates over geo-referenced forest maps and satellite imagery to prepare the deliverables both in soft and hardcopy
  • Joint field level verification of the output data and pillar demarcation by designated forest officials for acceptance

Final Deliverable

The following were delivered to the client:

  • Coordinates and photographs of secondary Ground Control Points (GCPs) and all individual forest pillars
  • Vector map denoting mouza boundary, forest boundary and pillars
  • Mouza-wise reports which include coordinates of forest pillars, area of forest patches etc.
  • Raw data from DGPS/ ETS survey

A final report was furnished incorporating the comments and suggestions of the authorities.