Being one of the countries with the most forest area, India has lost 80% of forest land due to rapid economic development and overuse of local resources. Aiming to help India’s government and industries and protect the existing resources, scientists developed a deep learning system that produces real-time monthly land use and land cover maps for India’s forests through satellite imagery data. This research was presented at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2022. 

The researchers trained the land use monitoring system through Planetscope images provided by NICFI Satellite Data Program. Then, they combined NICFI data with a global land cover map created by Tshinghua University. Their deep learning model could provide ten basemaps of the area from January to October 2022. 

With the help of these maps, they could find out the seasonal changes and the impacts of monsoons on cropland. Therefore, it is highlighted that these would help scientists understand how climate change impacts forests and detect deforestation areas. 

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