• Journal of Korean Society for Geospatial Information Science
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.3-12
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• 2009

Soil is one of the Earth's most important resources. There are many differences among the soils of plains.like and hilly terrains, and therefore, accurate and comprehensive information on soil is essential for optimum and sustainable soil utilization. However, information on the soil of the hilly terrains of the Eastern Ghats of Tamil Nadu, India, is limited or absent. In the present study, Kolli hill, one among the hills of the Eastern Ghats, was soil.inventoried and mapped using a ground survey and remote sensing. Soil samples were collected and their physico.chemical properties analyzed according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) standards. The soils were classified up to the family level. As a result of this study, 30 soil series belonging to ten sub.groups of five great groups and three sub.orders and orders each, were identified (classified to the family level) and mapped. Entisols, Inseptisols and Alfisols were the three orders, among which Entisols was the major one, occupying 75% of the area. Among the five great groups, Ustorthents occupied majority of the area (73%). Lithic Ustorthents and Typic Ustorthents were the two major sub.groups, occupying 40% and 26% of the total area, respectively. The present soil resource mapping of the Eastern Ghats of Tamil Nadu is a pioneer study, which yielded valuable information on the soil in this region.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.473-481
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• 2007

Joint Forest Management(JFM) is a concept of developing partnerships between fringe forest user groups and the Forest Department(FD) on the basis of mutual trust and jointly defined roles and responsibilities with regard to forest protection and development. In India, JFM was started during 1992 and it was implemented in many states. However success rate of JFM activity was not promising. Though there are many factors attributed to the failures, one of the main factors is the JFM site. This paper deals with the significant ground works to be done before planning for JFM using recent technologies such as remote sensing(RS) and Geographic Information System(GIS). Also it deals with the advantages of weighted overlay analysis in selecting suitable sites for JFM taking into consideration the various criteria. As a result of weighted overlay analysis, there were four types of suitability classes viz., less, moderate, highly and un-suitable. The moderately suitable class occupied maximum area(13209.64 ha) than less and highly suitable classes. If JFM is implemented on the suitability area, then the failure could be avoided in the future.