1. SAINT AUGUSTINE UNIVERSITY OF TANZANIA
BUKOBA CENTRE
FACULTY: EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT: GEOGRAPHY
COURSE TITLE REMOTE SENSING
COURSE CODE: GE 245
NAME OF STUDENT: MAPESA, NESTORY
REGISTRATION NUMBER: BAED II 41584
NAME OF INSTRUCTOR: MR. BASHEKA J. J
WORK TYPE: INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT
DATE OF SUBMISSION: 15th
NOVEMBER 2013
Question;
Choose any Natural resource of your interest and write satisfactory notes on how remote sensing
can be used to manage that resource.

2. Natural resources are things that are found in the nature that are useful to people. Examples of
natural resources are: water bodies, forest, mining, landand others. Forest is the area of land
covered by trees or vegetation which may be natural or artificial. Forest may be renewable when
reforestation is applied or nonrenewable when they cut down.
Remote sensing is the process of collecting information about the earth’s surface and phenomena
using sensors not in physical contact with the surfaces and phenomena of interest.All the
Electromagnetic energy reaches the earth’s surface must be reflected, absorbed or transmitted.
The transport of information from an object to a receiver (observer) by mean of radiation
transmitted through the atmosphere. The interaction between the radiation and the object of
interest conveys information required on the nature of the object. Their rates depend on types of
features, wavelengths and angle of illumination.
Therefore I have chosen a forest as a natural resource to write satisfactory notes on how
remote sensing can be used to manage this resource.
The reflection of sunlight from vegetation will give information on the reflection coefficient of
the object and its spectral variation and thus on the nature of the object which is the green trees.
Microwave radiation transmitted from radar system and scattered from a rain clouds in the back
direction to a receiver will give information on the raindrop size and intensity (active remote
sensing) whereby the scattering radiation originated from a specially. In Electromagnetic
radiation covers a very large range of waves. But in remote sensing we are concerned with
radiation from the Ultraviolet (UV) which have wavelengths of from 0.3 to 0.4 µm (10^- 6m) to
radar wavelengths in the region of 10cm (10^- 1m).
Reflection from Vegetation Healthy, growing appears green because there is selective
absorption in chlorophyll bands outside the green wavelengths. The absorption is only moderates
so that the green light is reflected and scattered at the cellular boundaries to appear green both in
reflection and transmission because of multiple reflection emergent natural light is non-
polarized.Chlorophyll strongly absorbs radiation in the red and blue wavelengths but reflects
green wavelengths. Leaves appear "greenest" to us in the summer, when chlorophyll content is at
its maximum. In autumn, there is less chlorophyll in the leaves, so there is less absorption and
proportionately more reflection of the red wavelengths, making the leaves appear red or yellow
(yellow is a combination of red and green wavelengths). The internal structure of healthy leaves
act as excellent diffuse reflectors of near-infrared wavelengths. If our eyes were sensitive to
near-infrared, trees would appear extremely bright to us at these wavelengths. In fact, measuring
and monitoring the near-IR (NIR) reflectance is one way that scientists can determine how
healthy (or unhealthy) vegetation may be. Vegetation could be differentiated using NIR sensors,
e.g. deciduous trees have a higher reflectance than the coniferous in NIR.

3. USE OF REMOTE SENSING IN FORESTRY APPLICATIONS
There are many forestry applications that remote sensing can be used for some of those
applications includes; terrain analysis, forest management, re cultivation, updating of existing
forest inventories, forest cover, types discrimination, the delineation of burned areas and
mapping of cleared areas. Many applications of forestry and natural resources require accurate
land cover and change analysis. Changing conditions due to urban sprawl, as well as increasing
forest fragmentation, make land cover and change analysis an extremely important consideration
for management, planning and inventory mapping. This includes ecosystem and species
diversity, forest productivity, reforestation, forest health, conservation of soil, water resources,
and nutrient cycling
Application of Remote Sensing for Forest fires; Forest fires are results of the simultaneous
existence of at least three unfavorable phenomena; long-term drought, the effect of air pollution
such that decline and decay of trees result to the inflammable material and high tourist presence
in forests. High resolution satellite data such as Landsat Thematic Mapper (30-60 m), SPOT (10-
20 m) and ERS- SAR combined with low resolution satellite images such as NOAA- AVHRR
(1100 m) offer new possibilities to monitor forest fire. They have a number of advantages over
conventional means of observation, using Satellite image, it is possible to view vast expanses of
land. This can be performed regularly for the same areas and recorded in different wavelengths,
thus providing information on the state of forest resource. Satellite data can be acquired without
encountering administrative restriction.
Thermal infrared remote sensing is also often used for detection of forest fires, volcanoes and
oil fire. Geographic Information System (GIS) may be useful in immediately finding the most
direct access to endangered areas and in locating water resources. After locating the fire on the
digital forest, the parameters and description of endangered forest stands are displayed, this
facilitates firefighting interventions.

4. Burnt areas seen on SPOT (black) and ERS- SAR (light green) images. Multi-temporal images in
this case ERS- SAR allow monitoring of recultivation.
Use of Radio Detection and Ranging (RADAR) for estimating biomass;
X band ( 3cm) C band ( 6cm) L band ( 25cm)
Not penetrate Almost penetratePenetrate
Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM) provides evaluation data from raw radar echoes
Forest management Statistics of forest cover, forest types, deforestation rate are essential data
for forest management. The data are being secured applying on Remote sensing. We can see that
remote sensing in forestry is very important because we can see the place that are damaged by
people or the places that are cut from the space and you can get these images when the satellite is
passing above your region. Example you can understand where there is fire, how big the fire is or
where the fire is going to, without going to that place and you can take the precautions
immediately also suppose after a hurricane or disasters, the damages on forests can be
understood in a very short time and the places.
Reconnaissance mapping; Objectives to meet by national forest or environment agencies
include forest cover updating, depletion monitoring, measuring bios physical properties of forest
stands. Remote sensing can cover change detection, mapping biophysical structure, mapping
ecosystem services, modeling trends under changes and generating management plans by using
satellites like RADAR and natural source like sun.
Environment monitoring and Evaluation; The forest department has assisted with its Remote
Sensing and GIS facilitates to carry out environmental impacts assessment operations in the
critical areas such as the total gas Pipeline Project. Conservation authorities are concerned with
monitoring the quality heath and diversity of the Earth’s surface. Mapping allows to determine
the distribution of species, plants functional types’ ecosystem and to reliably document changes
in land cover at periodic intervals. The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) This
application involves a ratio formula between the visual Red and NIR EM bands. This helps to
distinguish healthy and stronger vegetation reflection from other materials with similar
reflective qualities in those Electromagnetic bands wavelength group.
C LC

5. Biodiversity management; For the nature and wildlife conservation division of the forest
department the location of wildlife and other species in the scale such like 1:1000,000 scale. The
vegetation layer for habitat mapping is supplied from current land use data.
Desertification combats; remote sensing of the forest resource has done 1:50,000 scale maps of
current land use, slope information, erosion susceptibility and generation planning data.
Ground- derived maps can be biased due to large areas covered or subjective sampling avoiding
political instability, inaccessible areas. Remote sensing can be used to assess forest cover, its
changes and sources of threat.
ATMOSPHERE
EARTH’S SURFACE
The Photosynthetic action spectrum depends on the type of accessory pigments present in the
cells.Green plants peaks for violet blue and red light. The non-absorbed parts of the light
spectrum gives the colour, solar spectral irradiance at ground level is altered by the absorption
and scattering effects of the atmosphere. The influence of Chlorophylls in the leaf pigments
controls the response of vegetation in the forest to radiation in the visible wavelengths. As a
plant becomes diseased, the cell structure of a plant alters and the spectral signature of a plant in
the forest will change.
However the energy recorded by the sensor has to be transmitted often in electronic form to a
receiving and processing station where the data are processed into images. The processed image
is interpreted visually, digitally or electronically to extract information about the target which
was illuminated.
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SENSOR
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6. REFERENCES
Aggarawl, S. (1998)Principle of Remote sensing. Indian Institute of Remote Sensing.Dehradun.
Bhatta, B.(2008) Remote Sensing and GIS. India, Oxford University Press.
Drury, S. A,(1990). A Guide to Remote Sensing.Sheffield, South Yorkshire.
Lillesand.T, Kiefer R.W and Chipman, J.W (2004 1st Edition).Remote Sensing and Image
Interpretations.Library of Catalog. India.