Assessment of vegetation cover in India: LANDSAT images on band 5 black and white of 1980-82.

An accurate estimate about the extent of vegetation cover i.e. tree vegetation, shrubs etc. of the country is not readily available. All the existing estimates about vegetation/forest area were based on either the legal forest areas which cover blanks, river beds, snow-covered areas, shrubs, grass land and tree-covered areas or large scale generalization of some stray observations. An attempt has been made in this paper to assess the extent of vegetative area with crown cover density on macrolevel using LANDSAT MSS imageries on band 5. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]