Oil Palm Expansion on the Health of its Associated Vegetation; A Case Study in Nagoda Administrative Division Using GIS and Remote Sensing

摘要: Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) cultivation in Sri Lanka began several decades ago in the Galle district. Oil palm cultivation expanded to the other regions of the Low country wet zone to reach the national edible oil requirement. However, some communities in these regions claim that there are socio-environmentally detrimental consequences of this expansion, of which the depletion groundwater table is one of the most critical. Increase of the depth to groundwater table limit the water availability to plant uptake. This study focuses on evaluating the impact of oil palm expansion on the health of the associated vegetation using GIS and remote sensing. Nagoda administrative division in Galle district was selected as the study area (17448 ha in extent), where oil palm is the prominent plantation crop. Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) was used to estimate vegetation health. Cloud-free Landsat images from …