Deforestation Monitoring and Cause Detection System in India Using Satellite Imagery

Abstract

Deforestation is a major environmental challenge in India, driven by agriculture, urbanization, and infrastructure expansion. Satellite-based remote sensing provides a reliable and scalable approach for monitoring forest cover change across large areas. With the emergence of cloud platforms such as Google Earth Engine (GEE), multi-temporal analysis of satellite imagery has become more accessible, enabling integration of vegetation indices (NDVI, NDBI, NDWI) and advanced learning methods for accurate change detection. This paper presents a literature survey of twenty key studies on deforestation monitoring and cause detection, covering traditional index-based approaches, time-series change detection methods, and deep learning-driven image analysis. The review highlights datasets, methodologies, and applications relevant for building an automated deforestation monitoring and cause-detection system in India.