Abstract

Agasthyavanam Biological park which has been established in the foothills of Agasthyamalai region of the Southern part of Western Ghats in Thiruvananthapuram district of Kerala is the first of its kind in India. The essential theme of the project relates to the conservation, preservation and propagation of precious, rare and unique flora and fauna of the area. The present work assess the structural and degradation aspects of the forests of the park supplemented with tree species diversity. For, this, remote sensing techniques in the form of aerial photographs (1: 15, 000) and ground based studies using stratified random sampling techniques were used. A critical evaluation of the present status of the forest of Agasthyavanam Biological park was conducted to establish the baseline information of the area