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 At the behest of Department of Land Resources (DoLR) of Ministry of Rural Development (MRD) identification and inventorying of wastelands using satellite data on 1:50,000 scale was initiated in 1986 and completed in 2000 and the National Wastelands Atlas was brought out. The extent of wastelands at that time was 63.85 M ha. Consequently National Wastelands Updation Project was taken up by ISRO at the behest of MRD, during 2002-03 to update the earlier wasteland maps by using one time 2003 satellite data. This was completed in 2005 and the extent of wastelands was 55.64 M ha. Further in order to assess the impact of various wasteland reclamation programmes taken up across the country, National Wasteland Monitoring Project was taken up using three seasons data (Resourcesat-1 LISS-III) for the year 2005-06. The study has been completed and it reveals that the extent of wastelands in the country is reduced to 46.43 M ha (14.81% of the total geographical area). Recently National Wasteland Change Analysis project using satellite data of 2009 has been taken up to assess further changes in Wastelands of the country.
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