Land cover constitutes an important parameter for describing the Earth’s surface, which is essential for monitoring and management of the natural resources. This parameter is influenced considerably by changes due to natural as well as anthropogenic phenomenon. Changes in land cover impacts on and links many parts of the human and physical environments. Land cover is important for many planning and management activities and is considered an essential element for modeling and understanding the earth as a system. Therefore the study of land cover plays an important role at the local/regional as well as global level for monitoring the dynamics associated with the earth. Monitoring and management of natural resources requires timely, synoptic and repetitive coverage over large area across various spatial scales that help in assessing the temporal and spatial changes. Remote sensing provides an up to date, reliable, spatial data at regular time intervals, which are useful for land cover analysis. Geographic Information System (GIS) helps in compilation, analysis and management of spatial data with attribute information. Remote sensing data with better spectral and spatial resolution (Panchromatic, Multi Spectral data, Hyperspectral data, etc.) and GIS technologies play an important role in evaluating spatially the natural resource availability and demand. This paper explores various land cover techniques that could be used for resource monitoring focusing on bio-resources considering the spatial data of Kolar district, a semi-arid region in Karnataka state, India. Slope and distance based vegetation indices are computed for qualitative and quantitative assessment of land cover using remote spectral measurements. Slope based vegetation indices show area under vegetation range from 47.65 % to 49.05% while distance based vegetation indices shows its range from 40.40% to 47.41%.

Key words: Land cover, Remote sensing, land use, Semi-Arid region, Vegetation indices.