Ecological & Geographic Maps of Gilgit-Baltistan
Gilgit-Baltistan ESA Land Cover Map
This section provides an interactive map to visualize the geography and ecology of Gilgit-Baltistan.
The mapping section is built upon the Open Street Maps (Operated by the OpenStreetMap Foundation) and
Leaflet (Leaflet open-source JavaScript library by Vladimir Agafonkin) with number of base maps, ranging
from simple grey canvas to satellite imagery for the region. The base map can be changed from bottom
right icon in the map. The overlay layers cover topography, ecoregions, land-cover, temperature, aridity
and other physical aspects of Gilgit-Baltistan. For each overlay map you can select different categories
individually from the Overlay icon on the top right. Additionally each map section is also supplemented
with a statistical table. The table presents numerical/statistical breakup of various categories and aspects
for the whole of Gilgit-Baltistan and for each district.
Gilgit-Baltistan land cover map breaks down the different types of material on surface, such as bodies of
water, ice cover, crops, forests, grasslands and artificial surfaces. Data is based on European Space Agency's (ESA)
Climate Change Initiative (CCI) Global Land Cover Map for the 2010 epoch classifies land cover into one of 36
classes, including agriculture, forests, grasslands, artificial surfaces, and other categories. The CCI-LC
project delivers consistent global LC maps at 300 m spatial resolution on an annual basis from 1992 to 2015.
The data was generated reprocessing 5 different satellite missions providing daily observation of the Earth:
NOAA-AVHRR HRPT (1992-1999, 1km), SPOT-Vegetation (1998-2012, 1km), ENVISAT-MERIS Full and Reduced Resolution
Reflectance (2003-2012, 15 spectral bands at 300 m resolution) and ENVISAT-ASAR and PROBA-V (2013-2015, ⅓ km resolution).
Under the major categories a) cropland covers both rainfed and irrigated; b) mosaic vegetation includes mix of
cropland, natural tree, shrub and herbaceous cover; c) forest includes both open and closed types with tree
cover of above 15%; d) mosaic tree and shrub is generally mix of trees and shrubs with less than 50% ground
cover; and e) sparse vegetation means less than 15% tree or herbaceous cover.Overlay Legends
Snow and Ice
Bare Areas
Sparse Vegetation
Grassland
Mosaic Human Vegetation
Mosaic Natural Vegetation
Shrubland
Shrubland Flooded
Cropland Rainfed
Cropland Irrigated
Mosaic Tree and Shrub
Forest Needle-leaved
Forest Broadleaved Evergreen
Forest Broadleaved Deciduous
Forest Mixed Leaf
Tree-cover Flooded
Water
Built-up Areas
Populated Below 25/SqKM
Populated 25/SqKM to 100/Sqkm
Populated 100/SqKM to 1K/Sqkm
Populated 1K/SqKM to 5K/Sqkm
Populated Above 5K/SqKM
Map Statistics
| Category or Aspect | Gilgit-Baltistan | Hunza | Ghizer | Nagar | Gilgit | Diamer | Astore | Skardu | Shigar | Kharmang | Ghanche |
| Category or Aspect | GB | HNZ | GZR | NGR | GLT | DMR | AST | SKD | SHG | KHR | GHE |
| Total Area (Sq. Km) | 69,680 | 11,806 | 12,033 | 3,314 | 4,081 | 6,937 | 4,990 | 7,745 | 7,191 | 2,484 | 9,099 |
| Percent Area under Land Cover Category | |||||||||||
| Forest Broadleaved | 0.40 | 0.02 | 0.16 | 0.31 | 0.96 | 1.40 | 2.59 | 0.21 | 0.08 | 0.00 | 0.01 |
| Forest Needle-leaved | 2.25 | 0.06 | 0.60 | 2.23 | 7.85 | 10.13 | 5.45 | 1.06 | 0.50 | 0.02 | 0.02 |
| Forest Mixed-Leaf | 0.00 | 0.01 | 0.00 | 0.02 | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.00 | 0.01 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Mosaic Tree and Shrub | 4.35 | 0.12 | 2.45 | 3.31 | 9.49 | 20.94 | 7.98 | 2.85 | 0.99 | 1.75 | 0.41 |
| Shrubland | 0.27 | 0.08 | 0.15 | 0.30 | 0.47 | 1.53 | 0.36 | 0.24 | 0.09 | 0.07 | 0.03 |
| Mosaic Vegetation | 5.69 | 0.81 | 4.80 | 5.03 | 16.34 | 18.83 | 5.22 | 7.30 | 2.53 | 4.31 | 0.84 |
| Sparse Vegetation | 0.22 | 0.29 | 0.07 | 0.09 | 0.16 | 0.04 | 0.07 | 0.30 | 0.55 | 1.71 | 0.61 |
| Grassland | 50.17 | 38.57 | 65.96 | 36.23 | 45.14 | 38.86 | 57.86 | 64.72 | 38.10 | 75.01 | 35.27 |
| Cropland | 1.16 | 0.32 | 1.11 | 1.04 | 4.60 | 2.08 | 0.73 | 1.64 | 1.50 | 0.59 | 0.64 |
| Built-up Areas | 0.75 | 0.38 | 0.95 | 0.78 | 1.23 | 0.18 | 0.12 | 0.83 | 0.72 | 1.78 | 1.78 |
| Water | 1.63 | 2.02 | 1.70 | 0.89 | 1.32 | 2.16 | 2.32 | 2.75 | 2.16 | 1.25 | 1.72 |
| Bare Areas | 16.15 | 29.08 | 15.20 | 13.73 | 6.25 | 2.33 | 7.48 | 15.04 | 23.46 | 12.29 | 23.35 |
| Snow and Ice | 16.95 | 28.24 | 6.85 | 36.04 | 6.18 | 1.52 | 9.81 | 3.05 | 29.30 | 1.23 | 35.31 |
GB = Gilgit-Baltistan, HNZ = Hunza, GZR = Ghizer, NGR = Nagar, GLT = Gilgit, DMR= Diamer,
AST = Astore, SKD = Skardu, SHG = Shigar, KHR = Kharmang and GHE = Ghanche
This website is a joint effort of Forest, Parks and Wildlife Department, Government of Gilgit-Baltistan and Birds of Gilgit-Baltistan (an indigenous private initiative)
to highlight the diverse birdlife found in the region. All the maps, imagery and photographs in this book are provided by the mentioned individuals or entities with appropriate
permissions for public use, Government of Gilgit-Baltistan upholds the copyright of these material on behalf of the owners.
birds of gilgit-baltistan
