The forests of Bangladesh consist of
three major vegetation types occurring on
three distinctly different geomorphological
units : (i) the Tidal Swamps, consisting of mangrove forests (ii) the High Terraces,
consisting of deciduous forests and (iii)
the Tertiary Hills, consisting of mixed
evergreen forests. Soils of Bangladesh

Exploration and exploitation of natural
resources is a very important activity for
the continued economic growth of the
society. Many devices at different stages
of human civilisation were introduced for
the exploration of natural resources. In
the modern age Remote Sensing Technique
is one of the best tools for surveying natural
resources particularly in the inaccessible
areas. Modern remote sensing system from
space is the result of the development
process which began in the U. S. A. in the
mid sixties. This led to the Earth Resources
Technology Satellite ( ERTS) project
of NASA in 1970, now called LANDSAT.

Utilization of bamboo has taken great
strides in many countries. In the tropics,
especially in the South East Asia, bamboo
plays an important role in the village
economy and is extensively used for housing,
construction, handicrafts and many other
purposes. Besides, in the modern age,
bamboo finds extensive use as a raw
material in the pulp and paper industries.
Culms are the main plant parts of bamboo
used for various purposes. The present
yield of bamboo is not enough to meet
the increasing demand of the country. As
a result, the quantity and quality of culm
production, is most of the forest areas,
has been deteriorating due to over
exploitation.

Oil palm (Elaeis guineeiisis Jacq.) is
indigenous to West Africa (Zeven 1965,
Hartley 1967) where it grows wild in a
320-480 km coastal belt from Gambia to
Angola (Moe and Mohtadi 1971) E. guineensis
var. tennera, with thinner shelled fruits,
is a hybrid of ‘dura’- a wild variety with
thicker shell and ‘piscifera’ with no shell
(Rahman et al 1979). It is an exotic high
oil yielding fruit crop from Malaysia and
introduced in Bangladesh in 1978-79 with
a view to developing the domestic nonconventional
source of vegetable oil to
meet the demand of both edible and industrial
oils of the country. As such, Bangladesh
Forest Department initiated raising 4047
ha of oil palm plantation in the high
rainfall regions like Chittagong, Chittagong
Hill Tracts, Cox’s Bazar and Sylhct Forest

Mangium (Acacia mangium willd) is a
promising fast-growing multipurpose species
of the family Leguminosae and subfamily
Mimosoidcac. It is indigenous to
northern Australia, Papua New Guinea
and eastern Indonesia. The best known
stands are found in Queensland, Australia,
where the temperature ranges from 12°c
to 34°C and about 4,400 mm and 700 mm
rainfall are received annually during the
rainy and dry seasons respectively.