An efficient conservation planning is contingent upon assessment and mapping of biological diversity to identify the local, regional and global hotspots (Wilson, 2000). The existing methods to map biodiversity on a large spatial scale are time consuming as they require intensive ground surveys. In this paper we demonstrate the use of remote sensing imagery to assess and map the biodiversity in a tropical ecosystem and discuss the use of this technique in monitoring as well as conservation planning. Rationale for our approach stems from two established relationships. While there exists a strong relationship between species richness and productivity (Tucker and Sellers, 1986; Adams and Woodward, 1989; Curie, 1991), it has been demonstrated that the latter can be measured through annual sum of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) derived from satellite imagery at global and regional scales (Holben, 1986; Eidenshink and Faundeen, 1994). Thus we expected a positive relationship between plant species richness and NDVI values.