Green Vegetation Cover Has Steadily Increased Since Establishment of Community Forests in Western Chitwan, Nepal

Remote Sensing

Li An¹  DouglasA. Stow¹  Jie Dai¹  DarA. Roberts²  Qunshan Zhao³ 

[1] Department of Geography, San Diego State University, San Diego 92182, CA, USA;Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara 93106, CA, USA;Urban Big Data Centre, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8RZ, UK;

关键词: green vegetation;    Chitwan;    community forest;    spectral mixture analysis;   

DOI  :  10.3390/rs12244071

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Community forests have been established worldwide to sustainably manage forest ecosystem services while maintaining the livelihoods of local residents. The Chitwan National Park in Nepal is a world-renowned biodiversity hotspot, where community forests were consolidated in the park’s buffer zone after 1993. These western Chitwan community forests stand as the frontiers of human–environment interactions, nurturing endangered large mammal species while providing significant natural resources for local residents. Nevertheless, no systematic forest cover assessment has been conducted for these forests since their establishment. In this study, we examined the green vegetation dynamics of these community forests for the years 1988–2018 using Landsat surface reflectance products. Combining an automatic water extraction index, spectral mixture analysis and the normalized difference fraction index (NDFI), we developed water masks and quantified the water-adjusted green vegetation fractions and NDFI values in the forests. Results showed that all forests have been continuously greening up since their establishment, and the average green vegetation cover of all forests increased from approximately 30% in 1988 to above 70% in 2018. With possible contributions from the invasion of exotic understory plant species, we credit community forestry programs for some of the green-up signals. Monitoring of forest vegetation dynamics is critical for evaluating the effectiveness of community forestry as well as developing sustainable forest management policies. Our research will provide positive feedbacks to local community forest committees and users.

【 授权许可】

Unknown