Analysis of Forest Deforestation and its Driving Factors in Myanmar from 1988 to 2017

Rongfeng Yang,Liang Hong,Yi Luo,Xiaolu Zhou,Kun Yang

doi:10.3390/su11113047

Abstract

Myanmar, abundant in natural resources, is one of the countries with high forest cover in Southeast Asia. Along with its rapid socio-economic development, however, the construction of large-scale infrastructure, expansion of agricultural land, and an increasing demand for timber products have posed serious threats to the forests and significantly affected regional sustainable development. However, the geographical environment in Myanmar is complex, resulting in the lack of long-term sequence of land cover data products. Based on 30 years’ Landsat satellite remote sensing imagery data and the land cover data extracted by a mixed classification method, this paper examined the spatial and temporal evolution characteristics of forest cover in Myanmar and investigated driving factors of the spatio-temporal evolution. Results show that the forest cover has decreased by 110,621 km2 in the past 30 years with the annual deforestation rate of 0.87%. Cropland expansion is the main reason for the deforestation throughout the study period. The study can provide basic information of the forest cover data to the Myanmar government for ecological environment protection. At the same time, it can provide important support to the “Belt and Road” initiative to invest in the region’s economy.

Highlights

The changes, either the increase or decrease, of forest cover can affect the provision of ecosystem services, such as biodiversity abundance, climate regulation, carbon storage and water supply [1,2,3]
The results show that the spatial distribution of forests, forest cover area, forest cover rate and deforestation rate vary greatly among different provinces
This study showed that 30% of the forest cover changed during the period of 1988–2017, and the total loss of forest area was 110,621 km2

Summary

Introduction

The changes, either the increase or decrease, of forest cover can affect the provision of ecosystem services, such as biodiversity abundance, climate regulation, carbon storage and water supply [1,2,3]. The transformation of land cover, especially the forest cover, has important implications on the dynamic changes of global change [4,5,6], as the deforestation is the major driver of climate warming [4,7] and the destruction of biodiversity [4,8]. In Myanmar, research on forest monitoring and assessment is very scarce, so that this study aims to provide spatial forest cover maps and statistical data of Myanmar. The premise of effectively linking science and policy to forest ecosystems is to strengthen remote sensing monitoring, reporting and verification of forest cover change [19]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion