Abstract
The vegetative cover in and surrounding the Rohingya refugee camps in Ukhiya-Teknaf is highly vulnerable since millions of refugees moved into the area, which led to severe environmental degradation. In this research, we used a supervised image classification technique to quantify the vegetative cover changes both in Ukhiya-Teknaf and thirty-four refugee camps in three time-steps: one pre-refugee crisis (January 2017), and two post-refugee crisis (March 2018, and February 2019), in order to identify the factors behind the decline in vegetative cover. The vegetative cover vulnerability of the thirty-four refugee camps was assessed using the Per Capita Greening Area (PCGA) datasets and K-means classification techniques. The satellite-based monitoring result affirms a massive loss of vegetative cover, approximately 5482.2 hectares (14%), in Ukhiya-Teknaf and 1502.56 hectares (79.57%) among the thirty-four refugee camps, between 2017 and 2019. K-means classification revealed that the vegetative cover in about 82% of the refugee camps is highly vulnerable. In the end, a recommendation as to establishing the studied region as an ecological park is proposed and some guidelines discussed. This could protect and reserve forests from further deforestation in the area, and foster future discussion among policymakers and researchers.
Highlights
The local inhabitants, previously settled Rohingya refugees, and different national and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have built approximately209,891 households for nearly a million Rohingya refugees in the Ukhiya-Teknaf upazila of Bangladesh [1] since the commencement of the Rohingya refugee crisis on 25 August2017 [2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
Based on supervised image classification techniques, and remote sensing data, this research quantified the temporal changes of vegetative cover between 2017 and
We further identified the refugee camps with highly vulnerable vegetation cover utilizing the k-means clustering method and per capita greening area (PCGA)
Summary
The local inhabitants, previously settled Rohingya refugees, and different national and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have built approximately209,891 households for nearly a million Rohingya refugees in the Ukhiya-Teknaf upazila of Bangladesh [1] since the commencement of the Rohingya refugee crisis on 25 August2017 [2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. 209,891 households for nearly a million Rohingya refugees in the Ukhiya-Teknaf upazila of Bangladesh [1] since the commencement of the Rohingya refugee crisis on 25 August. World War II [9,10,11]. Rohingya minorities are one of the most widely victimized refugees in the world at the moment; the government of Bangladesh refers to Rohingya refugees as “Forcibly Displaced Myanmar Nationals” [12,13,14]. The government of Bangladesh allocated 1942.49 hectares of mostly hilly-forested land for refugee settlement in September 2017, which quickly became overpopulated [6]. 2021, 13, 4922 in September 2017, which quickly became overpopulated [6].
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