Abstract
Overdependence on and exploitation of forest resources have significantly transformed the natural reserve forest of Sundarban, which shares the largest mangrove territory in the world, into a great degradation status. By observing these, a most pressing concern is how much degradation occurred in the past, and what will be the scenarios in the future if they continue? To confirm the degradation status in the past decades and reveal the future trend, we took Sundarban Reserve Forest (SRF) as an example, and used satellite Earth observation historical Landsat imagery between 1989 and 2019 as existing data and primary data. Moreover, a geographic information system model was considered to estimate land cover (LC) change and spatial health quality of the SRF from 1989 to 2029 based on the large and small tree categories. The maximum likelihood classifier (MLC) technique was employed to classify the historical images with five different LC types, which were further considered for future projection (2029) including trends based on 2019 simulation results from 1989 and 2019 LC maps using the Markov-cellular automata model. The overall accuracy achieved was 82.30%~90.49% with a kappa value of 0.75~0.87. The historical result showed forest degradation in the past (1989–2019) of 4773.02 ha yr−1, considered as great forest degradation (GFD) and showed a declining status when moving with the projection (2019–2029) of 1508.53 ha yr−1 and overall there was a decline of 3956.90 ha yr−1 in the 1989–2029 time period. Moreover, the study also observed that dense forest was gradually degraded (good to bad) but, conversely, light forest was enhanced, which will continue in the future even to 2029 if no effective management is carried out. Therefore, by observing the GFD, through spatial forest health quality and forest degradation mapping and assessment, the study suggests a few policies that require the immediate attention of forest policy-makers to implement them immediately and ensure sustainable development in the SRF.
Highlights
Mangrove forests (MFs), are predominantly observed along the inter-tidal coastlines across the world where land meets with the sea [1]
The results revealed among all the images that the highest overall accuracy (OA) and kappa statistics were found for the 2019 supervised classification at 90.49%
The results suggest that TR loss is a big concern for forest communities in Bangladesh, including the rest of the world, because it is a World Heritage Site declared by UNESCO in 1987
Summary
Mangrove forests (MFs), are predominantly observed along the inter-tidal coastlines across the world where land meets with the sea [1]. The SRF is considered as one of the world’s most endangered tropical ecosystems [7], which has been threatened over the past 30 years by several activities, such as industrialization, extensive crab and shrimp farming, agricultural production, natural disasters such as cyclones and tidal surges [8], climate change [9], unsustainable human activities, etc. Sea-level projection data suggest that a rise in sea level from 32–88 cm will lead to the total disappearance of mangroves by 2100 [15,16,17]
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