Assessing the Correlation between Aboveground Carbon Stock, NDVI and Tree Species Diversity (A Study of Kailali and Kanchanpur District)

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There is limited research to show the correlation between biophysical character and reflectance value of satellite imageries. Thus, this research was conducted to show the relation between the reflectance value (Normalized Differences Vegetation Index: NDVI) and biophysical characteristics (carbon stock and biodiversity) of forest. Kanchanpur and Kailali districts of Nepal were selected as the study sites. Total 184 plots were established to measure the height and diameter at breast height (DBH). The Landsat 8 image of 2022 was downloaded from USGS.gov. Above ground tree biomass was calculated which was further converted into carbon stock. Tree species diversity was assessed using Shannon-Weiner index (H’). Furthermore, Pearson’ correlation was performed to show the relation between aboveground carbon stock vs NDVI and biodiversity vs NDVI. The descriptive statistics showed that mean value of above ground carbon with standard deviation was 109.70±64.52 and 96.76±53.79 ton/ha in Kanchanpur and Kailali districts respectively. The mean value with standard deviation of H’ index was 1.163 ±0.512 and 1.247 ±0.56 in Kanchanpur and Kailali districts respectively. The mean value with standard deviation of NDVI of the sampled plots was 0.491±0.268 and 0.367±0.192 of Kanchanpur and Kailali districts respectively. The R value of Carbon stock vs NDVI was 0.54 and 0.382 of study sites in Kanchanpur and Kailali districts respectively. Similar results were of Carbon stock vs H’ index and H’ index vs NDVI of the study sites of these districts. t-test showed that, these equations were significant at 5% since p value was less than 0.05. This study will be useful to understand the application of NDVI to correlate with biophysical characteristics of the forest.