Abstract
Sonitpur and Udalguri district of Assam possess rich tropical forests with equally important faunal species. The Nameri National Park, Sonai-Rupai Wildlife Sanctuary, and other Reserved Forests are areas of attraction for tourists and wildlife lovers. However, these protected areas are reportedly facing the problem of encroachment and large-scale deforestation. Therefore, this study attempts to estimate the forest cover change in the area through integrating the remotely sensed data of 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020 with the Geographic Information System. The Maximum Likelihood algorithm-based supervised classification shows acceptable agreement between the classified image and the ground truth data with an overall accuracy of about 96% and a Kappa coefficient of 0.95. The results reveal a forest cover loss of 7.47% from 1990 to 2000 and 7.11% from 2000 to 2010. However, there was a slight gain of 2.34% in forest cover from 2010 to 2020. The net change of forest to non-forest was 195.17 km2 in the last forty years. The forest transition map shows a declining trend of forest remained forest till 2010 and a slight increase after that. There was a considerable decline in the forest to non-forest (11.94% to 3.50%) from 2000–2010 to 2010–2020. Further, a perceptible gain was also observed in the non-forest to the forest during the last four decades. The overlay analysis of forest cover maps show an area of 460.76 km2 (28.89%) as forest (unchanged), 764.21 km2 (47.91%) as non-forest (unchanged), 282.67 km2 (17.72%) as deforestation and 87.50 km2 (5.48%) as afforestation. The study found hotspots of deforestation in the closest areas of National Park, Wildlife Sanctuary, and Reserved Forests due to encroachments for human habitation, agriculture, and timber/fuelwood extractions. Therefore, the study suggests an early declaration of these protected areas as Eco-Sensitive Zone to control the increasing trends of deforestation.
Highlights
Sonitpur and Udalguri district of Assam possess rich tropical forests with important faunal species
The forest cover slightly increased to 548.25 km[2] from 2010 to 2020, with a gain of 2.34% compared to the last decade (Fig. 3)
The conservation of biological diversity is gaining importance globally, and multiple countries and agencies are working towards the maintenance of forest health and thereby conservation and reintroduction of different extinct species in protected areas
Summary
Sonitpur and Udalguri district of Assam possess rich tropical forests with important faunal species. The Nameri National Park, Sonai-Rupai Wildlife Sanctuary, and other Reserved Forests are areas of attraction for tourists and wildlife lovers These protected areas are reportedly facing the problem of encroachment and large-scale deforestation. The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), Government of India has declared a number of protected areas (National Parks, Sanctuaries, and Reserved Forests) to control deforestation and degradation of forest ecology. The Sonai-Rupai Wildlife Sanctuary (WLS) has lost over 85 k m2 of its forest, and Nameri National Park (NP) registered a sharp decline in the dense forest due to habitat fragmentation and encroachment by small farmers[12]. In the backdrop of continuing deforestation and illegal encroachments, this study attempts to estimate the forest cover changes in the study area till 2020 and make a comparative assessment of deforestation during the past four decades (1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020)
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