Abstract
Abstract Background Forests are fundamental in maintaining water supplies, providing economic goods, mitigating climate change, and maintaining biodiversity, thus providing many of the world’s poorest with income, food and medicine. Too often, forested lands are treated as “wastelands” or “free” and are easily cleared for agricultural and infrastructure expansion. Methods In this paper, the sustainability of two forest ecosystems (state and community/private owned) was evaluated using SPOT-5 satellite images of 2005 and 2011. This study was conducted in a sub-watershed area covering 468 km2, of which 201 km2 is managed by the state and 267 km2 by community/private ownership in the Murree Galliat region of Punjab Province of Pakistan. A participatory approach was adopted for the delineation and demarcation of forest boundaries. The Geographic Object-Based Image Analysis (GEOBIA) technique was used for identification and mapping of ten Land Cover (LC) features. Results The results show that between the years 2005 to 2011, a total of 55 km2 (24 km2 in state-owned forest and 31 km2 in community/private forest) was converted from forest to non-forest. The conclusion is that conservation is more effective in state-owned forests than in the community/private forests. Conclusions These findings may help to mobilize community awareness and identify effective initiatives for improved management of community/private forest land for other regions of Pakistan.
Highlights
Forests are fundamental in maintaining water supplies, providing economic goods, mitigating climate change, and maintaining biodiversity, providing many of the world’s poorest with income, food and medicine
The results show that there is a decrease of about 5 km2 of ‘closed canopy Pinus wallinchiana’ forest from to 2011 in the state managed area, whereas, and a decrease of about 2 km2 in the community/private forest
The Murree forest division lies in the western Himalaya ecoregion, which is important in terms of forests and various biodiversity contributions regarding expected climate change effects (Chawla et al 2012)
Summary
Forests are fundamental in maintaining water supplies, providing economic goods, mitigating climate change, and maintaining biodiversity, providing many of the world’s poorest with income, food and medicine. Forest ecosystems are fundamental in securing water supplies, providing economic goods, mitigating climate change, and maintaining biodiversity providing many of the world’s poorest with income, food and medicine. Local and regional practices are different and often do not match national policies, and it is difficult to keep up with the impacts of international trade and investment flows on forests. International initiatives such as timber certification or According to FAO (2010) 2.2% or about 16,870 km area of Pakistan is forested with 3,400 km of planted forests. Many tribal communities have inhabited these areas for centuries, but tenure rights are not well defined or documented in government records (Shahbaz et al 2007)
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