Forest Change and Its Effect on Biomass in Yok Don National Park in Central Highlands of Vietnam Using Ground Data and Geospatial Techniques

Nguyen Viet Luong,Ryutaro Tateishi,Nguyen Thanh Hoan,To Trong Tu

doi:10.4236/ars.2015.42010

Nguyen Viet Luong, Ryutaro Tateishi + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.4236/ars.2015.42010

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Abstract

This paper assesses the changes in forest cover in Yok Don National Park of Vietnam between 2004 and 2010, and the implications of such changes on the biomass stocks of this national park. Remote sensing and GIS tools along with the ground truth data collected from the field were employed for classifying the forest types of the study area from SPOT HRV satellite imagery for years 2004 and 2010. The total area considered in this study is 115.5 thousand ha. Five different categories of forests were identified. The results demonstrated that between 2004 and 2010, the Evergreen broad leaved rich quality forest decreased by 11.2 thousand ha (3.5 Mega tons of biomass) and the Dry open dipterocarps medium quality forest decreased by 15.3 thousand ha (2.5 Mega tons of biomass). In that time period, the Evergreen broad leaved medium quality forest increased by 3.2 thousand ha (0.8 Mega tons of biomass), the Evergreen broad leaved poor quality forest increased by 2.5 thousand ha (0.24 Mega tons of biomass), and the Dry open dipterocarps poor quality forest increased by 3.2 thousand ha (0.69 Mega tons of biomass). Total biomass of the study area decreased by 4.3 Mega tons.

Highlights

Nowadays, climate change is no longer a prediction but has become a threat and a serious challenge to human-How to cite this paper: Luong, N.V., Tateishi, R., Hoan, N.T. and Tu, T.T. (2015) Forest Change and Its Effect on Biomass in Yok Don National Park in Central Highlands of Vietnam Using Ground Data and Geospatial Techniques
The parameters of structure of forest cover include the diameter of breast height at 1.3 m position (D1.3 > 5 cm), height at from bottom to top of wood tree (Hvn), height of wood tree under branch (Hdc), density of wood tree/ha (N/ha)
This study demonstrates the applicability of temporal data sets (2004 and 2010) from SystèmeProbatoire de l’Observation de la Terre (SPOT) HRV satellite and the ground data for mapping forest types and analyzing the forest change

Summary

Introduction

Climate change is no longer a prediction but has become a threat and a serious challenge to human-How to cite this paper: Luong, N.V., Tateishi, R., Hoan, N.T. and Tu, T.T. (2015) Forest Change and Its Effect on Biomass in Yok Don National Park in Central Highlands of Vietnam Using Ground Data and Geospatial Techniques. Climate change and its relation to CO2 emissions are a matter of global concern. Biomass is defined as the total amount of aboveground living organic matter in trees expressed as oven-dry tons per unit area [1] and tropical forests hold large stores of carbon [2]. Carbon stocks in forest biomass decreased by an estimated 0.5 Gt annually during the period 2005-2010, mainly because of a reduction in the global forest area [3]. In Southeast Asia region, total forest cover is estimated at 268 M ha in 1990, dropping to 236 M ha in 2010, with annual change rates of 1.75 M ha (∼0.67%) and 1.45 M ha (∼0.59%) for the periods 1990-2000 and 2000-2010, respectively [4]

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