Abstract
Abstract. This study focused on the forest ecosystem dynamics assessment and predictive modelling deforestation and forest cover prediction in a part of north-eastern India i.e. forest areas along West Bengal, Bhutan, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam border in Eastern Himalaya using temporal satellite imagery of 1975, 1990 and 2009 and predicted forest cover for the period 2028 using Cellular Automata Markov Modedel (CAMM). The exercise highlighted large-scale deforestation in the study area during 1975–1990 as well as 1990–2009 forest cover vectors. A net loss of 2,334.28 km2 forest cover was noticed between 1975 and 2009, and with current rate of deforestation, a forest area of 4,563.34 km2 will be lost by 2028. The annual rate of deforestation worked out to be 0.35 and 0.78% during 1975–1990 and 1990–2009 respectively. Bamboo forest increased by 24.98% between 1975 and 2009 due to opening up of the forests. Forests in Kokrajhar, Barpeta, Darrang, Sonitpur, and Dhemaji districts in Assam were noticed to be worst-affected while Lower Subansiri, West and East Siang, Dibang Valley, Lohit and Changlang in Arunachal Pradesh were severely affected. Among different forest types, the maximum loss was seen in case of sal forest (37.97%) between 1975 and 2009 and is expected to deplete further to 60.39% by 2028. The tropical moist deciduous forest was the next category, which decreased from 5,208.11 km2 to 3,447.28 (33.81%) during same period with further chances of depletion to 2,288.81 km2 (56.05%) by 2028. It noted progressive loss of forests in the study area between 1975 and 2009 through 1990 and predicted that, unless checked, the area is in for further depletion of the invaluable climax forests in the region, especially sal and moist deciduous forests. The exercise demonstrated high potential of remote sensing and geographic information system for forest ecosystem dynamics assessment and the efficacy of CAMM to predict the forest cover change.
Highlights
The human societies throughout their history have co-evolved with their environment through change, instability and mutual adaptation
The results indicated alarming depletion of the forest cover over time
In the year 1975, an area of 12,938.23 km2 was covered by seven types of forests viz., tropical wet evergreen, sub-tropical evergreen, tropical semi-evergreen, moist deciduous, sal, reverain and the bamboo forest, which got depleted to 12,285.59 km2 by 1990 and 10,603.95 km2 by 2009 thereby showing a progressive
Summary
The human societies throughout their history have co-evolved with their environment through change, instability and mutual adaptation. Humans lived in harmony with other creatures in different ecological systems till they advanced technically and socially. Today humans dominate the ecosystems and landscapes throughout the world (Vitousek et al, 1997; Kushwaha et al, 2010). Humans have interfered and brought about unprecedented changes in ecosystems, landscapes, biomes and the biosphere. Global changes in the land use/land cover, especially deforestation together with fossil fuel burning, is responsible for carbon accumulation in the atmosphere over past one century (Candell and Raupach, 2008) so much so that the survival of the large number of species is at stake. The concerns on the land use/land cover changes emerged in the research agenda on global environmental change with the realization that the land surface processes influence climate (Pitman and Narisma, 2005)
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