Abstract
Community forests have been established worldwide to sustainably manage forest ecosystem services while maintaining the livelihoods of local residents. The Chitwan National Park in Nepal is a world-renowned biodiversity hotspot, where community forests were consolidated in the park’s buffer zone after 1993. These western Chitwan community forests stand as the frontiers of human–environment interactions, nurturing endangered large mammal species while providing significant natural resources for local residents. Nevertheless, no systematic forest cover assessment has been conducted for these forests since their establishment. In this study, we examined the green vegetation dynamics of these community forests for the years 1988–2018 using Landsat surface reflectance products. Combining an automatic water extraction index, spectral mixture analysis and the normalized difference fraction index (NDFI), we developed water masks and quantified the water-adjusted green vegetation fractions and NDFI values in the forests. Results showed that all forests have been continuously greening up since their establishment, and the average green vegetation cover of all forests increased from approximately 30% in 1988 to above 70% in 2018. With possible contributions from the invasion of exotic understory plant species, we credit community forestry programs for some of the green-up signals. Monitoring of forest vegetation dynamics is critical for evaluating the effectiveness of community forestry as well as developing sustainable forest management policies. Our research will provide positive feedbacks to local community forest committees and users.
Highlights
Community forestry, characterized by incorporating local communities and individuals into forest management, aims at preserving forest ecosystem services while sustainably maintaining the livelihood of local residents, especially in countries in the Global South [1]
Monitoring forest cover is critical in community forest management, and remote sensing techniques have been applied in assessing vegetation conditions and dynamics [3,4,5]
The quantitative analyses of the green vegetation fractions and the significance of change will be discussed in the following paragraphs
Summary
Community forestry, characterized by incorporating local communities and individuals into forest management, aims at preserving forest ecosystem services while sustainably maintaining the livelihood of local residents, especially in countries in the Global South [1]. One concise and effective method is to calculate and examine vegetation indices, including the most widely used index, the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), where higher values are associated with greater vegetation cover and stature [6,7,8,9]. Despite being simple, these indices may sometimes produce controversial results due to undesirable atmospheric conditions or mixture effects from background substrate [10,11,12,13].
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