Abstract
BackgroundTropical forests have been experiencing remarkable rates of transformation over the past century as they are getting degraded or decimated to a great extent by anthropogenic activities. This study aims at investigating the long-term forest cover transformation in Palamau Tiger Reserve (PTR), Jharkhand, India, using Landsat TM, ETM+, and OLI satellite images during 1975–2015. The forest cover was delineated utilizing various keys of visual interpretation techniques.ResultsThe forest cover was primarily decreased in the north-eastern and north-western parts in PTR. In order to identify the anthropogenic disturbance in the forest reserve, human settlement density was mapped using high-resolution Google Earth imagery. The results showed a positive correlation between human population density and settlement density. Five major affected sites with an outer buffer of 2 km were demarcated in order to deduce the anthropogenic influences in major non-forested sites in PTR. It was observed that the forest change was maximum at site 3 (Ranidah, area 61.06 km2, − 6.47% change) followed by site 2 (Saidup, area 124.38 km2, − 7.65% change), where settlement units were also high (2638 and 2621 settlement units, respectively). At site 1 (Barkheta, area 81.59 km2), − 1.99% change was observed, and at site 4 (Samadh Tola, area 9.15 km2), 1.03% change was observed having moderate settlement units (2422 and 1892 settlement units, respectively). Areas with the low level of human settlements (1038 settlement units) observed the least change, i.e., at site 5 (Netarhat, area 48.52 km2), 0.58% change was observed mainly during the years.ConclusionsThe forest cover exhibited an overall decrease of 14.55 km2 (− 1.34% change) with episodic variation during 1975–2015 in PTR, Eastern India. A significant forest disturbance occurred primarily in the north-eastern and north-western parts of PTR along the forest fringe due to the high population and settlement density. The study highlighted the potential use of freely available multi-temporal satellite observations in forest management.
Highlights
The forest is a vital resource and under a high rate of change due to the combination of changing climate and anthropogenic influences (NEMA 2004)
The Landsat satellite datasets were acquired from the Global Land Cover Facility (GLCF; http://glcfapp.umiacs.umd.edu:8080/esdi/index.jsp), and Sentinel 2A satellite data was acquired from earth explorer website
The multi-temporal satellite imageries acquired from Landsat MSS (December 15, 1975), Thematic Mapper (TM) (October 12, 1991), ETM+ (November 22, 2001), TM (October 21, 2010), and Operational Land Imager (OLI) (December 28, 2015) were used to delineate forest and non-forest area boundaries during 1975 to 2015 utilizing various keys of visual interpretation techniques to assess forest cover transformation
Summary
The forest is a vital resource and under a high rate of change due to the combination of changing climate and anthropogenic influences (NEMA 2004). The human population increase and global change in climate were informed as crucial factors that contribute to forest cover loss and gain in seasonally dry tropical ecosystems worldwide (Lambin et al 2003; Lepers et al 2005). These changes contributed to the increase in agricultural expansion, the human population, and people’s socioeconomic condition, and these changes activated the unsustainable removal of natural resources. Forest cover change and environmental monitoring is a significant component for natural resources management for which it is essential to generate relevant information for the management of natural assets (Lu et al 2004). The forest cover was delineated utilizing various keys of visual interpretation techniques
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