Abstract
Establishment of protected areas (PA) has been one of the leading tools in biodiversity conservation. Globally, these kinds of conservation interventions have given rise to an increase in PAs as well as the need to empirically evaluate the impact of these PAs on forest cover. Few of these empirical evaluations have been geared towards comparison of pre and post policy intervention landscapes. This paper provides a method to empirically evaluate such pre and post policy interventions by using a cellular automata-Markov model. This method is tested using remotely sensed data of Bannerghatta National park (BNP) and its surrounding, which have experienced various national level policy interventions (Indian National Forest Policy of 1988) and rapid land cover change between 1973 and 2007. The model constructs a hypothetical land cover scenario of BNP and its surroundings (1999 and 2007) in the absence of any policy intervention, when in reality there has been a significant potential policy intervention effect. The models predicted a decline in native forest cover and an increase in non forest cover post 1992 whereas the actual observed landscape experienced the reverse trend where after an initial decline from 1973 to 1992, the forest cover in BNP is towards recovery post 1992. Furthermore, the models show a higher deforestation and lower reforestation than the observed deforestation and reforestation patterns for BNP post 1992. Our results not only show the implication of national level policy changes on forest cover but also show the usefulness of our method in evaluating such conservation efforts.
Highlights
Over the last few decades, tropical deforestation has been one of the major changes in terrestrial landscapes affecting the global environment [1,2,3]
In this paper we evaluated the Indian National Forest Policy of 1988 and the revisions made to it by building a landscape of no policy intervention using a Cellular automata (CA) Markov model
A CA Markov model is limited by its capacity to incorporate human decision making and assumes a stability of driving factors affecting the park over time
Summary
Over the last few decades, tropical deforestation has been one of the major changes in terrestrial landscapes affecting the global environment [1,2,3]. During the 1990s, the world has lost about 8.3 million hectares of forest per year, and in the period from 2000 to 2010 a reduced, but still significant rate of 5.2 million hectares lost per year (values account for deforestation and afforestation/reforestation to obtain final loss values) [5]. Of this forest cover loss, most occurred in biodiversity rich natural tropical forest areas [3,5]. Total forested area under protection globally has increased from 3.48% in 1985 [17] to 13% in
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