The availability of forest cover and the critical index of forest area over Merangin-Tembesi Watershed, Jambi Province

Abstract

The current condition of the Watershed (DAS) has undergone many changes from time to time. The opening of new land areas for agricultural, plantation, mining, residential and industrial activities often does not concern to the sustainability of nature, causing ecosystem changes. The study is aimed to analyze the availability of forest cover over the Merangin-Tembesi watershed and the critical index of the forest area existing. The existing forest cover was analyzed by conducting land cover classification using GIS software and groundtruth. The critical index was performed for the forest area in this watershed. The results showed that critical land in the Merangin Tembesi Watershed was divided into 5 classes, namely uncritical land class with an area of 823,294 ha (60.98%), potentially critical 88,552 ha (6.56%), moderately critical 360,792 ha (26.72%), critical area 52,669 ha (3.90%), and very critical 24,791 ha (1.84%). Protected Forests (HL) in Sarolangun Regency and Merangin Regency are dominated by the moderately critical class 75,260 ha (87.47%) followed by the non-critical class with an area of 5,828 ha (6.77%), critical potential class with an area of 2,189 ha (2.54%), critical class with an area of 1,582 ha (1.84%), very critical class 1,179 ha (1.37%).