Publication Date:
2020-11-13
Description:
Forest is an imperative part of environment but in the recent years, forest areas are being transformed due to population expansion, unscientific urbanization and a rising trend of industrialization in some countries. Dense forests habitats have been fragmented into patch forest region. This paper attempts to find out the forest canopy or crown density and forest fragmentation areas as well as to identify the spatiotemporal changing paradigms of forest within the Silabati river basin. Forest Canopy Density and fragmentation models are an important craftsmanship to examine the health of the forest or vegetation in a given area. Various indices such as Normalize Difference Vegetation Index, Advanced Vegetation Index, Shadow Index, Bareness Index and ultimately weightage overlay analysis methods have been adopted to determine forest health or anthropogenic stress on forest habitats. Higher weight has been assigned to dense forest areas and open forest area has been given lower weight. The result shows that forest canopy or crown cover as well as forest density are radically reduced in between the time period 1998 and 2009. It is also stated that the total 116.549 km2 areas have been degraded during 11 years period (1998–2009) with a rate of 10.59 km2/year. Meanwhile, 180.02 km2 forest areas have been regained in between 2019 and 2009 with a rate of 18 km2/year that is possible only due to implementation of forest policies exclusively execution of participatory or joint forest management techniques.
Print ISSN:
2524-4957
Electronic ISSN:
2524-4965
Topics:
Architecture, Civil Engineering, Surveying
,
Geography
